What about his promise that he wouldn't continue Bush's abuse of the state secrets privilege? Because he has ignored that.
I would not exactly say he ignored it. For example in his first day in office he implemented a roll back of an important Bush secrecy directive which was clearly an abuse of exactly what you are talking about, the state secret privilege.
There has been a roll-back of the Bush position in many cases, however in a few high profile cases he has continued the Bush policy. Speculation is that in some cases he is following the Bush policy because releasing documents would then compel prosecutions of former Bush officials - something he has stated he doesn't want.
Personally I think judgement on this will have to wait a bit for the overall picture to emerge.
That site doesn't even mention all his broken promises about transparency and such.
Crikey did you even look at it? One of the broken promises listed had to do with transparency.
In actuality Obama has a pretty good record of transparency. For example one of the first things he did in office is lift the executive order from Ashcroft that set a policy of contesting all FOIA requests. His legislative record as a senator is really good in this area too.
As far as this lawsuit goes there is so little information in the AP story we have no idea what is going on except some knee-jerk reaction.
The video is not on a quality level with a good upconverted DVD, and the sound is still only two channel. And it is bogs years behind some of the new BluRay players with interpolated deep color and DTS-MA audio.
Not to mention that the catalog available does not compare. Ar the studios going to give up on physical DVD sales? Seems unlikely to me.
Netflix may want to move to streaming exclusively, but I think that many of their customers will have differing ideas.
Personally I think Netflix may be jimping the shark here.
Well right now streaming quality stinks. It doesn't even include 5.1 sound and I get better resolution from my upscaling DVD player. And the catalog available is a small fraction of what is on physical media through Netflix.
Plus how do I stream if I am on vacation somewhere, or in an airplane?
Then of course there is the problem of DRM. What if the producer decides to withdraw the film from distribution? We have already seen this type of nonsense with George Lucas.
Don't get me started with music downloads - these are the purview of the Top 40 crowd. Anyone who is a bit older and has more sophisticated tastes in music isn't buying from iTunes. While CD sales of pop tunes has cratered, CD sales of other genre is still going strong and has hardly been affected by online distribution.
Then of course there is the substantial percentage of the population that does not have access to broadband, due to either location or lack of desire. These people may still desire to rent or purchase movies.
Much like what has happened in music we will continue to have physical media.
Hello the phone company monopoly was broken up back in 1981. What is really needed is to get the fricken rules on sharing internet infrastructure fixed, and to get multiple cable franchises per locality.
01. Germany has the world's 14th largest population, but by 2050, it is expected to have only the world's 26th largest.
02. Around 165,000 Germans moved abroad in 2007. Favorite destinations included Switzerland (20,000 people), the United States (14,000), Poland (10,000), and Austria (10,000).
03. The average age of German women having their first child (29 years old) is the highest in Europe.
04. By next year, 2009, an estimated 390,000 empty residences will have been torn down in eastern Germany since 1990.
05. With current birthrates and without immigration, Germany's population would drop to 24 million people by 2100.
06. An estimated 37 percent of the German population will be 60 and older by 2050.
07. The largest numbers of foreign citizens living in Germany come from Turkey (1.7 million), Italy (528,000), and Poland (384,000).
08. An average of 120,000 people per year become naturalized German citizens. The biggest countries of former citizenships are Turkey, Serbia, and Poland. Around 800,000 people of Turkish origin are German citizens.
09. Around 96 percent of Germany's over 15 million people with a "migration background" - immigrants and their descendants - live in the former West Germany or Berlin. They make up around 40 percent of the populations of the western cities of Stuttgart and Frankfurt.
10. Germany's annual average ratio of 8 births per 1,000 inhabitants is the world's lowest. The world's highest ratios are in Mali and Niger, both with over 49 births per 1,000 people.
New immigrants face prejudices and problems integrating with the native population and often segment into separate communities.[8]. Higher rates of delinquency and more general integration problems persist amongst some migrant groups. Notwithstanding police operations focusing on this matter, migrants may still be subject to racist assaults mainly in rural areas or small towns in former East Germany.
The problem with your thesis is that the Internet was 100% funded by the US Government from 1969 to 1986. It is a cause celebre for the idea of the benefits of government funded R&D.
Japan - aging population, oldest on earth. Birth rate way less than replacement. Export driven, monolithic ethnic composition. No acceptance of immigrants. Since there in no domestic demand a decline in exports is dire. Their 4th Q GDP decline was 12 times higher than the US decline.
Germany - aging population, birth rate less than replacement. 2nd oldest on earth. Export driven. Poor acceptance of immigrants. Since there is little domestic demand a decline in exports is dire. Their 4th Q GDP decline was much higher than the US decline.
China - Export driven. Since there in little domestic demand a decline in exports is dire. Their rapid growth rate has slowed remarkably. Social stability in this country that is trying to modernize is dependent on continued rapid growth. Currency has fixed exchange rate kept artificially low.
There is a reason that US Treasury bonds are selling like hotcakes. It is simple - despite the US problems, the alternatives are not as good.
Hong Kong and Singapore are probably about as close as it gets.
Doesn't sound promising. Both of these locations have significantly lower median wages than the US, along with substantially lower guaranteed personal freedoms and protections against exploitation.
Deregulation is fine if you are willing to accept a very unstable economy. We had lassiez-faire prior to the 1930's, and along with that 7 depressions in a 50 year period, including the Great Depression and the Long Depression. Not to mention the Great Panic that led to the creation of the Federal Reserve.
You might get faster growth that way, but at a big price. You also get massive social upheavals and personal misery because of the instability. You also get accumulation of wealth that is so concentrated in the hands of the few that the it threatens governmental institutions. For example look at the ugly incident in 1933 where a group of bankers conspired to conduct a coup d'etat during the FDR administration, and replace the US Government with a fascist regime, or the problems TR had with business trusts.
If we flash forward to the current economic situation it is pretty clear that the proximate cause was the relaxation of reserve requirements for investment banks by the SEC in 2004. This freed up hundreds of billions for mortgage backed securities that an unwitting and unregulated rating industry categorized as 'AAA' when in fact they were 'C' grade. The money that went into these securities went to fund subprime and alt-a mortgages, and ultimately inflated the housing market to the bursting point. The head of the Treasury, Paulson argued for removal of reserve requirements and self-regulation of the financial industry when he was head of Goldman Sachs. It is ironic that he had to deal with this outcome from the other side 8 years later.
Capitalism works well and I am not advocating abolishment of it. however there must be restraints on some of the outcomes; left unfettered it does provide an optimum or fair outcome to all who live in such a system, nor does it provide for a stable or peaceful society. An economicist would say that entities in such a system do not consider external consequences when making descisions; sort of an extended view of the prisoner's dilemma problem.
I don't have a DTV box; my HDTV has an ATSC tuner and I have a multi element directional roof antenna pointed at NYC. No nearby trees or tall buildings either.
And no, I can't get channel 25 worth beans.
The fact of the matter is that once you are more than 25 miles away the curvature of the earth comes into play. I am more like 50 miles out.
Maynbe when the Freedom Tower is done my reception will improve; it definitely went down hill when the WTC towers fell.
1. Stop using the Canon logo. 2. Remove references to violence. 3. Remove references to Chuck's family. 4. Changes to the look and feel of the blog so it would not be confused with actual Canon corporate sites.
It wasn't a totally unreasonable blanket take-down demand, and as such Fake Chuck will easily be able to comply and continue as a source of satire and humor.
According to this theory Fannie Mae should be the only financial institution that got into trouble.
The real root of the problem was the 2004 SEC change that allowed investment banks to double their amount of leverage, something that Paulson argued for in 2000 as head of Goldman Sacks. As soon as this happened the market for mortgage backed securities took off like a rocket, and the amount of subprime mortgages exploded because of the appetite for MBS..
This giant national nightmare is clearly the fault of a Republican administration that allowed this change in regulations.
Even in the NYC metro area there are a number of issues that are preventing my taking advantage of this theory. The channels that have switched to DTV seem to be harder to receive, and few are broadcasting in HD even though they have HD on the cable feeds.
I'd have to be pretty hard up to to turn off my cable subscription.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but they release a lot of NOx while burning.
Since I hate the idea of streaming movies another failure in this space is good news....
The harder you squeeze the more you piss off the electorate.
That's way optimistic. It is not an O(n) denominator!!! It isn't even polynomial.
Which one are you talking about? The 5 day waiting period? Pfft... that's not about transparancy.
According to a wide variety of other commentators it certainly is.
http://www.propublica.org/article/take-two-obama-short-on-transparency-pledge-again-090205
What about his promise that he wouldn't continue Bush's abuse of the state secrets privilege? Because he has ignored that.
I would not exactly say he ignored it. For example in his first day in office he implemented a roll back of an important Bush secrecy directive which was clearly an abuse of exactly what you are talking about, the state secret privilege.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jan/22/obama-lifts-bushs-veil-of-secrecy/
There has been a roll-back of the Bush position in many cases, however in a few high profile cases he has continued the Bush policy. Speculation is that in some cases he is following the Bush policy because releasing documents would then compel prosecutions of former Bush officials - something he has stated he doesn't want.
Personally I think judgement on this will have to wait a bit for the overall picture to emerge.
That site doesn't even mention all his broken promises about transparency and such.
Crikey did you even look at it? One of the broken promises listed had to do with transparency.
In actuality Obama has a pretty good record of transparency. For example one of the first things he did in office is lift the executive order from Ashcroft that set a policy of contesting all FOIA requests. His legislative record as a senator is really good in this area too.
As far as this lawsuit goes there is so little information in the AP story we have no idea what is going on except some knee-jerk reaction.
I suggest that people monitor the following site:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/
It gives a good overall view of whether it is 'bait and switch' or not.
So far the meter shows 15 promises kept and 2 broken. That is almost close to 90%. I'd say that is a pretty good score.
The video is not on a quality level with a good upconverted DVD, and the sound is still only two channel. And it is bogs years behind some of the new BluRay players with interpolated deep color and DTS-MA audio.
Not to mention that the catalog available does not compare. Ar the studios going to give up on physical DVD sales? Seems unlikely to me.
Netflix may want to move to streaming exclusively, but I think that many of their customers will have differing ideas.
Personally I think Netflix may be jimping the shark here.
Well right now streaming quality stinks. It doesn't even include 5.1 sound and I get better resolution from my upscaling DVD player. And the catalog available is a small fraction of what is on physical media through Netflix.
Plus how do I stream if I am on vacation somewhere, or in an airplane?
Then of course there is the problem of DRM. What if the producer decides to withdraw the film from distribution? We have already seen this type of nonsense with George Lucas.
Don't get me started with music downloads - these are the purview of the Top 40 crowd. Anyone who is a bit older and has more sophisticated tastes in music isn't buying from iTunes. While CD sales of pop tunes has cratered, CD sales of other genre is still going strong and has hardly been affected by online distribution.
Then of course there is the substantial percentage of the population that does not have access to broadband, due to either location or lack of desire. These people may still desire to rent or purchase movies.
Much like what has happened in music we will continue to have physical media.
Hello the phone company monopoly was broken up back in 1981. What is really needed is to get the fricken rules on sharing internet infrastructure fixed, and to get multiple cable franchises per locality.
As far as Google, this guy is obviously clueless.
Germany's Declining Birthrate
10 FACTS ABOUT DEMOGRAPHICS IN GERMANY
01. Germany has the world's 14th largest population, but by 2050, it is expected to have only the world's 26th largest.
02. Around 165,000 Germans moved abroad in 2007. Favorite destinations included Switzerland (20,000 people), the United States (14,000), Poland (10,000), and Austria (10,000).
03. The average age of German women having their first child (29 years old) is the highest in Europe.
04. By next year, 2009, an estimated 390,000 empty residences will have been torn down in eastern Germany since 1990.
05. With current birthrates and without immigration, Germany's population would drop to 24 million people by 2100.
06. An estimated 37 percent of the German population will be 60 and older by 2050.
07. The largest numbers of foreign citizens living in Germany come from Turkey (1.7 million), Italy (528,000), and Poland (384,000).
08. An average of 120,000 people per year become naturalized German citizens. The biggest countries of former citizenships are Turkey, Serbia, and Poland. Around 800,000 people of Turkish origin are German citizens.
09. Around 96 percent of Germany's over 15 million people with a "migration background" - immigrants and their descendants - live in the former West Germany or Berlin. They make up around 40 percent of the populations of the western cities of Stuttgart and Frankfurt.
10. Germany's annual average ratio of 8 births per 1,000 inhabitants is the world's lowest. The world's highest ratios are in Mali and Niger, both with over 49 births per 1,000 people.
http://knowledge.allianz.com/en/globalissues/demographic_profiles/germany/germany_demographic_profile.html?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=immigration%20germany&utm_campaign=Allianz%20Knowledge%20-%20Demographic%20Profile%20Germany
And:
New immigrants face prejudices and problems integrating with the native population and often segment into separate communities.[8]. Higher rates of delinquency and more general integration problems persist amongst some migrant groups. Notwithstanding police operations focusing on this matter, migrants may still be subject to racist assaults mainly in rural areas or small towns in former East Germany.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_issues_in_Germany
Wapner. 12 minutes to Wapner. Must watch Wapner. People's Court. Eight minutes to Wapner. - We got eight minutes to Wapner.
The problem with your thesis is that the Internet was 100% funded by the US Government from 1969 to 1986. It is a cause celebre for the idea of the benefits of government funded R&D.
Lets face it. The USA is done.
Let us examine some OTHER large economies also.
Japan - aging population, oldest on earth. Birth rate way less than replacement. Export driven, monolithic ethnic composition. No acceptance of immigrants. Since there in no domestic demand a decline in exports is dire. Their 4th Q GDP decline was 12 times higher than the US decline.
Germany - aging population, birth rate less than replacement. 2nd oldest on earth. Export driven. Poor acceptance of immigrants. Since there is little domestic demand a decline in exports is dire. Their 4th Q GDP decline was much higher than the US decline.
China - Export driven. Since there in little domestic demand a decline in exports is dire. Their rapid growth rate has slowed remarkably. Social stability in this country that is trying to modernize is dependent on continued rapid growth. Currency has fixed exchange rate kept artificially low.
There is a reason that US Treasury bonds are selling like hotcakes. It is simple - despite the US problems, the alternatives are not as good.
So much for the idea the recovery occurred in 1946:
http://static.seekingalpha.com/uploads/2009/2/17/saupload_depressiongdp.png
Hong Kong and Singapore are probably about as close as it gets.
Doesn't sound promising. Both of these locations have significantly lower median wages than the US, along with substantially lower guaranteed personal freedoms and protections against exploitation.
So what examples of true lassiez-faire do you have? The current best example is Somalia, and I don't think anyone wants that.
Yes, you do realize that the founding of the Federal Reserve was in reaction to JP Morgan acting in the same role, but without any constraints in law?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panic_of_1907
Deregulation is fine if you are willing to accept a very unstable economy. We had lassiez-faire prior to the 1930's, and along with that 7 depressions in a 50 year period, including the Great Depression and the Long Depression. Not to mention the Great Panic that led to the creation of the Federal Reserve.
You might get faster growth that way, but at a big price. You also get massive social upheavals and personal misery because of the instability. You also get accumulation of wealth that is so concentrated in the hands of the few that the it threatens governmental institutions. For example look at the ugly incident in 1933 where a group of bankers conspired to conduct a coup d'etat during the FDR administration, and replace the US Government with a fascist regime, or the problems TR had with business trusts.
If we flash forward to the current economic situation it is pretty clear that the proximate cause was the relaxation of reserve requirements for investment banks by the SEC in 2004. This freed up hundreds of billions for mortgage backed securities that an unwitting and unregulated rating industry categorized as 'AAA' when in fact they were 'C' grade. The money that went into these securities went to fund subprime and alt-a mortgages, and ultimately inflated the housing market to the bursting point. The head of the Treasury, Paulson argued for removal of reserve requirements and self-regulation of the financial industry when he was head of Goldman Sachs. It is ironic that he had to deal with this outcome from the other side 8 years later.
Capitalism works well and I am not advocating abolishment of it. however there must be restraints on some of the outcomes; left unfettered it does provide an optimum or fair outcome to all who live in such a system, nor does it provide for a stable or peaceful society. An economicist would say that entities in such a system do not consider external consequences when making descisions; sort of an extended view of the prisoner's dilemma problem.
I don't have a DTV box; my HDTV has an ATSC tuner and I have a multi element directional roof antenna pointed at NYC. No nearby trees or tall buildings either.
And no, I can't get channel 25 worth beans.
The fact of the matter is that once you are more than 25 miles away the curvature of the earth comes into play. I am more like 50 miles out.
Maynbe when the Freedom Tower is done my reception will improve; it definitely went down hill when the WTC towers fell.
The take down letter asked for 4 things:
1. Stop using the Canon logo.
2. Remove references to violence.
3. Remove references to Chuck's family.
4. Changes to the look and feel of the blog so it would not be
confused with actual Canon corporate sites.
It wasn't a totally unreasonable blanket take-down demand, and as such Fake Chuck will easily be able to comply and continue as a source of satire and humor.
According to this theory Fannie Mae should be the only financial institution that got into trouble.
The real root of the problem was the 2004 SEC change that allowed investment banks to double their amount of leverage, something that Paulson argued for in 2000 as head of Goldman Sacks. As soon as this happened the market for mortgage backed securities took off like a rocket, and the amount of subprime mortgages exploded because of the appetite for MBS..
This giant national nightmare is clearly the fault of a Republican administration that allowed this change in regulations.
Even in the NYC metro area there are a number of issues that are preventing my taking advantage of this theory. The channels that have switched to DTV seem to be harder to receive, and few are broadcasting in HD even though they have HD on the cable feeds.
I'd have to be pretty hard up to to turn off my cable subscription.
I was thinking Republican.
So when I am parking with my girlfriend the car is charging up? Wow.