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Contrast the news of Microsoft and IBM with yesterday's report that Apple beat the market's Q1 estimates

There's no need to contrast anything, IBM also reported better than expected numbers yesterday, and they still announced layoffs today.

I don't know if Apple will also trim its workforce, but in these weird times, good numbers != no layoffs. Still, I'd be surprised if they did. I don't know much about Apple but Microsoft, Intel and IBM have become bloated bureaucracies in the past ten years of growth or so.

Even Google recently announced belt-tightening measures, nuked free products and announced cutbacks - this from the company that supposedly is "safest" from an economic downturn. Obviously not.

Publicly traded companies often succumb to the irrational expectations of their shareholders, as in "everyone's laying people off to cut costs, why aren't the companies in my portfolio doing that as well".

The same thing happens with the Amazon sales ranking numbers. A Few Sales Tricks Can Launch a Book To Top of Online Lists

Wall Street Journal article about the ditching of a US Airways flight into the Hudson.

Carter's AG was responsible for having the FISA court established, in response to intelligence agency requests for warrantless surveillance during that administration.

http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/01/05/griffin-bell-attorney-general-in-carter-administration-passes-away-at-90/

Thank you!

-i work in baca's district. believe me i'm with you. i was thinking i should post an entry similar to yours until i saw yours.

but to do my part, here's the article referring to baca's role in the housing crisis from the WSJ the other day:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123111072368352309.html

i like how these people pushed the subprime loans and now that they backfired they blame the greedy lenders rather than their own misguided attempts to give people something they don't deserve. they drove them TO the lenders!

don't forget the non-profit group he started to funnel money to also. he should be jailed for money laundering.

While Windows itself couldn't be a single module -- it had too many functions for that -- it could be designed so that Microsoft could easily plug in or pull out new features without disrupting the whole system. That was a cornerstone of a plan Messrs. Srivastava and Valentine proposed to their boss, Mr. Allchin. Microsoft would have to throw out years of computer code in Longhorn and start out with a fresh base. It would set up computers to automatically reject bug-laden code. The new Longhorn would have to be simple. It would leave bells and whistles for later -- including Mr. Gates's WinFS, Messrs. Srivastava and Allchin say.
...
On Aug. 27, 2004, Microsoft said it would ship Longhorn in the second half of 2006 -- at least a year late -- and that Mr. Gates's WinFS advance wouldn't be part of the system. The day before in Microsoft's auditorium, Mr. Allchin had announced to hundreds of Windows engineers that they would "reset" Longhorn using a clean base of code that had been developed for a version of Windows on corporate server computers.

All I can say is, if the Wall Street Journal is now finally printing articles that say Israel is committing war crimes then you KNOW things have gotten out of hand.

In other words, the U.S. will collapse as predicted by
Professor Panarin and discounted in the English business and political propaganda paper named the Wall St. Journal.

I hope this helps your emigration plans.

Cordially,
Kilgore Trout

You are mostly correct in your assessment looking in. Our ties between financing campaigns and favors afterwards are well known and fairly well documented. While politicians occasionally get charged with corruption, I'd hazard a guess that it's probably only the top 1-2% of offenders, at best.

The one area you're not quite correct is in where the money actually comes from. This page shows summarized contributions from corporations, their Political Action Comities, and their employees. As you can see, it's far smaller than the total amount of funding Obama received. If you look at the voting records, Obama received around 62 million votes. If 5% of those individuals tossed $100 his direction, that's around half of his total funding, and 25 times more than he received from corporate ties.

In most elections, that would seem pretty high, and fairly unlikely. However, this was a pretty special case for us. As a whole, the country HATES President Bush. When McCain ran against Bush in 2000, he ran as a rebel, an anti-republican republican. After being crushed there, with the Bush campaign managing to smear his time as a POW and drawing into question the legitimacy of his daughter, he turned into Bush's lapdog. Nobody can really figure out why, but McCain went from being against much of the republican machine to being a cog in it.

Which such a public dislike for Bush, and with McCain viewed as being just more of the same, a lot more people in this election felt it was worth a couple hundred bucks to ensure that we would be able to get out of Iraq and fix our economy.

(But this doesn't mean that your complaint about corporate rule is in any-way unjustified. It's why I tell everyone we need another party, and it's why I refuse to vote for either party any more. )

Now the story is online for all to read!

Mr. Masnick's techdirt post is a welcome call for calm and even optimism. It is a reminder of the importance of perspective, the sort of wisdom encapsulated in the expression "This, too, shall pass" -- that is, just as most joy and glory is transient, so will the troubles and woes of today eventually vanish.

That said, his post is revealingly presumptuous. He writes about people trying to "hold back progress" and describes his frustration at not being able to convince them "of just what opportunities moving forward provides." But perhaps the reason he is so frustrated is that he misses a basic truth: that the people he describes aren't actually seeking to "hold back progress" -- they just have a different understanding of what is progress and what isn't, of what counts as "moving forward" and what doesn't. People do not agree on what is in the public interest; they do not agree about what is best for society, for the state, for the family.

Persuading those who disagree with you is not always a matter of marshalling facts or, as Mr. Masnick puts it, "clearly paint[ing] a picture." Often the people who disagree with you already understand the facts full well and already see the picture clearly -- they just disagree about whether what you call progress is indeed progress. This disagreement might well be rooted in a vision of the future that is fundamentally in conflict with your own. (See, for example, Thomas Sowell's A Conflict of Visions and Yuval Levin's Imagining the Future .)

This, incidentally, is why the book that Mr. Masnick approvingly cites, Robert Friedel's excellent A Culture of Improvement, deliberately eschews the term "progress". You might think human cloning or nuclear weapons or Windows Vista are all examples of unambiguous progress; your neighbor might well disagree.

Excepting that the naked short sellign issue is being taken up by a considerably varied group of financial people here, not just the "Crackpots" you describe.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122885715615592401.html for one example.

While it's far from total mainstream acceptance, the current state of wikipedia articles is abysmally onesided and biased toward the NSS=ok viewpoint, with all other viewpoints supressed, and anyone attempting to add such information banned as a sock of a certain user. And no, I am not that user, and have never edited such articles, despite being appalled by their complete lack of objectivity.

lol, how's the Wall Street Journal for you? http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123050978162738293.html

Unknown to most of the people who've commented so far, freight rail in the US is making a big comeback. US rail traffic in ton-miles has doubled since 1980. LA opened the Alameda Corridor a few years ago, with three tracks in a trench, like a freeway, across LA from the port to connections to the rest of the US. Most major railroads are upgrading capacity. The work often isn't highly visible, because the upgrades are heavier rail, better ballast, better signaling systems, better locomotives, and better rolling stock. But it's happening.

Chicago is the bottleneck in the US rail system. A deal is about to close under which Canadian National will take over U.S. Steel's old railroad and upgrade it to route traffic around downtown Chicago. Suburban residents are bitching.

This is a shark with body mounted twin lasers.
Is that good enough for you?

No joke man. (from the original cuttings) http://blogs.wsj.com/biztech/2008/02/06/conspiracy-theories-behind-those-cut-undersea-cables/ The link is worth the click for the image alone.

Except it sounds like Obama wants to kill the Orion project.

I can't understand how they could be so keen on throwing $500 billion at failed banks and mortgage deadbeats, yet they have no problem cutting NASA's $30 billion budget.

Did you actually read the article you linked to? There's nothing in it that suggests Obama wants to kill the Orion project. Indeed, if he's looking at the cost of alternatives to the Ares rocket, it strongly suggests he plans to continue Orion. You don't need an Ares alternative if you're just going to kill Orion.

There's also no suggestion in the article that he has any intention of cutting NASA's budget.

...And take about $100 billion of that bailout money and put it into R&D, including space exploration. In the medium to long term, we will reap much richer economic rewards for such an investment.

Personally, I'd love to see NASA ax Orion and instead spend the money on space exploration, but make up your mind. Should we be spending money on space exploration, or spending a lot of money sending people somewhere we've already been?

I'm hoping we don't get into the same situation we got into back in the 80s where we spend immense amounts of money on the shuttle program and spend almost nothing at all on space exploration...

If I had the money, I'd buy the thing, set up a launch pad and a refueling station, and rent flights out to NASA. After all, they're retiring the shuttle five years too soon, so I figure I can make a few billion in rentals until the Orion starts up.

Except it sounds like Obama wants to kill the Orion project.

I can't understand how they could be so keen on throwing $500 billion at failed banks and mortgage deadbeats, yet they have no problem cutting NASA's $30 billion budget. And then there's Obama's national health insurance which is bound to cost a few hundred billion, if not a trillion or two when it's up and running.

Here's an idea: don't bail out the banks that made bad loans and investments, and let the mortgage deadbeats be foreclosed. That's the way our system is supposed to work. And take about $100 billion of that bailout money and put it into R&D, including space exploration. In the medium to long term, we will reap much richer economic rewards for such an investment.
 

For some reason the reference doesn't show up, but it is there if you look at the wiki source.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122826503489174369.html

Can we stop it with the "czaring" already? It's a nausiating term. I, like history, like my czars corrupt, incompetant, out of touch, with sociopathic tendencies.

The czar I'd like to see: Blagojevich the government transparency and accountability Czar.

Now that's a czar I can believe in!

Speaking as someone who does university research in the field of silicon photonics:

Whenever Intel makes a marginal improvement on something, they fire up their massive PR department and get 100 news stories about it. This is not a major development. This is barely a minor development. This paper is a 6% improvement (six percent!) over something that was published in 1997 (their Ref. 19 in the paper) by one of the co-authors.

As far as I can tell, the Wall Street Journal is the only place that did some background research and critical thinking instead of just copy-and-pasting the Intel press release: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122867271550286035.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

The US Constitution, on balance would be no worse off if every amendment after 15 never happened, especially the 16th.

Of course, the Constitution has a history of not standing in the way of politics... for example, H. Clinton might very well be the next Sec State, despite constitional prohibitions> , as that clause has been ignored before, as if lowering the salary lets the new Executive squeak in under the intent of the law rather than the literal law.

I am just waiting for the day an average Joe is let off the hook for a crime, because he didn't intend to break it... thereby not violating the spirit, if not he actual law.

For example, if I carry a firearm, but not for criminal purposes, should I be ok? I may break the letter of the law, but not the reason for the law...

- "We don't believe we're going to have a recession though." [Vice President Dick Cheney, 1/30/08]
- "I think the experts will tell you we're not in a recession." [President Bush, 2/10/08]
- "The answer is, I don't think we are in a recession right now." [Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Edward Lazear, 2/11/08]
- "First of all, we're not in a recession." [President Bush, 4/22/08]
- "The data are pretty clear that we are not in a recession." [Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Edward Lazear, 5/7/08]
- "I don't think we are" in a recession. [Director of the National Economic Council Keith Hennesy, 6/3/08]
- "I think we have avoided a recession." [White House Budget Director Jim Nussle, 7/31/08]
- "I don't think anybody could tell you right now if we're in a recession or not" [Dana Perino, 10/7/08]

"We focus so much on memory that forgetting has been maligned," says Gayatri Devi, a neuro-psychiatrist and memory expert in New York City. "But if you didn't forget, you'd recall all kinds of extraneous information from your life that would drown you in a sea of inefficiency." Memories of mundane, recurring events compete to be recalled, and scientists say the brain appears to be programmed to forget those that aren't important. Neuroimaging studies show that it's the brain's prefrontal cortex, the area of complex thought and executive planning, that sorts and retrieves such "like-kind" memories. Researchers at Stanford University's Memory Laboratory demonstrated last year that the more subjects forgot competing memories, the less work their cortexes had to do to recall a specific one. In short, forgetting frees up brain power for other tasks, says psychologist Anthony Wagner, the lab's director. More here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122635803060015415.html?mod=rss_Health

I suspect that some of the funds I've donated are not being spent as required.

Mamma.com took a private investment at a discount (a PIPE). This is a sign of weakness, and the announcement sent the shares lower. The SEC alleges that Mr. Cuban sold his shares with insider knowledge of the PIPE, liquidating his stake before it got battered the next day.

WSJ article (report updated since I saw it earlier; it now erroneously says it was an investment in a private company).

...are in another Wall Street Journal article. On Vietnam:

The NSA's role in Vietnam has been well documented in a specific agency history by agency historian Robert J. Hanyok, who wrote of NSA's botched intelligence on the supposed second attack in the Gulf of Tonkin. But Mr. Johnson's interpretation differs. Mr. Johnson hired Mr. Hanyok to expand on the more-limited treatment of the war in Mr. Johnson's history.

Mr. Hanyok finds that NSA not only made analytic errors but it also withheld information from the White House, leading White House officials to believe that there had been a second attack when there hadn't been. Mr. Johnson maintains that the NSA was "flat wrong" in reporting a second attack in the Tonkin Gulf, but he attributes it to human error not an effort to manipulate the White House. (Vol. 2, p. 583)

Another area of interest is the legal issues with which the NSA has always grappled:

Mr. Johnson's history makes clear that NSA, and its predecessors, have long grappled with legal uncertainty. "Early American cryptologists worked without the knowledge of the American public," Mr. Johnson writes of the World War I period. "They even worked without knowing if what they were doing was legal or not. It was an odd and unsettling position to be in." (Vol. 1, p. 272)

Even as Congress sought to clarify the laws on government intercept operations, the 1934 Federal Communications Act left vague whether such activities were legal. A 1950 bill amending the criminal code that then-Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson pushed gave legal protection to intercept activities. The NSA was created two tears later in a secret memo from President Truman, but it wasn't until 1959 that it was named in legislation.

Meanwhile, the revelation in 1960 that two NSA employees had defected to the Soviet Union in prompted multiple agency investigations. An intensive screening of agency employees turned up 26 employees believed to be homosexual who were fired. "The proceedings were not all that a civil libertarian might have wanted, but they calmed the waters enough for NSA to begin functioning again," Mr. Johnson writes. (Vol. 1, p. 284)

It wasn't until 1968 that NSA's activities were officially authorized through obscure language in a crime bill. "It did so just in time," Mr. Johnson writes. "The Watergate period and the attendant Church and Pike Committee hearings called into question all that was illegal about espionage and much of what was legal, too." (Vol. 2, p. 474)

Those hearings revealed NSA's involvement with two eavesdropping programs -- known as Shamrock and Minaret. For decades, Shamrock obtained copies of cable traffic entering or leaving the U.S., and Minaret intercepted communications of Americans who had been placed on a watchlist.

In his history, Mr. Johnson reveals that the NSA lawyer who first looked at Minaret "stated that the people involved seemed to understand that the operation was disreputable if not outright illegal." (Vol. 3, p. 85) Reports from the program were designed to look like they didn't come from NSA.

Mr. Johnson gives great credit to NSA Director Gen. Lew Allen for shutting them down, noting that the director said "the did not pass the smell test." (Vol. 3, p. 84) Mr. Johnson is openly critical of the programs, writing, for example, that Minaret "came to a well-deserved end." (Vol. 3, p. 86)

He says in an interview that NSA employees involved should have gone to their bosses and said, "Boss, if you keep doing this, you're violating the law, and you could go to jail."

Mr. Johnson, in an interview, points to the current controversy over NSA's warrantless surveillance in the wake of 9/11. He noted that he was impressed to see reports that in 2004, about two and a half years into the program, NSA lawyers began demanding to see the White House's legal justifications for the program. Their efforts along with those of some new J

I can't believe you got modded up so high. /. really lacks an understanding of global finance. In fairness, it is a tech site, so....

All I am saying is that people have been "predicting" the demise of the US capitalistic system for 100 years. Yet, here we are. We made it through the depression. We made it through the 70's and we made it through every single hiccup in global finance since it began. Over that time, we have amassed more wealth than any other country in the history of the world. I am correct that the US has more wealth than other nations - that is indisputable. The reason this matters is because we have a lot of "slack" to make mistakes (like you are seeing on the front pages right now)

Bury your head in the sand but here ya go. Here's a list of per capita GNI. The US is #7.
Here's another list, based on GDP. Please notice the US is compared to the ENTIRE EU -- not just individual countries.


Seriously, if the US wants to "work itself" out of this, we just reduce the Social Security commitments we've made. People don't seem to grasp that the government can pay any debt it needs to. Whether there is the political will to do it is another story. This isn't a story of the US not being able to pay its debts....that is nowhere near the case right now.

I mean, this isn't even close. Why do you think Treasury prices have been pushed up so far over the last 3 months? People around the world have been FLOCKING to the safety of US treasuries. People around the world still view the US as the safest place to invest your money. If they were junk, as you indicate, they would trade as junk and nobody would want them. Your claim is testable and easy to verify - just go look at the US Treas charts. After looking for about 2 seconds, it is easy to see that you are just plain wrong. IOW, you have no idea what you are talking about here....

Call me when the US defaults on it's bonds. That is news. Until it happens (and it won't), what you posted is just idle wanting. I understand where it comes from, I do. But it is not based in any rational evidence. It's simply emotion based on what you want to happen.

By the way, I don't know what country you are in but take a look at what has happened to your own country's bonds. Do you think they are a safer or riskier investment than US bonds right now? The world market for bonds says, not only is the US safer, but they are THE safest of all countries.

This is nowhere near 1929. Totally apples and oranges comparison. Things worked WAY differently back then than they do now. Additionally, your insinuation that US Tbills are backed by "toxic debt" is woefully simplistic. US Tbills are backed by 200+ years of the US paying it's bills.


Lastly, I really wasn't kidding about betting against us. If you are soooo sure of your position, then you can put your money where your mouth is and if you are right -- you will be set for the rest of your life. Please watch out for the bodies of your predecessors, however.

Why? Is Obama really that much better than McCain?

Yes. McCain wanted to tax the poor to pay the wealthy. McCain was two footsteps from the grave with a ditzy anti-choice, creationist VP.

I dislike the VP choice as well, but taxing the poor? Where do you get that nonsense?

ANYONE but Clinton is better than Bush. That doesn't mean we can't do better than McCain.

Funny. I'd rather have Clinton than Obama (better the one you know than the one you don't).

If I ruled the world, my agenda for the Obama presidency:

- Fix Bush's financial mess.
- Re-establish our Constitutional rights (like, ban the PATRIOT act).
- Pull us out of Iraq ASAP.
- Go after Bin Laden where he really might be.

I'm with you on the PATRIOT act, but over all, you need to pull your head out of the sand. You want Bush to get us even more hated in the middle east by completely ignoring borders? The Democrats (Barney Frank, Chuck Schumer and Christopher Dodd were the most vocal, but they had plenty of help) had as much to do with it as the Republicans:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122091796187012529.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122212948811465427.html

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E06E3D6123BF932A2575AC0A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print :
''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.''

In fact, Bush, McCain, and others were pushing for more transparency and regulation (imagine that... republicans calling for regulation!) since at least 2003.

Why? Is Obama really that much better than McCain?

Yes. McCain wanted to tax the poor to pay the wealthy. McCain was two footsteps from the grave with a ditzy anti-choice, creationist VP.

I dislike the VP choice as well, but taxing the poor? Where do you get that nonsense?

ANYONE but Clinton is better than Bush. That doesn't mean we can't do better than McCain.

Funny. I'd rather have Clinton than Obama (better the one you know than the one you don't).

If I ruled the world, my agenda for the Obama presidency:

- Fix Bush's financial mess.
- Re-establish our Constitutional rights (like, ban the PATRIOT act).
- Pull us out of Iraq ASAP.
- Go after Bin Laden where he really might be.

I'm with you on the PATRIOT act, but over all, you need to pull your head out of the sand. You want Bush to get us even more hated in the middle east by completely ignoring borders? The Democrats (Barney Frank, Chuck Schumer and Christopher Dodd were the most vocal, but they had plenty of help) had as much to do with it as the Republicans:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122091796187012529.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122212948811465427.html

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E06E3D6123BF932A2575AC0A9659C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print :
''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.''

In fact, Bush, McCain, and others were pushing for more transparency and regulation (imagine that... republicans calling for regulation!) since at least 2003.

WSJ Article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122584386627599251.html

I don't care who wins, per se - but what has driven me nuts is the Bush Bashing. I know that he didn't lie, the very claim that he did is itself a lie. Yet it is repeated so often it is actually believed.

So: what history is being rewritten? Just look at this article from The New York Times, as reported from the Wall Street Journal:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122575933265095405.html

According to the six-year narrative of the press and political class, the Bush Administration's counterterrorism policies fall somewhere between the Spanish Inquisition and the Ministry of Love in "1984." So it was something of a shock to read a remarkable front-page story in the New York Times yesterday, the abridged version being: Never mind.

In their 1,600-word dispatch "Next President Will Face Test on Detainees," reporters William Glaberson and Margot Williams discover that, gee whiz, many of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay really are dangerous terrorists. The Times reviewed "thousands of pages" of evidence that the government has so far made public and concludes that perhaps the reality is more complicated than the critics claim.

Lo and behold, detainees are implicated in such terror attacks as the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and the 2000 attack on the USS Cole. Those with "serious terrorism credentials" include al Qaeda operatives Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi bin al-Shibh and the so-called "Dirty 30," Osama bin Laden's cadre of bodyguards. The Times didn't mention Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of 9/11, though he's awaiting a war-crimes tribunal at Gitmo too.

I dare say that the big loser of the past 8 years has been the American people and how we've let ourselves be brainwashed by the agenda driven Media.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118781024289705455.html?mod=home_health_right

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_10/007290.php

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/06/nyregion/06health.html?pagewanted=print

I much prefer the McCain plan. This article does the math:
Almost Everywould Would Do Better Under the McCain Plan
In short: McCain's plan provides a $2500 refundable tax credit for individuals and $5000 for families to pay for health insurance. If (credit / marginal_tax_rate) > insurance_cost, you come out ahead. If your tax rate is high and you like bloated, expensive full-coverage insurance you might take a hit but for lower tax brackets and especially the working poor it's a huge win. I pay a bit over $1200/year for catastrophic insurance so the $2500 credit would pay for that with money left over to fund a Health Savings Account for my routine expenses. With individuals and families paying for health insurance rather than employers, the portability issue is solved and you're not stuck with whatever your employer decided on. If you buy catastrophic insurance like I do instead of spending $thousands more for full-coverage that pretends to pay your routine bills, you'll be the one deciding which expenses are worthwhile rather than insurance company bureaucrats and there's a LOT less paperwork to deal with. (I'll vouch for Assurant Health, they've been very good about paying my covered expenses.)

Obama has run TV ads slamming the McCain plan as taxing your health insurance while failing to mention the refundable tax credit. It's a very dirty trick, much like how Democrats slam the Flat Income Tax without mentioning the personal and dependent deductions that would shelter the first $50K or so of a family of 4's income.

Obama advocates infanticide.

Read the full essay at link #1.

And, an article in the WSJ today: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122533149619882883.html

Wow, mod parent down for dishonesty. That's not "the WSJ" on Obama's tax plan, it's Jason Furman and Austan Goolsbee--"respectively, economic policy director and senior economic adviser at Obama for America," as noted at the foot of the article. The opinion of the Journal's editorial board is decidedly less glowing, see one example here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122385651698727257.html.

Just throwing out fuel for the fire: The Obama Tax Plan

- The top two income-tax brackets would return to their 1990s levels of 36% and 39.6% (including the exemption and deduction phase-outs). All other brackets would remain as they are today.

- The top capital-gains rate for families making more than $250,000 would return to 20% -- the lowest rate that existed in the 1990s and the rate President Bush proposed in his 2001 tax cut. A 20% rate is almost a third lower than the rate President Reagan set in 1986.

- The tax rate on dividends would also be 20% for families making more than $250,000, rather than returning to the ordinary income rate. This rate would be 39% lower than the rate President Bush proposed in his 2001 tax cut and would be lower than all but five of the last 92 years we have been taxing dividends.

- The estate tax would be effectively repealed for 99.7% of estates, and retained at a 45% rate for estates valued at over $7 million per couple. This would cut the number of estates covered by the tax by 84% relative to 2000.
:

You said, "... you're a drooling ideologue..."

Someone disagrees with you, and you engage in a personal attack? It's a fact, you are justifying a system in which a manufacturer can keep fraud secret.

You said "... hundreds of drugs are approved every year and only a handful turn out to have unknown risks..." [my emphasis]

The February 2008 article in the highly respected journal Nature, 2007 FDA drug approvals: a year of flux says, "The US FDA approved 17 new molecular entities (NMEs) and 2 biologic license applications (BLAs) in 2007, the lowest number recorded since 1983." That article includes a chart showing drug approvals for every year since 1996.

An August 23, 2008 article in the Wall Street Journal, Sick Patients Need Cutting-Edge Drugs says "The FDA approved just 16 new drugs last year, and is on pace to approve only 18 this year. That's down from a high of 53 in 1996 and 39 in 1997." That article says more drugs should be approved. But that is the position of a very ignorant person, who doesn't understand the widespread sloppiness of drug development.

Read the November 23, 2006 article in the New England Journal of Medicine, to which I linked above, Dangerous Deception - Hiding the Evidence of Adverse Drug Effects. That and many, many other articles show that drug fraud is common.

The November 23, 2006 NEJM article, Observational Studies of Drug Safety - Aprotinin and the Absence of Transparency says, "The full safety profile of a new drug is rarely known at the time of approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Most drug-development programs designed for treatments of symptomatic indications are underpowered to detect any increased risk of rare drug reactions or change in background event rates attributable to the drug. Large, post-marketing, randomized, controlled trials provide robust data on drug safety but may be subject to multiple sources of bias."

Again, "The full safety profile of a new drug is rarely known at the time of approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)", and only 16 drugs were approved in 2007. [my emphasis]

The evidence shows that the FDA is correct when it doesn't approve many drugs. The vast majority of clinical trials, experiments on people, show no benefit whatsoever. That's because new drugs are usually proposed based on wild guessing, not because of truly scientific investigation.

A large percentage of people in the U.S. are drug enthusiasts. They shouldn't be. Drugs, even ones that are considered beneficial by everyone, usually have negative side-effects.

Bush seems to be getting quite a lot of the Hoover comparisons. Even from the crazy right (Art Laffer probably isn't crazy, but he sure is pretty far right ideologically):

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122506830024970697.html

9 points worth of insinuations and no substance. Try again.

I'm sorry, I thought it was the media's jobs to dig. Frankly, I don't have the resources to investigate Barack Obama. The point is, this shit hasn't even been looked at. It's gotten so bad, some journalists are too embarrassed to even tell people they work in the press. As James Taranto has pointed out, even the liberal SNL is asking tougher questions than the media.

why haven't they smeared McCain's character as being a spoiled brat who had to pull strings to get into the naval academy, an then barely managed to pass (5th from the bottom of his class of 900 students)? Why haven't we heard about how he crashed several of our planes? Why haven't we heard all about his confessions?

Actually, McCain wrote about his being a bad student in his biography. But he finished and served his country with distinction. Apparently serving your country as a cadet while not graduating at the top of your class as a young person 40+ years ago is newsworthy, but doing cocaine as a young person is not newsworthy. Right, McCain is the one with the misspent youth. Obama partying with coke, that's the real good character guy. Unbelievable.

But I think even the MSM liberal reporters know you can't attack McCain's character. Nobody has ever alleged he has been a dirty politician (except by the guilty-by-association attacks that you say are unfair to do to Obama). Yet the LA Times just did a cheap hit piece on McCain's plane accidents (again, a soldier serving his country in wartime gets in an accident, he's bad, but some guy not serving his country does coke on purpose, he's the good guy). Talk about a cheap shot. How can you be such a heartless SOB to a serviceman who, in one of those "crashes" caused by a SAM, ended up in Haiphong Harbor with broken arms and a leg and spend 4+ years in a prison camp being beaten? And he spent an extra two years as a POW because the "spoiled" McCain turned down early release that was offered precisely because he was the son of the CINC. This is the vaunted liberal compassion? You sound like a vicious, heartless person to talk like this.

If only Obama and other liberals were as honest about their contempt for military service as you are.

That said, he's still a privileged piece of shit.

McCain spoiled? The guy lived on military bases and communities in modest homes. He did not come from money. His family lived on a paltry naval salary. He saw his father very rarely, since his dad was in the Navy. Everyone has to pull strings to get into the US Naval Academy. You need to be recommended by a senator to get in. So McCain married a hot rich chick when he was middle-aged. Don't be a hater. Kerry (you know, the guy who had three draft deferments before he went to Vietnam, and split after four months by getting some chickenshit purple heart because some rice exploded on him) married an ugly rich chick, and it worked for him.

How is being a Navy brat who served his country in wartime as a soldier and POW a "spoiled" upbringing, as opposed to Obama partying and not serving his country? If McCain was so "spoiled," why didn't he avoid the rigors of Annapolis and Vietnam and go to Harvard, like his party-like-a-rockstar opponent did? How does a brain think like this?

As far as criticizing someone who breaks under years of torture, that is so beyond the pale I am not even going to address it, especially to the type of liberal who likely criticizes the Bush administration for doing brief waterboarding as cruel and unreliable. Not to mention, liberals like yourself were so brave they ran to Canada when they faced being drafted. Yes, you, anyone who would say anything like that is an absolute coward, and a disgrace for someone of a the political persuasion that claims to have a monopoly on compassion.

You really don't even know what the words "fair" or "objective" mean do you?

He lied in his question to Obama about being in a position to buy his boss' company. His boss' company also doesn't make the level of income that would trigger a new tax under Obama's plan. Joe himself would get a tax cut under Obama's plan. Joe owes back taxes as it is. He's against Social Security. He's not a licensed plumber. Oh, and did I mention his first name isn't even Joe?

I think you truly missed the fundemental points represented by "Joe's question". Fundemental point #1 - Is it not the American Dream most of us pursue is to better their station in life? I mean you may work for philanthropic purposes but I suspect, like most of us you probably work to sustain yourself and those you support. So, if you can agree that most people seek to better their station in life, don't you find it a bit disingenous to criticize anyone who achieves a high level of success that affords them an income in excess of 250K a year should be penalized for that success? I mean after all Obama answered Joe's question stating,"

My attitude is that if the economy's good for folks from the bottom up, it's gonna be good for everybody. If you've got a plumbing business, you're gonna be better off if you're gonna be better off if you've got a whole bunch of customers who can afford to hire you, and right now everybody's so pinched that business is bad for everybody and I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody.

" That is the true point of contention in this whole thing. Obama's comment in bold is socialism pure and simple. Meriam-Webster's Dictionary defines socialism as the following, "a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done." Trying to bury the plumber or rail about the "lie" he represents is like pissing on the American Dream to better one's station in life, which I personally belive in. I don't think anyone has th right to penalize someone's elses success by taking something from them to give to someone else who hasn't earned it themselves. Spreading the wealth is the lie in this scenario. Spreading the wealth hasn't worked well and realistically, those who do have the money or cn afford it wil ljust find more ways of hiding it or just shipping it offshore. In the end, just like these assinine bailouts we the poor and middle class will end up paying for it no matter who the hell wins the white house. Ask the numerous economic professors who talk about Obama's grand socialist ideas and how it will impact the country. Try this from the wall street journal

MS Office 2007 has been doing quite well in the real world:

The Microsoft business division, which includes the Office suite of software, grew 20% to $4.95 billion. Microsoft's Profit Rises, But Outlook Is Damped [October 24]

20% growth in one quarter. If the tech sector as a whole is in the ICU with double pneumonia, Microsoft has a case of the sniffles.

Microsoft Office 2007/8 holds 4 of top 25 slots in software sales at Amazon.com.

In the retail market, Microsoft Office is bigger than games.

It is bigger than anything.

"Here's the really interesting statistic," said Chris Swenson, NPD's director of Software Industry Analysis. "Over two-thirds of the dollar volume growth in the U.S. retail PC software market in 2007 can be attributed to Microsoft Office. The ratio of Office dollar growth to total PC software growth is 67 percent." The Year of Office 2007

The geek tends to quote the max price for the retail box that he can find - and it can be useful to insert a correction.

Office Home & Student is about $100 at Amazon.com, with a three seat license.

The price of four ink jet cartridges - and if you can't afford the consumables, you can't afford the office suite, at any price.

The direct sale academic price for Office Ultimate is $60. The Ultimate Steal If your employer has a volume licensing agreement with Microsoft, Office for home use is the price of the media plus S&H. Home Use Program

Which are about as "capitalist' as the post office. Government-created monstrosities exempt from the law, which were leaned on by Barney Frank (see also, Barney's Rubble) and Chris Dodd to lend to poor people with bad credit.

I have to ask the question - if the Libertarian ideal of laissez-faire capitalism is so obviously the "correct" way for the fundamental economic idea of maximization of utility to manifest itself, why are there such problems creating a pure free market system in the U.S. instead of the quasi-socialist current system? I find it very difficult to believe that, given the power of American corporations, that somehow the Democrats could enforce such a system without their consent. The only conclusion I can draw is that the current economic system must exist because it creates a symbiotic net benefit for both government and corporations that's better (at least for those parties involved) than pure LFC. That or the economic theories that pure LFC are based upon are incorrect.

Which are about as "capitalist' as the post office. Government-created monstrosities exempt from the law, which were leaned on by Barney Frank (see also, Barney's Rubble) and Chris Dodd to lend to poor people with bad credit.

I have to ask the question - if the Libertarian ideal of laissez-faire capitalism is so obviously the "correct" way for the fundamental economic idea of maximization of utility to manifest itself, why are there such problems creating a pure free market system in the U.S. instead of the quasi-socialist current system? I find it very difficult to believe that, given the power of American corporations, that somehow the Democrats could enforce such a system without their consent. The only conclusion I can draw is that the current economic system must exist because it creates a symbiotic net benefit for both government and corporations that's better (at least for those parties involved) than pure LFC. That or the economic theories that pure LFC are based upon are incorrect.

Which are about as "capitalist' as the post office. Government-created monstrosities exempt from the law, which were leaned on by Barney Frank (see also, Barney's Rubble) and Chris Dodd to lend to poor people with bad credit.

The great irony is that you had an essentially government-forced-lending program created and protected by Democrats, while calls by Republicans to regulate it were opposed and called "ideological". And now the free marketers are being blamed! That's like blaming Slashdotters if voting machines failed to work right.

Which are about as "capitalist' as the post office. Government-created monstrosities exempt from the law, which were leaned on by Barney Frank (see also, Barney's Rubble) and Chris Dodd to lend to poor people with bad credit.

The great irony is that you had an essentially government-forced-lending program created and protected by Democrats, while calls by Republicans to regulate it were opposed and called "ideological". And now the free marketers are being blamed! That's like blaming Slashdotters if voting machines failed to work right.

Which are about as "capitalist' as the post office. Government-created monstrosities exempt from the law, which were leaned on by Barney Frank (see also, Barney's Rubble) and Chris Dodd to lend to poor people with bad credit.

The great irony is that you had an essentially government-forced-lending program created and protected by Democrats, while calls by Republicans to regulate it were opposed and called "ideological". And now the free marketers are being blamed! That's like blaming Slashdotters if voting machines failed to work right.

I apologize for being a little late, but lets see here...

As for the taxes part, the $250k lower limit is what he'll do first. Reasonable, no? But the rest of the plan has some interesting aspects. From the Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122385651698727257.html And if you think that lower limit will remain $45k, you're smoking something.

Conveniently enough, I just ran across this, which even points out the specific WSJ article that you linked. Search for

Furthermore, the Journal's editorial misstated a key fact in its "welfare" argument. It said that anyone who doesn't pay federal income taxes is not a "taxpayer," which is simply incorrect.

In reading various independent analysis of the tax policies of the two candidates, I'm pretty sure that you are reading a little too much republican propaganda if you think that I'm smoking something.

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Finally, your bit about Terrorists and Muslims is lame - yes, there are people who believe that and vote that way. There are also people who don't like McCain because, since he can't raise his arms, "doesn't look open and friendly". But it doesinvite the question about the company he keeps, and his forthrightness. Obama initially only admitted a trivial association with Ayers, but apparently there was quite a bit more to it.

McCain actually is a fairly amiable looking candidate in my opinion, despite what the media claims. But are you seriously arguing that the racism and fear of terrorism in this country is less of an issue than voting in a guy who doesn't look open and friendly (which I'd argue against)? What exactly do you define as "quite a bit more" to the Ayers connection, by the way? A meet the candidate night at the guy's house? Oh shit, they must have been preparing to bomb something. I guess what scares you about Ayers nowadays is that the foundation he is involved in funded two projects that the McCain campaign quoted as being radical - "one having to do with a United Nations-themed Peace School and another that focused on African-American studies." (from the same politifact link I pasted earlier).

I was actually a fan of McCain around 2000 before he changed a number of his stances, such as the Bush tax cuts and immigration. If you ask economists, immigration in particular is actually pretty damn good for the economy. It helps to look past the "They're taking our jobs!" meme that people like to spout out, and put a little thought into whether immigrants actually have the training necessary to take said jobs.

Quick note on the immigration from the LA Times:

As a sponsor of two comprehensive reform bills, McCain should be unbeatable on this issue. Standing up to fellow Republicans (and some Democrats), he declared that the nation could not turn its back on the impoverished millions who have come here to work and prosper. Unfortunately, the free-thinker has become a follower, trailing behind the worst instincts of his party. Abandoning problem-solving for politics, McCain has made border security and employment enforcement his new mandate. That may be good Republican politics, but it's not sound policy.

McCain used to have great ideas that go against common belief, but he has since turned his back on such in order to get more mainstream votes.

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You seem to think that all Republicans are either knuckle dragging cretins or amoral titans of industry.

I actually like to break it down slightly differently... (but I do like your wording of one, so I'll borrow that)

• Amoral titans of industry
• Regular people (potentially church-goers, but not always) who feel

Mainly guns. From the link you so kindly provided:

# Principles that Obama supports on gun issues:
Ban the sale or transfer of all forms of semi-automatic weapons.
Increase state restrictions on the purchase and possession of firearms.

It looks like you only read the first quote, where he appears to support 2nd amendment rights (although he doesn't really answer the questions asked). It's later that the page shows his positions that should scare the crap out of gun owners.

As for the taxes part, the $250k lower limit is what he'll do first. Reasonable, no? But the rest of the plan has some interesting aspects. From the Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122385651698727257.html And if you think that lower limit will remain $45k, you're smoking something.

Finally, your bit about Terrorists and Muslims is lame - yes, there are people who believe that and vote that way. There are also people who don't like McCain because, since he can't raise his arms, "doesn't look open and friendly". But it doesinvite the question about the company he keeps, and his forthrightness. Obama initially only admitted a trivial association with Ayers, but apparently there was quite a bit more to it.

You seem to think that all Republicans are either knuckle dragging cretins or amoral titans of industry. Applying the same level of stereotyping to the Democrats leads me to believe that they are all either union thugs, limousine liberals, or mental children who will believe that electricity can be made from fairy dust if we only just believe. Which one are you?