Yes, that is exactly what I want. I think it would be good for the country if congress had to come up with a 2/3 majority to pass anything...
I'm afraid that's one of those ideas that sounds nice on the face of it, but would be a disaster in practice. And the reason for that is the Senate, where the least populated states get the same two senators as California. Some people did the math and discovered that 3% of the population is enough to block legislation from passing. And that's with a 3/5 majority, much less 2/3.
Illegals actually consume more services then their cheap labor produces...If they are getting paid in cash I don't see how this is possible.
Payroll taxes, my good friend. They also pay sales and property taxes - the only tax they're really dodging is the income tax, but they generally don't make that much money anyway.
Simple: raise the price of gold. By devaluing the $US even further (yes, it's possible, and Ron Paul is just the guy to do it.)
Maybe that's his plan, but it sort of defeats the purpouse of having a gold standard if you arbitrarily raise the value of your bedrock commodity.:) But arguably we already *are* on a gold standard: black gold. Since oil is traded in dollars, it prevents our currency from fluctuating too wildly, and there's a lot more oil than there is gold. However if our economy got so bad that OPEC switched to trading in Euros and the Saudis and the Chinese called in our debts, we would be well and truly fucked. The U.S. would join poor African countries in begging for debt forgiveness.
Seriously, I like many of Ron Paul's ideas (internet freedom, etc) but I gotta agree with you about the cookoo part.
Yeah, that's Ron Paul in a nutshell - he'd be great in undoing 7 years of Busco fascism, but piss poor at just about everything else.
Please keep discussions limited to talk about Hillary and Obama.
Too bad so sad. The country may want Obama but it needs Edwards. Just look at these quotes:
`This election is a race between hope and fear, between division and community, between responsibility and blame, between whether we have the courage to change, to stay young forever, or whether we stay with the comfort of the status quo."
Our people are pleading for change, but government is in the way. It has been hijacked by privileged private interests. It has forgotten who really pays the bills around here. It has taken more of your money and given you less in return. We have got to go beyond the brain-dead politics in Washington and give our people the kind of government they deserve, a government that works for them.
Sounds like part of an Obama stump speech, doesn't it? Except Bill Clinton spoke these words in 1992. And we all know what happened to him: his bold health care plan was shot down by Republicans and conservative Democrats, and he spent the rest of his presidency being hounded by the right wing.
So Mr. Hope gets elected, tries to pass something bold, only to run into the same wall of opposition. What's his follow up plan when he finds out that "brining people together" makes for a nice speech but does little to bring special interests in line? Or put it this way: if insurance companies will let people die to save money, I doubt they'd suddenly have qualms when dealing with a newly elected president. Edwards probably wouldn't have any more luck going in on the first round, but he knows it would be a fight, and it's better to lose a fight than lose a negotiation.
And I hope Obama has sent his thank you cards to the media companies for awarding him lavish coverage while ignoring John Edwards. Coming into this race, it was a given that Hillary would have a ton of press, given her background and name recognition. But the press awarded Obama, a one term Senator who made a big speech at the 2004 convention, coverage equal to Clinton while ignoring the man who finished #2 in the 2004 primary and was the VP nominee that year.
Okay, rant over. The Dems best bet is Obama, because the demoralized GOP base will turn out to vote against Hillary and hurt the Dems downticket as those voters also vote for Republican senators and representatives. The worst scenario for the Dems is Hillary v McCain. Her whole campaign is based on her "35 years of experience", which McCain blows out of the water. And the press LOVES McCain but HATES the Clintons. Oh, one last thing: the Dem that consistently polled the best against the Republican candidates was John Edwards.
Huckabee is a nutjob (amend Constitution to meet "God's standards", wtf?), McCain is a sellout and vies with Romney for title of the Worst Flip Flopper On The Planet, and all three are warmongers when America is pretty damned tired of war.
And seriously, nothing is going to bring out the Ron Paul spambots like saying he's not invited to the discussion. And while Ron Paul is cookoo for coco puffs*, at least he isn't a fundie like Huckabee or a flip flopping asshole like McCain or Romney.
The Republicans only hope this year is that it will be Hillary v McCain. Her whole campaign is based on experience, which McCain blows out of the water. And she can't really attack him for flip flopping, when she's gone back and forth for drivers licenses for illegal immigrants, and for criticizing the Administration's foreign policy after voting for Kyl-Lieberman.
*Yes, Ron Paul is nuts. For example, how exactly is he going to move a $7 trillion economy back to the gold standard when there's less than $3 trillion in gold on the planet? Or how you'll be able to sue companies for the damage their pollution causes. Said companies will just use the cigarrette defense: how do you know is was my toxic waste dumped into the river that gave your wife cancer, and not the other three companies dumping into the same waterway?
Must be tough being a Republican this year, when the only candidate that isn't a joke or an asshole is a Libertarian loon. My apologies if you are a small l Libertarian, but Internet regulation isn't the only thing Dr. Paul is naive about - just how does he expect a $7 trillion economy to go back to the gold standard when there's less than three trillion dollars in gold on the planet, or if he seriously expects there to be a market based solution to global climate change that doesn't involve regulation of some kind.
That said, I'm almost tempted to vote for the guy when my states primary comes up, just to spite McCain and Romney.:) Have fun voting in your primary, whenever it is.
Here ya go. Scroll down to the third group of bills - take H.R.300 for example:
We the People Act - Prohibits the Supreme Court and each federal court from adjudicating any claim or relying on judicial decisions involving: (1) state or local laws, regulations, or policies concerning the free exercise or establishment of religion; (2) the right of privacy, including issues of sexual practices, orientation, or reproduction; or (3) the right to marry without regard to sex or sexual orientation where based upon equal protection of the laws.
Say your state government mandates prayer in public schools? You're outta luck. If you have no right or means to enforce the Constitution then the Constitution is meaningless.
Microsoft has been involved with Government since they started to become big... many years ago.
Red herring. The government is just another (large) customer. The government didn't create the Microsoft monopoly, nor does it sustain it through legal means.
The only other option would be to break up the corporation like Ma Bell, but as we've seen over the last few years it just seems to T1000 its way back together.
Because corporate friendly Bush administration will overlook just about anything. One of the reasons I'm wary of Hillary becoming president is we'll see more deregulation and consolidation.
Then again, look at what is happening to Microsoft now without government intervention. Competition in the marketplace from Google has forced them to use the last of their cash on hand to try and acquire another company.
Comparing Microsoft to Google is not a case of competition eroding a monopoly, because Microsoft never had a monopoly in Internet searching or services. Their monopolies are in operating systems and office suites - two areas Google hasn't been able to scratch.
Transportation, how much do we pay to bail out the airlines that can't balance a checkbook?
The problem isn't bailouts, the problem is that the airlines should never have been deregulated in the first place. Air fares were falling faster before deregulation. After deregulation, the airlines lost billions of dollars, and that was before 911.
Monopolies are nearly all caused by big government.
Explain how we had monopolies before we had government regulation, then.
When it takes an army of accountants and lawyers to do business, only those firms large enough to afford an army of accountants and lawyers will do business!
That's going to be big news to every mom & pop business in the country. And the government doesn't enforce accounting standards to make businesses jump through hoops, the standards are to enforce honesty to shareholders, partners and tax collectors.
Stop and think where Microsoft would be today without their government granted copyrights.
Copyrights are what encourages commercial development of works in the first place. The problem isn't copyright, it's the ludicrous lengths to which copyright has been extended.
You want him to stop campaigning the week before Super Tuesday just so he can go back to DC and watch the *Senate* vote? Sheesh.
Straw man. 1) the parent never said anything about him going to the Senate, and 2) does he really need to go back to DC to speak out against telecom immunity?
Here's a page with his privacy issues. If you still think he's in favor of warrantless searches you're nuts.
Yawn. Sure, Libertarians oppose warrantless wiretapping - with the same fervor that they oppose federal health insurance for children. Along with some common sense, Libertarians seriously need to learn about the concept of having priorities.
People are trying to punish telcos
Break the law, you suffer the consequences. What a novel concept.
when it's congress that needs to be punished for giving these outrageous powers to the presidency.
Congress didn't give powers to the president, the Administration just went ahead and did it. But aside from that, any Senator or Congressman that votes for immunity flagrantly violates their oath of office (protect the Constitution) and should resign.
These people have come here illegally, though, breaking our laws, and we cannot afford to support them.
We aren't supporting them, they are supporting us. Illegals subsidize Social Security to the tune of $7 billion per year - benefits they can't collect on.
They broke our laws, and you're crying that they might be deported?
Here's my view on the subject: conservatives can bitch about illegal immigration once they've returned the Southwest to Mexico, and start abiding by all the treaties made and broken with Indian tribes. Until then, they can STFU.
Then telecos can start paying rent on all the land that their lines run across. And pay back all the subsidies given to them to improve networks. With interest. Until then, they can take their regulation and like it. The good Dr. Paul is putting the cart before the horse here.
And they might have a case if you bought your game through Steam in the first place, but not if you bought the game in a store. A "license" you can only view after you've opened a box is worthless. Especially when the store refuses to accept a return on an opened item.
Do you know why Fileplanet implemented a service were paying subscribers get a better download priority? They need to cover the cost of the download servers. Likewise, Valve needs to have enough high-bandwidth servers in order to allow many players to download content onto their computer.
But bandwidth isn't that expensive. If Apple can rent a 1.2 gigabyte movies for $3, I doubt it costs Valve that much money.
There's also the case of undercutting the retail stores - if the game price on Steam is lower than what's found in retail stores, then the stores will believe there's no point in stocking that game.
Nice for them, but as a consumer I don't care. What bothers me more is how they charge new game prices for expansion packs.
Your vote gives you no effective say in how the government is run
Of course it does. In the last ten years, at least one presidential race and a governorship have been decided by a few hundred votes.
and certainly cannot control government incompetence and waste, which is inherent to government itself.
Yawn. Incompetence and waste are no more inherent to government than dumping toxic waste into rivers and groping secretaries is inherent to running a business.
And what exactly has changed as a result?
The worst party lost power and some of the worst Democrats were primaried. More of the same will happen with this years elections.
Do you really think that MS would take a brand as well known and popular as Yahoo and shit stuff it under the crappy MSN brand?
Immediately, no of course not. But over time you'd see less and less Yahoo and more and more MSN. I bet within five years Yahoo would be completely Microsoftized, and would remain in token name only. Within ten years, you'd never know Yahoo was a separate company.
McCain's only chance of winning is if Hillary gets the Dem nomination. McCain is old, tired, a bigger flip flopper than every Dem ever accused of flip flopping combined, a warmonger when Americans are tired of war and despite his "maverick" image is actually the biggest sellout on the face of the planet. However, Hillary's whole campaign is based on "experience", which McCain blows out of the water. And while the GOP base doesn't like McCain and is depressed this year, Republicans voters will turn out in droves to vote against "Billary". Finally, the press LOVES McCain but HATES the Clintons.
The Dems best candidate to beat the Republicans was Edwards, but the media first ignored him as they focused on Hillary and Obama, and then wrote off his candidacy as soon as possible. So he's now out. I'm confident that Obama could handle McCain with ease, but Hillary would be in real trouble.
Slashdot Mirror
You might try this other revolutionary concept...it's called reading comprehension.
The iPhone features don't suck and aren't a pain in the ass to use. They just work. Get it?
Yes, that is exactly what I want. I think it would be good for the country if congress had to come up with a 2/3 majority to pass anything...
I'm afraid that's one of those ideas that sounds nice on the face of it, but would be a disaster in practice. And the reason for that is the Senate, where the least populated states get the same two senators as California. Some people did the math and discovered that 3% of the population is enough to block legislation from passing. And that's with a 3/5 majority, much less 2/3.
Illegals actually consume more services then their cheap labor produces...If they are getting paid in cash I don't see how this is possible.
Payroll taxes, my good friend. They also pay sales and property taxes - the only tax they're really dodging is the income tax, but they generally don't make that much money anyway.
Simple: raise the price of gold. By devaluing the $US even further (yes, it's possible, and Ron Paul is just the guy to do it.)
:) But arguably we already *are* on a gold standard: black gold. Since oil is traded in dollars, it prevents our currency from fluctuating too wildly, and there's a lot more oil than there is gold. However if our economy got so bad that OPEC switched to trading in Euros and the Saudis and the Chinese called in our debts, we would be well and truly fucked. The U.S. would join poor African countries in begging for debt forgiveness.
Maybe that's his plan, but it sort of defeats the purpouse of having a gold standard if you arbitrarily raise the value of your bedrock commodity.
Seriously, I like many of Ron Paul's ideas (internet freedom, etc) but I gotta agree with you about the cookoo part.
Yeah, that's Ron Paul in a nutshell - he'd be great in undoing 7 years of Busco fascism, but piss poor at just about everything else.
Too bad so sad. The country may want Obama but it needs Edwards. Just look at these quotes: Sounds like part of an Obama stump speech, doesn't it? Except Bill Clinton spoke these words in 1992. And we all know what happened to him: his bold health care plan was shot down by Republicans and conservative Democrats, and he spent the rest of his presidency being hounded by the right wing.
So Mr. Hope gets elected, tries to pass something bold, only to run into the same wall of opposition. What's his follow up plan when he finds out that "brining people together" makes for a nice speech but does little to bring special interests in line? Or put it this way: if insurance companies will let people die to save money, I doubt they'd suddenly have qualms when dealing with a newly elected president. Edwards probably wouldn't have any more luck going in on the first round, but he knows it would be a fight, and it's better to lose a fight than lose a negotiation.
And I hope Obama has sent his thank you cards to the media companies for awarding him lavish coverage while ignoring John Edwards. Coming into this race, it was a given that Hillary would have a ton of press, given her background and name recognition. But the press awarded Obama, a one term Senator who made a big speech at the 2004 convention, coverage equal to Clinton while ignoring the man who finished #2 in the 2004 primary and was the VP nominee that year.
Okay, rant over. The Dems best bet is Obama, because the demoralized GOP base will turn out to vote against Hillary and hurt the Dems downticket as those voters also vote for Republican senators and representatives. The worst scenario for the Dems is Hillary v McCain. Her whole campaign is based on her "35 years of experience", which McCain blows out of the water. And the press LOVES McCain but HATES the Clintons. Oh, one last thing: the Dem that consistently polled the best against the Republican candidates was John Edwards.
Huckabee is a nutjob (amend Constitution to meet "God's standards", wtf?), McCain is a sellout and vies with Romney for title of the Worst Flip Flopper On The Planet, and all three are warmongers when America is pretty damned tired of war.
And seriously, nothing is going to bring out the Ron Paul spambots like saying he's not invited to the discussion. And while Ron Paul is cookoo for coco puffs*, at least he isn't a fundie like Huckabee or a flip flopping asshole like McCain or Romney.
The Republicans only hope this year is that it will be Hillary v McCain. Her whole campaign is based on experience, which McCain blows out of the water. And she can't really attack him for flip flopping, when she's gone back and forth for drivers licenses for illegal immigrants, and for criticizing the Administration's foreign policy after voting for Kyl-Lieberman.
*Yes, Ron Paul is nuts. For example, how exactly is he going to move a $7 trillion economy back to the gold standard when there's less than $3 trillion in gold on the planet? Or how you'll be able to sue companies for the damage their pollution causes. Said companies will just use the cigarrette defense: how do you know is was my toxic waste dumped into the river that gave your wife cancer, and not the other three companies dumping into the same waterway?
That would be a reasonable reply, except that I'm anything BUT a right-winger.
Doesn't matter. A right wing talking point is a right wing talking point, even it comes from the lips of Noam Chomsky.
If you noticed, I made a negative comment about both parties.
My last name isn't Klien or Broder, so I'm not impressed by your attempts at "balance".
I think your left-wing defensiveness is turned on a little high.
Just calling a spade a spade.
Must be tough being a Republican this year, when the only candidate that isn't a joke or an asshole is a Libertarian loon. My apologies if you are a small l Libertarian, but Internet regulation isn't the only thing Dr. Paul is naive about - just how does he expect a $7 trillion economy to go back to the gold standard when there's less than three trillion dollars in gold on the planet, or if he seriously expects there to be a market based solution to global climate change that doesn't involve regulation of some kind.
:) Have fun voting in your primary, whenever it is.
That said, I'm almost tempted to vote for the guy when my states primary comes up, just to spite McCain and Romney.
So I trust you're now an ex-Ron Paul supporter?
Microsoft has been involved with Government since they started to become big... many years ago.
Red herring. The government is just another (large) customer. The government didn't create the Microsoft monopoly, nor does it sustain it through legal means.
Just how naive are you, anyway?
Far less than you, apparently.
The only other option would be to break up the corporation like Ma Bell, but as we've seen over the last few years it just seems to T1000 its way back together.
Because corporate friendly Bush administration will overlook just about anything. One of the reasons I'm wary of Hillary becoming president is we'll see more deregulation and consolidation.
Then again, look at what is happening to Microsoft now without government intervention. Competition in the marketplace from Google has forced them to use the last of their cash on hand to try and acquire another company.
Comparing Microsoft to Google is not a case of competition eroding a monopoly, because Microsoft never had a monopoly in Internet searching or services. Their monopolies are in operating systems and office suites - two areas Google hasn't been able to scratch.
Transportation, how much do we pay to bail out the airlines that can't balance a checkbook?
The problem isn't bailouts, the problem is that the airlines should never have been deregulated in the first place. Air fares were falling faster before deregulation. After deregulation, the airlines lost billions of dollars, and that was before 911.
Monopolies are nearly all caused by big government.
Explain how we had monopolies before we had government regulation, then.
When it takes an army of accountants and lawyers to do business, only those firms large enough to afford an army of accountants and lawyers will do business!
That's going to be big news to every mom & pop business in the country. And the government doesn't enforce accounting standards to make businesses jump through hoops, the standards are to enforce honesty to shareholders, partners and tax collectors.
Stop and think where Microsoft would be today without their government granted copyrights.
Copyrights are what encourages commercial development of works in the first place. The problem isn't copyright, it's the ludicrous lengths to which copyright has been extended.
Government isn't the solution, it's the problem!
A trite, tired marketing slogan.
You want him to stop campaigning the week before Super Tuesday just so he can go back to DC and watch the *Senate* vote? Sheesh.
Straw man. 1) the parent never said anything about him going to the Senate, and 2) does he really need to go back to DC to speak out against telecom immunity?
Here's a page with his privacy issues. If you still think he's in favor of warrantless searches you're nuts.
Yawn. Sure, Libertarians oppose warrantless wiretapping - with the same fervor that they oppose federal health insurance for children. Along with some common sense, Libertarians seriously need to learn about the concept of having priorities.
People are trying to punish telcos
Break the law, you suffer the consequences. What a novel concept.
when it's congress that needs to be punished for giving these outrageous powers to the presidency.
Congress didn't give powers to the president, the Administration just went ahead and did it. But aside from that, any Senator or Congressman that votes for immunity flagrantly violates their oath of office (protect the Constitution) and should resign.
These people have come here illegally, though, breaking our laws, and we cannot afford to support them.
We aren't supporting them, they are supporting us. Illegals subsidize Social Security to the tune of $7 billion per year - benefits they can't collect on.
They broke our laws, and you're crying that they might be deported?
Here's my view on the subject: conservatives can bitch about illegal immigration once they've returned the Southwest to Mexico, and start abiding by all the treaties made and broken with Indian tribes. Until then, they can STFU.
Then telecos can start paying rent on all the land that their lines run across. And pay back all the subsidies given to them to improve networks. With interest. Until then, they can take their regulation and like it. The good Dr. Paul is putting the cart before the horse here.
They charge new game prices for expansion packs. That isn't reasonable, that's greed.
And they might have a case if you bought your game through Steam in the first place, but not if you bought the game in a store. A "license" you can only view after you've opened a box is worthless. Especially when the store refuses to accept a return on an opened item.
Do you know why Fileplanet implemented a service were paying subscribers get a better download priority? They need to cover the cost of the download servers. Likewise, Valve needs to have enough high-bandwidth servers in order to allow many players to download content onto their computer.
But bandwidth isn't that expensive. If Apple can rent a 1.2 gigabyte movies for $3, I doubt it costs Valve that much money.
There's also the case of undercutting the retail stores - if the game price on Steam is lower than what's found in retail stores, then the stores will believe there's no point in stocking that game.
Nice for them, but as a consumer I don't care. What bothers me more is how they charge new game prices for expansion packs.
Your vote gives you no effective say in how the government is run
Of course it does. In the last ten years, at least one presidential race and a governorship have been decided by a few hundred votes.
and certainly cannot control government incompetence and waste, which is inherent to government itself.
Yawn. Incompetence and waste are no more inherent to government than dumping toxic waste into rivers and groping secretaries is inherent to running a business.
And what exactly has changed as a result?
The worst party lost power and some of the worst Democrats were primaried. More of the same will happen with this years elections.
Lots of things. He has a big staff, with plenty of people to cover fucking over consumers AND citizens as the need arises.
And how is Google going to face more competition from one huge company as opposed to two large companies?
Liberal Dems are for big government
Good thing you brought that up, I was afraid I'd get through this thread without seeing any right wing talking points.
Do you really think that MS would take a brand as well known and popular as Yahoo and shit stuff it under the crappy MSN brand?
Immediately, no of course not. But over time you'd see less and less Yahoo and more and more MSN. I bet within five years Yahoo would be completely Microsoftized, and would remain in token name only. Within ten years, you'd never know Yahoo was a separate company.
McCain's only chance of winning is if Hillary gets the Dem nomination. McCain is old, tired, a bigger flip flopper than every Dem ever accused of flip flopping combined, a warmonger when Americans are tired of war and despite his "maverick" image is actually the biggest sellout on the face of the planet. However, Hillary's whole campaign is based on "experience", which McCain blows out of the water. And while the GOP base doesn't like McCain and is depressed this year, Republicans voters will turn out in droves to vote against "Billary". Finally, the press LOVES McCain but HATES the Clintons.
The Dems best candidate to beat the Republicans was Edwards, but the media first ignored him as they focused on Hillary and Obama, and then wrote off his candidacy as soon as possible. So he's now out. I'm confident that Obama could handle McCain with ease, but Hillary would be in real trouble.