First, it always is spending that is too high. Politicians make promise after promise because they are not truly responsible for the costs they impose on their constituents. I know some will say that is not true because we can vote them out, but we don't. Just like schools, its the other guy's politician that is bad; theirs is great. Yet while we have politicians clamor to hold corporate executives responsible for the slightest expenditure or such they allow no such hold on themselves. Throw in their truly golden retirement programs we only encourage them to laden on the promises so they can stay in office.
Just as the Federal government has lost its way so have the states. Both have moved to remove all responsibility for life's difficult decisions. They take our rights away because we ourselves have lost what our rights really are. People today are more concerned with their right to choose who the next American idol is, the right to choose their preferred cell provider, and the right to watch the channels on TV they want. Yet the turn a blind eye to rights that require self responsibility. However politicians are more than willing to step into this void and grant you rights that you already have but they do it with a twist. If you have noticed, most of these new rights come at the cost of someone else paying for it, doing the work.
As for illegals, please don't try to write off their burden on society. They consume the same if not more of the same government provided resources we all pay for yet the majority don't pay the same taxes we do. After all they aren't legal so how do we collect from them? Buying food at the local grocery and paying rent does not pay for the services our society provides. There are also many studies which show a large illegal population both committing crimes and incarcerated. You cannot have a great society if you guilt yourself consistently in to turning away from the hard decisions.
What I find amazing is that regardless of loss of income governments only resort to blackmailing the tax paying populace into paying more instead of cutting back on the frivolous or over staffed government agencies. Instead of cutting "lifestyle" agencies and such where do they hit us first? Education, police, and fire. This was well played out in Atlanta recently. Until the city folk caved and accepted higher taxes the city set about to close fire and police stations in sensitive areas - read areas where resistance to increased and undue taxation were most evident.
Yet people want to hand their right to choose their own health care to these people? Guess what, you will see endless expansion of it as well. Think its bad that Arizona is thinking of selling state property, wait till it becomes too expensive to afford your own because of the endless increases to the promises made possible by your work.
We have family friends who own a franchised gas station. Well they wanted to do some upgrades which meant new tanks; they purchased an old mostly hard case store. Well to make a long story short.
You cannot out pace the ability of feel good but short sighted politicians to impose fees/levies that simply make some business unsustainable. In other words, their best option was to rotate each store into a sub type structure and then let the subs who were burdened by feel good laws to bankrupt.
See, if they wanted to just keep the existing problems, like possible leakage, they were all fine and dandy. If they wanted to keep old pumps (still retrofitted with reclamation nozzles) they could. It was actually their audacity to fix things that sunk them. In the end they determined that they failed to do adequate research.
The original owner? Totally scot free - see he blew it by buying more than he could sustain an his properties were auctioned and such.
I would not doubt that the original planned cost to decommission a plant is far far from what it actually cost today with all the new laws, local, state, and federal.
The real question that we should all be asking is, why when we have a great example of "global warming approved" generation, one that many in Europe embrace, are we still held hostage by the green whackos out of California. Don't deny it, these freaks for whom no compromise exist because of their own internal factions end up leaving us with messes that are far worse that what they proclaim to protect us from.
We have the technology and man power to be free of relying on factional areas of the world for power yet we go out of our way to make any solution a miserable mess.
I hate math, always did. I was good at it but just could not stand it. As such I skipped out on about anything math related beyond algebra (college level). Didn't impede my programming ability at all.
Still there are times where I like to learn how stuff works and honestly this series of books, Manga Guide to......, has given me a quick leg up on a few subjects I would never have gained from traditional text books.
While I do not deny or accuse Foxconn of being a sweatshop people here need to quit judging incomes by amounts paid in their own countries. This is no different than declaring all poor the same, whereas in the US poor can mean you have shelter, more than one TV, a cell phone, and even a car.
All transactions, including communication between players, is logged. What happened here is that other players reported this person making the threats. All reports made to WOW game managers have to be reviewed. As such they found the offending text and they are obligated by their own TOS to report it.
Look at it this way, teenager makes threats to kill his parents because they won't let him play. Blizzard has it logged but does not report it. Teenager tries to or does kill parents, who do you think is going to be sued let alone vilified here?
I have no problem with Blizzard reporting threats to local authorities. Frankly we don't need these type of people in society, let alone virtual ones. Anonymity and protection of free speech is one thing, making threats is a whole other issue.
I grew up watching this stuff as a kid. The America we had back then is a far cry from that we have today. Gone is the self reliant take responsibility for one's self and actions. Now we have the wealth envy its not fair someone who works harder has more stuff crowd that can only relive the accomplishments of past generations because all they have nothing to show for themselves (mainly because it would require DOING SOMETHING)
when all the money is sucked up by wants there really isn't much for doing something new and exciting like the moon landings.
Yes, totally OT. But seeing the fact that forty years later and we can't do it now because of money which is better spent in the eyes of politicians on people sitting on their ass all day.
because they more affordable product to sell. This means more exposure for the new game because they can place them together leading to hopefully sales of the sequels
Because I haven't found a big box retailer who has near the selection as local game shops.
of this reserves managers, however I think India has a whole lot more to worry about than tigers. Yeah, while I sit in my comfy chair in an air conditioned building I can see where other people get off beating on countries for not doing what we want.
The simple matter is, India at least is trying to protect the tigers. They also are trying to manage a large population of people who essentially live like they have for thousands of years and bring them into what many of us would still not consider acceptable living let alone modern.
So yeah, we lose a few tigers. If the tigers are so important to the rest of the world then I suggest the rest of the world establish sanctuaries in their own territories and save them.
I am more concerned with India figuring out how to live peacefully with Pakistan and keeping religious strife between Hindu's and Muslims in check. While it is nice to look at tigers and appreciate nature's beauty the number of people who died to violence in the time it took me to write this far exceeds any tiger loss.
because here in Atlanta when police protecting the mayor scanned the plates of a car visiting her son and found the car stolen the policeman doing got into trouble and the police were prevented from doing future scans.
I figure it will probably be the same pseudo science employed by Gore.
In other words, claims of consensus, its for the children, we're smarter than you, and such should suffice.
Any reduction in storms proves their process works, any increase proves it wasn't executed properly and would work with more money and adherence to their process.
when Joe the consumer goes to the local big box store and wants to buy software... its going to magically work on Chrome?
If this gets much acceptance beyond installed machines it will surprise me. Unless it can magically run software that J.T.C. finds in his local store who is going to want this?
I can see a new wave of internet appliances - as in email/surf only. Not a threat to Windows at all, maybe versus new applications where the game console is being used for internet/mail.
Will it really matter?
on
Sunspots Return
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Because I betcha that if Congress gets Cap and Trade in place, throw in some Kyoto claims, that in a few years if we see a cooling trend beyond our current one, they will lay claim to proof they were right.
In other words, the salesmen won. No matter the out come they will claim to have proven themselves. In the end all we get will be more embedded taxes.
placed at intervals that they cannot be ignored. When speeds reduce the numbers should be in RED. They can be whatever convention is used for other traffic control signals depending on where in the world they are used.
However, using my area as an example. Normal speeds display in white... suggested speeds in yellow (like they are hinting that a speed reduction is coming) and then finally reduced maximums based on weather or traffic. We already have entrance ramps controlled by lights so why not control the highway as well based on prevailing weather conditions.
You had levels which gave you experience points which you used to buy up skills with. The levels gave you points in which to buy skills. At first the points to buy skills come quickly but quickly tapered off to 1 skill point per 5 levels, the highest priced skill was 16. Since not all skills shared the same attributes you could not be totally reckless with your points. Also, buying up the skill also slowed as each point cost more and more experience.
What did it lead to that was negative. Well since both stats and skills cost experience to raise people would have absurd starting stats. You initially were given 270 points to spend across six stats (or was it seven?) which meant that 10/100/10/10/100/100 combos appeared. (think strength endurance quickness coordination intel and self:wisdom) . It was easy to over come the low stats with just a few levels worth of experience to bring them up to comfort levels. The reasoning behind this was that there was a cap to what you could spend experience wise in any stat - once it was hit no more could be bought so you started it as high as possible. Stats contributed to the base rating of each skill you bought - which again had a cap on how much they could go up.
Overall it was a great classless system. It however was placed in a world of great lore but the mobs were different enough to keep people from readily connecting to it. Tradeskills worked just like any other skill so it was not uncommon to have trade only characters who got experience by pass up through allegiances. Initially allegiances acted like the worst MLM, the guy at the top got a portion of everyone below, at different ranks in the chain you got percentages of everyone below you. They tweaked it later to prevent the huge trees people built out of allegiances to exploit experience pass up.
By giving people distinct classes and levels it does provide an ease of entry for new players. They know their role and how to progress. It does make for a simpler game - which hopefully has complexities elsewhere to make up for it . Think WOW. While many begrudge the ease of play they ignore the complexity of raiding.
Let alone the whole fact that the TSA is yet another example of government sanctioned Political Connectedness run amok. My mom finally had a flight; she flies a few times a years; where she didn't get stopped. What makes her stand out? Oh, I dunno, but age sixty plus white women with small dogs are apparently a threat to US security. They don't even seem to notice her bag with needles for her insulin, or the pump attached to her. Yeah, last time she traveled she didn't have the dog.
Throw in the stories about how the TSA cannot profile and then how do we expect to have "security". You get it by profiling. Sorry, but when the next plane gets 'jacked all that political connectedness will have done what? Gotten more people killed.
Besides, the next method will be to shoot one down that is taking off. That will make 9/11's flight scares look benign.
So now we need private companies because the efficiency of a union staffed government agency is below par. What part of DUH don't people understand. Yet so many here want to turn over their health care to these same goons who can't even get you to your plane on time. Where is the proper sense of priorities here?
I am failing to see why this is difficult or worse than what we had to do before.
Hell I can remember it was a bear getting everyone on the same local lan because some people are just thick.
If Steam is ok for many where is the fault in this? What? I might actually have to worry less about people cheating/etc? Or is the hold here simply because so many people still hold a grudge over the battle net issues from many many years ago though some holding the grudge were never impacted whatsoever? (as in they want to join a victim class regardless of the issue)
So now instead of all of us having to futz around with our modems we can just click and play? This is somehow a backwards or undesired step? I remember the good old days, when if we wanted to play together we had to deal with crappy modem based connections hoping that something did end the game prematurely.
So what, with most friends I can just waltz in and fire up the laptop and connect right to their internet with a simple password. If I am out and about, like on the town or eating, the last thing I am going to be doing is playing a game on the computer. Sorry, but playing games on the Macbook Pro while sipping half caf decaf lattes with a twist at the local coffee shop just isn't as cool as many think it is.
Is what it really means. So the state doesn't want to be liable for what is in their landfills and as such passes the responsibility onto manufacturers because the state cannot go after every consumer but can damn well go after a manufacture. As such costs go up as everyone pays for the small percentage of people tossing stuff wrongly.
It is an easy sale for governments, big bad evil companies versus poor little school children drinking polluted water.
Just like the deposit tax on bottles, we all pay it, but who benefits? Supposedly all of us, but who gets the money and who benefits by it not being done?
I have no problem with manufactures being encouraged to make cleaner products, I do have a problem by the lies foisted onto the public how its the manufacturers responsibility to ensure disposal of the device after its use. How long before the disposal becomes a requirement by law? These laws can eventually turned into a system where all we do is lease everything we use because the manufacture can use government mandates stating that product "X" must be turned in NOW because the state claims that something about it doesn't fit current environmental laws, all at the behest of some good lobbying.
they waited too long before jumping on Iran for the handling of the election. I am really getting worried we are going to see a poll driven Presidency, far worse than Clinton. When the election news in Iran first starting coming out the White House was amazingly silent on the matter, worse even as evidence of demonstrations and government brutality started coming in all they could muster is some comment along the lines of "we support some of the people provided it does not offend the leadership"
When the polls shifted, in other words, public opinion in the US became news, suddenly the White House and now Congress (Read: Democrats in Congress) have changed their tune. Suddenly Iran is now bad. Apparently they figured out in six months what Bush knew coming in, that many countries don't give a rats ass if your nice to them, its a shine of weakness and they will exploit it.
Hence companies who acted within the law must be made pariah's because it gives the appearance that government is taking action to support the will of the people. Look, this is no different than Obama and Congress vilifying legal holders of GM/Chrysler debt just so they could pay off their union buddies and get control of two major manufacturers.
Slashdot Mirror
First, it always is spending that is too high. Politicians make promise after promise because they are not truly responsible for the costs they impose on their constituents. I know some will say that is not true because we can vote them out, but we don't. Just like schools, its the other guy's politician that is bad; theirs is great. Yet while we have politicians clamor to hold corporate executives responsible for the slightest expenditure or such they allow no such hold on themselves. Throw in their truly golden retirement programs we only encourage them to laden on the promises so they can stay in office.
Just as the Federal government has lost its way so have the states. Both have moved to remove all responsibility for life's difficult decisions. They take our rights away because we ourselves have lost what our rights really are. People today are more concerned with their right to choose who the next American idol is, the right to choose their preferred cell provider, and the right to watch the channels on TV they want. Yet the turn a blind eye to rights that require self responsibility. However politicians are more than willing to step into this void and grant you rights that you already have but they do it with a twist. If you have noticed, most of these new rights come at the cost of someone else paying for it, doing the work.
As for illegals, please don't try to write off their burden on society. They consume the same if not more of the same government provided resources we all pay for yet the majority don't pay the same taxes we do. After all they aren't legal so how do we collect from them? Buying food at the local grocery and paying rent does not pay for the services our society provides. There are also many studies which show a large illegal population both committing crimes and incarcerated. You cannot have a great society if you guilt yourself consistently in to turning away from the hard decisions.
What I find amazing is that regardless of loss of income governments only resort to blackmailing the tax paying populace into paying more instead of cutting back on the frivolous or over staffed government agencies. Instead of cutting "lifestyle" agencies and such where do they hit us first? Education, police, and fire. This was well played out in Atlanta recently. Until the city folk caved and accepted higher taxes the city set about to close fire and police stations in sensitive areas - read areas where resistance to increased and undue taxation were most evident.
Yet people want to hand their right to choose their own health care to these people? Guess what, you will see endless expansion of it as well. Think its bad that Arizona is thinking of selling state property, wait till it becomes too expensive to afford your own because of the endless increases to the promises made possible by your work.
We have family friends who own a franchised gas station. Well they wanted to do some upgrades which meant new tanks; they purchased an old mostly hard case store. Well to make a long story short.
You cannot out pace the ability of feel good but short sighted politicians to impose fees/levies that simply make some business unsustainable. In other words, their best option was to rotate each store into a sub type structure and then let the subs who were burdened by feel good laws to bankrupt.
See, if they wanted to just keep the existing problems, like possible leakage, they were all fine and dandy. If they wanted to keep old pumps (still retrofitted with reclamation nozzles) they could. It was actually their audacity to fix things that sunk them. In the end they determined that they failed to do adequate research.
The original owner? Totally scot free - see he blew it by buying more than he could sustain an his properties were auctioned and such.
I would not doubt that the original planned cost to decommission a plant is far far from what it actually cost today with all the new laws, local, state, and federal.
The real question that we should all be asking is, why when we have a great example of "global warming approved" generation, one that many in Europe embrace, are we still held hostage by the green whackos out of California. Don't deny it, these freaks for whom no compromise exist because of their own internal factions end up leaving us with messes that are far worse that what they proclaim to protect us from.
We have the technology and man power to be free of relying on factional areas of the world for power yet we go out of our way to make any solution a miserable mess.
it is "uh-bama" because if you ever had the pleasure of seeing him off the teleprompter he makes Bush look good.
I want to know where they hid the working LHC at.
http://www.amazon.com/Manga-Guide-Statistics-Shin-Takahashi/dp/1593271891
I hate math, always did. I was good at it but just could not stand it. As such I skipped out on about anything math related beyond algebra (college level). Didn't impede my programming ability at all.
Still there are times where I like to learn how stuff works and honestly this series of books, Manga Guide to ......, has given me a quick leg up on a few subjects I would never have gained from traditional text books.
to the prices in the economy you live in.
While I do not deny or accuse Foxconn of being a sweatshop people here need to quit judging incomes by amounts paid in their own countries. This is no different than declaring all poor the same, whereas in the US poor can mean you have shelter, more than one TV, a cell phone, and even a car.
All transactions, including communication between players, is logged. What happened here is that other players reported this person making the threats. All reports made to WOW game managers have to be reviewed. As such they found the offending text and they are obligated by their own TOS to report it.
Look at it this way, teenager makes threats to kill his parents because they won't let him play. Blizzard has it logged but does not report it. Teenager tries to or does kill parents, who do you think is going to be sued let alone vilified here?
I have no problem with Blizzard reporting threats to local authorities. Frankly we don't need these type of people in society, let alone virtual ones. Anonymity and protection of free speech is one thing, making threats is a whole other issue.
I grew up watching this stuff as a kid. The America we had back then is a far cry from that we have today. Gone is the self reliant take responsibility for one's self and actions. Now we have the wealth envy its not fair someone who works harder has more stuff crowd that can only relive the accomplishments of past generations because all they have nothing to show for themselves (mainly because it would require DOING SOMETHING)
when all the money is sucked up by wants there really isn't much for doing something new and exciting like the moon landings.
Yes, totally OT. But seeing the fact that forty years later and we can't do it now because of money which is better spent in the eyes of politicians on people sitting on their ass all day.
that tells us global warming will doom us in one hundred years.
So, in the meantime, thank you for funding my lavish lifestyle and be happy to know your saving your data (world)
because they more affordable product to sell. This means more exposure for the new game because they can place them together leading to hopefully sales of the sequels
Because I haven't found a big box retailer who has near the selection as local game shops.
of this reserves managers, however I think India has a whole lot more to worry about than tigers. Yeah, while I sit in my comfy chair in an air conditioned building I can see where other people get off beating on countries for not doing what we want.
The simple matter is, India at least is trying to protect the tigers. They also are trying to manage a large population of people who essentially live like they have for thousands of years and bring them into what many of us would still not consider acceptable living let alone modern.
So yeah, we lose a few tigers. If the tigers are so important to the rest of the world then I suggest the rest of the world establish sanctuaries in their own territories and save them.
I am more concerned with India figuring out how to live peacefully with Pakistan and keeping religious strife between Hindu's and Muslims in check. While it is nice to look at tigers and appreciate nature's beauty the number of people who died to violence in the time it took me to write this far exceeds any tiger loss.
Please note, its not that 55% are Democrats... its 55% of those surveyed.
and anyone with half a brain knows that you can skew a survey simply by sampling where you know you will get the results you want.
because here in Atlanta when police protecting the mayor scanned the plates of a car visiting her son and found the car stolen the policeman doing got into trouble and the police were prevented from doing future scans.
I figure it will probably be the same pseudo science employed by Gore.
In other words, claims of consensus, its for the children, we're smarter than you, and such should suffice.
Any reduction in storms proves their process works, any increase proves it wasn't executed properly and would work with more money and adherence to their process.
when Joe the consumer goes to the local big box store and wants to buy software... its going to magically work on Chrome?
If this gets much acceptance beyond installed machines it will surprise me. Unless it can magically run software that J.T.C. finds in his local store who is going to want this?
I can see a new wave of internet appliances - as in email/surf only. Not a threat to Windows at all, maybe versus new applications where the game console is being used for internet/mail.
Because I betcha that if Congress gets Cap and Trade in place, throw in some Kyoto claims, that in a few years if we see a cooling trend beyond our current one, they will lay claim to proof they were right.
In other words, the salesmen won. No matter the out come they will claim to have proven themselves. In the end all we get will be more embedded taxes.
placed at intervals that they cannot be ignored. When speeds reduce the numbers should be in RED. They can be whatever convention is used for other traffic control signals depending on where in the world they are used.
However, using my area as an example. Normal speeds display in white... suggested speeds in yellow (like they are hinting that a speed reduction is coming) and then finally reduced maximums based on weather or traffic. We already have entrance ramps controlled by lights so why not control the highway as well based on prevailing weather conditions.
You had levels which gave you experience points which you used to buy up skills with. The levels gave you points in which to buy skills. At first the points to buy skills come quickly but quickly tapered off to 1 skill point per 5 levels, the highest priced skill was 16. Since not all skills shared the same attributes you could not be totally reckless with your points. Also, buying up the skill also slowed as each point cost more and more experience.
What did it lead to that was negative. Well since both stats and skills cost experience to raise people would have absurd starting stats. You initially were given 270 points to spend across six stats (or was it seven?) which meant that 10/100/10/10/100/100 combos appeared. (think strength endurance quickness coordination intel and self:wisdom) . It was easy to over come the low stats with just a few levels worth of experience to bring them up to comfort levels. The reasoning behind this was that there was a cap to what you could spend experience wise in any stat - once it was hit no more could be bought so you started it as high as possible. Stats contributed to the base rating of each skill you bought - which again had a cap on how much they could go up.
Overall it was a great classless system. It however was placed in a world of great lore but the mobs were different enough to keep people from readily connecting to it. Tradeskills worked just like any other skill so it was not uncommon to have trade only characters who got experience by pass up through allegiances. Initially allegiances acted like the worst MLM, the guy at the top got a portion of everyone below, at different ranks in the chain you got percentages of everyone below you. They tweaked it later to prevent the huge trees people built out of allegiances to exploit experience pass up.
By giving people distinct classes and levels it does provide an ease of entry for new players. They know their role and how to progress. It does make for a simpler game - which hopefully has complexities elsewhere to make up for it . Think WOW. While many begrudge the ease of play they ignore the complexity of raiding.
the worst part is the Congress using the death as a distraction to get some of their less savory items into law
and that the TSA cannot do this BY NOW.
Let alone the whole fact that the TSA is yet another example of government sanctioned Political Connectedness run amok. My mom finally had a flight; she flies a few times a years; where she didn't get stopped. What makes her stand out? Oh, I dunno, but age sixty plus white women with small dogs are apparently a threat to US security. They don't even seem to notice her bag with needles for her insulin, or the pump attached to her. Yeah, last time she traveled she didn't have the dog.
Throw in the stories about how the TSA cannot profile and then how do we expect to have "security". You get it by profiling. Sorry, but when the next plane gets 'jacked all that political connectedness will have done what? Gotten more people killed.
Besides, the next method will be to shoot one down that is taking off. That will make 9/11's flight scares look benign.
So now we need private companies because the efficiency of a union staffed government agency is below par. What part of DUH don't people understand. Yet so many here want to turn over their health care to these same goons who can't even get you to your plane on time. Where is the proper sense of priorities here?
I am failing to see why this is difficult or worse than what we had to do before.
Hell I can remember it was a bear getting everyone on the same local lan because some people are just thick.
If Steam is ok for many where is the fault in this? What? I might actually have to worry less about people cheating/etc? Or is the hold here simply because so many people still hold a grudge over the battle net issues from many many years ago though some holding the grudge were never impacted whatsoever? (as in they want to join a victim class regardless of the issue)
So now instead of all of us having to futz around with our modems we can just click and play? This is somehow a backwards or undesired step? I remember the good old days, when if we wanted to play together we had to deal with crappy modem based connections hoping that something did end the game prematurely.
So what, with most friends I can just waltz in and fire up the laptop and connect right to their internet with a simple password. If I am out and about, like on the town or eating, the last thing I am going to be doing is playing a game on the computer. Sorry, but playing games on the Macbook Pro while sipping half caf decaf lattes with a twist at the local coffee shop just isn't as cool as many think it is.
pay taxes?
Are internet retailers using your sewer? You schools? Your police?
Then why should people living in another state fund yours?
Tax them where they reside.
Whats next? Taxing people for giving gifts to people in higher tax states? Hell, lets tax people's medical benefits - oops.
Is what it really means. So the state doesn't want to be liable for what is in their landfills and as such passes the responsibility onto manufacturers because the state cannot go after every consumer but can damn well go after a manufacture. As such costs go up as everyone pays for the small percentage of people tossing stuff wrongly.
It is an easy sale for governments, big bad evil companies versus poor little school children drinking polluted water.
Just like the deposit tax on bottles, we all pay it, but who benefits? Supposedly all of us, but who gets the money and who benefits by it not being done?
I have no problem with manufactures being encouraged to make cleaner products, I do have a problem by the lies foisted onto the public how its the manufacturers responsibility to ensure disposal of the device after its use. How long before the disposal becomes a requirement by law? These laws can eventually turned into a system where all we do is lease everything we use because the manufacture can use government mandates stating that product "X" must be turned in NOW because the state claims that something about it doesn't fit current environmental laws, all at the behest of some good lobbying.
they waited too long before jumping on Iran for the handling of the election. I am really getting worried we are going to see a poll driven Presidency, far worse than Clinton. When the election news in Iran first starting coming out the White House was amazingly silent on the matter, worse even as evidence of demonstrations and government brutality started coming in all they could muster is some comment along the lines of "we support some of the people provided it does not offend the leadership"
When the polls shifted, in other words, public opinion in the US became news, suddenly the White House and now Congress (Read: Democrats in Congress) have changed their tune. Suddenly Iran is now bad. Apparently they figured out in six months what Bush knew coming in, that many countries don't give a rats ass if your nice to them, its a shine of weakness and they will exploit it.
Hence companies who acted within the law must be made pariah's because it gives the appearance that government is taking action to support the will of the people. Look, this is no different than Obama and Congress vilifying legal holders of GM/Chrysler debt just so they could pay off their union buddies and get control of two major manufacturers.