Slashdot Mirror

Yes. Real Mature. Just like: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/19/AR2007041900962.html

They can do A without the keep it secret part and still do B. And until the United States realizes the deep ingrained anti-America feelings across large parts of the world they will keep embarking on projects like trying to bring democracy in Afghanistan instead of getting the hell out ASAP.

The antagonism towards the U.S. runs so deep in the populations of some countries that it will take generations for views to change. And as American influence on the world fades, regimes that paid lip service in exchange for free goodies will become bolder. The failure to have any influence over Pakistan despite the massive amounts of financial and military aid sent there isn't just a safety risk, it is a huge embarrassing humiliation that emboldens corrupt dictator regimes like Iran. Obama's moderation is too little too late to make up for over half a century of screwing entire countries over. The distrust is so overwhelming that people may believe little else of what their corrupt governments and state controlled media tell them, but they will believe any criticism of the US. It's too late to do any good, it's too late to mend fences, the best way is to get the hell out of places you don't need to be in, focus on having access to resources, everything else can sort itself out. Limit the military presence and ties to countries where public opinion still actually favours the U.S. (for entirely self serving reasons of course, but whatever) - places like Australia, India, U.S, dependent oil rich middle east countries-can't do without them, NATO Europe (if it comes to war everyone knows where they stand). Israel is such a massive liability that it might be cheaper in the long run to move the entire country to a relatively empty part of the United States, someone should probably do a research study to try and quantify how much support for Israel has cost the United States.

They'll hate you for the foreseeable future. It's an unwinnable propaganda war--you can remove and replace entire evil regimes but the population will turn against you and support whoever shouts the loudest in the anti-America propaganda shouting contest. It happened in Afghanistan and Iraq, it will happen if you go anywhere near Pakistan or Iran.

or 3. The lawyers, judges, and Congress will realize that the entire government will grind to a halt if that strategy is allowed, so they will reject the strategy, completely failing to realize that this is also a problem in other areas.

This is exactly what happened in banking... they had a patent troll attack, and the bansters' government pets just made that entire sector immune [1] from the problem.

So what you get is further distancing of sectors like banking and law from the rest of us... and increases likelyhood of a (more violent) revolution.

[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/13/AR2008021303731.html?nav=emailpage

See here

GENEVA—Gamers worried their actions on the virtual battlefield could land them at the Hague war crimes tribunal can relax.

The International Committee of the Red Cross says media reports that it is investigating whether the Geneva Conventions apply to video games are false.

The Swiss-based humanitarian group assured gamers Thursday that “serious violations of the laws of war can only be committed in real-life situations.”

So you don't have to wade through the bullshit in the article or the outraged incredulity of the comments:

Gamers worried their actions on the virtual battlefield could land them at the Hague war crimes tribunal can relax.

The International Committee of the Red Cross says media reports that it is investigating whether the Geneva Conventions apply to video games are false.

The Swiss-based humanitarian group assured gamers Thursday that “serious violations of the laws of war can only be committed in real-life situations.”

The ICRC says it is nevertheless interested in working with video game makers to promote a better understanding of international humanitarian law because some companies also develop war simulations for armed forces.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/game-on-red-cross-says-players-of-combat-simulations-wont-face-war-crimes-prosecution/2011/12/08/gIQAivwAfO_story.html

Just think, if I had my way idiots like you would have to actually verify the story before posting dumb ass shit on /.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/game-on-red-cross-says-players-of-combat-simulations-wont-face-war-crimes-prosecution/2011/12/08/gIQAivwAfO_story.html

/. please, please, please stop using stories from the daily mail.

This story is FALSE. Just like almost EVERY OTHER story from the mail. Stop.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/game-on-red-cross-says-players-of-combat-simulations-wont-face-war-crimes-prosecution/2011/12/08/gIQAivwAfO_story.html

Your post is a collection of lies.

Fukushima Dai-ichi unit 1 was granted a 10 year license extension just prior to the incident
http://www.bellona.org/articles/articles_2011/fukushima_reactorext
The earthquake did not damage the plant
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-02/tepco-says-earthquake-didn-t-damage-critical-units-at-fukushima-reactor.html
Fuel rods were not removed, they could not have been. They are still in there, molten down.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-24/tepco-confirms-meltdown-of-no-2-3-reactors-at-fukushima-1-.html
The tsunami was not unprecedented, bigger tsunami wave run-ups have occurred on Japan's eastern seaboard in the past 100 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1933_Sanriku_earthquake
During the incident, the people at the plant did not work selflessly and continually to help prevent the incident from escalating further, but rather evacuated on multiple occasions.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/latest-nuclear-plant-explosion-in-japan-raises-radiation-fears/2011/03/15/ABwTmha_story.html?wpisrc=nl_natlalert

Javed Iqbal was arrested in New York in November 2001, on charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States and fraud in relation to identification documents.

[citation needed.]

From http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/24/AR2006082401461.html, is this:

New Yorker Arrested for Providing Hezbollah TV Channel

By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 25, 2006

A New York man was arrested yesterday on charges that he conspired to support a terrorist group by providing U.S. residents with access to Hezbollah's satellite channel, al-Manar.

Javed Iqbal runs HDTV Corp. [...]

[...snip...]

Donna Lieberman of the American Civil Liberties Union said she is "deeply troubled" that a television distributor is being prosecuted for the content of a broadcaster. Such a prosecution, she said, "raises serious First Amendment concerns." She said she thinks that the law under which Iqbal has been charged has a First Amendment exception for news communications.

You wouldn't be a(nother) pro-American propagandist liar, would you? Yes, it looks like you are. Couldn't even get the year right on your dissemination, could you?

I hope you betted on that

Let's have some respect for the world's largest democracy, please.

They may be a democracy, but they're still fairly backward in several ways: far too religious, abortion of female fetuses and female "circumcision" (mutilation).

They* killed a killed a guy for being ... "dangerous terrorist". No trial, no judge, no lawyer, no oversight.

Care to share the name? News reports? Evidence? If you have evidence, go to the press, or Cryptome or...

...

So, back to the point, citations please.

Well, assuming GP was referring to US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, there is no shortage of press commentary. Apparently US citizen Salmir Khan was killed in the same attack, but was not deliberately targeted, being just another collateral casualty. The press reports include statements of concern regarding this extra-judicial execution of al-Awlaki being ordered by the sitting US president. It was not a "heat of the moment" death in a shootout or in an attempt to escape from being arrested. Moreover, was not convicted of any offence, not even in absentia. Although many accusations were made (presumably with justification), no charges were ever laid against him. From what is in the press reports, he was by no means a Mahatma Gandhi, but the ordering of an execution without even going through the motions of a trial (not even a mock trial) should be disturbing to any US citizen. It's easier to slide down the slippery slope than to climb back up.

Oh, here's a few press references, in the Wahington Post, the Huffington Post, and CBS News. Use your Google-fu to find many many more. There is also an interesting comment in the New York Times, which suggests that legal advice given to the president before the execution was that it would be illegal.

Someone just blew up (at least) one of their missile bases. There are reports of more attacks.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/checkpoint-washington/post/image-shows-than-an-iranian-missile-site-was-destroyed/2011/11/28/gIQA7KZW5N_blog.html

Iran claimed it was an accident...
Course then the UK embassy then gets invaded and a drone is shot down. Or claimed. All a coincidence of course.
 

We give 100% of federal revenue to the old and the poor these days.

Bullshit, all the cries of socialism and handouts for the lazy, criminal, and brown people are a charade to keep the crooks in power so they can continue to rob you while you blame socialism. A scheme that works quite well, apparently, so well that millions of people blame a guy who sleeps in an alley for their stolen wallet and take up arms to defend the billionaire who actually stole it, even sending more money to his campaign fund.

Welfare for the poor: $191 billion
Tax breaks and loopholes: $1 trillion
Welfare for millionaires: bailouts, corporate welfare, no-bid contracts, war profiteers: $trillions

So go on being so focused on boogeymen like socialism, sharia law, and global warming denial that you're oblivious to the real crimes, corruption and waste plaguing this shithole we absurdly proclaim "the greatest country on earth", you're following the script to a tee.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/post/congress-approval-problem-in-one-chart/2011/11/15/gIQAkHmtON_blog.html#excerpt

It's arguable that Apple as a business might not directly create as many jobs as a traditional manufacturing business; however, Apple certainly fosters the creation of "collateral" jobs with myriads of developers working night and day to produce iOS apps. As of today, Apple has approved more than 500,000 of them (source).

Except our free market is running about 20 percent unemployment. Don't trust official estimates, they game them to ignore the long-term unemployed. Our country has a serious problem, and the people who can actually do something about it won't even talk about it.

Fun Fact: The Solyndra loans were approved of during the Bush administration. Have fun with your partisan pissing contest.

I'm sorry, you seem a bit short on facts. Here are some facts from the left leaning New York Times and Los Angeles Times.

Preliminary approval under Bush, final approval under Obama. Then financial analysis was skipped under Obama and warnings were ignored. Plus Solyndra's owner was a top Obama campaign contributor. Plus the Obama administration structured the deal so that investors would get paid before taxpayers if the company failed.

"George B. Kaiser, a billionaire from Tulsa, Okla., was a fund-raiser for Mr. Obama’s 2008 campaign and the backer of a foundation that is Solyndra’s leading investor ... during the period when Solyndra’s loan guarantee was under review and management by the Energy Department, the company spent nearly $1.8 million on Washington lobbyists, employing six firms with ties to members of Congress and officials of the Obama White House. None of the other three solar panel manufacturers that eventually got federal loan guarantees spent a dime on lobbyists."

""“It was alarming,” said Frank Rusco, a program director at the Government Accountability Office, which found that Energy Department preliminary loan approvals — including the one for Solyndra — were granted at times before officials had completed mandatory evaluations of the financial and engineering viability of the projects. “They can’t really evaluate the risks without following the rules.” The Energy Department’s senior staff has acknowledged in interviews the intense pressure from top Obama administration officials to rush stimulus spending out the door. “We had to knock down some barriers standing in the way to get these projects funded,” Matthew C. Rogers, the Energy Department official overseeing the loan guarantee program, said in March 2009, just days before Solyndra got its provisional loan commitment. Mr. Rogers said Energy Secretary Steven Chu had been personally reviewing loan applications and urging faster action on them.""
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/23/us/politics/in-rush-to-assist-solyndra-united-states-missed-warning-signs.html?pagewanted=all

"At a White House meeting in late October, Lawrence H. Summers, then director of the National Economic Council, and Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, expressed concerns that the selection process for federal loan guarantees wasn't rigorous enough and raised the risk that funds could be going to the wrong companies, including ones that didn't need the help. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, also at the meeting, had a different view. Under pressure from Congress to speed up the loans, he wanted less scrutiny from the Treasury Department and the Office of Management and Budget, or OMB."
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/sep/26/nation/la-na-energy-loans-20110927

"Energy Department officials were warned that their plan to help a failing solar company by restructuring its $535 million federal loan could violate the law and should be cleared with the Justice Department, according to newly obtained e-mails from within the Obama administration. The e-mails show that Energy Department officials moved ahead anyway with a new deal that would repay company investors before taxpayers if the company defaulted."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/solyndra-obama-and-rahm-emanuel-pushed-to-spotlight-energy-company/2011/10/07/gIQACDqSTL_story.html

Jobs creation in the midst of economic downturn. It appears to be a race to the bottom, the result of which won't manifest itself until after the next presidential election.

YOU are being arbitrary.

Marijuana is not unharmuful. It's as harmful as any other smoking drug.

More facts, less wishful thinking, please.

Ironic that you plead for more facts and less wishful thinking - since your assertion that marijuana is "as harmful as any other smoking drug" has been disproven by actual research. Marijuana does not cause lung cancer. Dr. Donald Tashkin made this finding 6 years ago now, and it has been reaffirmed by subsequent follow on investigation, which has also turned up evidence of lower risks for other types of cancer in cannabis users. Cannabinoids are in fact potent anti-cancer agents (shown in lab tests as well).

Check this out: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/25/AR2006052501729.htm l. And this: http://cancerpreventionresearch.aacrjournals.org/content/2/8/759.abstract .

Follow your own advice and actually learn the facts.

Look - there were no deaths in Vietnam War protests before Kent State. There is always a first episode of massive violence, and nobody knows when that will come.

We are only in the very beginning of these protests - as the economy gets worse, more people will join them. As police forces make more blunders, they will react with more force. We are on a path that very soon now will be irreversible - of peaceful revolution or bloody ruin. The status quo will not hold - Communism is more popular than Congress these days.

And from what I've read the Democrats aren't willing to cut anything unless taxes are raised to the point that nothing has to be raised

That's because the public overwhelmingly does not want them to do so. This is known as "listening to your constituents."

The GOP have listened to Grover Norquist, who is ONE constituent.

It kind of falls in nicely with the 1% vs. the rest of us issue that is pretty clearly established as our biggest political issue of this era.

The fact is that you cannot raise taxes high enough to eliminate the deficit.

Clinton did. In fact, the math and the facts overwhelmingly demonstrate that Bush's tax cuts on the rich are the primary structural driver of our deficit. The other being the wars that Bush dragged us into for no reason.

Entitlements will consume 100% of revenue eventually unless the are radically reformed.

This is also known as a lie. Social Security could be made solvent for another 75 years by simply raising the cap on taxes for those making more than 106k. Medicare can be made solvent by ending the ridiculous conditions imposed on it by Bush's part D abomination that the government cannot negotiate for lower drug prices.

The shame is that clearly the Democrats are not interested in any compromise because any entitlement reform, however badly needed for the good of the nation

. . . so you need to steal my Social Security benefits to pay off Bush's wars? To hell with that bullshit. I EARNED MY MOTHERFUCKING SOCIAL SECURITY. That money IS MINE. I am not giving it up so that some gold-plated CEO can have his second motherfucking yacht.

The shame is that the Republicans are listening to Grover Norquist and very obviously not hearing a single word the public has to say, which is, in a nutshell:

* The public opposes the supercommittee âoemaking hundreds of millions of dollars in spending cuts to Medicare and Medicare through increasing beneficiary costs,â 76-19. A majority, 52 percent, strongly opposes these cuts.

* The public supports the supercommittee âoeincreasing taxes on wealthy Americans and corporations,â 66-31. A majority, 52 percent, strongly support these tax increases.

Democracy may be inconvenient to your ideology, but we are the majority and you are not. If you have a smidgeon of respect for it (which by your previous posts I can tell, you really don't) you will accept that an deal with it.

But, if like many Republicans you actually do NOT respect Democracy, the great thing is you are still going to just have to gag on that thing, and fucking deal with it. I do not care. Your movement and their ridiculous opinions do not matter anymore in US politics. The truth of this will become clear to you next year when we the 99% take your unearned power and rip it right the fuck out of your hands.

Better get used to that.

Let's take your points as they are:

Hans Blix:
- Iraq was impeding his mission deliberately.
- Iraq was playing cat and mouse games.
- Report to UN on Janurary 27th, 2003: "Iraq appears not to have come to a genuine acceptance, not even today, of the disarmament which was demanded of it."

ElBaradei:
- was relying on Iraq themselves to provide evidence.
- report to the UN from ElBaradei was that Iraq was withholding evidence and materials, that their Dec. 7, 2002 document dump “did not provide any new information relevant to certain questions that have been outstanding since 1998."

At the time, they were NOT certain what was present, because Saddam was deliberately not cooperating. So we had three theories. We had the theory (which turned out to be correct) that there wasn't anything left and Saddam was just blustering. We had the theory, which the US had, that Saddam's weapons program had gone underground into storage or hidden operation. And we had the theory, proposed by the Weenie French, that we shouldn't attack Iraq because Saddam would use WMD's to retaliate.

Oh, and let's not forget that the UN high mucky-mucks, particularly those like Hans Blix and ElBaradei, were already under heavy suspicion related to Kofi Annan and the oil-for-food scandal and all the bribery Saddam's regime was tossing around from it.

I couldn't figure out a way to fit it into the summary, but I was bothered by the way Reuters recently handled their story claiming George Soros was funding Occupy Wall Street (OWS), first running a headline claiming a connection but with a story that offered very spurious evidence of monetary support for the movement, and then taking that story down under heavy criticism from other news sources and reposting the exact same story with a headline absolving Soros of any connection to OWS with a new link, while simultaneously killing the link to the old story without any explanation.

It was extremely problematic for people debating online, as my conservative friends suddenly had their link go dead, while my liberal friends suddenly had the same story but with a headline supporting their position. It was the same exact story, but since nobody RTFAs, the headline was the most important piece of evidence in the debate.

I post this example, not to dredge up some off-topic flamewar about OWS, but because it seems like a pretty clear cut case of how we don't want news agencies operating. I read a comment on Slashdot recently that the reason we aren't allowed to modify our comments is to prevent users from editing out things in order to accuse others of strawman attacks. If you screw up a fact, you post a correction. It seems News Organizations owe us the same courtesy.

In the United States, it's clear that the government just doesn't care about false advertising any more

Wow, you are very misinformed. Example 1. Example 2. Example 3. Example 4. Example 5. All this year (most in the last month), all from the FTC, all just a small fraction of recent efforts. There are also several other federal agencies and at least 50 state agencies that go after false advertising.

Also, I don't believe anti-net neutrality is a partisan issue, R and D are both for it.

If both parties are against net neutrality, how do you explain the Senate vote last week where the Democrats voted against repealing it and the Republicans voted for repealing it? And Obama threatened to veto a repeal? Link

Oh, were you talking about America putting more women in power? WTF dude, we've already got tons. Funny how these criticisms only get leveled at one side, with the other side getting off scot-free.

You must have missed it in 2005 when several of the AFL-CIO's largest unions walked out of the federation and nobody got their legs broken.

That's understandable, given that your comment indicates your perception of organized labor froze in place around 1955 or so.

We have the head the of SEC replying when asked "why can't we fire failed regulators" respond by saying that that would harm the agency.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/seven-sec-employees-disciplined-on-failure-to-stop-madoff-fraud/2011/11/10/gIQA3kYYCN_story.html

We just had a recent story about how the IRS can't get its act together and I betcha they are not in worry about losing their jobs. We have more government workers making over 100k a year and 900+ over 170k a year. Do you think any are truly accountable now?

We are Greece, we just fail to admit it. When one in seven works for a government agency I think it is a clue. Protect your own is their motto.

Oddly enough, the wealthy are already taxed

As it turns out, according to the IRS and ABC News,1,470 American millionaires paid no federal income tax in 2009.

That's a problem with the overly-complicated tax code full of loopholes and deductions easily hidden in the tens of thousands of pages of IRS codes and regulations. The answer to that is simplification, not tweaking rates and adding more complexity.

Nearly 100,000 millionaires pay lower tax rates than middle class, and capital gains (gambling on the stock market and commodity futures) has half the tax rate as a working person's income tax.

If you can make money without working, you're in different world than most people, and you're not talking about the 3.6 million "1%'ers", you're talking about something like 0.00001%. Collectively, they don't really have enough money to make a dent in the federal debt, even if you took all of it. Capital gains are taxed at a lower rate to keep revenues high. That rate has been played with many times before, and even Obama and Biden acknowledge that raising the rate will reduce revenues. That's because investors take on risk, and will be less willing to LOSE money if any gains are taxed the same as no-risk earnings.

Oddly enough, the wealthy are already taxed

As it turns out, according to the IRS and ABC News,1,470 American millionaires paid no federal income tax in 2009. Nearly 100,000 millionaires pay lower tax rates than middle class, and capital gains (gambling on the stock market and commodity futures) has half the tax rate as a working person's income tax. Funny how your tea party was all against repealing the Bush tax cuts for the rich, but against the Obama tax cuts for the middle class.

banks are already regulated

Not nearly enough. For one thing, tha Glass-Stegal act's repeal was one of the causes of the economic meltdown. Do you really think that a 200% APR is in any way not usurious? Yet that's how much many of the payday loan places that the poor use charge.

Unfortunately, no one really knows what that point is. All I've gotten from them is "Wah! Rich people have more than we do!"

Then you obviously haven't been paying attention.

Really kinda sad considering that they are the 1% themselves when looked at from a worldly point of view.

The preacher at my church tried to make the same point, and he was wrong, too. I'm twice as rich as someone in Chicago who earns the same wage as me, because prices are twice as high there. When I was in Thailand in the USAF in 1974, it was a third world country with a median income of $1000 per year. But you could feed four in a nice restaraunt for less than a dollar, take a bus anywhere in the country for a nickle, rent a bungalow (woman included) for thirty bucks a month. In the US, my airman's salary made me a pauper, but if I'd had a year's worth of that salary in Thailand, I could have retired. If you made $1000 per year in Thailand you weren't poor, $1000 per year in the US and you were destitute. You simply can't determine wealth by the amount of dollars one has, because a dollar is worth different amounts in different places.

Simply being able to eat without working puts them there.

Boy, you sure swallow these 1%er tea party lies hook, line, and sinker, don't you? One in six Americans have problems with hunger. I went without food when I was young and poor. And you're going to blame the 9% unemployment rate on the people who can't find jobs? Son, that's close to insanity. It's Washington and Wall Street that keep people poor -- jobs are their job, and they're both falling down on that job.

You might want to educate yourself.

Crony capitalism exposed

But, the more news reporting there is of how completely evil they are, the more outraged people get at their behavior, the more likely it becomes that either the Mexican or American authorities take them more seriously and launch an all-out war against them.

They have had an all-out war for three years now - and by "war" I don't mean the kind of war that's "war on drugs" in U.S., I mean actual war with military personnel, fully equipped, directly involved in operations - and cartels using IEDs, machine guns, grenade launchers, mortars, and improvised but still impressive armored vehicles.

So far it doesn't seem to be working all that well, because, in those southern states, cartels are often more powerful than the government, and their manpower is, to a large extent, ex-government law enforcement / military personnel (keep in mind that Los Zetas was founded by Mexican ex-spec ops!). So even when they give the army a green light to shoot first and ask questions later, it's still not a walk in the park.

And what's your band's name?

Nowadays you need to be famous. Great talent is optional[1] maybe even overrated. If you're too obscure, you could be the best and tour as much as you want, nobody is going to attend your tours.

[1] There are many thousands of very talented musicians. Fact is you could be one of the best violinists in the world, but hardly anyone will care, unless you're gift wrapped in marketing and presented appropriately: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html

And why should they care? With the population growth and increase in opportunities and technology, there are more talented musicians nowadays than there have ever been in history. But the average lifespan of each person has at most doubled.

So why should people even give a minute's attention to your particular bunch of musicians. And without that minute of their life how are you going to even get a dollar from them?

Are many people even pirating your band's music? If more people are pirating other band's music and not your band's perhaps you should think hard about why that is happening and fix it - They don't know of your band? They don't like the music? They don't like the people in the band? They don't like the look or image?

Or you can just keep cussing, whining and blaming the pirates. Doesn't matter that much to me. Plenty of other stuff to listen to, many movies to watch, many games to play, many restaurants to go to, etc.

p.s. I'm actually happy to hear there are empty floors at Sony's offices.

Every time in history, that the middle class has been wiped out, it has been from bad government monetary policy, or the institution of communism, period. Capitalism has always increased over time the quality of life for all.
The Government is going broke, and from Reinhart and Rogoff's book "This time it's Different, Eight Centuries of Financial Folly" Every time a government reaches the current situation of the West's balance sheet (Europe, and the US), governments have debased the currency - bad monetary policy, or faced default, ending all of those nice entitlement programs and military adventures overseas.

Also, the "crumbling infrastructure" argument is patently false:
http://cafehayek.com/2011/09/its-this-myth-that-should-be-crumbling.html
http://cafehayek.com/2011/09/crumbling.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-us-infrastructure-argument-that-crumbles-upon-examination/2011/10/31/gIQAnILRaM_story.html

Wall Street firms — independent companies and the securities-trading arms of banks — are doing even better. They earned more in the first 21 / 2 years of the Obama administration than they did during the eight years of the George W. Bush administration, industry data show. Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/wall-streets-resurgent-prosperity-frustrates-its-claims-and-obamas/2011/10/25/gIQAKPIosM_story.html

Bush. Obama. Clinton. Who cares? I grow tired of trying to pin the tail on the appropriate "ass" here to find blame...like THAT is going to do any good? Think we're actually going to incarcerate a former President? Please. We can't even manage to impeach an active one even when we find reason to. Greed and Corruption existed far before the last dozen presidents were in office, so let's stop with the name games already. If you want to throw any name around, then stick with the current guy for not doing a damn thing about the problem. Everything else is water under the bridge, and in many ways, all equally guilty.

Wall Street firms — independent companies and the securities-trading arms of banks — are doing even better. They earned more in the first 21 / 2 years of the Obama administration than they did during the eight years of the George W. Bush administration, industry data show. Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/wall-streets-resurgent-prosperity-frustrates-its-claims-and-obamas/2011/10/25/gIQAKPIosM_story.html

Oh yeah?

Appeal to authority works in the other direction too, you know. Especially when the source in question was just reporting on the release as published by NASA.

Yeah, whatever. NASA's just part of the leftist lamestream media, amirite?

> Fix welfare; and by "fix" I mean "nuke from orbit" and start over from scratch. Welfare is hopelessly
> broken, because it is no longer the temporary assistance program it was intended to be but has
> become a system which ensures people remain a slave to it.

Somewhat curious as to how the changes to what you term "welfare" which were put in place by the Clinton Administration and Congress specifically to address the concerns you note have been undone? Because I have seen no sign of such undoing either in Congress or the state governments; just the opposite if anything.

> I know multiple people who are struggling financially and are receiving assistance, want to get off
> it but because their industries are dead, or are unable to perform their old jobs, have sought
> alternate work, but taking a lower-paying job as a temporary stepping stone results in losing all
> assistance, including food stamps, which leaves them in a worse predicament than they started out in.

That's an entirely different problem from that of "welfare" you started out with, and one which is far less tractable (particularly given the social constraints imposed on the US by its 1%).

sPh

Here is the source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/26/AR2009012601831.html HFCS manufacutrers may use soduim hydroxide produced using the Castner-Kellner process which contains mercury. There is no way to know how the HFCS in food was produced. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castner-Kellner_process

I think this has more to do with the Lululemon murder verdict on wednesday than the iPhone 4.

Summary: Self-absorbed Apple store employees ignore screams from a neighboring store where a girl was being murdered: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/whats-scarier-the-slaying-or-the-bystanders-who-heard-and-did-nothing/2011/10/31/gIQA9y2tZM_story.html

There's probably a massive lawsuit coming Apple's way about this.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/house-republicans-keeping-the-faith/2011/11/01/gIQAP8EPdM_story.html?hpid=z3

And the patent reform bill passed both houses a month or so ago.

I'm sorry that this isn't the kind of "skeptic" you wanted.

What I want is irrelevant. The kind of skeptic TFA claimed this guy was is a "Global Warming Skeptic". Those words are taken directly from the title of TFA. What you did was take a bunch of other stuff, much of which I agree with, and used that to counter my point. My point, of course, is that this guy is not a "Global Warming Skeptic", as TFA points him out to be.

As to the rest of your post, well, the premise is shot so rest is simply negated.

You would have done better to point out the TFA is on The Huffington Post, which is well known for being full of crap. Unfortunately, it's not just HuffPo that is the problem. Take this article from The Washington Post

A skeptical physicist ends up confirming climate data (Lack of capitalization is all theirs)
Back in 2010, Richard Muller, a Berkeley physicist and self-proclaimed climate skeptic, decided to launch the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) project to review the temperature data that underpinned global-warming claims. Remember, this was not long after the Climategate affair had erupted, at a time when skeptics were griping that climatologists had based their claims on faulty temperature data.

What do you think they mean by "self-proclaimed climate skeptic"? Did they intend to make the reader think this guy denies climate? Of course not. They want you to believe that this was a Global Warming Denialist (much like a Holocaust denier), who denies that Global Warming is real.

The only thing that Muller "denied" was proxy data. He explains it all HERE. He also explains the research project that this article is about as he's doing it and what he intends to learn from it.

Then why has marijuana never been linked to lung disease or cancer? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/25/AR2006052501729.html

Though I agree with your sentiment regarding the inherent condescension of "let", my reading of "let Mexico turn into New Afghanistan" was more to the effect that while we've been sacrificing our own sons and brothers in far off lands under questionable-at-best pretenses, a country with whom we share almost 2000 miles of borderland has deteriorated from 'kinda bad' to 'downright 3rd world'. At least in the border towns controlled by the cartels. I hear from Mexican natives that further south it's not so much of a problem. But not *too* far south, because then you get into the territory of the South American cartels. All because of *our* (assuming from your syntax that you are also American) demand for drugs. Not that our selling cartels (the ones we're friendly with, today at least) assault weapons was helping things in the least.

It's not a problem that can be solved militarily, or even via police. It's an economic problem plain and simple. There exists such a great profit margin in trafficking drugs to the US that even airplanes are considered disposable in pursuit of profit. The markup is that good. We can't win this battle with a greater show of force, because every time we confiscate a drug shipment, or arrest a dealer, the street price simply rises, and the cartels continue unabated. And experience suggests that Americans' demand won't diminish any time soon. Sure, some low-level proles get sent to prison now and again, but thanks to the drug war, that's the criminal's equivalent of university. Anyone who's anyone in that world has done a stint at some point or another. It's nothing more than a networking opportunity (how many of us have gone to an industry trade group event that had *terrible* food? Prison is like that, just you can't leave for a while, and you might get stabbed) to the hardened criminal.

Our only hope is to fight the cartels economically. Legalize drugs. *All* drugs, immediately. Pass a moderate tariff on anything labelled an 'intoxicant' (and be prepared to fight the alcohol and tobacco lobbies) and use even just a fraction of the money to pay for medical treatment for addicts, who would finally be treated as having a medical problem, rather than a criminal one. Slowly but surely, the cartels would whither away, even faster if you legalized -- and thus opened to regulation -- prostitution, thus undercutting another cartel revenue stream. The only downside is that the CIA would throw a fit at having its black ops budget destroyed overnight, but I think I'm okay with that.

The real question is, in the country that has spawned the most aggressive of multinational corporations, how have they all overlooked this potential revenue stream? They seem to be able to lobby effectively for themselves in virtually all other aspects of their business; don't tell me that the mentality that spawned Union Carbide, Monsanto, or Altria has suddenly grown a social conscience? I'm no friend of corporations, but I'd love nothing more than to see Marlboro brand cannabis compete with locally-sourced, organic strains for marketshare. And for a person with a drug problem to be offered a chance at rehabilitation, rather than imprisonment and a recidivism rate no better than random chance.

But maybe I'm just a dreamer.

What the hell does law enforcement need a 37mm/40mm grenade launcher attached to a remote-controlled UAV for?

Stuff like that, perhaps?

Holy Hell. If I were in the same room with you I'd slap you upside the head.

So you're unstable enough that you're willing to assault people you don't agree with? Cute.

Quit whining and become the 1% yourself.

What you're suggesting is mathematically impossible for anymore than 1% of the population. The problem is, when the cost of health care is factored out, wages for nearly everyone else is flat. The US is about 60th in the world in upward mobility.

Also, the Washing Post says entry into the 1% is about $520,000:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/who-are-the-1-percenters/2011/10/06/gIQAn4JDQL_blog.html

And the corporate system is working to the point where pensions are taken away from everyone but executives, and those executives had pay increases of 300% over the previous decades, when everyone else is flat.

It may be an aside, but the trope found elsewhere that the non-1%ers are lazy just doesn't ring true, I think it's more like something people say to comfort themselves without having to think about it. I've known a lot of hard-working, smart people that have had significant struggles finding employment or their businesses struggle hard. I've done pretty well, but I think that's luck because these other people aren't less hard-working, nor are they dumb people. In fact, I've known a few people that had their businesses yanked out of under them because the bank wanted their money back before term. These weren't delinquent businesses either, they kept up with payments and didn't complain. They couldn't find other financing in time to save the business, so the business was liquidated.

Furthermore, we already have government run healthcare: the VA and Medicare--for vets and old people. Not only are these services popular, their more efficiently run than private insurance companies, with less administrative costs. Which lead to the absurd statement: "get your government hands off my medicare."

Excuse me when I say that I think you've been brain-washed by Fox News.

This report specifically talks about how INEFFICIENT Medicare is and makes recommendations to change that.

This USA Today article complains that Medicare funds the vast majority of residency training in the USA. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a substantial amount of money that is not going to treatment as you said.

This report says fraud is costing in the billions. And this article says that fraud is a growing problem in Medicare costing $60 billion per year and says that fewer than 5%... that's 5% of claims are audited.

According to this Congressional Research Service report Medicare's budget is $420 billion for 2009. If $60 billion is just fraud, that means nearly 15% of Medicare's budget is NOT going to treatment not including all the rest of Medicare's expenses (funding residency, other misc overhead).

Sorry, but to say that Medicare is efficient is just plain wrong.

From the Wikipedia link: "many claims are expected to be met administratively from the fund set up for that purpose under the Oil Pollution Act of 1990"

The Oil Pollution Act set up funds to prevent civil liability for spills. It capped BP's maximum liability for the spill at $75M. So I ask, what lawsuit risk? The government already set up a system such that BP knew exactly what it was liable for - a total risk of $75M.

But we need those regulators, right? I mean, they obviously kept the spill from happening, or at least knew it was going to occur... U.S. exempted BP's Gulf of Mexico drilling from environmental impact study

No, the reality is regulatory capture. The only people with enough expertise to oversee something as complex as oil drilling are largely people who have worked in the industry, who have friends in the industry, and often benefit financially from the very companies they have to regulate. BP gets a pass, regardless of how many regulations are on the books, because the guy that's regulating went to college and worked for 15 years with the guy he's trying to regulate.

But really, keep calling people that disagree with you anti-science, or anti-evidence. It makes it easy to tell you're being partisan instead of rational.