Me, for one. Even new, my laptop took at least 5 minutes to load it up. My work computers are cluttered with stuff the IT guy put on it and usually has to restart at least once during the boot process.
Has to reboot at least once during the boot process? So you're saying you never reach the desktop?
Her, crying by this point: I don't care. Fines aren't good enough. People might still see the videos. We have to filter them all.
[cut argument about my supposedly not knowing when to stop debating]
Her: It's not about 'cost to society', it's about protecting women. I'm appalled that you would put not being censored ahead of that. I don't know if I can care about someone who doesn't want to protect women. You should go.
Now would probably not be the best time to mention the hidden camera you installed in the bedroom.
I found the environment in Oblivion to be a modern miracle to behold, absolutely gorgeous and stunning. The leveling system I found to be frustrating to the point of near unplayability, very much harming the enjoyment of the game. I also found the storyline to be underwhelming. But wow, those environments! I could wander around for hours just soaking it in.
At Geezer and Gidget's recent speeches, they had people shouting "treason!" and "kill him!", the object of their vitriol being "that one." So, is the McCain Campaign helping the Secret Service in investigating these death threats?
As a card carrying member of the I dislike leftist politicians club, I have to say Bush got his clock cleaned in the debate against Kerry. He came across as whiny and petulant ("It's a hard job").
Kerry? Leftist? Pull the other one, laddie. We're so far skewed to the right that what passes for a lefty today would have been a moderate conservative years back.
Hey, I can make any plane a submersible. Granted, there's not much you can do with it after that point but hey, you were the one who were vague about the specifics!
Anyone else getting flashbacks to that old game Subwar 2050?
For the average consumer, it's easier to stick a CD inside your car for music, assuming your vehicle has a CD player. Most cars do not have an auxiliary port, iPod jack, or USB slot. Only cars that have been made in the last few years might actually come with these options. Keep in mind, I'm speaking as someone that lives in the U.S., I'm not sure how different the options are in other countries.
Any decent 3rd party CD player has line-in, had one on the player I got ten years ago. The Yaris, Toyota's lowest-end car which is really quite nice, it has line-in as well, standard equipment. The sound system is quite nice. Not up to audiophile standards, obviously, no seal-skin wrapping on the wires to increase the sound's warmth and chewability, but it's nice. Actually, car audio's been sounding good on the imports since the 90's, stock speakers being more than sufficient.
And he's right about the US media becoming like the British media. There are no "neutral" media outlets anymore, if indeed they ever existed in the first place. Much as the UK has red papers and Tory papers, US news outlets now all have a bias of some kind. Fox is well known for tending to the right, CNN trended left in the early 90's (that one was a shame, as they were the only truly unbiased news outlet in America during the late 80's). NBC has gone so blatantly to the left that we call it's cable outlet "MSDNC".
*snort* CNN liberal? With the likes of Glenn Beck on there? Or how about Dobbs?
"He looked like an alternatively commander in chief, rock star, movie star, and one of the guys." (CNN's Lou Dobbs, on Bush's 'Mission Accomplished' speech, 5/1/03)
MSNBC liberal? Because they had Keith Olbermann on between the blocks of prison documentaries? They only added Maddow what, a month ago? For the past eight years Chris Matthews was giving Bush telegraphed blowjobs on air.
"We're all neo-cons now." (MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)
"We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy like Clinton or even like Dukakis or Mondale, all those guys, McGovern. They want a guy who's president. Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple. We're not like the Brits." (MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 5/1/03)
"Why don't the damn Democrats give the president his day? He won today. He did well today." (MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)
Liberal bias my ass. It's just more Republican obfuscation of the facts. "Oh, of course the media has a liberal bias. We've said it before, haven't we? And just look at that evil liberal Couric asking all those tough questions of our dear Palin, demanding her words parse as complete English sentences. Have you no shame, madame? At long last, have you no shame?"
So to anyone talking about liberal bias in the media, fuck you. And to anyone talking about free markets, a double fuck you and a flaming wad of bad paper up your ass.
In further news, a source inside the Pentagon reports that 17 pencils have been reported missing over the last three months. "These are critical communication devices, built to mil spec standards. They have the potential to inflict injury to an untrained operator. The Pentagon takes these communications security breaches quite seriously, and we will be looking for further funding to study this National Vulnerability."
"And they spent $1.5 million a piece for them, too! Haw-haw!"
No, actually they did. Cost-plus contract from Haliburton.
Morally, I don't doubt that people like Kissinger would want to invent and employ a death plague to kill off all the poor people. This seems like exactly the sort of thing that they would fantasize about while touching themselves late at night.
My biggest beef with that theory is that I don't think we're anywhere near the ability to invent such diseases. Certainly if sekrit goverment scientists could invent it, other scientists not involved in the conspiracy would end up sussing out clues. To make a bit of a leap, the a-bomb was well-known as a theoretical possibility in the 30's. There had been little cause to develop one before the rising military crisis but world events caused leading physicists to begin thinking exactly along those lines. So British physicists knew what American and German physicists were working on, what the state of the art was, and the likelihood that a program could be put together to make the bomb happen. Because of this, when the first bombs were dropped over Japan, civilians with a scientific interest were able to recognize it for what it was. (this comes from accounts of the bomb I've read. The observer thought that an a-bomb was still futuristic like rocket ships and ray guns but could offer no other explanation for the scope of the devastation from a single bomb.)
So the point I'm getting at is if we're able to custom-build viruses, certainly civilian virologists would know about it and there would be signatures of artificial origin, things to indicate that it did not evolve from the natural chimp virus. After all, we can tell wild antrhax from weaponized anthrax.
I just find it too hard to believe that we could have the technology to invent something like this and nobody else could figure it out, no scientists involved with the creation got cold feet, etc. It seems too James Bondian.
You're not a Republican. You're a fiscal conservative as am I. While there are some like us in the Republican party, certainly more than there are in the Democrat party, we're still a minority voice within the party. So much so that I don't consider myself a Republican anymore. There are very few Republicans like Tom Coburn in the Senate and Ron Paul and Jeff Flake in the House that are truly fiscal conservative today and were truly fiscal conservatives during their years in the majority. Most of the party just plays it lip service when it suits them.
I'm a registered independent. I used to consider myself more of a republican when I was a kid but their behavior turned me off in the 90's. I was never a big dem fan but since Bush have allied with them out of a sense of self-preservation. But they've been fairly awful, especially on the national level. There's really not that much difference in Congress between ownership-class reps and ownership-class dems, they're all working against the American people.
Philosophically, I believe in only using as much effort/money/resources required to do the job right and no more. Just throwing money at a problem does nothing to solve it if the money is not spent wisely. Throwing government at a problem does nothing if there's no plan of action, no leadership. And letting unregulated business get their hands on anything just turns it into a fuckfest like our current stock market.
As far as government goes, I believe that sovereignty rests with the people, is granted to a governing authority as needed, and thus gives the people a controlling interest in that government, and thus the authority to remove management if they are performing poorly. The government's duty is to the people and any action taken that harms the people is thus treason. By this standard, pretty much everyone in Congress is guilty of treason. On a practical matter, the role of government is to provide for the security and safety of the people by providing services that cannot be entrusted to the hands of private enterprise.
As far as finance goes, I'm a conservative. To hell with this casino bubble economy. The whole point of having an economy is to make the individual lives of citizens better through cooperation than it would be if everyone worked individually. Business activity that has a neutral impact upon the populace is permissible, it does no good and no harm. Actively malicious business would be prosecuted. But as for larger corporations, the original charters historically were granted because the corporation would perform some net good for the community while providing a reasonable return for the people investing in it. A charter to build a bridge or a toll road was a net gain but if the corporation did harm to the community, the 20 year charter might not be renewed. By this standard, I think most companies in America would be facing revocation of their charters.
Socially, I'm very liberal. And it harm none, do what thou wilt. You want to have orgies and stick furniture up your ass? Do it in your own home and I don't give a rat's ass. Be gay, be bi, be a sexual omnivore, it's all good. Pray to God, pray to Allah, Buddha, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I don't care. Want to be a furry? I think you're a sick motherfucker and wouldn't ever want to associate with you personally but what the fuck, so long as you don't come after me in a fursuit, I'll support no law against you. And I'll rain fire down on morality police who say that God cries when someone puts a penis in their bottom but says nothing when a televangelist defrauds his flock.
I wonder if there's a party for me. I'm voting Obama but I don't know if he can clean up the dems. Those fuckers were sent back to Congress with a mandate to stop the war and impeach Bush but their record over the past two years has been one of cowardice and shame. "Impeachment's off the table!" says Pelosi. Fuck her and fuck Reid.
After a quick visit to the dictionary, I have to admit I am rather disappointed that waitron is not a robotic cocktail waitress that I was previously unaware of.
You think you're disappointed? I googled "waittron definition" and got just one result: Lesbotronic. Sadly, not the cybernetic sapphobot I was imagining.
Create Your Lesbotronic Profile I feed people (restauranteur, waittron, chef, nutritionist)...... adopted a broad definition for the meaning of the word "lesbian."... www.lesbotronic.com/make.html - 161k
This is something new and very interesting. It's relatively trivial for a nation of over a billion people and a strong centralized government to develop a space program. But a privately funded orbital rocket. That's a game changer.
Especially when that rocket is NOT funded by someone with a white persian cat who is never seen from the neck up.
e are problems with women in space. The catheters they use for space suits are still pretty awkward, and menstruation is apparently very awkward. But heck yes, bring women. They're lighter and take less oxygen/kilo and fewer calories/workload.
No, you just have to convince them that a bigger space station will have better schools for the kids, then the wives will insist the husbands mortgage themselves up to their eyeballs to build it. "Suzanne researched this!"
I am not going to give up time with my family so some middle manager can get some slaps on his back for bringing in the project on a date he never should have agreed to in the first place. What ever happened to accountability? oh right.... they get $700bn bail outs.
These troubled times are going to be interesting. Apologists for America's unrestricted capitalism argue that top talent demands top dollar and that market forces are justifying these outrageous salaries. "Obviously, Company X thinks Chairman Z is worth eleventy billion gigabucks because they wouldn't pay him that much if he weren't worth it." People are starting to realize that the market is a rigged game, just like a casino -- no, wait, it is a casino. Maybe it wasn't supposed to be, maybe it didn't used to be, but it is now. This bailout is being condemned something like 300 to 1 I hear, congresscritters are getting their ears chewed off by irate constituents.
it'll be interesting to see what the consequences are. In my view, the Republicans are the evil scumfucks who directly pushed for this kind of shit and the Democrats have been codependent enablers, some of them guilty of doing nothing to oppose this evil while others were as actively engaged in it as the Republicans. The vichy Dems responsible for cringing and cowering along with the Republicans should be held just as accountable and bear the more dire of consequences.
The problem with WW2 is that it created a massive debt. There was short-term prosperity (virtually everyone had a job in the U.S.), but over the long-term it created a heavy burden. And when the war was done, the recession returned and lasted into the 1950s.
WW2 didn't really solve the problem - it only pushed it out of the way, and the recession came snapping back immediately after. Your "improve internal infrastructure" would have the exact same result. Shortterm gains; but longterm debt.
True growth has to come from private individuals; it can't come from tax expenditures.
And what prepped the soil for that growth?
Here's my view of the way government should work. Government is the gardener. He tills the soil, puts up the scarecrows, keeps the bunnies and mice from eating the seeds, provides the water. It's up to the seed to grow and take advantage of these ideal conditions but the gardener can no more make that seed grow than he can make the sun reverse its course. All he can do is make sure if that seed fails, it is because it's a bad seed and not for any external reason.
So to move away from the gardening metaphor, the government exists to protect the citizens from the enemies outside and the enemies within. The military minds the borders, the internals are a matter of health care, education, emergency services, inspections and regulation, and contract enforcement. We're told that the reason why communism failed is because people need self-interest to really motivate peak performance; this is why collective farms did poorly but individual plots whose produce could be sold for a personal profit did well. But on the far extreme we have investment firms masters pull down hundreds of millions in personal profits because "top talent demands top dollar" and yet they've driven the country over the abyss due to unchecked and unchallenged greed and avarice.
The free marketers are unscientific zealots who have a religious faith in the certitude of their dogma. With the problems we currently face in this financial crisis, brought about by deregulation and greed, of course their answer is that we need more deregulation. There can no longer be any pretense of debate with such people. They should be treated like any other religious fundamentalist, head-cases who cannot be left unsupervised in civilized society.
FDR tried and failed to fix the 1930s recession..... it ultimately took a world war to bring-back full employment. Without the war, FDR would have been voted out of office in 1940, and the recession would have stretched through most of the 1940s.
Obama faces what FDR faced, and Obama's not going to be any more successful. (Unless a war saves him.)
Why is it we always praise wars for bringing full employment? I hate to use the cheesedick "war on x" phrases but seriously, what if we were literally do pull out all the stops and mobilize the population on the scale of total war but make the enemy be shoddy infrastructure or crappy housing or something. Instead of marshaling the entire industrial might of the nation towards turning out bombers and tanks, why not treat the whole war as a massive public works project? Make the government the employer of last resort. "If private industry cannot provide work for our good citizens, the government will employ them in something as close to their profession as possible, working towards the public good." It's unemployment benefits that don't keep you out of work and gives the government a tangible return for the money. When the economy picks up, the private sector can start hiring the workers back.
We've been cutting back on investing in infrastructure for decades, it'd be good to put some money back into our country again. Set a goal of getting us off fossil fuels over the next two decades, put government labs to work on seriously making a go of fusion power, green living, reshape our cities to be less energy intensive.
Though he will not meet my personal standard for a cool flying suit until he can take off and land on his own two feet. Shouts of "Up, up, and away!" are optional. I'll also allow the compromise of roller-skates if he cannot make VTOL work.
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Me, for one. Even new, my laptop took at least 5 minutes to load it up. My work computers are cluttered with stuff the IT guy put on it and usually has to restart at least once during the boot process.
Has to reboot at least once during the boot process? So you're saying you never reach the desktop?
In all honesty, I love the multiple minutes it takes to bring up windows now. Instant on would be a detriment.
Oh my God, the fucking Comcast turtle posts to Slashdot.
Her, crying by this point: I don't care. Fines aren't good enough. People might still see the videos. We have to filter them all.
[cut argument about my supposedly not knowing when to stop debating]
Her: It's not about 'cost to society', it's about protecting women. I'm appalled that you would put not being censored ahead of that. I don't know if I can care about someone who doesn't want to protect women. You should go.
Now would probably not be the best time to mention the hidden camera you installed in the bedroom.
I found the environment in Oblivion to be a modern miracle to behold, absolutely gorgeous and stunning. The leveling system I found to be frustrating to the point of near unplayability, very much harming the enjoyment of the game. I also found the storyline to be underwhelming. But wow, those environments! I could wander around for hours just soaking it in.
How's Fallout stack up?
At Geezer and Gidget's recent speeches, they had people shouting "treason!" and "kill him!", the object of their vitriol being "that one." So, is the McCain Campaign helping the Secret Service in investigating these death threats?
As a card carrying member of the I dislike leftist politicians club, I have to say Bush got his clock cleaned in the debate against Kerry. He came across as whiny and petulant ("It's a hard job").
Kerry? Leftist? Pull the other one, laddie. We're so far skewed to the right that what passes for a lefty today would have been a moderate conservative years back.
Hey, I can make any plane a submersible. Granted, there's not much you can do with it after that point but hey, you were the one who were vague about the specifics!
Anyone else getting flashbacks to that old game Subwar 2050?
For the average consumer, it's easier to stick a CD inside your car for music, assuming your vehicle has a CD player. Most cars do not have an auxiliary port, iPod jack, or USB slot. Only cars that have been made in the last few years might actually come with these options. Keep in mind, I'm speaking as someone that lives in the U.S., I'm not sure how different the options are in other countries.
Any decent 3rd party CD player has line-in, had one on the player I got ten years ago. The Yaris, Toyota's lowest-end car which is really quite nice, it has line-in as well, standard equipment. The sound system is quite nice. Not up to audiophile standards, obviously, no seal-skin wrapping on the wires to increase the sound's warmth and chewability, but it's nice. Actually, car audio's been sounding good on the imports since the 90's, stock speakers being more than sufficient.
And he's right about the US media becoming like the British media. There are no "neutral" media outlets anymore, if indeed they ever existed in the first place. Much as the UK has red papers and Tory papers, US news outlets now all have a bias of some kind. Fox is well known for tending to the right, CNN trended left in the early 90's (that one was a shame, as they were the only truly unbiased news outlet in America during the late 80's). NBC has gone so blatantly to the left that we call it's cable outlet "MSDNC".
*snort* CNN liberal? With the likes of Glenn Beck on there? Or how about Dobbs?
"He looked like an alternatively commander in chief, rock star, movie star, and one of the guys."
(CNN's Lou Dobbs, on Bush's 'Mission Accomplished' speech, 5/1/03)
MSNBC liberal? Because they had Keith Olbermann on between the blocks of prison documentaries? They only added Maddow what, a month ago? For the past eight years Chris Matthews was giving Bush telegraphed blowjobs on air.
"We're all neo-cons now."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)
"We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy like Clinton or even like Dukakis or Mondale, all those guys, McGovern. They want a guy who's president. Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple. We're not like the Brits."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 5/1/03)
"Why don't the damn Democrats give the president his day? He won today. He did well today."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)
Liberal bias my ass. It's just more Republican obfuscation of the facts. "Oh, of course the media has a liberal bias. We've said it before, haven't we? And just look at that evil liberal Couric asking all those tough questions of our dear Palin, demanding her words parse as complete English sentences. Have you no shame, madame? At long last, have you no shame?"
So to anyone talking about liberal bias in the media, fuck you. And to anyone talking about free markets, a double fuck you and a flaming wad of bad paper up your ass.
Since when did Ashcroft get involved with astrophysics?
So true, just like when they found Amelia Earhart's plane last year. Major news outlets didn't think it was newsworthy enough to run the story at all.
Link? I haven't heard of it, wiki has nothing.
In further news, a source inside the Pentagon reports that 17 pencils have been reported missing over the last three months. "These are critical communication devices, built to mil spec standards. They have the potential to inflict injury to an untrained operator. The Pentagon takes these communications security breaches quite seriously, and we will be looking for further funding to study this National Vulnerability."
"And they spent $1.5 million a piece for them, too! Haw-haw!"
No, actually they did. Cost-plus contract from Haliburton.
"Oh. That's not funny."
Not unless you're Dick Cheney.
What will they say to people who try to access the cloud without authorization? I think the error message should be: "Hey! You! Get off of my cloud!"
At least it would make more sense to go with that Stones song than Start Me Up.
Morally, I don't doubt that people like Kissinger would want to invent and employ a death plague to kill off all the poor people. This seems like exactly the sort of thing that they would fantasize about while touching themselves late at night.
My biggest beef with that theory is that I don't think we're anywhere near the ability to invent such diseases. Certainly if sekrit goverment scientists could invent it, other scientists not involved in the conspiracy would end up sussing out clues. To make a bit of a leap, the a-bomb was well-known as a theoretical possibility in the 30's. There had been little cause to develop one before the rising military crisis but world events caused leading physicists to begin thinking exactly along those lines. So British physicists knew what American and German physicists were working on, what the state of the art was, and the likelihood that a program could be put together to make the bomb happen. Because of this, when the first bombs were dropped over Japan, civilians with a scientific interest were able to recognize it for what it was. (this comes from accounts of the bomb I've read. The observer thought that an a-bomb was still futuristic like rocket ships and ray guns but could offer no other explanation for the scope of the devastation from a single bomb.)
So the point I'm getting at is if we're able to custom-build viruses, certainly civilian virologists would know about it and there would be signatures of artificial origin, things to indicate that it did not evolve from the natural chimp virus. After all, we can tell wild antrhax from weaponized anthrax.
I just find it too hard to believe that we could have the technology to invent something like this and nobody else could figure it out, no scientists involved with the creation got cold feet, etc. It seems too James Bondian.
You're not a Republican. You're a fiscal conservative as am I. While there are some like us in the Republican party, certainly more than there are in the Democrat party, we're still a minority voice within the party. So much so that I don't consider myself a Republican anymore. There are very few Republicans like Tom Coburn in the Senate and Ron Paul and Jeff Flake in the House that are truly fiscal conservative today and were truly fiscal conservatives during their years in the majority. Most of the party just plays it lip service when it suits them.
I'm a registered independent. I used to consider myself more of a republican when I was a kid but their behavior turned me off in the 90's. I was never a big dem fan but since Bush have allied with them out of a sense of self-preservation. But they've been fairly awful, especially on the national level. There's really not that much difference in Congress between ownership-class reps and ownership-class dems, they're all working against the American people.
Philosophically, I believe in only using as much effort/money/resources required to do the job right and no more. Just throwing money at a problem does nothing to solve it if the money is not spent wisely. Throwing government at a problem does nothing if there's no plan of action, no leadership. And letting unregulated business get their hands on anything just turns it into a fuckfest like our current stock market.
As far as government goes, I believe that sovereignty rests with the people, is granted to a governing authority as needed, and thus gives the people a controlling interest in that government, and thus the authority to remove management if they are performing poorly. The government's duty is to the people and any action taken that harms the people is thus treason. By this standard, pretty much everyone in Congress is guilty of treason. On a practical matter, the role of government is to provide for the security and safety of the people by providing services that cannot be entrusted to the hands of private enterprise.
As far as finance goes, I'm a conservative. To hell with this casino bubble economy. The whole point of having an economy is to make the individual lives of citizens better through cooperation than it would be if everyone worked individually. Business activity that has a neutral impact upon the populace is permissible, it does no good and no harm. Actively malicious business would be prosecuted. But as for larger corporations, the original charters historically were granted because the corporation would perform some net good for the community while providing a reasonable return for the people investing in it. A charter to build a bridge or a toll road was a net gain but if the corporation did harm to the community, the 20 year charter might not be renewed. By this standard, I think most companies in America would be facing revocation of their charters.
Socially, I'm very liberal. And it harm none, do what thou wilt. You want to have orgies and stick furniture up your ass? Do it in your own home and I don't give a rat's ass. Be gay, be bi, be a sexual omnivore, it's all good. Pray to God, pray to Allah, Buddha, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I don't care. Want to be a furry? I think you're a sick motherfucker and wouldn't ever want to associate with you personally but what the fuck, so long as you don't come after me in a fursuit, I'll support no law against you. And I'll rain fire down on morality police who say that God cries when someone puts a penis in their bottom but says nothing when a televangelist defrauds his flock.
I wonder if there's a party for me. I'm voting Obama but I don't know if he can clean up the dems. Those fuckers were sent back to Congress with a mandate to stop the war and impeach Bush but their record over the past two years has been one of cowardice and shame. "Impeachment's off the table!" says Pelosi. Fuck her and fuck Reid.
After a quick visit to the dictionary, I have to admit I am rather disappointed that waitron is not a robotic cocktail waitress that I was previously unaware of.
You think you're disappointed? I googled "waittron definition" and got just one result: Lesbotronic. Sadly, not the cybernetic sapphobot I was imagining.
Create Your Lesbotronic Profile ..... adopted a broad definition for the meaning of the word "lesbian." ...
I feed people (restauranteur, waittron, chef, nutritionist).
www.lesbotronic.com/make.html - 161k
This is something new and very interesting. It's relatively trivial for a nation of over a billion people and a strong centralized government to develop a space program. But a privately funded orbital rocket. That's a game changer.
Especially when that rocket is NOT funded by someone with a white persian cat who is never seen from the neck up.
Implied here is that a larger space station would be spun for gravity.
e are problems with women in space. The catheters they use for space suits are still pretty awkward, and menstruation is apparently very awkward. But heck yes, bring women. They're lighter and take less oxygen/kilo and fewer calories/workload.
No, you just have to convince them that a bigger space station will have better schools for the kids, then the wives will insist the husbands mortgage themselves up to their eyeballs to build it. "Suzanne researched this!"
Forgive my skepticism, but this is exactly the sort of thing that China commonly lies about.
Finally conspiracy tards will be satisfied, there really will be a faked moon landing.
should be held just as accountable and bear the more dire of consequences.
Yeah! Like...being mauled by a Dire Bear.
A D'yer Maker is scarier.
I am not going to give up time with my family so some middle manager can get some slaps on his back for bringing in the project on a date he never should have agreed to in the first place. What ever happened to accountability? oh right.... they get $700bn bail outs.
These troubled times are going to be interesting. Apologists for America's unrestricted capitalism argue that top talent demands top dollar and that market forces are justifying these outrageous salaries. "Obviously, Company X thinks Chairman Z is worth eleventy billion gigabucks because they wouldn't pay him that much if he weren't worth it." People are starting to realize that the market is a rigged game, just like a casino -- no, wait, it is a casino. Maybe it wasn't supposed to be, maybe it didn't used to be, but it is now. This bailout is being condemned something like 300 to 1 I hear, congresscritters are getting their ears chewed off by irate constituents.
it'll be interesting to see what the consequences are. In my view, the Republicans are the evil scumfucks who directly pushed for this kind of shit and the Democrats have been codependent enablers, some of them guilty of doing nothing to oppose this evil while others were as actively engaged in it as the Republicans. The vichy Dems responsible for cringing and cowering along with the Republicans should be held just as accountable and bear the more dire of consequences.
The problem with WW2 is that it created a massive debt. There was short-term prosperity (virtually everyone had a job in the U.S.), but over the long-term it created a heavy burden. And when the war was done, the recession returned and lasted into the 1950s.
WW2 didn't really solve the problem - it only pushed it out of the way, and the recession came snapping back immediately after. Your "improve internal infrastructure" would have the exact same result. Shortterm gains; but longterm debt.
True growth has to come from private individuals; it can't come from tax expenditures.
And what prepped the soil for that growth?
Here's my view of the way government should work. Government is the gardener. He tills the soil, puts up the scarecrows, keeps the bunnies and mice from eating the seeds, provides the water. It's up to the seed to grow and take advantage of these ideal conditions but the gardener can no more make that seed grow than he can make the sun reverse its course. All he can do is make sure if that seed fails, it is because it's a bad seed and not for any external reason.
So to move away from the gardening metaphor, the government exists to protect the citizens from the enemies outside and the enemies within. The military minds the borders, the internals are a matter of health care, education, emergency services, inspections and regulation, and contract enforcement. We're told that the reason why communism failed is because people need self-interest to really motivate peak performance; this is why collective farms did poorly but individual plots whose produce could be sold for a personal profit did well. But on the far extreme we have investment firms masters pull down hundreds of millions in personal profits because "top talent demands top dollar" and yet they've driven the country over the abyss due to unchecked and unchallenged greed and avarice.
The free marketers are unscientific zealots who have a religious faith in the certitude of their dogma. With the problems we currently face in this financial crisis, brought about by deregulation and greed, of course their answer is that we need more deregulation. There can no longer be any pretense of debate with such people. They should be treated like any other religious fundamentalist, head-cases who cannot be left unsupervised in civilized society.
FDR tried and failed to fix the 1930s recession..... it ultimately took a world war to bring-back full employment. Without the war, FDR would have been voted out of office in 1940, and the recession would have stretched through most of the 1940s.
Obama faces what FDR faced, and Obama's not going to be any more successful. (Unless a war saves him.)
Why is it we always praise wars for bringing full employment? I hate to use the cheesedick "war on x" phrases but seriously, what if we were literally do pull out all the stops and mobilize the population on the scale of total war but make the enemy be shoddy infrastructure or crappy housing or something. Instead of marshaling the entire industrial might of the nation towards turning out bombers and tanks, why not treat the whole war as a massive public works project? Make the government the employer of last resort. "If private industry cannot provide work for our good citizens, the government will employ them in something as close to their profession as possible, working towards the public good." It's unemployment benefits that don't keep you out of work and gives the government a tangible return for the money. When the economy picks up, the private sector can start hiring the workers back.
We've been cutting back on investing in infrastructure for decades, it'd be good to put some money back into our country again. Set a goal of getting us off fossil fuels over the next two decades, put government labs to work on seriously making a go of fusion power, green living, reshape our cities to be less energy intensive.
Though he will not meet my personal standard for a cool flying suit until he can take off and land on his own two feet. Shouts of "Up, up, and away!" are optional. I'll also allow the compromise of roller-skates if he cannot make VTOL work.