You are quite wrong. Rove started the American Crossroads [americancrossroads.org] PAC specifically to oust the liberty and evangelicals from party leadership, right down to the local committee level. I've seen it in action.
AFAICT AC hasn't fought particularly against any Republican. A good chunk of their money goes to hurting Democrats.
As I said, I've seen it in action. I'll just leave this right here. A lot of their money is not tracked, because it doesn't go to candidates in partisan elections at all - it goes to candidates for leadership offices within the Republican party.
Rove isn't a neocon, he's a partisan Republican. He will support whoever is in power, as long as it's a Republican.
You are quite wrong. Rove started the American Crossroads PAC specifically to oust the liberty and evangelicals from party leadership, right down to the local committee level. I've seen it in action. If he's supporting the Neocons (he is) maybe it's because they are still in power, right?
There is no one left who will say, "What's good for America is good for the world" as a justification to start wars, and PNAC closed a long time ago.
PNAC may have dissolved, but the Kagans (including Robert Kagan's wife, Victoria "Fuck the EU" Nuland) are still very active promoting the same type of interventionist foreign policies. And still very influential. Their latest funding / lobbying group is the Foreign Policy Initiative. Check it out.
Neocons are dead, they pretty much gave up when Iraq showed their goal was a failure.
I wish. They are still firmly in control of the GOP. Sure, Cantor was ousted, but Rove came up with a war chest to oust the opposition from the party. Jeb Bush is their candidate, and he's raking in the campaign cash.
Are you seriously trying to say that a pro-choice candidate could ever get the Republican nod for president?
Nice. A subject change AND a straw man all in the same form-of-a-question response. Kudos to you, sir!
I said what I said, not what you said. Are you saying that the Democrats are clamoring for a pro-life candidate? Is this binary litmus test running the country now? Maybe a good question for your favorite Democratic candidate would be "Can you explain the moral difference between the crimes for which Dr. Kermit Gosnell was convicted (first-degree murder of infants shortly after birth at 23-25 weeks into pregnancy) and late-term abortions?"
No wonder the parties have such identical positions on so many other issues. This has got to be the single most asinine way to select a government in the history of mankind - convince a large block of voters to select or reject candidates on the sole basis of a single, decided issue that won't ever move more than minor degrees in one direction or another. You are a HUGE problem with politics today, by promoting this myopic view.
You even see Republican presidential candidates, when asked if they believe in evolution, making a canned reply of "Well, I'm not a scientist"
Hey, fucktard, you ever see Democratic presidential candidates even asked this question, hmmm? Why is that? You can't think your way out of a paper bag, can you? What a fucking idiot you are. Oh, everyone knows the Democrats love science and Republicans are anti-science, right? We'll just put the questions out there to bash our opponents with. Yea, we know 98.65% of all reporters are Democrats, that's a well-known partisan fact, too, right? Am I right?
The Neocons, that trotskyist group that wants eternal war in the middle east
Right. I count Obama among them.
are yet another group that has taken over the republican party.
More demonstration of ignorance from you (not unexpected). Which group has "taken over" and which has not? I've got news for you - the Neocons are into pushing left (they call it "moderate") as much as possible, and want the religious right to just shut up and vote. They are in opposition in the party. I expect a hyperpartisan moron like yourself to be ignorant of the various Republican party factions, but you seem to even be ignorant of factions within your own party. I don't even know why I'm responding, you're so obviously stupid about politics.
If democrats had brough in a foreign speaker to contradict a republican presidents policies, they'd be screaming for the gatling guns to be unleashed upon anyone to the left of the KKK.
I assume you're referring to Netanyahu? Nothing but a made-up controversy. And entirely irrelevant to the rest of your post.
We'll just have to disagree on the extent of the Reigious right's influence.
We "disagree" because you don't know what the fuck you're talking about - that's clear.
I'm saying if you can't pass their litmus tests, you will not be the parties presidential nominee.
The FIRST thing you did in this thread was introduce a litmus test! Wow - how the left can project!
And for a person like myself, who views the political spectrum not as a left-right straight line, I see the further you get from the center, the closer left and right extremists become in actuality, if not rhetoric.
You view it from mainstream Democrat party talking points, and that's about it. Your opinion doesn't really matter in politics these days, because you will pull the lever for the "D" no matter who's name is there. Just like the racist "solid south" Democrats always did, and how all the useless eaters that care more about their free health care than how their children will find jobs, do today.
The Federal Reserve doesn't work like that. The USA can maintain its government deficit because enough people are willing to buy US government bonds. If, one day, people no longer trust it to repay its debts, there will be a financial meltdown the like of which the world has never yet seen.
The largest purchaser of US bonds today is... wait for it... the Federal Reserve.
Even if 100% of their past debts were written off, current tax receipts are insufficient to meet current expenditure.
That situation is exactly the same in the US (except the gap is about $500 billion right now, more than the entire Greek debt). The only reason that the US keeps going is that they control the lender (the Federal Reserve). At least they think they do.
That's a big part of what gave him a chance to win, the Republicans didn't take him seriously and spent most of their time fighting Hillary. Hardly anyone expected him to get the nomination much less win the presidency.
It was a good demonstration of the power of the MSM. Obama was their darling, going way back to his run for the US Senate. They started covering him, I think it was Time that did the first big fluff piece about him, way back in 2003. Other far-left "reporters" picked up the mantle and ran with it. They created him, and put him in place. It's no wonder he got such favorable coverage.
He failed to get his trade bill, which is either good or bad, depending on your ideology, but it shows his lack of competence for working with congress.
No, actually, the TPA was recently passed, providing fast-track for the TPP (and the TPIP), which means it will only get an up-or-down vote when Obama finishes negotiations. Maybe they'll keep it secret until after that vote, too, who knows. I don't know what kind of bribes and/or threats were used to get it passed, but there it is.
Frankly, it's stunning how much of the Neocon agenda can get implemented when there's a Democrat president pushing for it. If a Republican president had done some of the things Obama has done, DC would be full of Democrats with pitchforks. For some reason they "trust" Obama...
The religious right have firm control of their party.
Not really. They haven't gotten what they want from the party for quite some time. The Neocons are firmly in control these days. They are the ones that put up McCain, then Romney (eviscerating the Ron Paul wing in the process). Oh, they get a lot of play in the MSM (easy targets), but influence in the GOP - not so much.
What's your bot? (My boys and I are watching the show on ABC.)
What a horrible job they did of putting that show together. Battles are only 3 minutes, but with all the commentary, backgrounders, interviews and fluff, they can only fit FOUR battles into an hour-long show. Worse, they include so much commentary they actually EXCLUDE about 1/2 the battles, and just show a few highlights from some.
Imagine if a network covered the NBA playoffs like that? Producers at ABC certainly showed a lot of incompetence with that show.
Why so much? Netflix manages it for $8 per month. Nevertheless, people are willing to pay a fair price for a good product. I wouldn't watch Hulu for free, when it was free, because of the commercials. More recently, my roommate decided to pay for Hulu Premium, (or whatever they call it), but after trying it a couple of times, neither of us would watch it, and he eventually cancelled.
Here's the deal: Commercials are suppose to equal free TV. But these people want to have their cake, and eat it, too. Unfortunately for them, people now have other choices.
Well your complaints were all about the commercials, which I agree are annoying, and the same reason I cancelled my Hulu + subscription. I probably would pay more for it without the ads, though. I watch Netflix frequently, it has lots of good content, but the selling point for Hulu is you keep current with shows. It had enough current content it could have actually replaced 95% of my TV watching (only exception off the top of my head being the local morning news).
The ads on Hulu were actually MORE annoying than regular TV, since I could always fast-forward through those (an option Hulu does not support).
Like you were supposed to when you started charging for cable. Who knows, you could make more money by offering a better product.
Yea, I miss the good old days. MTV actually played music (and no advertising). USA actually had programming all night (and it was weird stuff). TBS had black-and-white movies.
(nipples on breasts were a pretty solid indicator and easy to scan for... also detecting a crotch region with dark hair... obviously a fat man in a hair-toned thong would trigger alarms)
What's wrong with (female) nipples on breasts? Are they more naked than a man with a naked upper body? Should the woman be covered while the man can freely go around without something to cover his chest? There is absolutely nothing wrong with female breasts. They are not sexual objects. Treating them like that is just demeaning, both to women and men.
Well my nipples, in fact, are sexual objects. My wife's were, too, until she had a kid. Then, not so much. Not at all, in fact.
prohibit the private registration of domains which are "associated with commercial activities and which are used for online financial transactions
I'm not sure I have a big problem with this. If you do business with a company that can just disappear, that'd be a bummer. That said, you shouldn't do business with a company like that, but people aren't always smart.
Ant that is why they are using the phrase which are used for online financial transactions as a place to start, and put the system in place. Camel's nose in the tent, as it were. More people will be okay with it. Once the system is in place, it will expand to cover everyone (except, of course, governments, politicians, and large corporations).
Right now, I can pay my ISP an extra $10 - 20 to anonymize my information on Whois. I still have to provide it to my ISP - that has already been made a legal requirement. But with the crackpot stuff I sometimes tend to put on the Intarwebs, I don't want to become a victim of doxing or swatting by some butt-hurt "hactivist". So it's worth it. But when they expand this system, or decide that fee needs to be $1000 or more, well, it just won't be available to me any more.
So, in the long run, this is an effort to end anonymous speech, to scrub unpopular opinions from the Web, and coerce small players into leaving the website business or, worse, further centralizing distribution of content. There are currently only six media companies in the US that control 90% of all media. There are plenty of elitists that would love to see all of the content on the Internet controlled by those six companies. It would make it so much easier to drown out any dissenting voices, wouldn't it?
It's because consulting firms are unable to find high skilled computer experts in the US, so they must expand the H1-B program to bring in more foreigners to compensate for the lack of competent Americans!
A source "with detailed knowledge on the matter" told Reuters that hiring screeners for Booz Allen had found some details of Snowden's education that "did not check out precisely," but decided to hire him anyway
Resume falsified, yup sounds like a typical "expert" to me.
You have bought into the administration smear campaign and government propaganda. Booz Allen isn't necessarily lying, here, but this statement, along with the ridiculously picayune reasons for rejecting candidates based on some detail not being perfect, it's likely something as innocuous as listing the wrong day of the month for a graduation, or misspelling of an instructor's name.
You might educate yourself by checking out the form Snowden was required to complete. I challenge anyone to be able to fill it out completely and include nothing that does not "check out precisely".
I would actually pay MORE to cut my channels to just the local broadcast stations. What a scam.
Try an antenna to get your broadcast stations. If you're in a region with decent signal strength, you will be happily surprised at what your TV can bring in... for FREE!
You can even re-provision the coax cable you use now for the cable service to hook up the antenna!
Not really worth the hassle, considering I'd be paying almost the same thing to Verizon anyway. And I tried the antenna before, many years ago. It works for a few of the local channels, but some either won't tune or are so full of pauses and artifacts they aren't watchable. Easier just to keep the bundle. Plus, I'd end up spending the ~ $10 I would save anyway so the wife can watch her HGTV shows on Hulu Plus...
suck it cable companies, we dont need you anymore, we just need internet access and-DAMMIT. well played cable companies, well played.
I decided I didn't need the TV service from Verizon any more, so I called about cancelling that and just keeping Internet. It turns out, that's only a $10 a month savings ("Well you don't get the bundle discounts."). I do watch the local broadcast stations, but that package is $12.99, so I would actually pay MORE to cut my channels to just the local broadcast stations. What a scam.
I'm now going to make an educated guess and say that you've never sat in on executive-level financial reviews of an entire business because if you had, we wouldn't be having this particular debate.
Only for non-profits, and while they were even more focused on limiting expenses (I would think), no one ever suggested getting rid of skilled veterans and replacing them with code monkeys. In fact the one outsourcing attempt (to a foreign company) was such a failure it had to be reversed.
And you're always, always right, no matter what. I have never once seen you admit that you are wrong, Curunir_Wolf, and your posts are brazen and detailed enough that any admission would be startling.
I have been wrong (really, really wrong) more than once, and while I have admitted so in some cases, I've found it's best to shut up and let the correction (often, multiple corrections from many folks) stand on their own.
I should also note that I don't have the experience with html tags that you do either
Then you should change your posting settings to "plain text", so that at least you can put in line breaks. The first post was wall-of-words enough but this one is really painful to pick through.
Wages have not technically been flat.
This is what I had to respond to. I thought it was well known and well-established. 1-3% raises, to only a few, is part of what is keeping wages flat. And while some like to point out that "well inflation is very low", they use only the latest modified CPI, which ignores things like food, energy, and housing costs which have all risen even faster than CPI. And even CPI shows price increases between 2 and 4% for the last 20 years. That means a 1-3% raise is actually falling income.
You can Google the results of wages over time on your own to educate yourself, but for your edification, I will also provide some references. The first is from Pew Research, which studied wages from 1964. It clearly demonstrates the issue of stagnant wages throughout that period. The most marked trend, though, has been the stagnation of wages since about 2000. An interesting report on the trend comes from the Economic Policy Institute. Of particular note in that study are several very troubling trends:
Productivity has actually increased significantly during the period. That is, workers are performing more work, while compensation remains flat.
During the Great Recession, productivity continued to increase (7.7 percent), while wages were flat (0.0 percent) as measured by the Labor Productivity and Costs (LPC).
Compensation for the top 5% of earners actually has seen growth. The most growth.
The last point is interesting. What is basically means is that as productivity grows, the company executives compensate themselves, while replacing their workers with cheaper foreign labor. The company declines, goes into bankruptcy, the executives bail out with their golden parachutes, and everything from a small block to an entire town ends up in dire financial straights.
I don't know what the answer is for resolving this spiral into a country in decline, but I do know what happened to the leaders of France when it happened there...
Slashdot Mirror
You are quite wrong. Rove started the American Crossroads [americancrossroads.org] PAC specifically to oust the liberty and evangelicals from party leadership, right down to the local committee level. I've seen it in action.
AFAICT AC hasn't fought particularly against any Republican. A good chunk of their money goes to hurting Democrats.
As I said, I've seen it in action. I'll just leave this right here. A lot of their money is not tracked, because it doesn't go to candidates in partisan elections at all - it goes to candidates for leadership offices within the Republican party.
The US prints dollars, the debt is in dollars. Think about your assertion and tell us how it could ever come to pass.
Your premise is wrong. The US doesn't print dollars - it borrows them from the Federal Reserve.
Rove isn't a neocon, he's a partisan Republican. He will support whoever is in power, as long as it's a Republican.
You are quite wrong. Rove started the American Crossroads PAC specifically to oust the liberty and evangelicals from party leadership, right down to the local committee level. I've seen it in action. If he's supporting the Neocons (he is) maybe it's because they are still in power, right?
There is no one left who will say, "What's good for America is good for the world" as a justification to start wars, and PNAC closed a long time ago.
PNAC may have dissolved, but the Kagans (including Robert Kagan's wife, Victoria "Fuck the EU" Nuland) are still very active promoting the same type of interventionist foreign policies. And still very influential. Their latest funding / lobbying group is the Foreign Policy Initiative. Check it out.
Neocons are dead, they pretty much gave up when Iraq showed their goal was a failure.
I wish. They are still firmly in control of the GOP. Sure, Cantor was ousted, but Rove came up with a war chest to oust the opposition from the party. Jeb Bush is their candidate, and he's raking in the campaign cash.
Are you seriously trying to say that a pro-choice candidate could ever get the Republican nod for president?
Nice. A subject change AND a straw man all in the same form-of-a-question response. Kudos to you, sir!
I said what I said, not what you said. Are you saying that the Democrats are clamoring for a pro-life candidate? Is this binary litmus test running the country now? Maybe a good question for your favorite Democratic candidate would be "Can you explain the moral difference between the crimes for which Dr. Kermit Gosnell was convicted (first-degree murder of infants shortly after birth at 23-25 weeks into pregnancy) and late-term abortions?"
No wonder the parties have such identical positions on so many other issues. This has got to be the single most asinine way to select a government in the history of mankind - convince a large block of voters to select or reject candidates on the sole basis of a single, decided issue that won't ever move more than minor degrees in one direction or another. You are a HUGE problem with politics today, by promoting this myopic view.
You even see Republican presidential candidates, when asked if they believe in evolution, making a canned reply of "Well, I'm not a scientist"
Hey, fucktard, you ever see Democratic presidential candidates even asked this question, hmmm? Why is that? You can't think your way out of a paper bag, can you? What a fucking idiot you are. Oh, everyone knows the Democrats love science and Republicans are anti-science, right? We'll just put the questions out there to bash our opponents with. Yea, we know 98.65% of all reporters are Democrats, that's a well-known partisan fact, too, right? Am I right?
The Neocons, that trotskyist group that wants eternal war in the middle east
Right. I count Obama among them.
are yet another group that has taken over the republican party.
More demonstration of ignorance from you (not unexpected). Which group has "taken over" and which has not? I've got news for you - the Neocons are into pushing left (they call it "moderate") as much as possible, and want the religious right to just shut up and vote. They are in opposition in the party. I expect a hyperpartisan moron like yourself to be ignorant of the various Republican party factions, but you seem to even be ignorant of factions within your own party. I don't even know why I'm responding, you're so obviously stupid about politics.
If democrats had brough in a foreign speaker to contradict a republican presidents policies, they'd be screaming for the gatling guns to be unleashed upon anyone to the left of the KKK.
I assume you're referring to Netanyahu? Nothing but a made-up controversy. And entirely irrelevant to the rest of your post.
We'll just have to disagree on the extent of the Reigious right's influence.
We "disagree" because you don't know what the fuck you're talking about - that's clear.
I'm saying if you can't pass their litmus tests, you will not be the parties presidential nominee.
The FIRST thing you did in this thread was introduce a litmus test! Wow - how the left can project!
And for a person like myself, who views the political spectrum not as a left-right straight line, I see the further you get from the center, the closer left and right extremists become in actuality, if not rhetoric.
You view it from mainstream Democrat party talking points, and that's about it. Your opinion doesn't really matter in politics these days, because you will pull the lever for the "D" no matter who's name is there. Just like the racist "solid south" Democrats always did, and how all the useless eaters that care more about their free health care than how their children will find jobs, do today.
The Federal Reserve doesn't work like that. The USA can maintain its government deficit because enough people are willing to buy US government bonds. If, one day, people no longer trust it to repay its debts, there will be a financial meltdown the like of which the world has never yet seen.
The largest purchaser of US bonds today is ... wait for it ... the Federal Reserve.
Even if 100% of their past debts were written off, current tax receipts are insufficient to meet current expenditure.
That situation is exactly the same in the US (except the gap is about $500 billion right now, more than the entire Greek debt). The only reason that the US keeps going is that they control the lender (the Federal Reserve). At least they think they do.
Yeah, cause all of the developed countries in the world that have public healthcare, have "drafted" their doctors.
Oh wait, no they haven't. Guess that was just a strawman by you after all.
Are you sure about that?
That's a big part of what gave him a chance to win, the Republicans didn't take him seriously and spent most of their time fighting Hillary. Hardly anyone expected him to get the nomination much less win the presidency.
It was a good demonstration of the power of the MSM. Obama was their darling, going way back to his run for the US Senate. They started covering him, I think it was Time that did the first big fluff piece about him, way back in 2003. Other far-left "reporters" picked up the mantle and ran with it. They created him, and put him in place. It's no wonder he got such favorable coverage.
He failed to get his trade bill, which is either good or bad, depending on your ideology, but it shows his lack of competence for working with congress.
No, actually, the TPA was recently passed, providing fast-track for the TPP (and the TPIP), which means it will only get an up-or-down vote when Obama finishes negotiations. Maybe they'll keep it secret until after that vote, too, who knows. I don't know what kind of bribes and/or threats were used to get it passed, but there it is.
Frankly, it's stunning how much of the Neocon agenda can get implemented when there's a Democrat president pushing for it. If a Republican president had done some of the things Obama has done, DC would be full of Democrats with pitchforks. For some reason they "trust" Obama ...
You're not familiar with Obama, are you? They're going to change things for the better, not destroy things for the worse.
You made up the "for the better" part. That was not in the script.
Doctors are not federal employees
Well how did they get out of it when the rest of us are working for the Federal government for almost 5 months?
Or you prefer that doctors be drafted?
That's not the goal? After all, if healthcare is a "right", you need someone drafted to provide it...
Did someone tell them that there are capitalists in Silicon Valley?
Maybe they're trying to change the system from the inside...
The religious right have firm control of their party.
Not really. They haven't gotten what they want from the party for quite some time. The Neocons are firmly in control these days. They are the ones that put up McCain, then Romney (eviscerating the Ron Paul wing in the process). Oh, they get a lot of play in the MSM (easy targets), but influence in the GOP - not so much.
What's your bot? (My boys and I are watching the show on ABC.)
What a horrible job they did of putting that show together. Battles are only 3 minutes, but with all the commentary, backgrounders, interviews and fluff, they can only fit FOUR battles into an hour-long show. Worse, they include so much commentary they actually EXCLUDE about 1/2 the battles, and just show a few highlights from some.
Imagine if a network covered the NBA playoffs like that? Producers at ABC certainly showed a lot of incompetence with that show.
March 2014: Norfolk, WV - the World's LARGEST Naval base.
West Virginia doesn't even have access to the ocean or even a very large river, much less a deep water port sufficient for a Naval base.
Why so much? Netflix manages it for $8 per month. Nevertheless, people are willing to pay a fair price for a good product. I wouldn't watch Hulu for free, when it was free, because of the commercials. More recently, my roommate decided to pay for Hulu Premium, (or whatever they call it), but after trying it a couple of times, neither of us would watch it, and he eventually cancelled. Here's the deal: Commercials are suppose to equal free TV. But these people want to have their cake, and eat it, too. Unfortunately for them, people now have other choices.
Well your complaints were all about the commercials, which I agree are annoying, and the same reason I cancelled my Hulu + subscription. I probably would pay more for it without the ads, though. I watch Netflix frequently, it has lots of good content, but the selling point for Hulu is you keep current with shows. It had enough current content it could have actually replaced 95% of my TV watching (only exception off the top of my head being the local morning news).
The ads on Hulu were actually MORE annoying than regular TV, since I could always fast-forward through those (an option Hulu does not support).
Like you were supposed to when you started charging for cable. Who knows, you could make more money by offering a better product.
Yea, I miss the good old days. MTV actually played music (and no advertising). USA actually had programming all night (and it was weird stuff). TBS had black-and-white movies.
Now, get off my lawn
(nipples on breasts were a pretty solid indicator and easy to scan for... also detecting a crotch region with dark hair... obviously a fat man in a hair-toned thong would trigger alarms)
What's wrong with (female) nipples on breasts? Are they more naked than a man with a naked upper body? Should the woman be covered while the man can freely go around without something to cover his chest? There is absolutely nothing wrong with female breasts. They are not sexual objects. Treating them like that is just demeaning, both to women and men.
Well my nipples, in fact, are sexual objects. My wife's were, too, until she had a kid. Then, not so much. Not at all, in fact.
prohibit the private registration of domains which are "associated with commercial activities and which are used for online financial transactions
I'm not sure I have a big problem with this. If you do business with a company that can just disappear, that'd be a bummer. That said, you shouldn't do business with a company like that, but people aren't always smart.
Ant that is why they are using the phrase which are used for online financial transactions as a place to start, and put the system in place. Camel's nose in the tent, as it were. More people will be okay with it. Once the system is in place, it will expand to cover everyone (except, of course, governments, politicians, and large corporations).
Right now, I can pay my ISP an extra $10 - 20 to anonymize my information on Whois. I still have to provide it to my ISP - that has already been made a legal requirement. But with the crackpot stuff I sometimes tend to put on the Intarwebs, I don't want to become a victim of doxing or swatting by some butt-hurt "hactivist". So it's worth it. But when they expand this system, or decide that fee needs to be $1000 or more, well, it just won't be available to me any more.
So, in the long run, this is an effort to end anonymous speech, to scrub unpopular opinions from the Web, and coerce small players into leaving the website business or, worse, further centralizing distribution of content. There are currently only six media companies in the US that control 90% of all media. There are plenty of elitists that would love to see all of the content on the Internet controlled by those six companies. It would make it so much easier to drown out any dissenting voices, wouldn't it?
It's because consulting firms are unable to find high skilled computer experts in the US, so they must expand the H1-B program to bring in more foreigners to compensate for the lack of competent Americans!
A source "with detailed knowledge on the matter" told Reuters that hiring screeners for Booz Allen had found some details of Snowden's education that "did not check out precisely," but decided to hire him anyway
Resume falsified, yup sounds like a typical "expert" to me.
You have bought into the administration smear campaign and government propaganda. Booz Allen isn't necessarily lying, here, but this statement, along with the ridiculously picayune reasons for rejecting candidates based on some detail not being perfect, it's likely something as innocuous as listing the wrong day of the month for a graduation, or misspelling of an instructor's name.
You might educate yourself by checking out the form Snowden was required to complete. I challenge anyone to be able to fill it out completely and include nothing that does not "check out precisely".
I would actually pay MORE to cut my channels to just the local broadcast stations. What a scam.
Try an antenna to get your broadcast stations. If you're in a region with decent signal strength, you will be happily surprised at what your TV can bring in... for FREE!
You can even re-provision the coax cable you use now for the cable service to hook up the antenna!
Not really worth the hassle, considering I'd be paying almost the same thing to Verizon anyway. And I tried the antenna before, many years ago. It works for a few of the local channels, but some either won't tune or are so full of pauses and artifacts they aren't watchable. Easier just to keep the bundle. Plus, I'd end up spending the ~ $10 I would save anyway so the wife can watch her HGTV shows on Hulu Plus...
suck it cable companies, we dont need you anymore, we just need internet access and-DAMMIT. well played cable companies, well played.
I decided I didn't need the TV service from Verizon any more, so I called about cancelling that and just keeping Internet. It turns out, that's only a $10 a month savings ("Well you don't get the bundle discounts."). I do watch the local broadcast stations, but that package is $12.99, so I would actually pay MORE to cut my channels to just the local broadcast stations. What a scam.
I'm now going to make an educated guess and say that you've never sat in on executive-level financial reviews of an entire business because if you had, we wouldn't be having this particular debate.
Only for non-profits, and while they were even more focused on limiting expenses (I would think), no one ever suggested getting rid of skilled veterans and replacing them with code monkeys. In fact the one outsourcing attempt (to a foreign company) was such a failure it had to be reversed.
And you're always, always right, no matter what. I have never once seen you admit that you are wrong, Curunir_Wolf, and your posts are brazen and detailed enough that any admission would be startling.
I have been wrong (really, really wrong) more than once, and while I have admitted so in some cases, I've found it's best to shut up and let the correction (often, multiple corrections from many folks) stand on their own.
I should also note that I don't have the experience with html tags that you do either
Then you should change your posting settings to "plain text", so that at least you can put in line breaks. The first post was wall-of-words enough but this one is really painful to pick through.
Wages have not technically been flat.
This is what I had to respond to. I thought it was well known and well-established. 1-3% raises, to only a few, is part of what is keeping wages flat. And while some like to point out that "well inflation is very low", they use only the latest modified CPI, which ignores things like food, energy, and housing costs which have all risen even faster than CPI. And even CPI shows price increases between 2 and 4% for the last 20 years. That means a 1-3% raise is actually falling income.
You can Google the results of wages over time on your own to educate yourself, but for your edification, I will also provide some references. The first is from Pew Research, which studied wages from 1964. It clearly demonstrates the issue of stagnant wages throughout that period. The most marked trend, though, has been the stagnation of wages since about 2000. An interesting report on the trend comes from the Economic Policy Institute. Of particular note in that study are several very troubling trends:
The last point is interesting. What is basically means is that as productivity grows, the company executives compensate themselves, while replacing their workers with cheaper foreign labor. The company declines, goes into bankruptcy, the executives bail out with their golden parachutes, and everything from a small block to an entire town ends up in dire financial straights.
I don't know what the answer is for resolving this spiral into a country in decline, but I do know what happened to the leaders of France when it happened there...