You're right. Maybe I should have said "far left". You can not deny the raw hatred that comes from the far left of this country. Granted, I'm sure there is just as much from the far right (the KKK for example), but Republicans tend to distance themselves from that level of politics. I don't see a whole lot of Democrats calling Code Pink, ANSWER, MoveOn.org, Air America, Huffington Post, Daily Kos and so one what they truly are.
You may want to look at yourself. This attack is laughable and shrieks of parody.
Yeah, I understand you disagree with comments posted on DailyKos or Huffington Post, but given I read them both almost daily, I know that these aren't sites filled with America Hatred. Hatred of Republicans such as yourself, sure. But who can blame them, given how much you guys have fucked things up.
Again, you need to look at yourself. You've become that which you claim to hate.
No, it turned into crap immediately after his Presidency. Remember the recession of 2001? You can't blame that on GWB, he was only in office for a few months and hadn't enacted any of his platform yet.
It seemed to me there were three pillars of the economic problems of 2001.
The dot.com stock bubble. The attacks of 9/11. The collapse of Enron.
I don't think you can blame GWB for the problems, but certainly his response to all three was wrong.
What's fascinating about GWB, in retrospect, is that under his Presidency we've seen the greatest introduction of Regulatory Oversight, since the New Deal era. I'm speaking in particular Sarbanes-Oxley, but also this recent call for regulation on the mortgage market. What's interesting about that, is in both cases, his final appeasement towards Regulation has been a direct result of his utter ineptitude in properly responding to the crisis early.
Now, look at your other points...
Forget all the scandals of the 90s and think about the legislation that he signed -- remember the Telecommunications Act of 96 that gutted regulation and set the stage for the telcos and cablecos to crave up this country into a duopoly? Remember the Communications Decency Act and the blatant attempts to censor the internet? Remember the relaxation of media ownership rules that encouraged the consolidation of the newspaper and radio industries? Remember who signed the DMCA into law? Remember whose failed health care plan and Federal tax increase set the stage for the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994?
One could easily argue that Bill Clinton was the best Republican President we've had in 50 years.:-)
That's pretty common for any wiki entries relating to current political events. Any criticism will be removed.
For instance looking at John McCain, there is some small mention of the Keating Five but it's limited to simply saying "He survived it", Which is interesting considering it is probably the biggest blight on his career. It doesn't even acknowledge the lessons he learned from that, which one can either see as smart politics, or cynicism. That being, when caught with your hand in the cookie jar, attack the makers of cookies. aka his "Maverick" quest for political reform.
Or if you want to get into games of political gotcha. There is no mention at all of his quotes on not knowing anything about the economy, or wanting us to stay in Iraq for 100 years.
Whether criticism is fair or not is entirely dependent upon your biases.
Which really had nothing at all to do with the OP or any statement he made, and was clearly done to inflame and close off debate. Veiled accusations of misogyny will do that, especially when they're plucked out of thin air.
But veiled accusations of the feminization of society are not? Give me a break. If you can't enter a discussion with anything beyond a shallow thought, don't be surprised when it gets buried so easily.
Your response is like a new form of Political Correctness. Nobody is allowed to call an argument stupid and ridiculous, because it demeans the person making the argument.
I'm not trying to bash women here, I'm just saying that society as a whole has taken on an overtly feminized aura to it. There is no balance anymore, the way there used to be./blockquote.
By used to be, I assume you mean back before we allowed women to vote?
I'm not sure how that created balance. Seems to me that if there is an argument to be made here, then the argument should be made. Intelligent people will listen, even women.
That's self-evidently false, since the free market DID work in health care for many, many years. It's only in the last couple of decades that it has been failing, and that is largely because it has become LESS of a free market.
That may have more to do with life expectancy than government regulation.
It must be nice to live in your little fantasy world, where all you need is a tax cut to cure the world's problems.
I never said that it would. I said negotiating prices CAN result in HIGHER prices. Not that not-doing it would result in lower prices.
You should learn the difference between probable and possible.
You seem to think there is a link. What link is that?
More than a coincidence.
Exactly, because government regulation essentially protects medical businesses. For example, here in WA, health insurance is so tightly regulated that most insurance companies end up being the same. So there's a distinct lack of competition, and therefore no incentive to lower costs.
LOL! I suppose they could let people die more often, otherwise how are they going to reduce costs?
If we had less regulation and more competition, and gave consumers more control and choice, we would see cost cutting. Necessarily.
And a tax cut! You forgot the tax cut!
Exactly: and why do we have a fixed market? Primarily, it is because of government regulation.
I was thinking more that there are only so many people who live in a given area. I suppose insurance companies could go global, start selling health insurance to China. Maybe it's ok to just let people die over there, which would make for larger profits.
That is entirely backward. When it is funded by the taxpayers there is LESS incentive to reduce costs, because you never pay for ANYTHING out of your pocket.
I've never understood why Conservatives are opposed to funding research. How many for-profit drug companies do you think would be willing to pour hundreds of millions of dollars into things like a vaccine for AIDS with no prospects of recouping that money for decades (if ever)?
Agreed. A government funded research project will result in a cure.
A private industry funded research project will result in a pill to treat the symptoms.
Just look at ulcers as an example. When that Australian doctor realized it was a bacteria causing ulcers and wanted to study the idea of giving antibiotics to cure it, he was attacked by the drug companies(and doctors!) who were making billions of dollars treating heartburn.
I see several problems. First, Medicare negotiating lower drug prices causes INCREASED prices for those not on Medicare. This will be a big hit to middle class and poor families. I agree with this in principle, but see no way around it harming others. The middle class especially is already subsidizing drugs to Canada and other countries; now they would be subsidizing drugs to Medicare recipients.
This doesn't make sense. I can see where one country negotiating prices raises prices for another country not negotiating prices.
But not negotiating prices isn't going to lower prices for anybody. It just makes you a stupid sucker.
Further, I agree that taxpayers should not be subsidizing drug companies' ads.
I still find it fascinating that drug prices started skyrocketing when we allowed drug companies to advertise.
Providing insurance to everyone is not the answer. Reducing the cost of health care is the answer.
There doesn't seem to be any incentive to reduce cost. The hospitals aren't going to do it. The insurance companies won't. The doctor's won't. They're all motivated to increase revenues. Increasing revenues when you have a fixed market means increasing costs. And since it's coming out of people's pocket books and our politicians think increasing revenues is good for business, there is this general attitude of doing nothing.
At least if our healthcare system were funding by the taxpayers, there would be a political motivation to reduce costs.
Because Apple Mac OSX machines don't require patching. They are secure out of the box because they are built upon the superior Unix which has security designed in from the start./snark
The CD on the other hand doesn't have that - maybe there's a concert tour, but the tour usually makes money on merch and CD sales, so we're back to the CD being the main profit center again.
That depends.
For a small band... touring helps to promote the CD sales.
But for a mega band like U2... CD sales help to promote the tour.
As CD sales increase, you get more radio airplay, or at least more attention which means more people come to the concert, which means you can fill all the seats and charge more for tickets. They feed upon one another.
McCain doesn't plan to be or want to be in Iraq for 100 years. But, he plans to be there until the job is done. Why can't we recognize this as the only honest answer to the question? Not "We must leave Iraq immediately no matter what!" but "We will leave Iraq when it makes sense to leave Iraq."
Seems to me the reason we invaded Iraq was to eliminate the threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction. I'd say the job is done, given there were no WMDs.
I love the "job is done" line. It's a way of not having to take responsibility for fucking up and invading a country we didn't need to invade.
How can you be honest about leaving, when you can't be honest about how we got there?
Nobody is actually afraid of Rev. Wright. He's not a threat to society, or to anybody individually. And nobody actually believes Barack Obama agrees with any of this after he's said he does not, and has never shown in any of his writings or speeches that he agrees.
Someone thought they could avoid the issues of the economy, foreign affairs, the future of America in this world, etc... and undermine Obama with this cheapshot.
That's what politics is all about. Nobody actually pays attention to the important issues. How did GW Bush get elected? He's a guy you want to have a beer with, even though he's a fucking moron who couldn't find America on a map.
Anyway, better to get this bullshit out now instead of waiting until October like they normally do.
But then again, besides the competition aspect, I think they are also trying to woo companies that can hire even less expensive "developers" since sooooooooooo many more things have been added making development a matter of point and click (and requiring even less actual development skills)... it seems more like a two prong attack against their competition.
Given an experienced C# developer makes six figures, I'm not sure that is inexpensive.
Microsoft seems to focus on getting things done, rather than elegance. That's what you mean, I think.
Some people say, "the terrorists have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams." I don't think so. Rather, the current situation is a dismal failure for all involved, terrorists included. It's a failure for the U.S., which is now engaged in a bloody, costly (we have spent more than we did in Vietnam [spiegel.de]), no-way-out quagmire of a war. It's a failure for the extremists who downed those planes, who rather than convincing the U.S. to pull out of the Middle East has provoked it to deploy even more troops there.
What if that wasn't their goal?
What if their goal was to collapse the US economy?
Because you have the snipe program, you don't have to monitor the auction, and you don't submit bids until the last second. As such, there is no bidding war. Although the counter argument is that without your program, chances are the bid would just end where it was and the buyer wouldn't get the extra. So it goes both ways.
If the auction were extended by a minute every time a bid was entered. This would allow other buyers to respond. That's basically how a real auction house does it. If there are still bids coming in, they hold the auction open.
Slashdot Mirror
You may want to look at yourself. This attack is laughable and shrieks of parody.
Yeah, I understand you disagree with comments posted on DailyKos or Huffington Post, but given I read them both almost daily, I know that these aren't sites filled with America Hatred. Hatred of Republicans such as yourself, sure. But who can blame them, given how much you guys have fucked things up.
Again, you need to look at yourself. You've become that which you claim to hate.
2000 called, they want their "Al Gore didn't say he invented the internet" back.
It seemed to me there were three pillars of the economic problems of 2001.
The dot.com stock bubble.
The attacks of 9/11.
The collapse of Enron.
I don't think you can blame GWB for the problems, but certainly his response to all three was wrong.
What's fascinating about GWB, in retrospect, is that under his Presidency we've seen the greatest introduction of Regulatory Oversight, since the New Deal era. I'm speaking in particular Sarbanes-Oxley, but also this recent call for regulation on the mortgage market. What's interesting about that, is in both cases, his final appeasement towards Regulation has been a direct result of his utter ineptitude in properly responding to the crisis early.
Now, look at your other points...
One could easily argue that Bill Clinton was the best Republican President we've had in 50 years.
A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. - Churchill
Whoa, I don't support Clinton at all, but this is a perfect example of the childish inanity of many of the attacks upon her.
That's pretty common for any wiki entries relating to current political events. Any criticism will be removed.
For instance looking at John McCain, there is some small mention of the Keating Five but it's limited to simply saying "He survived it", Which is interesting considering it is probably the biggest blight on his career. It doesn't even acknowledge the lessons he learned from that, which one can either see as smart politics, or cynicism. That being, when caught with your hand in the cookie jar, attack the makers of cookies. aka his "Maverick" quest for political reform.
Or if you want to get into games of political gotcha. There is no mention at all of his quotes on not knowing anything about the economy, or wanting us to stay in Iraq for 100 years.
Whether criticism is fair or not is entirely dependent upon your biases.
But veiled accusations of the feminization of society are not? Give me a break. If you can't enter a discussion with anything beyond a shallow thought, don't be surprised when it gets buried so easily.
Your response is like a new form of Political Correctness. Nobody is allowed to call an argument stupid and ridiculous, because it demeans the person making the argument.
LOL!
That may have more to do with life expectancy than government regulation.
It must be nice to live in your little fantasy world, where all you need is a tax cut to cure the world's problems.
You should learn the difference between probable and possible.
More than a coincidence.
LOL! I suppose they could let people die more often, otherwise how are they going to reduce costs?
And a tax cut! You forgot the tax cut!
I was thinking more that there are only so many people who live in a given area. I suppose insurance companies could go global, start selling health insurance to China. Maybe it's ok to just let people die over there, which would make for larger profits.
LOL!
And this makes private insurance better, how?
Agreed. A government funded research project will result in a cure.
A private industry funded research project will result in a pill to treat the symptoms.
Just look at ulcers as an example. When that Australian doctor realized it was a bacteria causing ulcers and wanted to study the idea of giving antibiotics to cure it, he was attacked by the drug companies(and doctors!) who were making billions of dollars treating heartburn.
This doesn't make sense. I can see where one country negotiating prices raises prices for another country not negotiating prices.
But not negotiating prices isn't going to lower prices for anybody. It just makes you a stupid sucker.
I still find it fascinating that drug prices started skyrocketing when we allowed drug companies to advertise.
There doesn't seem to be any incentive to reduce cost. The hospitals aren't going to do it. The insurance companies won't. The doctor's won't. They're all motivated to increase revenues. Increasing revenues when you have a fixed market means increasing costs. And since it's coming out of people's pocket books and our politicians think increasing revenues is good for business, there is this general attitude of doing nothing.
At least if our healthcare system were funding by the taxpayers, there would be a political motivation to reduce costs.
Because Apple Mac OSX machines don't require patching. They are secure out of the box because they are built upon the superior Unix which has security designed in from the start. /snark
That depends.
For a small band... touring helps to promote the CD sales.
But for a mega band like U2... CD sales help to promote the tour.
As CD sales increase, you get more radio airplay, or at least more attention which means more people come to the concert, which means you can fill all the seats and charge more for tickets. They feed upon one another.
http://www.dollartimes.com/calculators/inflation.htm
$15.99 in 2007 was about $8.05 in 1984 dollars.
So it appears as though they were right. Over time the cost of a CD did come down to $8.
Taking quotes out of context and attacking others for it, is part and parcel of American political theatre.
Yeah, it'll probably work with some low-info voters. That's what the perpetual outrage folks are hoping for. But god does it grow lame.
So you agree then that the Iraq War is a big money sinkhole and should have it's budget cut?
Well certainly not spending the money overseas in Iraq.
Seems to me the reason we invaded Iraq was to eliminate the threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction. I'd say the job is done, given there were no WMDs.
I love the "job is done" line. It's a way of not having to take responsibility for fucking up and invading a country we didn't need to invade.
How can you be honest about leaving, when you can't be honest about how we got there?
It's all political theatre.
Nobody is actually afraid of Rev. Wright. He's not a threat to society, or to anybody individually. And nobody actually believes Barack Obama agrees with any of this after he's said he does not, and has never shown in any of his writings or speeches that he agrees.
Someone thought they could avoid the issues of the economy, foreign affairs, the future of America in this world, etc... and undermine Obama with this cheapshot.
That's what politics is all about. Nobody actually pays attention to the important issues. How did GW Bush get elected? He's a guy you want to have a beer with, even though he's a fucking moron who couldn't find America on a map.
Anyway, better to get this bullshit out now instead of waiting until October like they normally do.
Given an experienced C# developer makes six figures, I'm not sure that is inexpensive.
Microsoft seems to focus on getting things done, rather than elegance. That's what you mean, I think.
A tax cut will solve all of our problems.
What if that wasn't their goal?
What if their goal was to collapse the US economy?
My God! I used to run Windows NT 4.0 with only 64 Megs and thought that was a lot.
Because you have the snipe program, you don't have to monitor the auction, and you don't submit bids until the last second. As such, there is no bidding war. Although the counter argument is that without your program, chances are the bid would just end where it was and the buyer wouldn't get the extra. So it goes both ways.
If the auction were extended by a minute every time a bid was entered. This would allow other buyers to respond. That's basically how a real auction house does it. If there are still bids coming in, they hold the auction open.