wild conspiracy? for pointing out the possibility that person ACTUALLY spinning wild conspiracies might have an ulterior motive?
you're an idiot.
After looking through your previous posts, I realized you were a serial troll. My bad for responding. Please continue your regularly scheduled trolling activities...
I don't know where you folks got your information, but that's not the story I heard. I'm not even religious, but at least I did pay a little attention when I was a kid.
There was no "God vs Devil" death-match as this thread suggests. My understanding was that God created "everything", both good and evil. It never was a matter of who would win, it was simply that good could not exist without evil.
The whole thing with Lucifer was about trying to get the other angels to follow "him" instead of God, not about kicking God's butt, which even he had the sense to know could not happen.
As I said, I'm certainly no Jesus freak (I tend to think Bill Maher has it about right), but folks, at least get the story straight.
Still makes no sense. What kind of all-powerful, benevolent God creates a universe that requires the kinds of evil we see in the world?
indict?! i said they embarrass who they choose to... you're claiming they don't make such decisions? they operate autonomously?
if the pentagon, or whoever, choose to interweave false documents in with real documents with an internal system to tell them apart, simply to lessen the effects of a widespread secrets breach, then is it not possible that wikileaks is distributing documents the government distributed internally just to flush out a defector? would they then not also demand all the documents back?
you're pretty dense, danse.
you're an idiot.
Lol. You're the one spinning wild conspiracy theories here without a shred of evidence to back them.
And Comcast customers are getting what they paid for: a connection to the internet. But this goes beyond that and into the realm of a sustained QoS from Netflix. No Comcast customers are paying for that.
Comcast customers pay for a connection to the internet, with a specific speed range, and a limit on how much data they can transfer up or down. So, if Comcast is also charging whomever is sending the data down to their customers, then effectively both the customer and the sender are being charged for the same data. Apparently this charging both ends of a connection for the same data is common practice.
Comcast is charging anyone that wants to send traffic over its network. Just like every other provider. You pay to send traffic. If the traffic is equal, they'll just end up paying each other the same amount, so instead they agree on a settlement-free exchange. Now the traffic is no longer equal. Comcast is sending X and Level 3 is sending 5X. End result is that Level 3 ends up paying for that additional 4X of unequal traffic.
By that logic, I shouldn't have to pay much at all since I only send a tiny fraction of the data that is sent to me by others. Unfortunately that's not how my ISP sees it. I'm paying for both upstream and downstream transfers, with limits on both. Apparently they do charge twice for the same data, once to whoever send it, and again to whoever receives it.
I think Comcast (and others) charging both ends of a transfer for the bandwidth is the issue here. Comcast customers have been sold plans that allow them to transfer a certain amount of data. Why is Comcast trying to charge both the senders and receivers for that data transfer?
Even if Comcast drops Level3 completely, you will still get Netflix - Level3 will just pass off the traffic to someone who does peer with Comcast. It'll be slower than if Level3 directly peered with Comcast, but it will still get there.
Netflix doesn't need to pay Comcast anything. Netflix is already paying Level3 to be their CDN. Level3 just now needs to pay for the bandwidth they're using.
Huh? Aren't Comcast's customers, the one's who are streaming Netflix, already paying for that bandwidth that they're using? This sounds like Comcast wanting to double-dip.
You would like to believe that the brightest military minds in the world were duped into invading Iraq?
Truly you are naive.
It sounds cliche but you really need to 'follow the money'.
I'm a contractor and though I don't work in Iraq or Afghanistan I have friends who have for many years. Their companies have made hundreds of millions (some have made billions), while they themselves have become minor millionaires. There is no accountability. The world is a small place, and DC is even smaller. If you know the right people you can get anything you want. No bid contracts anyone? The latest wikileaks confirm that Afghanistan is indeed a cesspool of corruption, though anyone who has been there knows that perfectly well.
No... the sad reality is that Iraq was invaded on the behest of a handful of very determined (and cynical) cabal of civil servants (all of which have ties to the arms industry I might add) who made the conscious decision that PAX AMERICA was worth the sacrafice. Control over the PRIZE of Iraq, the second largest oil producer on the planet was worth ANY price. Truth be damned.
But of course in the end, we mainly ended up helping Iran. They'll now have much more control over their neighbors than we do, and unless we want to fight another war that we can't afford with them, there's not much we can do about it.
For the last time (you'd know if you switched away from Fox News once in a while), the Obama healthcare reform is budget neutral. The reforms will result in $622 billion in savings over 10 years (preventative care vs emergency care) so there is no wealth redistribution involved.
That is a giant load of crap. Even the GAO and administration are now admitting that 0care will be extremely expensive. It is already screwing up private insurance (for instance most group plans no longer cover children).
What GAO estimate are you referring to? And private insurance is already seriously screwed up, which is why a lot of changes needed to be made. I think they went the wrong direction with the health care bill, but I think longer term outcome is still a much better path than what we were on.
When people with poor health management skills find their mandated government insurance lacking, will they suddenly cease going to the emergency rooms? Their insurance isn't going to cover them when they refuse medical advice and just keep doing what they feel is best, and a great many of them won't see the value in paying for the follow up visits, running the prescriptions all the way out, etc - and they will be back. IF, that is, they aren't completely disenfranchised by the process and decide that the free emergency room care really was better at meeting their needs.
What is it with you Republican types? One minute you're telling us that liberals are elitist and condescending, thinking that they are smarter than everyone else. Next minute you're telling us that people are just stupid and can't change and should apparently be disregarded by society in general. You really believe that people who can't afford or can't get insurance (due to pre-existing condition, etc) wouldn't seek health care if it was available to them? That's a pretty bold claim, not to mention a pretty dismal outlook on people in general. Got any evidence to back it up?
By the way, what exactly is the Republican plan for fixing the problems of people not being able to get health insurance due to pre-existing conditions? Health care can't be left to charity, because it'll end up costing all of us anyway. We've already decided as a country that we'll have universal health care, because we don't want to let people die in the streets by denying them access to emergency rooms. We just have the least efficient form of universal healthcare imaginable, and that needs to be fixed.
If they weren't real, then the organization would have no legal rights to the documents and no grounds to demand their return (as we've seen them do). You're REEEEALLY stretching to try to indict WL for something even though you have not a shred of evidence to support your claims apparently.
What the Chinese do or do not do as punishment is irrelevant to a discussion over whether the punishment fits the crime. For example, if the Chinese are extremely unjust in applying punishment, that does not mean we are OK to be somewhat less unjust; we should be just in our punishments regardless of the actions of other nations.
Be sure to tell that to all the people who point out the US still has the death penalty and is one of the few 1st world nations to do so.
Who needs to compare it with the rest of the world? Just pointing out the serious problems in our own legal system should be sufficient to show that it's highly irresponsible to put anyone to death based on the results of that system.
except if someone loses due to missing votes from a 3rd party, that party may run someone closer to the 3rd parties views next time. This happened to a slight degree this last election. Many republicans lost in 2006 due in part to the large turnout of Libertarian voters. The Teabag the Democrats party formed within the republicans to answer this and this last election shows the results of that.
If you don't vote for what you want, you will always get what you don't want.
Yeah, but that just gets us a Republican or Democrat that makes noises like a third party. I don't see this new crop being any different than the so-called revolutions that have happened in the past. Democrats in the 70s or "contract with America" Republicans in the 90s. We never end up with any real change. If we want to elect third party candidates, we shouldn't have to worry about a split vote, and we shouldn't have to settle for some watered-down version when one of the major parties pays lip-service to the third party for a while.
>>>you do realize that you're comparing things which aren't of similar magnitude, right?
They appear to be similar magnitude to me. Let's count the ways that I hate BOTH the republicans and democrats
- Democrats - Clinton's White House created a "no person shall be turned down" policy in 1997 which directly led to the housing boom
- Republicans - passed the damnable Patriot Act
- Democrats - passed the Patriot Renewal Act when they should have killed it
- Republicans - started a damn war
- Democrats - won congress and could have ended the war, but instead expanded its scope
- Republicans - Failed to clean-up the mess caused by Katrina
- Democrats - Failed to clean-up the mess caused by BP oil spill
- Democrats - passed that damn Banker Bailout Bill of 2008, despite 80% opposition by americans
- Democrats - passed the Healthcare NON-reform Bill of 2010, despite 70% opposition by americans
- Democrats - passed a 800 billion stimulus that has done anything but; in fact ~100 billion of that cash was mailed overseas
- Republicans - Won back the house, and now they want to go to war against Iran (rumor)
Only a fool trusts either of these two parties.
Some of those could be attributed to both, and I could probably double the size of that list. While I was opposed to the bailout in the way that it was done (although I can't help but believe the vast majority of economists that predicted utter doom for us if we didn't do it), and I was in favor of the health care bill even though I thought it had far too many concessions in it, and didn't addresss a number of issues that it needed to, I don't think that the opposition numbers you cite are terribly relevant, even if they were accurate, which I don't think they are. With all the misinformation being spread, of course there was opposition! The democrats were gonna pull the plug on Grandma!!! The guy on TV said so!!! It's no wonder we can't have rational conversations about policy anymore.
Aside from the bullshit we get from politicians, we have media taking sides and giving airtime to jackasses that will say anything they can think of to scare the shit out of people. With people like Beck, Hannity and Limbaugh on the right, and Olberman and... well I can't actually think of any far--left pundits. They probably exist, but just not at the level that they get any real audience. Is Air America still around? I remember hearing some crazy left-wing stuff on that station a while back. I suppose my point is that while I generally agree that both parties have done plenty of bad, it's hard to even determine what is good or bad anymore because of all the deception and blind rage that is spewed over the airwaves. The outlets that try to stick to facts are overwhelmingly drowned out by the hyperbolic rantings of the outlets that just want to generate viewer/listener numbers, and are willing to put any whackjob on the air to do it.
One vote never has, and never will, make a difference in a race larger than perhaps a state congress, and even that has never happened and probably never will.
You're missing the point that that one vote that would put someone over the top wouldn't happen without all the other votes that came before it. Voting does matter, even if our current system tries to make it as difficult as possible for us to express our true intentions.
A vote is only wasted if it is for something you don't want.
Or when it helps the worst candidate of the bunch get elected over others that would be better to at least some degree. Our election system sucks because it forces this kind of choice on us rather than letting us actually rank our choices in some manner.
Well, for one thing, it's not necessarily the same crop of people being voted in. E.g., there are 80 GOP freshmen in this house, different from the 2000-2006 Republicans who voted in the deficit increases.
I don't think that just being new to Washington is enough though. Congress and the campaigns that have to be waged and deals that have to be struck to get there, not to mention actually doing anything once they're there, seem to ensure that they will be beholden to others and more susceptible to corrupting influences. Third parties sound great, but our election system is designed to preserve the 2-party system by ensuring that voting for a third party will help the least-favored party win.
I have no idea what you think my preconceptions are, or how they could be obvious to you when I didn't write the post that you were responding to.
Really?
But certainly not a reason to elect the bigger crooks and liars again either
You should probably report the fact that someone is spoofing your name and posting here...
Ok, now I'm confused as to which statement of yours you considered to be a sarcastic response to mine. While I see the sarcasm in your post that I first responded to, I don't see any in your response to my post.
The election system is not the biggest issue. Washington has a tendency to corrupt just about everyone who goes there, even people with the best intentions. (Election reform is also damn near impossible in the current environment.)
What is needed is the watchful eye and the accusing mouth of the public. Public pressure works better than anything else. Fortunately, the excesses of the Bush administration were obvious enough to get people to pay attention, which is why you see so much talk about the (often) relatively smaller excesses of the Obama administration. The Republicans just elected to the House and Senate are going to be watched very carefully--certainly not by their fanboys, but by the sizable number of swing voters who made it possible for them to be put into office.
America is waking up.
Yes, but when the current crop turns out to be just another set of corrupt suits, what are those swing voters gonna do? Vote Dems back in? Then Republicans again? Or will the economy recover and everyone goes back to sleep again?
Actually it wasnt an implicit concession at all. The only concession I made was that in the greater political stage this is a minor infraction.
That's exactly the concession I was referring to.
My statement was sarcasm playing on your obvious preconceptions. I've made no indication at all here about my political beliefs other than that being lied to by politicians pisses me off.
I have no idea what you think my preconceptions are, or how they could be obvious to you when I didn't write the post that you were responding to.
You're making an assumption that any one political group is any less deceitful than any other. You're basing that on who happens to benefit from a particular lie and if you think the ends justify the means for the people you happen to agree with more. That makes you as much of a problem as the collective crooks and liers that make up Washington politics.
No, I was just going with the implicit concession you made in your statement that the lies that got us into the Iraq war, and those in all the various other scandals of the last administration were bigger and more harmful than this particular one. This administration hasn't been around long enough to even come close to surpassing the lies of the previous administration. Your assumptions about the basis of my statement and my motivations are simply wrong.
Right. Because its forgivable when the Presidential administration lies and decieves you so long as the last administration had bigger lies and deceptions.
Frankly this particular deception is small compared to others from this administration. But it still pisses me off.
Not forgivable, no. But certainly not a reason to elect the bigger crooks and liars again either, which is what tends to happen. Until we have fundamental reforms to our election system, it will continue to happen. We'll keep bouncing from one set of crooks to another. Unfortunately, the ones who have to make those reforms are the ones that benefit the most from the status quo.
But on the other hand things like Steam (or worse AC2 style online "activation") are killing the used PC game market for ALL of us not just Gamestop. And don't forget this is DRM folks
I'm tired of invasive DRM. Steam handles DRM quite nicely. I'm not totally against DRM if it's not invasive.
You don't want any DRM? Ok, so take a look at Crysis - probably (arguably) the most pirated PC exclusive FPS made. And let me tell you, that game was pretty damn good! Now, because of piracy, Crytek (the makers of Crysis) are never going to do a PC exclusive game. Meaning longer dev times, and maybe a lesser experience for PC's (since they can't just focus on one platform). At least they didn't give us all the middle finger and go out of business. Now, if it'd been offered in Steam and the DRM (which you cry so hard about) keeps the piracy numbers way down -- ultimately the company makes money and piracy is much lower.
Also, Steam makes updates almost painless for the end user. Dev pushes a patch, game is patched. No waiting for Fileshack / etc to be able to get a download at 75k/sec.
As long as there's more money to be made in bringing games to consoles, developers are going to go in that direction. That's how business works. They make a big deal about the piracy issue, but that's not what is driving the console development, it's the fact that there are a hell of a lot more console gamers than PC gamers, so there's a lot more money to be made there. DRM makes little difference to piracy anyway, so Steam is no savior there. Steam just makes sure that if I buy the game legitimately through them, I can't resell it, trade it, give it away, etc, without paying them again for the privilege.
Of course I'm not entitled to a profit. Neither is someone entitled to coming into my store and undercutting me after a I've spent the resources of securing a store front, doing the research, examining the item and negotiating a price. This isn't a god damn auction, it's a sale between two parties. You wouldn't go into a new retail store and tell someone that's about to buy a laptop that you've got one right here in your bag that you'll sell for half-price.
If I had one to sell, then why not? We're two private citizens who happen to be in the same store at the same time, and if they express an interest in a used laptop, then I don't see why I shouldn't offer mine up if I'm willing to part with it for less. It's not like I'm setting up shop in that store, it's just a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Happens all the time in business.
As I said in a post farther down, this has nothing to do with what happens outside of the business I'm conducting - I constantly refer people to craigslist or ebay when they don't like the price or I don't have a particular item. I'm not trying to bend the market to my will - I encourage people to do their research. I never hide my intentions: if someone asks, I'm happy to tell them that, yes, that camera I'm buying from you for $20 I'm going to sell for $50, and that here are the ebay listings that I'm finding and, no, I won't pay you the $200 you bought it for. At the end of the day, I'm just a sales peon working in a slightly different environment. I didn't post that intending to start some kind of crusade-against-people-selling-their-crap, just that, "hey, that's sort of frowned upon. Why not put it up on craigslist and not abuse their facilities if you're feeling ripped off?"
While you may be some sort of exception, that's not the sort of forthright honesty about pricing that I've ever gotten at GameStop. If two people in the store discover that they have what the other wants, that's just the way it goes. It's a lucky break, but would be horribly innefficient as a method of trading/selling games, so I don't think you're going to see people making a habit of it. There are far better ways of going about it online, and as those become more trusted and well-known, GameStop will decline in their used-game sales.
It's not exactly black and white as you pretend to put it. The so called attempts at bipartisanship in the last few years consisted specifically of This is what we are going to do, either do it with us or not at all. Hell, even the so called concessions were little more then what they wanted to do claiming that the republicans should agree to it.
That's exactly my point. They were angry at the Democrats for not being bipartisan, which implies that they believe bipartisanship is the right way to do things, and then they go around claiming that they aren't going to be bipartisan at all unless the Democrats go along with what they want. Both sides pull that crap all the time, and people buy into their bullshit every damn time. It's maddening.
If you think they move in lockstep, then you simply haven't been paying attention much over the last decade or so. IF they had been moving in lockstep, they never would have lost the government in the first place.
That doesn't make any sense. They did pretty much exactly what they wanted to do for years. The Democrats are too incompetent and disorganized to do anything to stop them. They lost because people weren't happy with what they were doing, not because they couldn't do what they wanted. They were hit with one scandal after another for quite a while, on top of policies that people didn't like, and they got voted out for it.
Cap and trade as well as the 250k removal of the Bush tax cuts, health car requirements places on by Obamacare and so on. They also talked about moving capitol gains back to match the income rates and there was plenty of talk about business not paying it's fair share which only means some intended to raise their shares.
First of all, nobody is talking about removing all the Bush tax cuts. About 98% of the households in the country have an income level that falls under the 250K limit, and they will continue to get the tax cut on their entire income. Those that make more than that will still get the tax break on income up to 250K. Even those folks aren't necessarily going to pay more, and may even end up paying less than they do now. Personally, I think it's rather ridiculous that we don't have more tax brackets above that, and that's something that could help in this case. However, I haven't seen any compelling evidence that those couple percent of households are small business owners. They seem to be professional athletes, doctors, lawyers, investment bankers, CEOs of large businesses, etc. Small business owners tend to make a lot less than that on average.
Here is my take on it. Suppose your right and we cannot continue to pump crap loads of Co2 and other GHGs into the atmosphere. There is no practical replacement to doing that as of now and there won't be within the next decade or two. The supposed idea behind taxing is that it will raise the cost of normal energy to make alternatives more attractive. Ok, so they are more attractive, they still aren't as prevalent, reliable, or as dependable as traditional energy sources. So all that happens is that it costs us more to produce things and provide goods and services. But wait, China and India aren't involves in it so they now have an advantage. So some suggest that we put tariffs in place to protect American industry. Now if the WTO and the trade agreements we have in place allow that to happen in the first place, then all the sudden they are collecting a tax on imports too. But does the cap and tax plans attempt to use this extra money to offset the taxes already being paid by the citizens seeing how it will necessarily drive the costs of goods and services up? No, they are pocketing it and spending it on non-environmental related ticket items.
Lots of speculation there. I don't think we know half of the things you're assuming or how they'd be handled in the C
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wild conspiracy? for pointing out the possibility that person ACTUALLY spinning wild conspiracies might have an ulterior motive?
you're an idiot.
After looking through your previous posts, I realized you were a serial troll. My bad for responding. Please continue your regularly scheduled trolling activities...
I don't know where you folks got your information, but that's not the story I heard. I'm not even religious, but at least I did pay a little attention when I was a kid. There was no "God vs Devil" death-match as this thread suggests. My understanding was that God created "everything", both good and evil. It never was a matter of who would win, it was simply that good could not exist without evil. The whole thing with Lucifer was about trying to get the other angels to follow "him" instead of God, not about kicking God's butt, which even he had the sense to know could not happen. As I said, I'm certainly no Jesus freak (I tend to think Bill Maher has it about right), but folks, at least get the story straight.
Still makes no sense. What kind of all-powerful, benevolent God creates a universe that requires the kinds of evil we see in the world?
indict?! i said they embarrass who they choose to... you're claiming they don't make such decisions? they operate autonomously?
if the pentagon, or whoever, choose to interweave false documents in with real documents with an internal system to tell them apart, simply to lessen the effects of a widespread secrets breach, then is it not possible that wikileaks is distributing documents the government distributed internally just to flush out a defector? would they then not also demand all the documents back?
you're pretty dense, danse.
you're an idiot.
Lol. You're the one spinning wild conspiracy theories here without a shred of evidence to back them.
And Comcast customers are getting what they paid for: a connection to the internet. But this goes beyond that and into the realm of a sustained QoS from Netflix. No Comcast customers are paying for that.
Comcast customers pay for a connection to the internet, with a specific speed range, and a limit on how much data they can transfer up or down. So, if Comcast is also charging whomever is sending the data down to their customers, then effectively both the customer and the sender are being charged for the same data. Apparently this charging both ends of a connection for the same data is common practice.
Comcast is charging anyone that wants to send traffic over its network. Just like every other provider. You pay to send traffic. If the traffic is equal, they'll just end up paying each other the same amount, so instead they agree on a settlement-free exchange. Now the traffic is no longer equal. Comcast is sending X and Level 3 is sending 5X. End result is that Level 3 ends up paying for that additional 4X of unequal traffic.
By that logic, I shouldn't have to pay much at all since I only send a tiny fraction of the data that is sent to me by others. Unfortunately that's not how my ISP sees it. I'm paying for both upstream and downstream transfers, with limits on both. Apparently they do charge twice for the same data, once to whoever send it, and again to whoever receives it.
I think Comcast (and others) charging both ends of a transfer for the bandwidth is the issue here. Comcast customers have been sold plans that allow them to transfer a certain amount of data. Why is Comcast trying to charge both the senders and receivers for that data transfer?
This isn't how it works.
Even if Comcast drops Level3 completely, you will still get Netflix - Level3 will just pass off the traffic to someone who does peer with Comcast. It'll be slower than if Level3 directly peered with Comcast, but it will still get there.
Netflix doesn't need to pay Comcast anything. Netflix is already paying Level3 to be their CDN. Level3 just now needs to pay for the bandwidth they're using.
Huh? Aren't Comcast's customers, the one's who are streaming Netflix, already paying for that bandwidth that they're using? This sounds like Comcast wanting to double-dip.
You would like to believe that the brightest military minds in the world were duped into invading Iraq?
Truly you are naive.
It sounds cliche but you really need to 'follow the money'.
I'm a contractor and though I don't work in Iraq or Afghanistan I have friends who have for many years. Their companies have made hundreds of millions (some have made billions), while they themselves have become minor millionaires. There is no accountability. The world is a small place, and DC is even smaller. If you know the right people you can get anything you want. No bid contracts anyone? The latest wikileaks confirm that Afghanistan is indeed a cesspool of corruption, though anyone who has been there knows that perfectly well.
No... the sad reality is that Iraq was invaded on the behest of a handful of very determined (and cynical) cabal of civil servants (all of which have ties to the arms industry I might add) who made the conscious decision that PAX AMERICA was worth the sacrafice. Control over the PRIZE of Iraq, the second largest oil producer on the planet was worth ANY price. Truth be damned.
But of course in the end, we mainly ended up helping Iran. They'll now have much more control over their neighbors than we do, and unless we want to fight another war that we can't afford with them, there's not much we can do about it.
For the last time (you'd know if you switched away from Fox News once in a while), the Obama healthcare reform is budget neutral. The reforms will result in $622 billion in savings over 10 years (preventative care vs emergency care) so there is no wealth redistribution involved.
That is a giant load of crap. Even the GAO and administration are now admitting that 0care will be extremely expensive. It is already screwing up private insurance (for instance most group plans no longer cover children).
What GAO estimate are you referring to? And private insurance is already seriously screwed up, which is why a lot of changes needed to be made. I think they went the wrong direction with the health care bill, but I think longer term outcome is still a much better path than what we were on.
When people with poor health management skills find their mandated government insurance lacking, will they suddenly cease going to the emergency rooms? Their insurance isn't going to cover them when they refuse medical advice and just keep doing what they feel is best, and a great many of them won't see the value in paying for the follow up visits, running the prescriptions all the way out, etc - and they will be back. IF, that is, they aren't completely disenfranchised by the process and decide that the free emergency room care really was better at meeting their needs.
What is it with you Republican types? One minute you're telling us that liberals are elitist and condescending, thinking that they are smarter than everyone else. Next minute you're telling us that people are just stupid and can't change and should apparently be disregarded by society in general. You really believe that people who can't afford or can't get insurance (due to pre-existing condition, etc) wouldn't seek health care if it was available to them? That's a pretty bold claim, not to mention a pretty dismal outlook on people in general. Got any evidence to back it up?
By the way, what exactly is the Republican plan for fixing the problems of people not being able to get health insurance due to pre-existing conditions? Health care can't be left to charity, because it'll end up costing all of us anyway. We've already decided as a country that we'll have universal health care, because we don't want to let people die in the streets by denying them access to emergency rooms. We just have the least efficient form of universal healthcare imaginable, and that needs to be fixed.
they DON'T "know"... they ASSUME.
such assumption is vulnerable to disinformation.
If they weren't real, then the organization would have no legal rights to the documents and no grounds to demand their return (as we've seen them do). You're REEEEALLY stretching to try to indict WL for something even though you have not a shred of evidence to support your claims apparently.
What the Chinese do or do not do as punishment is irrelevant to a discussion over whether the punishment fits the crime. For example, if the Chinese are extremely unjust in applying punishment, that does not mean we are OK to be somewhat less unjust; we should be just in our punishments regardless of the actions of other nations.
Be sure to tell that to all the people who point out the US still has the death penalty and is one of the few 1st world nations to do so.
Who needs to compare it with the rest of the world? Just pointing out the serious problems in our own legal system should be sufficient to show that it's highly irresponsible to put anyone to death based on the results of that system.
except if someone loses due to missing votes from a 3rd party, that party may run someone closer to the 3rd parties views next time. This happened to a slight degree this last election. Many republicans lost in 2006 due in part to the large turnout of Libertarian voters. The Teabag the Democrats party formed within the republicans to answer this and this last election shows the results of that.
If you don't vote for what you want, you will always get what you don't want.
Yeah, but that just gets us a Republican or Democrat that makes noises like a third party. I don't see this new crop being any different than the so-called revolutions that have happened in the past. Democrats in the 70s or "contract with America" Republicans in the 90s. We never end up with any real change. If we want to elect third party candidates, we shouldn't have to worry about a split vote, and we shouldn't have to settle for some watered-down version when one of the major parties pays lip-service to the third party for a while.
>>>you do realize that you're comparing things which aren't of similar magnitude, right?
They appear to be similar magnitude to me. Let's count the ways that I hate BOTH the republicans and democrats
- Democrats - Clinton's White House created a "no person shall be turned down" policy in 1997 which directly led to the housing boom - Republicans - passed the damnable Patriot Act - Democrats - passed the Patriot Renewal Act when they should have killed it - Republicans - started a damn war - Democrats - won congress and could have ended the war, but instead expanded its scope - Republicans - Failed to clean-up the mess caused by Katrina - Democrats - Failed to clean-up the mess caused by BP oil spill - Democrats - passed that damn Banker Bailout Bill of 2008, despite 80% opposition by americans - Democrats - passed the Healthcare NON-reform Bill of 2010, despite 70% opposition by americans - Democrats - passed a 800 billion stimulus that has done anything but; in fact ~100 billion of that cash was mailed overseas - Republicans - Won back the house, and now they want to go to war against Iran (rumor)
Only a fool trusts either of these two parties.
Some of those could be attributed to both, and I could probably double the size of that list. While I was opposed to the bailout in the way that it was done (although I can't help but believe the vast majority of economists that predicted utter doom for us if we didn't do it), and I was in favor of the health care bill even though I thought it had far too many concessions in it, and didn't addresss a number of issues that it needed to, I don't think that the opposition numbers you cite are terribly relevant, even if they were accurate, which I don't think they are. With all the misinformation being spread, of course there was opposition! The democrats were gonna pull the plug on Grandma!!! The guy on TV said so!!! It's no wonder we can't have rational conversations about policy anymore.
Aside from the bullshit we get from politicians, we have media taking sides and giving airtime to jackasses that will say anything they can think of to scare the shit out of people. With people like Beck, Hannity and Limbaugh on the right, and Olberman and... well I can't actually think of any far--left pundits. They probably exist, but just not at the level that they get any real audience. Is Air America still around? I remember hearing some crazy left-wing stuff on that station a while back. I suppose my point is that while I generally agree that both parties have done plenty of bad, it's hard to even determine what is good or bad anymore because of all the deception and blind rage that is spewed over the airwaves. The outlets that try to stick to facts are overwhelmingly drowned out by the hyperbolic rantings of the outlets that just want to generate viewer/listener numbers, and are willing to put any whackjob on the air to do it.
One vote never has, and never will, make a difference in a race larger than perhaps a state congress, and even that has never happened and probably never will.
You're missing the point that that one vote that would put someone over the top wouldn't happen without all the other votes that came before it. Voting does matter, even if our current system tries to make it as difficult as possible for us to express our true intentions.
A vote is only wasted if it is for something you don't want.
Or when it helps the worst candidate of the bunch get elected over others that would be better to at least some degree. Our election system sucks because it forces this kind of choice on us rather than letting us actually rank our choices in some manner.
Well, for one thing, it's not necessarily the same crop of people being voted in. E.g., there are 80 GOP freshmen in this house, different from the 2000-2006 Republicans who voted in the deficit increases.
I don't think that just being new to Washington is enough though. Congress and the campaigns that have to be waged and deals that have to be struck to get there, not to mention actually doing anything once they're there, seem to ensure that they will be beholden to others and more susceptible to corrupting influences. Third parties sound great, but our election system is designed to preserve the 2-party system by ensuring that voting for a third party will help the least-favored party win.
I have no idea what you think my preconceptions are, or how they could be obvious to you when I didn't write the post that you were responding to.
Really?
But certainly not a reason to elect the bigger crooks and liars again either
You should probably report the fact that someone is spoofing your name and posting here...
Ok, now I'm confused as to which statement of yours you considered to be a sarcastic response to mine. While I see the sarcasm in your post that I first responded to, I don't see any in your response to my post.
The election system is not the biggest issue. Washington has a tendency to corrupt just about everyone who goes there, even people with the best intentions. (Election reform is also damn near impossible in the current environment.)
What is needed is the watchful eye and the accusing mouth of the public. Public pressure works better than anything else. Fortunately, the excesses of the Bush administration were obvious enough to get people to pay attention, which is why you see so much talk about the (often) relatively smaller excesses of the Obama administration. The Republicans just elected to the House and Senate are going to be watched very carefully--certainly not by their fanboys, but by the sizable number of swing voters who made it possible for them to be put into office.
America is waking up.
Yes, but when the current crop turns out to be just another set of corrupt suits, what are those swing voters gonna do? Vote Dems back in? Then Republicans again? Or will the economy recover and everyone goes back to sleep again?
Actually it wasnt an implicit concession at all. The only concession I made was that in the greater political stage this is a minor infraction.
That's exactly the concession I was referring to.
My statement was sarcasm playing on your obvious preconceptions. I've made no indication at all here about my political beliefs other than that being lied to by politicians pisses me off.
I have no idea what you think my preconceptions are, or how they could be obvious to you when I didn't write the post that you were responding to.
You're making an assumption that any one political group is any less deceitful than any other. You're basing that on who happens to benefit from a particular lie and if you think the ends justify the means for the people you happen to agree with more. That makes you as much of a problem as the collective crooks and liers that make up Washington politics.
No, I was just going with the implicit concession you made in your statement that the lies that got us into the Iraq war, and those in all the various other scandals of the last administration were bigger and more harmful than this particular one. This administration hasn't been around long enough to even come close to surpassing the lies of the previous administration. Your assumptions about the basis of my statement and my motivations are simply wrong.
Right. Because its forgivable when the Presidential administration lies and decieves you so long as the last administration had bigger lies and deceptions. Frankly this particular deception is small compared to others from this administration. But it still pisses me off.
Not forgivable, no. But certainly not a reason to elect the bigger crooks and liars again either, which is what tends to happen. Until we have fundamental reforms to our election system, it will continue to happen. We'll keep bouncing from one set of crooks to another. Unfortunately, the ones who have to make those reforms are the ones that benefit the most from the status quo.
But on the other hand things like Steam (or worse AC2 style online "activation") are killing the used PC game market for ALL of us not just Gamestop. And don't forget this is DRM folks
I'm tired of invasive DRM. Steam handles DRM quite nicely. I'm not totally against DRM if it's not invasive.
You don't want any DRM? Ok, so take a look at Crysis - probably (arguably) the most pirated PC exclusive FPS made. And let me tell you, that game was pretty damn good! Now, because of piracy, Crytek (the makers of Crysis) are never going to do a PC exclusive game. Meaning longer dev times, and maybe a lesser experience for PC's (since they can't just focus on one platform). At least they didn't give us all the middle finger and go out of business. Now, if it'd been offered in Steam and the DRM (which you cry so hard about) keeps the piracy numbers way down -- ultimately the company makes money and piracy is much lower.
Also, Steam makes updates almost painless for the end user. Dev pushes a patch, game is patched. No waiting for Fileshack / etc to be able to get a download at 75k/sec.
As long as there's more money to be made in bringing games to consoles, developers are going to go in that direction. That's how business works. They make a big deal about the piracy issue, but that's not what is driving the console development, it's the fact that there are a hell of a lot more console gamers than PC gamers, so there's a lot more money to be made there. DRM makes little difference to piracy anyway, so Steam is no savior there. Steam just makes sure that if I buy the game legitimately through them, I can't resell it, trade it, give it away, etc, without paying them again for the privilege.
Of course I'm not entitled to a profit. Neither is someone entitled to coming into my store and undercutting me after a I've spent the resources of securing a store front, doing the research, examining the item and negotiating a price. This isn't a god damn auction, it's a sale between two parties. You wouldn't go into a new retail store and tell someone that's about to buy a laptop that you've got one right here in your bag that you'll sell for half-price.
If I had one to sell, then why not? We're two private citizens who happen to be in the same store at the same time, and if they express an interest in a used laptop, then I don't see why I shouldn't offer mine up if I'm willing to part with it for less. It's not like I'm setting up shop in that store, it's just a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Happens all the time in business.
As I said in a post farther down, this has nothing to do with what happens outside of the business I'm conducting - I constantly refer people to craigslist or ebay when they don't like the price or I don't have a particular item. I'm not trying to bend the market to my will - I encourage people to do their research. I never hide my intentions: if someone asks, I'm happy to tell them that, yes, that camera I'm buying from you for $20 I'm going to sell for $50, and that here are the ebay listings that I'm finding and, no, I won't pay you the $200 you bought it for. At the end of the day, I'm just a sales peon working in a slightly different environment. I didn't post that intending to start some kind of crusade-against-people-selling-their-crap, just that, "hey, that's sort of frowned upon. Why not put it up on craigslist and not abuse their facilities if you're feeling ripped off?"
While you may be some sort of exception, that's not the sort of forthright honesty about pricing that I've ever gotten at GameStop. If two people in the store discover that they have what the other wants, that's just the way it goes. It's a lucky break, but would be horribly innefficient as a method of trading/selling games, so I don't think you're going to see people making a habit of it. There are far better ways of going about it online, and as those become more trusted and well-known, GameStop will decline in their used-game sales.
It's not exactly black and white as you pretend to put it. The so called attempts at bipartisanship in the last few years consisted specifically of This is what we are going to do, either do it with us or not at all. Hell, even the so called concessions were little more then what they wanted to do claiming that the republicans should agree to it.
That's exactly my point. They were angry at the Democrats for not being bipartisan, which implies that they believe bipartisanship is the right way to do things, and then they go around claiming that they aren't going to be bipartisan at all unless the Democrats go along with what they want. Both sides pull that crap all the time, and people buy into their bullshit every damn time. It's maddening.
If you think they move in lockstep, then you simply haven't been paying attention much over the last decade or so. IF they had been moving in lockstep, they never would have lost the government in the first place.
That doesn't make any sense. They did pretty much exactly what they wanted to do for years. The Democrats are too incompetent and disorganized to do anything to stop them. They lost because people weren't happy with what they were doing, not because they couldn't do what they wanted. They were hit with one scandal after another for quite a while, on top of policies that people didn't like, and they got voted out for it.
Cap and trade as well as the 250k removal of the Bush tax cuts, health car requirements places on by Obamacare and so on. They also talked about moving capitol gains back to match the income rates and there was plenty of talk about business not paying it's fair share which only means some intended to raise their shares.
First of all, nobody is talking about removing all the Bush tax cuts. About 98% of the households in the country have an income level that falls under the 250K limit, and they will continue to get the tax cut on their entire income. Those that make more than that will still get the tax break on income up to 250K. Even those folks aren't necessarily going to pay more, and may even end up paying less than they do now. Personally, I think it's rather ridiculous that we don't have more tax brackets above that, and that's something that could help in this case. However, I haven't seen any compelling evidence that those couple percent of households are small business owners. They seem to be professional athletes, doctors, lawyers, investment bankers, CEOs of large businesses, etc. Small business owners tend to make a lot less than that on average.
Here is my take on it. Suppose your right and we cannot continue to pump crap loads of Co2 and other GHGs into the atmosphere. There is no practical replacement to doing that as of now and there won't be within the next decade or two. The supposed idea behind taxing is that it will raise the cost of normal energy to make alternatives more attractive. Ok, so they are more attractive, they still aren't as prevalent, reliable, or as dependable as traditional energy sources. So all that happens is that it costs us more to produce things and provide goods and services. But wait, China and India aren't involves in it so they now have an advantage. So some suggest that we put tariffs in place to protect American industry. Now if the WTO and the trade agreements we have in place allow that to happen in the first place, then all the sudden they are collecting a tax on imports too. But does the cap and tax plans attempt to use this extra money to offset the taxes already being paid by the citizens seeing how it will necessarily drive the costs of goods and services up? No, they are pocketing it and spending it on non-environmental related ticket items.
Lots of speculation there. I don't think we know half of the things you're assuming or how they'd be handled in the C