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There's a whole range of hate speech which starts at "I hate him". It's rather stronger to add "...and I'm glad his daughter's dead", and then there's the matter of how such speech is delivered. You could start with mentioning quietly if the matter comes up in conversation, go through standing on a street corner with a loudhailer announcing the same feelings, posting the object of your hate letters informing them of this fact, posting those same opinions on the Internet and taking out an advert in the national press informing anyone who cares to read of this opinion. (For the purpose of this post, let us suppose you could actually find a national newspaper prepared to run such an advert).

Most countries draw a line somewhere and say "Right, that's it. Step over this line and it's a criminal offence" - even in the US you can get in trouble for sending hate mail. (IIRC there are laws about what you can send through the USPS that are used in such cases. You can hate someone all you like but you're not making the USPS a party to telling the world that!)

Welcome to the realities of criminal law. Along the lines of "when the only tool you have is a hammer..." it can be tough to keep up when times change faster than the law can. Someone does something that doesn't neatly fit within the existing framework and prosecutors face pressure to "do something about it" and they apply the only tool they have. The alternative is legislating the hell out of everything until the criminal code is beyond comprehension. There's already something like 4,500 federal offenses that you can go to jail for, let alone state and local crimes. Even the Department of Justice couldn't figure out how many federal crimes exist on the books. Can you imagine if legislators decided to enumerate everything?

I don't claim to have the answer but be careful what you wish for when complaining about laws that are overly broad.

It took too long. The WSJ has a better one here http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904836104576558600549181370.html/ that's not behind a paywall. It also takes a more insightful view of the deal and who might be affected by it.

I am always amazed by the extent to which humans believe they are immune from the problems that the rest of the animal kingdom has to deal with, or else from the mechanisms used to solve those problems on account of our civilization.

'But Aquitaine,' you say, 'Isn't the whole point of civilization that we can rise above barbaric, survival-of-the-fittest brutality?'

Sure -- some of the time. But that doesn't change what we are or what we're doing on this planet, which is trying to survive a competition for limited resources with a minimum of suffering. Capitalism is a system that rewards many of the same traits that nature would reward you for -- innovation, wits, cleverness, but also deception. Government and civilization are the means through which we try to 'level the playing field,' either by creating artificial advantages for those who may need them, or else by removing advantages from those who have them. To a certain extent this is the very definition of 'humane,' but it can also be quite smart. One needn't look far to find a second- or third-generation heiress (or heir) to a fortune who is dumb as a post and won't amount to anything other than a flashy headline when they OD in their Manhattan loft one day. Similarly, there are plenty of smart, hardworking people out there who simply run into terrible luck, and for whom the cost of rescuing them is far less than the loss of value or production if you didn't. Technically, these are not 'pure capitalist' notions, but as the WSJ points out in an article just today -- 'pure' conservatism is pretty much a myth (subscription required) -- The net returns for some artificial control of free markets, both in measurable dollars and in harder-to-measure human life and happiness, are pretty much indisputable, and even Adam Smith and Madison knew that.

The difficulty arises when you establish an entity whose purpose is to design these controls and whose reward is commensurate with the greatest number of people advantaged in the short-term rather than the soundness of the control. Here you have two very easy examples: the private sector, when shareholders influence corporate decision-making for short-term reward without regard for long-term competition (or the environment, or any number of other long-term considerations), and the government, where Nancy Pelosi's reward has everything to do with the number of people she can 'cover' with government insurance and hardly anything to do with whether the mechanism she uses to cover them will put the country on an express train to where Greece and Portugal are hanging out right now.

This is not a weakness in either capitalism or communism; it's simple self-interest achieved via rhetoric and populism, and if the private sector is any more immune to it than the public sector, it's because the private sector has a built-in cycle of institutional death and birth occurring on a more regular basis than does government. If a big company starts doing dumb things, three medium-sized companies will (eventually, usually) step in because they did smart things. This is much harder in government, and the more necessity for it that there is, the more reactionary the movement that might ultimately achieve it will be, typically to everybody's detriment (see also: the guillotine).

So it gets a little tiring trying to reduce everything in politics to capitalism versus communism (or capitalism versus socialism); that war is over. There is no modern industrial society whose prosperity is not tied to a capitalist base, even if that base is then overwhelmingly restrained and regulated by a powerful government; statism is not mutually exclusive with capitalism -- it just redirects the output more artificially and less efficiently than the market would. Some of the time and in some ways, that's just what you want, because you're 'buying civilization' with it. Do it too much, and you're stifling the natural engin

Let's face it. If there was a country such as Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Syria, or maybe even Iran, is there a computer security company who would have the guts to say "no" when a pile of cash was plonked on the table? Oh, you want to spy on your own citizens that might be breaking local laws (which happen to prevent free speech and any expressions of disagreement with the government)? No problem. For a fee we'll train your personnel to configure the software however you want. This is what happened at the intelligence service in Libya, it's unsurprising in Tunisia.

Are there laws in the countries where they are incorporated that would prevent them from doing this? With the exception of Iran and Syria, which are under a regime of sanctions that may or may not bar this kind of commerce ("state sponsors of terrorism"), I doubt it. This is all just business-as-usual. The real question is whether it should be.

Yes, it's so wildly successful they stopped reporting sales numbers. Now there's vote of confidence if ever I saw one.

Damn you're dumb. According to Gibson, the foreign governments have not accused them of any crimes. SO What? Did you bother to even look at the charges under the law? It clearly states that there only be in violation and not that any accusations need to be filed. http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/16/usc_sec_16_00003372----000-.html any fish or wildlife taken, possessed, transported, or sold in violation of any law or regulation of any State or in violation of any foreign law; There is no vast conspiracy, stop being a lemming and following blindly what every Tea Party blogger tells you; try thinking independently. The CEO nailed himself when he suggested buying on the "grey market" because everything in Madagascar was so corrupt. And it didn't help him when his original supplier was caught and is now facing charges in Madagascar. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903895904576542942027859286.html http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/general_music_news/gibson_guitar_tangled_in_madagascar_wood_law.html

The foreign governments don't need to complain you moron. The law in the US clear states that: ANY fish or wildlife taken, possessed, transported, or sold in VIOLATION of ANY LAW or REGULATION of any State or in VIOLATION of ANY foreign law; http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/16/usc_sec_16_00003372----000-.html Mr. Nix went to Madagascar in June 2008 and emailed back to the home office that he saw "widespread corruption and theft of valuable woods" and that the company should look into buying through "the grey market.". Those were just some of the emails seized. Also logging and cutting trees in Madagascar has been illegal since 2006. The supplier of the wood which ended up at Gibson's office in the US has been criminally charged in his native Madagascar. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903895904576542942027859286.html http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/general_music_news/gibson_guitar_tangled_in_madagascar_wood_law.html There you go

The Apple products are a copy of the Motorola wireless. They work just like the Motorola Wireless. That's not something you demand money for, that's something you outright ban.

This is going to be fun. Here's a hint: the Motorola patents are not on "a rectangle". They're on important stuff.

This is just the beginning. Microsoft has used Non Practicing Entities (NPEs) for this for years. Nokia, probably on Microsoft's suggestion, is doing the same. You can't sue an NPE back. They don't make products. But turnabout is fair play and Motorola Mobility has got what it takes to play this game.

Motorola Mobility (MMI) could take a handful of patents, an executive, a lawyer and a dozen paralegals, and stand it up as a business unit and spin it off in an IPO, retaining only a minority interest and with a license back to the patents. Just like the Nokia NPE, they can make the patents revert to MMI in the event of a "change of control," like bankruptcy or hostile takeover. This mini-NPE could then file suit, borrow money against future court winnings and set to work pursuing injunctions of products from companies that suing them directly or standing up NPE sockpuppets to do so - like Apple, Microsoft, Nokia and Oracle. May as well throw HP in there too. The Street just loves these high-risk, high-reward IP pureplay instruments.

And then they could do it again. And again. And on the second day they can do it again three times. They can turn it into a business model, and do it three times a day for a year. MMI has many thousands of very strong patents in hand to do this with. Because the mini-NPEs have differing ownership and different patents at issue the suits don't get joined and have to be defended separately. They can get their lawyers and such at bulk rates and set up a spinoff assembly line.

The load on the courts goes logarithmic. Most mini-NPEs flameout and revert the patents at 0 cost to retry, but some few hit it big and get injunctions until there's no tech product left to ship, anywhere in the world. And none of them settle, ever.

It's the IPocalypse. Mutually Assured Destruction. The end of tech as we know it.

However, this does prove EXACTLY how stupid HP is, if they killed it so quickly without knowing about 1 or 2 (whichever it was, if not both.) As for being "stunned" at the response--really? I mean, they got lukewarm reviews, but everyone said they were decent devices, and HP could have EASILY sold all of their stock at about $249 each*, and not looked quite so much like chickens with their heads cut off while doing so. The only message the $99 price sent was "We want out of this fucking business TODAY."

And in case anyone is wondering why HP is doing what they're doing, read this. Very nice one-page summary from the Wall Street Journal.

* $499: no sales. $449: no sales. $399: no sales. $99: SOLD OUT IN HOURS. Maybe there's a reasonable (though still not profitable) middle ground there somewhere...

Behavioral profiling is effective.

Considering that TSA can't even weed out criminals during the hiring process I don't have much faith that TSA agents will prove much more adept at picking out terrorists in a 30 second interview prior to boarding an airplane.

It's actually all part of a carefully planned, coherent strategy:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904787404576535211589514334.html

I wish the TSA was more transparent and honest about the technologies and processes they use. I get the impression their imaging technology and their processes such as their rules for liquids were better thought out and better supported by real world facts. After the attempt to smuggle explosive liquids onto flights in the UK, many airports limited liquid size to 100 ml, or 3.4 ounces. This somewhat arbitrary amount is just under the size of many 4 ounce mini-drinks and mini-yogurts and baby foods in the U.S. So why not allow 4 or 5 ounces. Does that .6 ounce truly make the difference between life and death?

The TSA should engage in profiling, as the Israelis do. Although it's controversial, the Israelis have managed to prevent any hijacking incidents since 1969 so they must be doing something right. Even the Israelis aren't perfect and sooner or later it's possible someone will slip through and cause a calamity, but so far they have demonstrated a more intelligent approach to airport security that does not require body scanner imaging technology such as the TSA has enthusiastically promoted.

China's airport security is efficient and thorough, as well. A friend traveling there recently told me that when he came back to the U.S., it felt like going from a developed country to a 3rd world country in the airports. I suppose China has certain other problems having to do with civil liberty, not to mention a serious attitude problem on the part of one of their private airlines, but they seem to be doing something right with some aspects of the flying experience, anyway.

From the WSJ: "Draw public criticism from a major corporate-governance advisory firm, alleging Mr. Apotheker filled board openings with cronies."

H-P's One-Year Plan (WSJ): Let's say you were given a year to kill Hewlett-Packard. Here's how you do it.

First of all, TFA makes it sound like a straightforward case of "don't advertise illegal crap". Google didn't outright take ads for vendors of illegal drugs, they took ads for entirely legal Canadian pharmacies.

Er, citation needed. There's a bit of a history here indicating that Google was taking ads from just about anybody ... People have been selling prescription medicine on the internet forever. How real it is or where it comes from, what does it matter? The fact is that you need a prescription for it for a reason and those people get it without one.

The FDA just doesn't like anyone cutting in on US pharmaceutical industry profits (even when the drugs come from those very same US companies).

That or they are attempting to do their job to regulate medicine.

Second, if merely accepting ads from unkosher sources commits a crime, then why the hell haven't the major broadcast networks gotten the smack-down for showing a non-stop string of crapvertisements from the likes of such blatant frauds as Enzyte and Head On?

Because Head On and Enzyte don't contain prescription drugs? They're largely over the counter drugs? It's when you get into scheduled drugs that the federal government gets upset. Here's an example of Adderall and Vicodin.

Oh. Right. "Online", the magic word that makes everything old new and illegal again.

No, but it makes it easier for you to appear legitimate, make quick semi-anonymous transactions of money and do it across a border so it's harder for law enforcement to track. "Online" increases our ability to communicate, it increases our commerce and it greatly improves our quality of life but it also amplifies the potential of illicit and illegal activities (for the same reasons I just listed). It's a double edged sword.

Google set aside $500 million for this a while ago. I'm not saying that that act alone implies guilt but it certainly indicates that they were preparing for this. If they thought these claims were bogus, I bet they would have put that money to better use. They have a history, I see news articles about these illegal prescription-less pharmacies and I'm guessing that you're just blindly defending Google for god only knows why.

Sprint - they still have unlimited data.

Unlimited data may not be around for long if Sprint is anything like Verizon
http://mobile.wsj.com/article/SB100014240531119033279045765266906

They actually lost offsite power: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903461304576526642400085456.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Which also happens in the US.

Apple are the heavyweight in cheap consumer electronics, and American owned. We should be asking why they aren't building in the US, especially as most of what they "build" is putting together other companies' components.

And we should be defining what "make (or made)" and "build (or built)" mean. If I buy a motherboard from taiwan and build a computer from it in the US, is it "Made in America"? What if the motherboard is from taiwan, CPU from Arizona, hard drive and case from China, power supply from California and I build the computer in Dallas, is it "Made in America"? What if the parts are mostly from the US but they're assembled in Mexico, what is that? And we can take it further, what if the parts are made in the US but the rare earth elements used in those parts are from China, where is it "made"?

Car manufactures have been playing this game for years, buying parts from overseas but assembling the car in the US and calling them "American made". It's so bad that there's a American-Made Index where they rate cars based on how many of their parts come from the US and vehicles like the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord are more "American made" than the Chevy Traverse or Ford Explorer and American icons like the F-150 and Silverado don't even make the list, so people buying trucks from Ford or GM thinking they're supporting America really aren't, they'd be better off buying a Toyota Tundra.

Obviously if the metal, chemicals and other rare materials were mined in the US to make the parts in the US used to assemble the device in the US then it's 100% American made, but that's almost never going to happen so we need to clear this up before we can call something "Made in America".

I think that Amazon, Google, and Apple would all disagree with you. For them, IT is the most strategic element of their company. Check out this article in the Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903480904576512250915629460.html

PS - Your comment that people who disagree with you are "a scourge on the industry" is somewhat nasty. I hope that you can continue this discussion in a polite manner, and accept differences of opinion in a gentlemanly way.

> ICultists wont touch it with a 10 foot pole at any price because it's
> not made by Apple and everyone else that's on the fence is going
> to see the identical price and buy the Ipad because either they saw
> it on TV more / their ICult buddy recommended it and since they're
> priced the same might as well get what everyone else is talking about

I am SO FUCKING SICK of all this "it's all because of fanboys/marketing/cultishness" shit! EVERY SINGLE MAJOR REVIEW of the TouchPad says it's barely in the same league with the iPad 1 and not even CLOSE to the iPad 2.

And because someone is bound to post a reply asking for proof, here are two major mainstream ones:

• David Pogue, New York Times
  "... the TouchPad doesn't come close to being as complete or mature as the iPad or the best Android tablets..."
• Walt Mossberg, Wall Street Journal
  "Bottom line: ... I can't recommend the TouchPad over the iPad 2"

And if you think the big sites are just dumb and/or Apple whores, how about some tech sites, like Ars Technica or Engadget?

• Engadget
  We all wanted the TouchPad to really compete, to give us a compelling third party to join the iOS and Android boxes on the ballot. But, alas, this isn't quite it... The shortage of apps is a problem, no doubt, but that will change with time. What won't change is the hardware, and there we're left a little disappointed. Holding this in one hand and either an iPad 2 or a Galaxy Tab 10.1 in the other leaves you wondering why you'd ever be compelled to buy the HP when you could have the thinner, lighter alternative for the same money. Meanwhile, the performance left us occasionally wanting and, well, what is there to say.
• Ars Technica
  The HP TouchPad, if it were less expensive, could be an extremely strong, if slightly less polished, alternative to the iPad. But like other recently-released high-profile Android tablets, it's determined to take on the champ. And just like those Android tablets, its hard to recommend over an iPad at the same price.

That said, I would have snapped one up for $99 but it's now Saturday afternoon and there are none to be found. (I went to bed early last night and was out of the house first thing in the morning. Dammit!)

> Non Apple Tables are priced roughly $200-300 too expensive. Get
> them around $199-$299 and they'll sell like gangbusters just like it
> did for Android phones in the mobile market.

There is not magical "make it cheap" dust that can be sprinkled on non-iOS devices. The fact that the OS is free really doesn't amtter much at all. (Remember when everyone thought Linux would take over the desktop because it was considered to be as good as Windows?) Believe it or not, Apple is being DAMN price competitive on the iPad. Do you think multibillion dollar companies are spending billions of dollars to bring tablets to the market and then watching them fail just for fun? No, they're selling them for that much because they HAVE to in order to make any profit at all, and they're failing because they just aren't as good. You CAN NOT MAKE a tablet as good as the iPad for less. It has a good looking, responsive touchscreen, the best battery life out there, and it's within 1mm of being the thinnest as well. Lightest of all the 10" tablets, too, AFAIK. Cheaper tablets have screens that are worse looking and/or less sensitive, they're thicker, they're heavier, AND they have worse battery life.

There ARE cheap Android tablets out there (especially if you include things like the Pandigital Novel and B&N Nook Color) and they ARE NOT SELLING anywhere

Because HP says the fact people are increasingly ditching PC's for tablets (read: iPads) factored in their decision :

"The tablet effect is real, and sales of the TouchPad are not meeting our expectations," Apotheker says, explaining the movement of consumers from PCs to tablets as one of the problems with the PC division. So H-P is exploring options for its unit that "may include separation through spinoff or other transactions."

Basically they're saying iPads are where the money and future growth are and they failed to create even a beachhead in that market so they're getting out.

That seems like a very shortsighted move because HP only acquired Palm last year and has only had a competitor to the iPad on the market for a month and a half. To kill your largest division because your 1st generation tablet didn't make an immediate splash against a product from a company that has a cult-like following tells me that HP's management isn't willing to work to develop a product that they purchased just to enter this market, and they deserve to fail as a result.

Also, Dell and Lenovo may take HP's share of the corporate workstation market and Acer the low-to-mid range laptop but Apple will probably take a healthy bite out of the more profitable high end laptop share (what HP had left of it) and high end PC. The volume isn't really important, the fact that there isn't any money left in being top dog volume-wise is the whole reason they are getting out.

While there isn't a lot of profits left to squeeze out of that market, it is still the company's largest division, and it's not like they have a lot of options to make up that income. When IBM sold their PC division to Lenovo, they had the market for big iron locked up, a successful line of midrange computers, a line of servers, several lines of enterprise software products, and a large consulting division. HP has their printer division, their server and storage lines, their line of Itanium products, and their networking division. HP doesn't have enough in those other areas to make up for spinning out their PC division.

The only thing that would make this move make sense is if HP is attempting to focus solely on the data center and gambling that VDI will be the future of the corporate desktop.

Margins are small and competition is fierce, apple rules supreme on the tablet front, but that part of HP's business is even tinier, hence why would the link bother to mention apple?

Because HP says the fact people are increasingly ditching PC's for tablets (read: iPads) factored in their decision :

"The tablet effect is real, and sales of the TouchPad are not meeting our expectations," Apotheker says, explaining the movement of consumers from PCs to tablets as one of the problems with the PC division. So H-P is exploring options for its unit that "may include separation through spinoff or other transactions."

Basically they're saying iPads are where the money and future growth are and they failed to create even a beachhead in that market so they're getting out.

Also, Dell and Lenovo may take HP's share of the corporate workstation market and Acer the low-to-mid range laptop but Apple will probably take a healthy bite out of the more profitable high end laptop share (what HP had left of it) and high end PC. The volume isn't really important, the fact that there isn't any money left in being top dog volume-wise is the whole reason they are getting out.

Yeah, news from 2009.

Not exclusive. They are sold in the Apple stores factory unlocked. No one is limited to having to buy from a carrier.

Yeah, news from 2009.

I used to think the Governor's office has no power, but it does have some (c.f., the hay Cheney made with the vice presidency). The biggest power it has is appointments -- especially the kind the Lege can't veto because it's out of session for 1.5yrs (SBOE chairs, Arson board reviewing the Willingham case, etc.). Secondarily, it can veto legislation. What's different from other governors is that Perry also has a technology slush fund. The Convergen scandal deriving from said fund was only the most egregious. There are others. The Trans-Texas Corridor would have been an ideal project for him to reward donors and their businesses but the 1-mile wide boondoggle was set to "eminent domain" a large swath of rural Republican territory.

(During the school finance shuffle, they did redo some of the Robin Hood formulas. But it makes no difference when you're simply unwilling to fund from the state level, constitution be damned.)

You are correct that Texas is a weak governor state. However, Perry has been able to fully utilize his powers since he's been governor for so flippin' long and unfortunately, a lot of it has been for crony capitalism, creationist pandering, and filling boards with yesmen.

-l

Remember how CSS was supposed to make web pages more compact, and simplify layout by avoiding old-style table based layout? Look at how that worked out.

Here's a single article from the Wall Street Journal. It's 3299 lines of HTML. That doesn't include anything pulled in from style sheets.

As an exercise, I went through and took out all the junk. The actual story, plus all the formatting needed to display the full page in in its original fonts, is 77 lines. So what's the rest? Some of it is links to other stories, but that's under 100 lines. Much of the code is ad-related, even though there are only a few ads. There's a lot of "social related" stuff, which, although it takes up little screen real estate, seems to require far too much on-page code. The "login" mechanism turns out to have all the code for not only "login", but registration of a new account, as part of the page itself. That's on every page served by the Wall Street Journal. There's a vast amount of hidden content, including a "video carousel". There's personalization stuff that would turn on if the user was logged in.

When the people who code crap like that start using HTML 5 with both local storage and connections to the "cloud", it can only get worse.

I'm sure the SEALs destroyed the stuff that really matters. Stealth technology is not new. China has already started testing their own prototype of a stealth plane. Will the Chinese learn something from what was left behind? Maybe. Maybe not.

I suspect that if this technology was so uber-secret, we would have saturated the place with enough ordinance to blow it into dust. So either it's not so terribly secret (the SEALs destroying what needed to be destroyed) or there was a plan to leave it behind specifically to mislead. Either way, I'd suggest this is a tempest in a teacup.

Since a judge is very likely to be a great deal smarter than you

Obviously you haven't met many of them. Why, just this morning I was reading about one of these smart guys who know better than us.

Unions are pressing Congress to assess how home builder Pulte Group Inc. spent about $900 million in government tax breaks meant to help spur job creation and avoid layoffs.

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2010/12/15/unions-take-fight-with-pulte-to-congress/

Note that Pulte is no small mom-and-pop operation; according to their website:

PulteGroup, Inc. (NYSE: PHM) based in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., is America's premier home building company with operations in 60 markets and 28 states. The Company has an unmatched capacity to meet the needs of all buyer segments through its brand portfolio that includes Pulte Homes, Centex Homes and Del Webb.

http://www.pultegroupinc.com/

(Please don't click on that URL; their web server may collapse if you do and then our poor Commander Taco may be dragged into court.)

Now back to your regularly scheduled bailout ..

but check out this graph for one counterpoint.

Would have been nice to cite the full-size image, or the article in which it appears, rather than a badly resized Google image result, but whatever. The graph you cited compares hourly wages to productivity, and I'm not sure how that relates to standard of living rather than employee productivity. Within its context the graph pretty poorly done; the axis aren't labeled ($140 per hour in 2005?), the description is vague, nothing is said about what was actually measured (or how) and I'd be willing to bet any mention of standard of living doesn't even account for inflation over the 55 years it covers.

Any serious analysis (read: not partisan) of standard of living will show that for most people in the US in the last 30 years, it's gotten better.

Now go and enlighten yourself.

Forgive me for being blunt here, but based on your original post (with a questionable source), and your relatively hostile response to criticism of said post, it looks like the only person stuck on partisan analysis here is you.

Or a liberal's. Take the quiz and see if you're better. Stupidity and demagoguing all around!

Seriously, the average American learned about economics in High School, and that's it. A good portion of people who THINK they know about economics learned about it from partisan blogs/TV/radio, and end up believing that 'government spending destroys jobs' or that 'the US has never defaulted.'

Might want to be careful...

The "Oh, our Predators are using unencrypted video feeds over transmission hardware sufficiently similar that dirt-cheap satellite-TV piracy gear is enough to grab their feeds in real time" incident was sort of an ominous sign...

You will care when interest rates rise for everyone from the local bonds building your schools to state bonds building roads and bridges because those levels of gov't are dependent on federal funds, that is taxes paid by state residents and laundered through the federal government and returned at varying ratios with strings attached. It may even effect the interest rate on your home mortgage if it's not fixed.

The ratings agencies have warned the feds for months. They wanted to see $4 trillion in cuts and only one plan offered that. It was the one called "Cut, Cap & Balance" and passed by the Republican-led House first with some Democrats joining in. The Democrat-controlled Senate voted immediately to table the bill. It never even got a debate.

The White House belittled the plan as "Duck, Dodge & Dismantle" when all the cuts talked about are reductions in automatic increases. Since the Budget Act of 1974, the federal government depends on "baseline budgeting" and today that means a guarantee that budgets will rise 7.5% over the prior year every year. We should be using "zero-based budgeting" where departments must justify every budget dollar.

We know from debt commissions and other studies, there are billions--maybe $100-200 billion according to the non-partisan GAO--in overlapping and duplicative spending but we have Democrats screaming nothing should be touched and anyone who wants spending reform is a "terrorist" (Vice Pres. Biden) or wants to "destroy" government (Minority Leader Pelosi). This is NOT helpful.

Republicans offered their long term reform ideas months ago in the form of the so-called "Ryan plan." Democrats offered criticism all year but no formal counter proposal. There was nothing in writing that could be "scored" by the CBO and Obama's budget received ZERO votes in the Senate. Senator Majority Leader Reid said it would be foolish for his congressional Democrats to offer a budget. That body hasn't passed a budget period in 829 days. Way to avoid responsibility and accountability!

Instead the president's party and its allies used the GOP proposal in divisive, misleading campaign ads. One even showed a doppelgänger of Congressman Ryan pushing an wheelchair-bound elderly woman over a cliff when the plan itself doesn't effect existing benefits for anyone 55 or older. Again, NOT helpful. (Hey, what happened to the "new tone" of "civility" after the Tuscan shooting?)

The president talks about "millionaires and billionaires" when the actual tax changes would effect, not those super rich alone, but persons making $200,000 or couples at $250,000. Small business people filing as S-corps or a cops and teachers in some high cost of living areas like NYC. Taxation needs fundamental reform not just higher rates on easy political targets who are also the most able to avoid taxation. Just as Ireland about Bono.

For anyone reading here who doesn't know and feels guilty a

Not that many are so severely restricted. It's not like the US was downgraded to non-investment grade. I'm sure there will be some selling and shuffling of overall portfolios, but not a massive sell-off.

is here: http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2011/08/05/sp-downgrades-u-s-debt-rating-press-release/

It is interesting that deficit isn't the only, nor it seems, most important issue. FTA:

The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America's governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed. The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy.

The GOP refused to consider any new revenues at all, the prime reason cited by S & P in their downgrade.

That's not what they said at all:

Standard & Poorâ(TM)s takes no position on the mix of spending and revenue measures that Congress and the Administration might conclude is appropriate for putting the U.S.â(TM)s finances on a sustainable footing.

We have a spending problem. S&P wanted to see debt reduction, they wanted to see a bigger amount of savings, but they didn't care where the savings came from. If anything, they listed cuts to entitlement programs like medicare and social security as more important than anything else (because they quite frankly are).

Laying this entirely at the feet of the Republicans is just more blind partisanship. Both parties are worthless and ineffective. Arguing about which one is worse than the other isn't going to help us get out of this situation. Our entire system of government needs a massive shakeup at all levels, and it's going to happen one way or another: either at the ballot box in the short term, or in a complete collapse of the government in the long-term.

Although you raise an intriguing point, I strongly doubt that S&P is willing to do this as a favor to Washington while the US Treasury is calling BS on their math:

S&P officials notified the Treasury Department early Friday afternoon it was planning to downgrade the U.S. government’s debt from the AAA rating it has held for decades, a government official said, and it presented its report to the White House. S&P has previously warned such a downgrade might come if Washington didn’t move to comprehensively tackle its long-term fiscal woes.

After two hours of analysis, Treasury officials discovered that S&P officials had miscalculated future deficit projections by close to $2 trillion. It immediately notified the company of the mistakes.

Credit rating is ideologically ignorant - it's a matter of high debt and inability to meet payments.

No, in fact it is ideologically very non-ignorant, as it has an ideology that it is trying to push on the world. c.f. Krugmans commentary on the issue.

It is also arguably irrelevant in many situations. You can compare us 10y bond yields with, I don't know, greece's 10y bond yield or a bunch of orthers. The world is not about to end on the US. It is quite possible that S&P have just made fools of themselves.

I wonder if anybody on Easter Island ever said, "Hey guys. Do you think we might be running out of trees?" But you know, after the fact I'm sure they were all like, "Oh man. Yeah, you were right. Now that we're all dead I can see that putting up idols for the gods was not as effective as managing our forests would have been."

A new book says that it was actually rats that caused the deforestation. A link to a book review is below.

WSJ.com

/WARNING: scoffers, "tin-foil hatters" and "don't make me thinkers" should skip this post. Closed minds need not apply.

Many have made the point here that Google can certainly sell my viewing habits as a persona to ad agencies and be just as effective in reaching my eyeballs/wallet without a wallet-name. My profile as a long-maintained pseudonymous writer contains a boatload more information on my viewing habits and pathways than my wallet name would (as I am extremely careful about the security of that data). So, they can sell me stuff; I still control my typist's wallet. There's also a huge difference between anonymous and pseudonymous. Those arguments have been made before and above.

A couple pieces of this puzzle can be set next to each other for contemplation:

1. Google is currently undergoing an FTC probe for antitrust violations concerning its dominance in the web-advertising market.

2. Put that piece next to the piece that shows Google's continuing handling of this issue in the face of a real groundswell of negative opinion and debate from a cross-section of users (including the security community) and the information coming from Skud (aka Robert Kirrily) about the database he is compiling of purged accounts and Googlers quitting their jobs over this issue.

3. The just-passed Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act aka the Data Retention Bill.

There's a pertinent paragraph in the above-linked article about PCIPA:

"The Constitution protects privacy against government intrusion, but it doesn't stop the government from forcing private companies to do its dirty work."

Is that happening? I don't know; I don't think it's "crazy-land" to ask questions about this latest "real names or nuthin'!" push. When the government tried to push Real ID (2006) many states said "no fscking way!" and killed that movement. This latest trend smells to me like it might be an end-run around that kind of resistance; after all, if people are offering their data (on condition of using a "free" service), why then, it's perfectly legal for the government to simply buy it as another customer.

So sure, call tin-foil hat on me; call crazy-nut. There's a lot of questions about this issue that aren't being asked because of the knee-jerk reaction of "there ain't no conspiracies anywheres!" crowd. Perhaps I need to re-brand that in today's terms and call it cronyism, collusion or #trending. I'm not a "true believer" but I do have serious questions about this all being about "marketing" and "ad sales."

Miso Susanowa

Nice opportunity? The more that cursed country spirals into oblivion with its nuclear weapons and US sponsored military hardware and hardline jihad ideology the worse it is for India. Its in everyones interest that pakistan improves rather than deteriorates further and hopefully stop its indian fixation.
A nice read here if you are interested:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304911104576445862242908294.html

According to this it wasn't revoked by some authority for being ridiculous, it was pulled by Disney themselves after widespread public backlash. That won't happen in most cases. Also in the most problematic cases of large hollywood studios stealing the public domain, they won't be going up against the world's best military.

Herbert Hoover tried the Tea Party approach to an economic meltdown, and the result was 25% unemployment, breadlines and tent cities. Did you see those things during this meltdown? This time around, shaking money out of the mattresses of cowering capitalists worked.

Quite wrong, but I understand why you believe it since it's the revisionist history that has been repeated over and over by the compromised media and the state-run school system.

FYI - Herbert Hoover was a major interventionist, and the massive deficit spending and interventionist policies he implemented exacerbated the Great Depression. So the voters kicked him out, and installed a Socialist instead. Who also made things worse with even more intervention, but at least he spoke well enough to convince people that his ideas were working. Shit, a lot of people still believe it.

Seeing as warrantless wiretapping is clearly unconstitutional, it's thoroughly inappropriate to be doing it at all.

Warrantless wiretapping for national security purposes has been found Constitutional by courts repeatedly. You don't know what you are talking about.

Intelligence Court Releases Ruling in Favor of Warrantless Wiretapping

A special federal appeals court yesterday released a rare declassified opinion that backed the government's authority to intercept international phone conversations and e-mails from U.S. soil without a judicial warrant, even those involving Americans, if a significant purpose is to collect foreign intelligence.

Why We Endorsed Warrantless Wiretaps

the special FISA appeals court, which in a 2002 sealed case upholding the constitutionality of the Patriot Act held that "the President did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence information." The court said it took the president's power "for granted," observing that "FISA could not encroach on the President's constitutional power."

For your viewing pleasure, some of the more recent developments regarding would be "Jihadis" in the US:

Yet again: Fort Hood Suspect Mentions al Qaeda Cleric Believed to Have Inspired Previous Attack, Official Says

A U.S. serviceman is in custody after he allegedly admitted he was planning an attack on his fellow servicemen at the U.S. Army base at Fort Hood, Texas, the same base where 13 people were killed in a 2009 terror attack.

Reservist Charged in '10 Building Shootings

WASHINGTON â" The Marine Corps reservist arrested in Arlington National Cemetery last week with suspicious materials in his backpack was charged Thursday with firing shots last year at five military buildings in the Washington area, including the Pentagon.

Investigators said they linked the reservist, Yonathan Melaku, to the shootings by determining that the bullet fragments recovered at those scenes came from the same gun as the spent shell casings found in his backpack last week.

Minneapolis Man Pleads Guilty to Terrorism Offense - July 18, 2011

Pennsylvania Man Indicted for Soliciting Jihadists to Kill Americans - July 14, 2011

Accused al Shabaab Leader Charged with Providing Material Support to al Shabaab and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula - July 5, 2011

Two Men Charged in Plot to Attack Seattle Military Processing Center - June 23, 2011

Chicago Businessman Tahawwur Hussain Rana Guilty of Providing Material Support to Terror Group and Supporting Role in Denmark Terrorism Conspiracy - June 9, 2011

No

Seeing as the private sector has been sitting on huge wads of cash for a while, not creating jobs it makes perfect sense that the government should intercede to stimulate job growth.

Oh, and the Wall Street Journal would like to have a word with you:

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2011/06/28/new-york-has-largest-glut-of-unemployed-lawyers-in-the-nation/

Check out this gem from the bowels of the Murdoch empire: The WSJ explains why it's Norway's own fault for letting so many immigrants into their country.

with the huge debt republican leadership gave to Obama, the guy has little choice.

I hate to break it to you but both sides are responsible for the current problem, and Obama has done his fair share of spending:

In 2007, before the recession, federal expenditures reached $2.73 trillion. By 2009 expenditures had climbed to $3.52 trillion. In 2009 alone, overall federal spending rose 18%, or $536 billion. Throw in a $65 billion reduction in debt service costs due to low interest rates, and the overall spending increase was 22%.

That is from the WSJ

Conspiracy?

The list price for the drug, Makena, turned out to be a stunning $1,500 per dose. Thatâ(TM)s for a drug that must be injected every week for about 20 weeks, meaning it will cost about $30,000 per at-risk pregnancy. If every eligible American woman were to get Makena, the nationâ(TM)s bloated annual health-care tab would swell by more than $4 billion.

What really infuriates patients and doctors is that the same compound has been available for years at a fraction of the cost â" about $10 or $20 a shot.

---

Here come the unintended consequences. While the FDA says it hoped there wouldnâ(TM)t be a significant run-up in the price of colchicine â" sold as Colcrys by URL â" the retail cost has soared to more than $5 a bill from the previous pennies a tablet. URL Pharma also sued five makers of manufacturers of colchicine, saying they have been illegally marketing their colchicine products since Colcrysâ(TM)s approval. One of those makers has settled the matter and stopped production. The other four companies are fighting the lawsuit.

---
Three years ago, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the drug Ketek (telithromycin), lauding it as the first of a new class of antimicrobial agents that circumvent antibiotic resistance. Since then, Ketek has been linked to dozens of cases of severe liver injury, been the subject of a series of increasingly urgent safety warnings, and sparked two Congressional investigations of the FDA's acceptance of fraudulent safety data and inappropriate trial methods when it reviewed the drug for approval. ...

Despite these discoveries, FDA managers presented study 3014 to the advisory committee in January 2003 without mentioning the issues of data integrity.1 The managers have stated that they were legally barred from disclosing the problems to the committee because there was an open criminal investigation, but they have not explained why the data were presented at all, in view of the evidence of the study's lack of integrity. Unaware of the integrity problems, the committee voted 11 to 1 to recommend approval of Ketek.

--

etc.etc.

You can't dismiss facts, but you sure can call them conspiracies if you wish.