When they made it illegal to buy "too much" Sudafed within a certain period, the first person to be arrested was a guy who bought enough to last his kid through summer camp.
Real meth cookers know not to buy too much in a traceable manner over the counter, so it's not likely to catch an actual criminal. But some dad worried about his kid's allergies sure got nailed.
The Muslims never conquered North Africa, Persia, Arabia, the Middle East and much of Europe and Asia without regard of tribal, linguistic or religious differences. Basic fact, regardless of history, Islam is currently a religion living in centuries past as practiced by the majority that needs to get with the times. If it refuses, it needs to be walled off so its centuries-old barbaric ideas don't infect modern thinking. If it refuses to be walled, any leakage of those elements must be met with severe penalties wherever it is found. Contain it, let it advance, wither or destroy itself, but do not let it influence our societies.
But, no, we have the UN accepting the Muslim resolution to condemn "defamation" of Islam (read: "telling the truth"). This was submitted as "defamation of Islam," then changed to "defamation of religions," but in reality it is treated as defamation of Islam, rooting out anywhere a Muslim may be insulted by someone saying something they don't like. Islam is the only religion singled-out for protection, and it condemns anything that could incite violence, which means anything Muslims don't like, even a simple cartoon.
The Muslims even got the Dutch government to try one of their own politicians for the crime of "hate speech" for speaking his opinion of Islam. This is very, very wrong. The message instead should be "Don't like freedom of speech? Then get the fuck out! Go back to where it means 'freedom of speech that I agree with.'"
Now this is not to say that a modern, Westernized Muslim can't be a great person. I know a few. But that's the kick, they've shed the baggage that those in most Muslim countries still adhere to. Sure, they're personally more conservative than most, just like these Jews, but that affects only themselves. You won't find them demanding Sharia courts to have the parallel religious and civil systems found in the more modern (yet still backwards) Muslim countries so they can violate the rights of women with misogynistic proceedings. Sorry, at least in the US, Sharia is anathema to constitutional rights.
that slowly but surely we're edging towards a corporatocracy
You do realize that's a recently made-up term that is essentially equal to a plutocracy? This probably came about because a few of the smarter leftists realized that the real political term "corporatism" so often bandied about is not restricted to the evil for-profit corporations as they would like, but instead involves any group of people incorporated together as a special interest petitioning the government to address their issues. This means the rich and powerful unions, the ACLU, ACORN, NAACP, GLAD, the Black Panthers, Planned Parenthood, Greenpeace, blacks, Hispanics, the DNC, and the Occupy movement are also included in the definition of a corporation. Can't cast corporate influence as evil when your side is in it just as much as the other one. And, yes, the US is going quite close to corporatism as corporations (all types) send their lobbyists to Washington, wielding a lot of influence, leaving individual voters with little influence except the ballot.
Whether or not practices began with Islam, it is the fact that much of the Muslim community still adheres to these practices that Western countries today generally find abhorrent.
Over the last thousand years or so the Western world, mainly Christianity and Judaism, has shed these ancient barbaric practices.
Women have legal equality (and in some cases superiority). Attempts to infringe on their equal status are frowned upon by society, actionable as a civil tort, and/or punishable by law.
Arranged child forced marriages are illegal, and any contract between families for forced marriages at all is unenforceable. An older man marrying a teenage girl, where legal, arranged or not, is frowned upon by society.
There is no legal punishment for apostasy or blasphemy. Both are covered under freedom of religion and freedom of speech. Where it exists social punishment at most results in shunning in the local community among only the most religiously conservative.
Where old civil laws exist against adultery, they used to have moderate legal punishment when enforced, and are never enforced any more. Sex outside of marriage receives no more punishment than a shunning from the most extreme religious among us, and is barely noticed among society at large.
Honor killings are prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law as murder. Honor is no defense or mitigating factor.
FGM will get you jail time, the child taken away.
Homosexuality is now legal and no longer punished, and accepted in society by all but the most conservatively religious. Aside from the marriage issue (were equal legal protections exist as a civil partnership without the word "marriage"), a gay has full rights of any citizen, and even more protections.
Contras with most Muslim countries:
Women do not have legal equality in most countries. Where they technically do there is heavy social pressure to stay in their place.
Arranged child marriages are legal and accepted. The contracts can be enforced.
Apostasy, blasphemy and adultery can get you anything from a jail sentence to the death penalty from the courts, or a lynching from the mob.
The authorities usually look the other way in the case of honor killings.
FGM is acceptable.
Homosexuals can be executed.
Sorry that Christianity and Judaism for the most part grew up before Islam, they did have a head start. However, sorry, but we're not going to accept this barbaric behavior anymore. Basically, Islam needs to grow the hell up, and fast.
Sadly, the more liberal among us want us to accept the "religion of peace" for what it is, and there's even a push to accommodate their views. For example, more and more Westerners are starting to accept the Muslim view that Freedom of Speech doesn't apply to their religion.
I said, truthfully, that tens of millions of Muslims at a minimum agree with these practices. That these practices are institutionalized in countries representing hundreds of millions of Muslims, this is a good bet.
I also said most Muslims probably agree with some punishment for what we consider an exercise of human rights. This is also likey true, since almost all Muslim-run countries impose some sort of punishment for exercising freedom of religion or freedom of speech when it runs counter to the rules of Islam.
To state that these practices are limited to a very tiny minority as Muslim apologists are fond of saying is just as wrong as saying these practices are universal.
And the pace continues. We're moving in the right direction, both in the US and overseas. I know we closed well over 100 Army installations (ranging from few-acre sites to large bases) in Germany since the end of the Cold War, and a good chunk of the remaining ones are scheduled to close in the next few years. The Air Force went from a huge number of bases to just a few. Ramstein is the only big US one left, we have a tanker squadron at the NATO-controlled Geilenkirchen, and Spangdahlem keeps getting smaller as they transfer planes out.
It's actually harder to do this in the US since we have congresscritters protecting their local jobs.
I just hope we do it smartly and don't overdo it like we did after WWII, screwing us for Korea.
These reporters are just being sensationalist, manufacturing stories to get page views off this big IPO.
Truth is as you say. I think it shows a great sense for rational valuation if after the first day the stock stayed within 10% of its opening either way. Much more shows dangerous wild speculation by traders, or the company completely blew their valuation estimates.
Sorry, but while these orthodox Jews number in the thousands, a very tiny any ineffectual minority of Jews, the number of Muslims who interpret their religion to think these barbaric practices are fine number in the tens of millions at least. Looking at the laws in Muslim-governed countries, I bet that a majority of Muslims support punishment for apostates, something absolutely contrary to the Western concept of human rights when it comes to freedom of religion.
These people did it because they wanted to, and were coerced into covering it up by the authority figure. It has nothing to do with the religion, except that the religion created that structure with the authority figure. Any other authority structure could have produced the same result.
Muslims do it because it's the law of their religion.
The US has troops in dozens of countries around the world in various capacities outside of current war. We have the leftover cold war troops in Europe, the troops holding the line against North Korea's insane leaders, and smaller advisory or advance contingents on the rest of the continents except Antarctica. It is understood that we are the real defense for many other countries should the SHTF, so those countries don't have to spend so much on their own defense.
Some countries do complain about the actions of some individuals stationed there, and it's understandable, and they will grumble about kicking the US out. However, they are usually reticent to take the financial hit that a US withdrawal will cause. I've seen a community in Germany decimated after a base closure, since the base was a good chunk of the local economy (direct gov-gov payments, soldier spending, and hiring of many local nationals on the base). Usually when they really want us gone, it's because our bases are sitting on some valuable real estate.
They both contributed in their way. Edison was moderately intelligent, methodical, driven, and most importantly -- completely sane. This brute-force approach produced usable, marketable results, although no advancements in scientific theory. However, he was the perfect person to stand on the shoulders of giants to bring technology to the masses.
Tesla was the epitome of the insane genius, prone to bouts of unworkable fancy that had a grain of great insight that would later be worked out by others. Wanting to use radio waves to detect subs was a good example, envisioning RADAR before anybody else, yet not quite understanding how it could be practically applied.
I'm not Jewish, but the author having been a conservative rabbi tells me they're probably fairly accurate portrayals. Take Asher Lev, for the religion to cause such strife and try to snuff out a young man's natural talent, you have to wonder if the religion is a net benefit to society. I know the story is fiction, but it is supposedly set within a realistic portrayal of a Hasidic community. On the other hand, you probably have this conflict within the conservative branch of any religion. This brings me to the quesiton, is religion in general a net benefit?
But I figure in the end, at least they're not bombing anybody. They're welcome to do what they want in their communities as long as they're not violating anybody's civil rights or demanding we change to accommodate their beliefs. Same for conservative Muslims here.
May 2007, Blackberry-like Android prototypes are available for internal use (Horowitz says he's been using his for six months). This phone looks like the phone in the first SDK phone emulators.
Apple releases iPhone June 2007
Sometime before November 2007, an obviously unfinished full-screen Android device with very limited touch capabilities is ready for a demonstration. Notice the menus are still key-based like the Blackberry and no on-screen typing is done.
October 2008, the first Android phone, the HTC Dream, is released with Android 1.0. It functions a lot more like an iPhone than anything we've previously seen. Blackberry-like Android phones are nowhere to be seen.
If Apple won purely on quality, and consumer demand, then Apple would need all the patent scams.
They did win on quality and consumer demand. They were 25% of the US smartphone market within two and a half years of release (one new vendor on one carrier vs. multiple established vendors on all carriers), and wouldn't file their first offensive iPhone lawsuit for another couple months.
I do see a difference. Microsoft threatened HTC and others with a lawsuit if they didn't pay because Microsoft was on the bottom, bleeding smartphone marketshare like mad, and wanted a piece of the action of those who were making money like any troll would.
Apple sued when they were doing quite well and still rising fast. If anything, the suits have hurt Apple's bottom line with millions of dollars in legal fees spent and little if any extra iPhone sales to show for it, or really any damage to competing product sales (until now). Apple sued because Jobs was tired of other companies riding on Apple's coattails. Post-Jobs Apple management is even talking about settling because how much these suits are bleeding Apple's money. Jobs wouldn't settle because for him it was about principle, not about money, which is really a rather emotional, unprofessional position for a CEO to be taking.
There's a problem with how you define one or more of the following: fact halo effect
Fact: Most original iPhone buyers were not current Apple fans, or even product owners. Apple had $1.2 billion in yearly sales in Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe before the iPhone. The iPhone's release drove that up to $22 billion the next year.
Halo effect was coined: You need to understand the definition of context, as in the how the term "halo effect" was used in this context.
Create mediocre, over-priced smart phone to leverage absurdly loyal fan-base
You do realize that most buyers were not Apple fans, right? In fact, the term "halo effect" was coined in this context to describe people who became Apple fans because of buying iPhones, making them more likely to buy Apple computers.
using components from popular MP3 player.
There was pretty much no hardware or software in common with the iPod of the time when the iPhone was released.
sue into oblivion anyone who dares to threaten your market share by creating superior products.
The marketshare and insane profits came before the lawsuits. Those lawsuits appeared because of copycat products. Android is a perfect example. Early prototypes were Blackberry copies, and then when the iPhone got popular, they switched to copying the iPhone. If not for the iPhone, RIM would probably be the one suing Android makers over the copycat issue.
Apple already destroyed the competition by having a superior product. Symbian, Microsoft and Blackberry phones began a steep decline after the iPhone was introduced, and before any lawsuits. In all markets where there is no legal restriction to selling competing tablets, the iPad still rules.
Simple solution to that: You can file a patent immediately to get protection. Howver, if regulatory requirements delay the commercial release of your product, then the expiration clock only starts ticking upon regulatory approval. The time period is there so inventors can recoup their investments, so it's ony fair that the clock start ticking at the moment the investment can be recouped.
This would apply to pharmaceuticals, some new car tech that has to be tested by the NHTSA, new communications device that must be FCC approved, or anything else under the same restrictions.
Even Wikipedia makes it pretty clear that the Obama administration rushed this through for political reasons over the objections of the beancounters. The article is well-sourced, especially from the original Washington Post article.
In the West, the religious fanatics are not in power. The extreme ones who would kill you for blasphemy, apostasy or homosexuality are laughed at or scorned by the rest of the nation. It is not a reasonable expectation that these people will attain enough power to impose their will any time in the near future.
In the Muslim world, it's quite often those extreme religious fanatics who are in charge. Iran executed a man for being homosexual not long ago. Salman Rushdie still has a price on his head because he offended Muslim sensibilities. I believe most Muslim states still execute apostates, and Iran has several under sentence of death right now.
Their products used no silicon. A drop in price of silicon made their products less attractive, although not worthless. Overall, bad management killed the company.
No, the program isn't much of a controversy, and Solyndra failing isn't a controversy either. As you say, some rate of failure was expected.
The controversy is that the financial backers of Solyndra were also some of the biggest financial backers of Obama's 2008 campaign. That in itself isn't evil, but the newly-installed Obama administration then rushed through approval of the loan guarantee over the objections of the OMB, who said it was not a financially sound investment. The OMB even accurately predicted the month and year that Solyndra would run out of our money and go bankrupt, and Obama didn't care. In fact, he gave them MORE of our money.
Basically, it was an Obama payoff of fat-cat campaign donors using our tax money. That is a legitimate controversy.
I know several Iranians, and none of them have been home in 30 years. They're not stupid enough to get caught up in the political tug of war between the US and Iran.
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When they made it illegal to buy "too much" Sudafed within a certain period, the first person to be arrested was a guy who bought enough to last his kid through summer camp.
Real meth cookers know not to buy too much in a traceable manner over the counter, so it's not likely to catch an actual criminal. But some dad worried about his kid's allergies sure got nailed.
Then the traffickers will shift to New Mexico and Texas. These are smart businessmen with the proven ability to quickly shift with the landscape.
The Muslims never conquered North Africa, Persia, Arabia, the Middle East and much of Europe and Asia without regard of tribal, linguistic or religious differences. Basic fact, regardless of history, Islam is currently a religion living in centuries past as practiced by the majority that needs to get with the times. If it refuses, it needs to be walled off so its centuries-old barbaric ideas don't infect modern thinking. If it refuses to be walled, any leakage of those elements must be met with severe penalties wherever it is found. Contain it, let it advance, wither or destroy itself, but do not let it influence our societies.
But, no, we have the UN accepting the Muslim resolution to condemn "defamation" of Islam (read: "telling the truth"). This was submitted as "defamation of Islam," then changed to "defamation of religions," but in reality it is treated as defamation of Islam, rooting out anywhere a Muslim may be insulted by someone saying something they don't like. Islam is the only religion singled-out for protection, and it condemns anything that could incite violence, which means anything Muslims don't like, even a simple cartoon.
The Muslims even got the Dutch government to try one of their own politicians for the crime of "hate speech" for speaking his opinion of Islam. This is very, very wrong. The message instead should be "Don't like freedom of speech? Then get the fuck out! Go back to where it means 'freedom of speech that I agree with.'"
Now this is not to say that a modern, Westernized Muslim can't be a great person. I know a few. But that's the kick, they've shed the baggage that those in most Muslim countries still adhere to. Sure, they're personally more conservative than most, just like these Jews, but that affects only themselves. You won't find them demanding Sharia courts to have the parallel religious and civil systems found in the more modern (yet still backwards) Muslim countries so they can violate the rights of women with misogynistic proceedings. Sorry, at least in the US, Sharia is anathema to constitutional rights.
You do realize that's a recently made-up term that is essentially equal to a plutocracy? This probably came about because a few of the smarter leftists realized that the real political term "corporatism" so often bandied about is not restricted to the evil for-profit corporations as they would like, but instead involves any group of people incorporated together as a special interest petitioning the government to address their issues. This means the rich and powerful unions, the ACLU, ACORN, NAACP, GLAD, the Black Panthers, Planned Parenthood, Greenpeace, blacks, Hispanics, the DNC, and the Occupy movement are also included in the definition of a corporation. Can't cast corporate influence as evil when your side is in it just as much as the other one. And, yes, the US is going quite close to corporatism as corporations (all types) send their lobbyists to Washington, wielding a lot of influence, leaving individual voters with little influence except the ballot.
Whether or not practices began with Islam, it is the fact that much of the Muslim community still adheres to these practices that Western countries today generally find abhorrent.
Over the last thousand years or so the Western world, mainly Christianity and Judaism, has shed these ancient barbaric practices.
Contras with most Muslim countries:
Sorry that Christianity and Judaism for the most part grew up before Islam, they did have a head start. However, sorry, but we're not going to accept this barbaric behavior anymore. Basically, Islam needs to grow the hell up, and fast.
Sadly, the more liberal among us want us to accept the "religion of peace" for what it is, and there's even a push to accommodate their views. For example, more and more Westerners are starting to accept the Muslim view that Freedom of Speech doesn't apply to their religion.
I didn't think so.
I said, truthfully, that tens of millions of Muslims at a minimum agree with these practices. That these practices are institutionalized in countries representing hundreds of millions of Muslims, this is a good bet.
I also said most Muslims probably agree with some punishment for what we consider an exercise of human rights. This is also likey true, since almost all Muslim-run countries impose some sort of punishment for exercising freedom of religion or freedom of speech when it runs counter to the rules of Islam.
To state that these practices are limited to a very tiny minority as Muslim apologists are fond of saying is just as wrong as saying these practices are universal.
And the pace continues. We're moving in the right direction, both in the US and overseas. I know we closed well over 100 Army installations (ranging from few-acre sites to large bases) in Germany since the end of the Cold War, and a good chunk of the remaining ones are scheduled to close in the next few years. The Air Force went from a huge number of bases to just a few. Ramstein is the only big US one left, we have a tanker squadron at the NATO-controlled Geilenkirchen, and Spangdahlem keeps getting smaller as they transfer planes out.
It's actually harder to do this in the US since we have congresscritters protecting their local jobs.
I just hope we do it smartly and don't overdo it like we did after WWII, screwing us for Korea.
These reporters are just being sensationalist, manufacturing stories to get page views off this big IPO.
Truth is as you say. I think it shows a great sense for rational valuation if after the first day the stock stayed within 10% of its opening either way. Much more shows dangerous wild speculation by traders, or the company completely blew their valuation estimates.
Sorry, but while these orthodox Jews number in the thousands, a very tiny any ineffectual minority of Jews, the number of Muslims who interpret their religion to think these barbaric practices are fine number in the tens of millions at least. Looking at the laws in Muslim-governed countries, I bet that a majority of Muslims support punishment for apostates, something absolutely contrary to the Western concept of human rights when it comes to freedom of religion.
These people did it because they wanted to, and were coerced into covering it up by the authority figure. It has nothing to do with the religion, except that the religion created that structure with the authority figure. Any other authority structure could have produced the same result.
Muslims do it because it's the law of their religion.
The US has troops in dozens of countries around the world in various capacities outside of current war. We have the leftover cold war troops in Europe, the troops holding the line against North Korea's insane leaders, and smaller advisory or advance contingents on the rest of the continents except Antarctica. It is understood that we are the real defense for many other countries should the SHTF, so those countries don't have to spend so much on their own defense.
Some countries do complain about the actions of some individuals stationed there, and it's understandable, and they will grumble about kicking the US out. However, they are usually reticent to take the financial hit that a US withdrawal will cause. I've seen a community in Germany decimated after a base closure, since the base was a good chunk of the local economy (direct gov-gov payments, soldier spending, and hiring of many local nationals on the base). Usually when they really want us gone, it's because our bases are sitting on some valuable real estate.
They both contributed in their way. Edison was moderately intelligent, methodical, driven, and most importantly -- completely sane. This brute-force approach produced usable, marketable results, although no advancements in scientific theory. However, he was the perfect person to stand on the shoulders of giants to bring technology to the masses.
Tesla was the epitome of the insane genius, prone to bouts of unworkable fancy that had a grain of great insight that would later be worked out by others. Wanting to use radio waves to detect subs was a good example, envisioning RADAR before anybody else, yet not quite understanding how it could be practically applied.
I'm not Jewish, but the author having been a conservative rabbi tells me they're probably fairly accurate portrayals. Take Asher Lev, for the religion to cause such strife and try to snuff out a young man's natural talent, you have to wonder if the religion is a net benefit to society. I know the story is fiction, but it is supposedly set within a realistic portrayal of a Hasidic community. On the other hand, you probably have this conflict within the conservative branch of any religion. This brings me to the quesiton, is religion in general a net benefit?
But I figure in the end, at least they're not bombing anybody. They're welcome to do what they want in their communities as long as they're not violating anybody's civil rights or demanding we change to accommodate their beliefs. Same for conservative Muslims here.
Do I have the timeline wrong here?
Apple begins working on iPhone in 2005
Google buys Android in 2005
Apple announces iPhone in January 2007
May 2007, Blackberry-like Android prototypes are available for internal use (Horowitz says he's been using his for six months). This phone looks like the phone in the first SDK phone emulators.
Apple releases iPhone June 2007
Sometime before November 2007, an obviously unfinished full-screen Android device with very limited touch capabilities is ready for a demonstration. Notice the menus are still key-based like the Blackberry and no on-screen typing is done.
October 2008, the first Android phone, the HTC Dream, is released with Android 1.0. It functions a lot more like an iPhone than anything we've previously seen. Blackberry-like Android phones are nowhere to be seen.
They did win on quality and consumer demand. They were 25% of the US smartphone market within two and a half years of release (one new vendor on one carrier vs. multiple established vendors on all carriers), and wouldn't file their first offensive iPhone lawsuit for another couple months.
I do see a difference. Microsoft threatened HTC and others with a lawsuit if they didn't pay because Microsoft was on the bottom, bleeding smartphone marketshare like mad, and wanted a piece of the action of those who were making money like any troll would.
Apple sued when they were doing quite well and still rising fast. If anything, the suits have hurt Apple's bottom line with millions of dollars in legal fees spent and little if any extra iPhone sales to show for it, or really any damage to competing product sales (until now). Apple sued because Jobs was tired of other companies riding on Apple's coattails. Post-Jobs Apple management is even talking about settling because how much these suits are bleeding Apple's money. Jobs wouldn't settle because for him it was about principle, not about money, which is really a rather emotional, unprofessional position for a CEO to be taking.
Fact: Most original iPhone buyers were not current Apple fans, or even product owners. Apple had $1.2 billion in yearly sales in Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe before the iPhone. The iPhone's release drove that up to $22 billion the next year.
Halo effect was coined: You need to understand the definition of context, as in the how the term "halo effect" was used in this context.
You do realize that most buyers were not Apple fans, right? In fact, the term "halo effect" was coined in this context to describe people who became Apple fans because of buying iPhones, making them more likely to buy Apple computers.
There was pretty much no hardware or software in common with the iPod of the time when the iPhone was released.
The marketshare and insane profits came before the lawsuits. Those lawsuits appeared because of copycat products. Android is a perfect example. Early prototypes were Blackberry copies, and then when the iPhone got popular, they switched to copying the iPhone. If not for the iPhone, RIM would probably be the one suing Android makers over the copycat issue.
Apple already destroyed the competition by having a superior product. Symbian, Microsoft and Blackberry phones began a steep decline after the iPhone was introduced, and before any lawsuits. In all markets where there is no legal restriction to selling competing tablets, the iPad still rules.
Simple solution to that: You can file a patent immediately to get protection. Howver, if regulatory requirements delay the commercial release of your product, then the expiration clock only starts ticking upon regulatory approval. The time period is there so inventors can recoup their investments, so it's ony fair that the clock start ticking at the moment the investment can be recouped.
This would apply to pharmaceuticals, some new car tech that has to be tested by the NHTSA, new communications device that must be FCC approved, or anything else under the same restrictions.
There is no comparison. The reliigious fanatics haven't been in power in the West for hundreds of years.
Even Wikipedia makes it pretty clear that the Obama administration rushed this through for political reasons over the objections of the beancounters. The article is well-sourced, especially from the original Washington Post article.
In the West, the religious fanatics are not in power. The extreme ones who would kill you for blasphemy, apostasy or homosexuality are laughed at or scorned by the rest of the nation. It is not a reasonable expectation that these people will attain enough power to impose their will any time in the near future.
In the Muslim world, it's quite often those extreme religious fanatics who are in charge. Iran executed a man for being homosexual not long ago. Salman Rushdie still has a price on his head because he offended Muslim sensibilities. I believe most Muslim states still execute apostates, and Iran has several under sentence of death right now.
Their products used no silicon. A drop in price of silicon made their products less attractive, although not worthless. Overall, bad management killed the company.
No, the program isn't much of a controversy, and Solyndra failing isn't a controversy either. As you say, some rate of failure was expected.
The controversy is that the financial backers of Solyndra were also some of the biggest financial backers of Obama's 2008 campaign. That in itself isn't evil, but the newly-installed Obama administration then rushed through approval of the loan guarantee over the objections of the OMB, who said it was not a financially sound investment. The OMB even accurately predicted the month and year that Solyndra would run out of our money and go bankrupt, and Obama didn't care. In fact, he gave them MORE of our money.
Basically, it was an Obama payoff of fat-cat campaign donors using our tax money. That is a legitimate controversy.
1) Company A investors and execs seek to take advantage of a government loan program to fund the company
2) Investors and execs contribute heavily to the election campaign of a presidential hopeful
3) Thusly elected president rushes through approval of the loan over the objections of the beancounters who say it's a bad bet
4) Profit! as the investors rape the company for all its worth and execs give themselves fat bonuses as the company slides into bankruptcy
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
I know several Iranians, and none of them have been home in 30 years. They're not stupid enough to get caught up in the political tug of war between the US and Iran.