Yea, government regulators have done such a GREAT job keeping Monsanto in check! Oh, wait, no they haven't - they are now in CHARGE!.
It's not "de"-regulation that caused rolling blackouts and the financial crisis. It's the corporate / administrator elites working together to screw the rest of us. And you BUY their crap. Amazing.
Fool. Government elites don't care about you - keep being their happy little human resource, though, I'm sure they'll take real good care of you.
Did you see the link? It really doesn't say much, does it? Other than it must have been a private company providing government services. You could say I'm ignorant of the history of the Pinkertons. Guilty.
Of course, you'll now go off (like I already predicted) claiming that if we didn't have unions we'd have little kids working 12 hours a day in sweat shops, and factory owners sending thugs after anyone complaining about working conditions.
Now that unions are the ones with all the power (and union leaders are part of the 1%), somehow it's okay that these tyrants abuse their power, because they're on "our side". God forbid we would want to reverse the ruling that shields them from prosecution for acts of violence, or hold them accountable for open threats!
Good point, and I agree. Everybody tries to protect their own spending priorities, and constituents reward them for it, because everybody has their own government program or spending that absolutely must not be cut. It's always a successfully strategy to promise to stop the other guy from cutting your vital program. Telling people that "this is going to cause you some pain, but it must be done." is typically not a winning political strategy.
and ooh what do we have here? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:InflationAdjustedDefenseSpending.PNG [wikipedia.org] . curious how the defense spending shoots up right there too. what should be worrying is that you're going to be paying a lot of money just for the interest rates of money loaned to wage war.
I am. Are you? I thought you guys were all hunky-dory with the war spending now that your guy is in charge. I guess people really did take it to the bank since they didn't show up at the war protest rallies once The O was in office.
You should also be worried about all the "non-discretionary" spending which now exceeds the entire federal revenue, and yet congress not only refuses to reform or slow down any of that spending, but actively refused to end the $500 million bonuses paid to states for INCREASING the welfare rolls!
yeah, and we also had a lot more abuse without regulation
There has never been as much "abuse" from any private entity as there has been from government regulators. And if you think suing a corporation is bad, try suing the IRS or the EPA.
I don't see anything wrong with that. Do you prefer this?
frankly, the $10k per employee is cheap, compared to the alternatives
You mean alternatives like a lower unemployment rate, and less jobs moving offshore?
I supposed next (since you've already started down that path) you'll start claiming that without the overly oppressive regulation in place today, that it would be just like "The Jungle" and we'd all have rats in our canned meat, and little kids would be working 12 hours a day in sweat shops.
And by far, the single largest contributor to the national debt over the past 20 years would be a certain set of tax cuts that were passed in 2001 by a Republican senate, under reconciliation rules (thus no supermajority for cloture required), without matching spending cuts [crooksandliars.com].
Oh, crooksandliars.com - well there's a credible, non-partisan source of information, for sure.
I shouldn't even reply to this, but this lie has been propagated enough I'm afraid people will actually start to believe it. Of course, it's not true, as pointed out by the Congressional Budget Office in their report:
The tax policies enacted a decade ago are responsible for just 16 percent of the swing from surplus to deficit. Furthermore, given that only about one-fourth of the tax cuts went to upper-income earners, just 1/25th of the decline from surpluses to deficits resulted from upper-income tax cuts. (NOTE: Given that CBO does not take into account any of the positive impact of tax cuts on investment, savings and economic growth, the percentage was actually even smaller than the 1/25th estimate)
The CBO report has shown that new spending and net interest were three times as responsible for the deficits as the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts – and 12 times as responsible as the upper-income portion of the tax cuts.
And here is the full report. Try using math instead of inflammatory partisan rhetoric if you plan to refute it.
It's only "worse" if I accept your premises about what it means. We had a lot less regulation in the past than we do now, and entrepreneurial opportunities were much greater. It has recently been estimated by the Small Business Administration that small businesses pay over $10,000 per employee in regulatory costs alone. It costs a huge amount of money today to start even a modest business.
You're also downplaying the "not easy" part of whatever regulation you're supporting as "proper" - and if it's anything close to the current regime, then "not easy" is downright impossible. And the reason for that is the costs for not playing the Lobby game become much higher than playing the Lobby game. These days, if you don't play, you automatically lose. That invites corruption, and it's almost impossible to rout out.
Just look what Obama has done: to appear unbeholden to "lobbyists", he pledged not to accept donations from them. So the people that register as lobbyists don't get access. Instead, there are unregistered "bundlers" that do all the massive fundraising, and since they are not required to register, their activities are much less transparent.
You know what? The Constitution puts the spending power in the hands of Congress, not the president. So, take a look at where the deficits are really happening
The trouble is that there are always a multitude of reasons and causes. Time will tell if the killer was mentally ill, a member of some sort of anti-movie militia, neo-NAZI, or just some very angry person that needed to "get back at society" or any combination of those and then some.
Don't rule out political motivations of government officials. We have already seen Eric Holder sending thousands of guns to Mexico in an attempt to drum up public support for stricter gun control. And now just one week before the Senate vote on the very controversial United Nation Small Arms Treaty comes this tragic, highly publicized tragic killing of a theater full of people. And it's committed by an unemployed graduate student that somehow had tens of thousands of dollars worth of military-grade equipment, sophisticated booby traps in his apartment, and the training to enable him to use it all.
Giving kids a sophisticated bullshit detector is crucial if they are to succeed in today's world.
Unfortunately, that's exactly the OPPOSITE of what HOTS and OBE are designed to do.
OBE conceals and perpetuates the number-one crime of the public school system — the failure to teach first graders how to read. It's committed to the "whole language," word-guessing method rather than the phonics method. Teachers are cautioned not to correct spelling and syntax errors because that could be damaging to the student's self esteem and creativity.
Those promoting OBE and HOTS are perfectly content to have the schools turn out quotas of semi-literate workers who can be trained to perform menial tasks under supervision in order to serve the demands of the global economy.
Consider what Thomas Sticht said:
"Many companies have moved operations to places with cheap, relatively poorly educated labor. What may be crucial, they say, is the dependability of a labor force and how well it can be managed and trained — not its general educational level, although a small cadre of highly educated creative people is essential to innovation and growth. Ending discrimination and changing values are probably more important than reading in moving low-income families into the middle class."
Functional literacy competencies (beginning in 4th grade) are defined as an ability to read a map and a bus schedule. Sticht was a member of the Secretary of Labor's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) and, as Associate Director for Basic Skills at the National Institute of Education, promoted similar techniques called "competency education" and "mastery teaching" (the don't mean what they sound like - OBE is just re-packaging of the proven failure "Mastery Learning").
As international test scores indicate, America's children are the recipients of an increasingly rotten education. Meanwhile, the focus of their education becomes a football between elite establishment groups.
America's families and children are becoming pawns and worker bees to be manipulated through social engineering. The goal is to manufacture peaceful, docile citizens of a world corporate state. The individual is to be subsumed into the collective.
The same two ostensibly state government-associated groups (NGA and CCSSO) developed Obama's "Race to the Top" (RTTT ), as well as America 2000 under the Bush 41 administration that morphed into Goals 2000 in 1994 under President Clinton. Goals 2000 and that year's reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act combined for the first time to require that states and school districts comply with federal standards listed in Goals 2000 in order to receive federal education dollars. Those standards include expanding government schooling into the preschool years and a much greater emphasis on the mental health or social and emotional aspects. Many would rightly deem this psychosocial meddling indoctrination, instead of what parents want and expect as the traditional academic aspects of education - reading, math, history and civics.
Grassroots education activists were told that local control of education would be improved by George W. Bush's "No Child Left Behind", that the hated Goals 2000 would be repealed. The summary of the bill states: "The proposal would remove all references to Goals 2000, outcome-based education, School-to-Work, Workforce Investment Act, and higher order thinking skills."
What is Goals 2000, you ask? It is an education dumbing-down package passed in 1994 during the Clinton administration after it failed to pass under former President Bush in 1991. It was supposed to "harmonize" the relationship between government and education by mandating watered-down, dumbed-down education standards that included a national curriculum, national test and national teacher's license.
Passed at the same time as Goals 2000 was HR 6. That bill stated that "voluntary" stipulations of Goals 2000 were mandatory if states wanted federal money. Thus, in essence, the feds would control education in all states.
While current politicians talk a good game, the fact is every Goals 2000 mandate was reauthorized in "No Child Left Behind," then reauthorized and strengthened in RTTT under the Obama administration.
The only things these bills improve are the power of the establishment and the disempowering of the states and individuals and the dumbing-down of American children.
Education grassroots activist, mother of three and physician Dr. Karen Effrem of MREC stated recently that "Goals 2000 has nothing to do with academics." She believes that eventually the federal leviathan will control the entire education system, which will include private and home schooling.
From Professor Allen Quist:
American schools used to teach the fundamental values of the United States--including the inalienable, God-given rights of life, liberty and property, as guaranteed by our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Not any more. Now our students will be indoctrinated in the UN's definition of human rights. As clarified by the UN's UDHR [Universal Declaration of Human Rights], our rights now may not "be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations" (Art 29:3). Our children will be taught that they have only those rights the UN says they have.
The UNESCO standards also include the UN's Earth Charter, which further defines internationally benchmarked standards. The Charter says these standards must entail what it calls "sustainability education" (Art 14:b). The Charter explains that "sustainability education" entails the "promotion of the equitable distribution of wealth within nations and among nations" (Art. 10:a), nuclear disarmament (Art. 16
I dunno, could be the thousands of sites that have been cracked over the last 20 years (some publicized, most not.) Have you not been reading about the growing hacker war between China and the rest of the world? Someone with DEEP pockets could get to anybody's data if they so wanted. That seems way more likely to me, and the police in question do in fact have a squad who investigates cybercrime. This isn't exactly a South American backwater.
Your deconstruction is wrong, and we do NOT agree. That seemed pretty thorough, but you seemed to latch on to anything the guy said that provided some doubt (sort of like a Denier). Here's a better, more concise one, and the analysis I was looking for in the first place.
Still don't buy it, and it doesn't take a conspiracy theory to realize that most journalists and police are clueless about technology. If you can ignore the source for this thorough forensic analysis of the leaked files and the description of the University's email architecture, it seems wildly improbable that "some hacker over the Internet" would have been able to obtain the files in that condition.
Please don't just attack the source - if you think the analysis is flawed, point out where.
Sure, as long as it has the same testing as other drugs.
That's primarily a money-making process. But of course since no one can make money without a patent, who is supposed to pay the enormous FDA price tag for that testing? And why do I need government approval for it, unless you assume they OWN me?
And don't use the old hippy "it's natural so it can't do you any harm" routine. You could say the same about opium/morphine, but I really don't think you want that to be handed out like aspirin.
Straw man
PS stop the "FDA shill" nonsense, it just makes you sound like a paranoid crank.
But you (and the GP) SOUND like shills. If you prefer, I'll just call you obstinately ignorant, and selectively ignoring any facts that get in the way of your stated viewpoint. That better?
Most "alternative medicine" is sheer bollocks, and you know it.
Your ignorant opinion is what is bollocks. I'll say this again: If there is an proven, effective treatment for something, that should be the first try. There are MANY serious and terminal diseases with NO traditional treatment. Stop telling people to go home and die because the hospitals and drug companies can't make a profit on their illness. There are also very safe, cheap, and natural treatments for less serious conditions than the big-pharma government-approved stuff. Why should I risk liver damage and death so I can take an "approved" pill for my toe fungus where there are safer and cheaper alternatives?
You're being overly paranoid. Newspaper and websites want eyeballs so they can sell advertising and make money. Now, individual authors and writers might have their own point of view, but so does everyone.
Almost. It's more like they want eyeballs so they can sell them to advertisers. Companies provide copy AND news stories, and news organizations sell their consumers to the highest bidder. YOU are the product.
Dude - seriously. When you post a headline that says "Comic-Con Highlights", people click on your click on your link looking for THIS. I mean, come on, right?.
Yea, sure. But "Highlights" from Comic-con should be from the persistent photographers that comb through the throngs of fat geeks to find the rare hot chicks dressed in skimpy fantasy costumes. False advertising, Slashdot! Where are the pics?
there'd have been no auto industry bailout, and most of the American automakers would have gone the way of the dodo
Except, of course, for Ford, and the manufacturing plants in Kentucky (Toyota), Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Georgia, and Texas. Oh, and of course the Rolls Royce engine manufacturing plant in Virginia. Probably forgotten some others.
Plus no healthcare reform of any kind
I seriously doubt that. It may not have been a gigantic tax that fell 70% on the middle class, and it may not have cut $500 billion from Medicare, but it needed reform. Not that McCain is any less of a big government tyrant than Obama, but whatever reform passed would have had to go through without the Chicago-style bullying-and-bribery that was used to put the travesty of Obamacare in place.
Plus no healthcare reform of any kind, so people like my wife and I - both of whom have pre-existing medical conditions - would have remained locked out of any possibility of obtaining medical insurance.
Do you have it now? Because if you do, it's not because of Obamacare, which has not started requiring insurance companies to ignore them yet. There's the PCIP, but that's as expensive as any private insurance available unless you have something really expensive or can't deal with the typical 6-month to a year waiting period. So I call bullshit on this.
Plus Osama bin Laden would still be alive.
You're claiming that Obama is a bigger warmonger then John "BombbombbombIran" McCain. That's rich. You must be a shill.
So, yeah, as disappointing as Obama's first term has been in many ways, I think there'd be significant differences in the current state of affairs had McLame been elected, instead. And not, you know, in a good way...
At least that much is true. There would be differences. Hard to imagine it WORSE, but if anyone could accomplish that, it would be McCain.
I can tell you're no where close to the math/engineering/science field of study or work.
Well that shows how much you know. Okay, that's probably too subtle for you - it shows you know nothing.
If you were, you would know that every advanced gadget or piece of machinery we have today is possible due to computer simulations (this is no joke).
It's a joke that you compare computer assisted engineering design with things like climate modelling. They don't design drugs or human surgery robots with computer modelling, because modelling a human being is complex (although it's easier than modelling the earth's climate).
Also, obviously modern warfare isn't anything like modern warfare, but the physics engines used in games are more advanced than you might expect.
Yes, simulating explosions (and the like) is very precise these days. But my point was that you need to play computer games a little less and get out and see how things work in the real world. You might be surprised by a butterfly effect.
Well you called me a liar and then started spouting a bunch of bullshit. What did you expect?
It takes a long time to get people out of their denial - the truths about our current political system are hard to accept, so I can understand your resistance. Of COURSE you think Ron Paul supporters are crazy, they have taken the red pill, so to speak, and you're just saying you would rather have the steak dinner promised by TPTB, and they already know it's just an illusion.
Here's the truth, though - you denied what I was saying by calling me a liar. I can't find stats for the popular vote from ALL the primaries (or caucuses - Paul put all of his campaigning into causes, and didn't even compete in most of the primaries), but looking at the Super Tuesday primaries, the "20%" is closer than the "11%". On Super Tuesday Paul got about 17% of the vote. And, yes, he got 40% of the vote HERE in VA, and that upsets you so much you just fall back into denial.
Just my discussion of it upsets you, too, because you're stuck in the two-sides delusion promoted by the MSM (they do this to make money, BTW). So you've interpreted my response as a flip-flop, when all I am doing is pointing out realities. I never acknowledged your 5% as correct - it's not. But, Ron Paul supporters do not have enough numbers to get him nominated in the party, there's no denying that. So this isn't "switching tact" as your world view causes you to interpret it, just two realities.
Here's another reality that will throw you into an even further tizzy: Pretty much every election (including the election in November) is decided by only 3% of the people. The candidate that gets just over half of those 3% to vote for them (1.5% +1) will win the election (disregarding election fraud, of course). So it doesn't take a lot of people to make a change, just the RIGHT people, properly educated and motivated.
Too bad it's only about 5% of all Americans that want that.
Yea, the American electorate is pretty ignorant. They've given us Bush for 8 years, and now Obama and Romney.
Keep deluding yourself while the rest of us continue to live in the real world.
Well that's the problem, isn't it? Ron Paul is the only "real world" candidate - all the rest are media-propped, cardboard-cutout, tyrant-led actors. As long as the public keeps falling for all that slick PR and getting fooled into supporting these elitist insiders, they will keep getting screwed by the oligarchy club.
Well, note the ephedrine and pseudoephedrine are both considered "ephedrine alkaloids", and are treated the same, legally. Around here, ephedrine was banned as a "supplement" a few years back, courtesy of some PR campaign about kids using it for speed. Phenylpropanolamine was banned even before that - the excuse that time was that some old people with weak hearts could be hurt by it, so it was removed from everything for everyone.
The FDA worked to ban ephedrine from "dietary supplements" years ago, and lost a challenge to that in court, until they passed a ban as part of the USPATRIOT act renewal in 2005. My guess is that the Pharma companies have more profitable stuff used for the same indications, so they have pretty stopped manufacturing in the US. There are some over-the-counter medications for asthma (i.e. Broncaid), but it is regulated now, and will be phased out in favor of patented medications in the near future.
Slashdot Mirror
Yea, government regulators have done such a GREAT job keeping Monsanto in check! Oh, wait, no they haven't - they are now in CHARGE!.
It's not "de"-regulation that caused rolling blackouts and the financial crisis. It's the corporate / administrator elites working together to screw the rest of us. And you BUY their crap. Amazing.
Fool. Government elites don't care about you - keep being their happy little human resource, though, I'm sure they'll take real good care of you.
Did you see the link? It really doesn't say much, does it? Other than it must have been a private company providing government services. You could say I'm ignorant of the history of the Pinkertons. Guilty.
Of course, you'll now go off (like I already predicted) claiming that if we didn't have unions we'd have little kids working 12 hours a day in sweat shops, and factory owners sending thugs after anyone complaining about working conditions.
Now that unions are the ones with all the power (and union leaders are part of the 1%), somehow it's okay that these tyrants abuse their power, because they're on "our side". God forbid we would want to reverse the ruling that shields them from prosecution for acts of violence, or hold them accountable for open threats!
Good point, and I agree. Everybody tries to protect their own spending priorities, and constituents reward them for it, because everybody has their own government program or spending that absolutely must not be cut. It's always a successfully strategy to promise to stop the other guy from cutting your vital program. Telling people that "this is going to cause you some pain, but it must be done." is typically not a winning political strategy.
and ooh what do we have here? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:InflationAdjustedDefenseSpending.PNG [wikipedia.org] . curious how the defense spending shoots up right there too. what should be worrying is that you're going to be paying a lot of money just for the interest rates of money loaned to wage war.
I am. Are you? I thought you guys were all hunky-dory with the war spending now that your guy is in charge. I guess people really did take it to the bank since they didn't show up at the war protest rallies once The O was in office.
You should also be worried about all the "non-discretionary" spending which now exceeds the entire federal revenue, and yet congress not only refuses to reform or slow down any of that spending, but actively refused to end the $500 million bonuses paid to states for INCREASING the welfare rolls!
yeah, and we also had a lot more abuse without regulation
There has never been as much "abuse" from any private entity as there has been from government regulators. And if you think suing a corporation is bad, try suing the IRS or the EPA.
this is what you want?: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkerton_Government_Services,_Inc.
I don't see anything wrong with that. Do you prefer this?
frankly, the $10k per employee is cheap, compared to the alternatives
You mean alternatives like a lower unemployment rate, and less jobs moving offshore?
I supposed next (since you've already started down that path) you'll start claiming that without the overly oppressive regulation in place today, that it would be just like "The Jungle" and we'd all have rats in our canned meat, and little kids would be working 12 hours a day in sweat shops.
And by far, the single largest contributor to the national debt over the past 20 years would be a certain set of tax cuts that were passed in 2001 by a Republican senate, under reconciliation rules (thus no supermajority for cloture required), without matching spending cuts [crooksandliars.com].
Oh, crooksandliars.com - well there's a credible, non-partisan source of information, for sure.
I shouldn't even reply to this, but this lie has been propagated enough I'm afraid people will actually start to believe it. Of course, it's not true, as pointed out by the Congressional Budget Office in their report:
And here is the full report. Try using math instead of inflammatory partisan rhetoric if you plan to refute it.
It's only "worse" if I accept your premises about what it means. We had a lot less regulation in the past than we do now, and entrepreneurial opportunities were much greater. It has recently been estimated by the Small Business Administration that small businesses pay over $10,000 per employee in regulatory costs alone. It costs a huge amount of money today to start even a modest business.
You're also downplaying the "not easy" part of whatever regulation you're supporting as "proper" - and if it's anything close to the current regime, then "not easy" is downright impossible. And the reason for that is the costs for not playing the Lobby game become much higher than playing the Lobby game. These days, if you don't play, you automatically lose. That invites corruption, and it's almost impossible to rout out.
Just look what Obama has done: to appear unbeholden to "lobbyists", he pledged not to accept donations from them. So the people that register as lobbyists don't get access. Instead, there are unregistered "bundlers" that do all the massive fundraising, and since they are not required to register, their activities are much less transparent.
You know what? The Constitution puts the spending power in the hands of Congress, not the president. So, take a look at where the deficits are really happening
(I am a physician and I'm okay with taking a pay cut..... so long as my malpractice insurance goes down by a similar percentage.)
How is that supposed to happen? With the provisions passed with Obamacare, it will more likely go up.
Glad to see the support for more income equality is working out just as planned!
The trouble is that there are always a multitude of reasons and causes. Time will tell if the killer was mentally ill, a member of some sort of anti-movie militia, neo-NAZI, or just some very angry person that needed to "get back at society" or any combination of those and then some.
Don't rule out political motivations of government officials. We have already seen Eric Holder sending thousands of guns to Mexico in an attempt to drum up public support for stricter gun control. And now just one week before the Senate vote on the very controversial United Nation Small Arms Treaty comes this tragic, highly publicized tragic killing of a theater full of people. And it's committed by an unemployed graduate student that somehow had tens of thousands of dollars worth of military-grade equipment, sophisticated booby traps in his apartment, and the training to enable him to use it all.
Giving kids a sophisticated bullshit detector is crucial if they are to succeed in today's world.
Unfortunately, that's exactly the OPPOSITE of what HOTS and OBE are designed to do.
OBE conceals and perpetuates the number-one crime of the public school system — the failure to teach first graders how to read. It's committed to the "whole language," word-guessing method rather than the phonics method. Teachers are cautioned not to correct spelling and syntax errors because that could be damaging to the student's self esteem and creativity.
Those promoting OBE and HOTS are perfectly content to have the schools turn out quotas of semi-literate workers who can be trained to perform menial tasks under supervision in order to serve the demands of the global economy.
Consider what Thomas Sticht said:
Functional literacy competencies (beginning in 4th grade) are defined as an ability to read a map and a bus schedule. Sticht was a member of the Secretary of Labor's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) and, as Associate Director for Basic Skills at the National Institute of Education, promoted similar techniques called "competency education" and "mastery teaching" (the don't mean what they sound like - OBE is just re-packaging of the proven failure "Mastery Learning").
As international test scores indicate, America's children are the recipients of an increasingly rotten education. Meanwhile, the focus of their education becomes a football between elite establishment groups.
America's families and children are becoming pawns and worker bees to be manipulated through social engineering. The goal is to manufacture peaceful, docile citizens of a world corporate state. The individual is to be subsumed into the collective.
The same two ostensibly state government-associated groups (NGA and CCSSO) developed Obama's "Race to the Top" (RTTT ), as well as America 2000 under the Bush 41 administration that morphed into Goals 2000 in 1994 under President Clinton. Goals 2000 and that year's reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act combined for the first time to require that states and school districts comply with federal standards listed in Goals 2000 in order to receive federal education dollars. Those standards include expanding government schooling into the preschool years and a much greater emphasis on the mental health or social and emotional aspects. Many would rightly deem this psychosocial meddling indoctrination, instead of what parents want and expect as the traditional academic aspects of education - reading, math, history and civics.
Grassroots education activists were told that local control of education would be improved by George W. Bush's "No Child Left Behind", that the hated Goals 2000 would be repealed. The summary of the bill states: "The proposal would remove all references to Goals 2000, outcome-based education, School-to-Work, Workforce Investment Act, and higher order thinking skills."
What is Goals 2000, you ask? It is an education dumbing-down package passed in 1994 during the Clinton administration after it failed to pass under former President Bush in 1991. It was supposed to "harmonize" the relationship between government and education by mandating watered-down, dumbed-down education standards that included a national curriculum, national test and national teacher's license.
Passed at the same time as Goals 2000 was HR 6. That bill stated that "voluntary" stipulations of Goals 2000 were mandatory if states wanted federal money. Thus, in essence, the feds would control education in all states.
While current politicians talk a good game, the fact is every Goals 2000 mandate was reauthorized in "No Child Left Behind," then reauthorized and strengthened in RTTT under the Obama administration.
The only things these bills improve are the power of the establishment and the disempowering of the states and individuals and the dumbing-down of American children.
Education grassroots activist, mother of three and physician Dr. Karen Effrem of MREC stated recently that "Goals 2000 has nothing to do with academics." She believes that eventually the federal leviathan will control the entire education system, which will include private and home schooling.
From Professor Allen Quist:
I dunno, could be the thousands of sites that have been cracked over the last 20 years (some publicized, most not.) Have you not been reading about the growing hacker war between China and the rest of the world? Someone with DEEP pockets could get to anybody's data if they so wanted. That seems way more likely to me, and the police in question do in fact have a squad who investigates cybercrime. This isn't exactly a South American backwater.
You have WAY too much faith in the incompetent buffoons of the Norfolk Constabulary. One of the first things they did was to seize the computers from the guy that ran a blog where links to the leaked emails were first posted, including his adsl router. Really? The blog wasn't even hosted on those computers!
Any claim from these guys that they know how the emails were obtained has no credibility whatsoever. Better to just listen to the experts.
Your deconstruction is wrong, and we do NOT agree. That seemed pretty thorough, but you seemed to latch on to anything the guy said that provided some doubt (sort of like a Denier). Here's a better, more concise one, and the analysis I was looking for in the first place.
Still don't buy it, and it doesn't take a conspiracy theory to realize that most journalists and police are clueless about technology. If you can ignore the source for this thorough forensic analysis of the leaked files and the description of the University's email architecture, it seems wildly improbable that "some hacker over the Internet" would have been able to obtain the files in that condition.
Please don't just attack the source - if you think the analysis is flawed, point out where.
Medical marijuana, anyone?
Sure, as long as it has the same testing as other drugs.
That's primarily a money-making process. But of course since no one can make money without a patent, who is supposed to pay the enormous FDA price tag for that testing? And why do I need government approval for it, unless you assume they OWN me?
And don't use the old hippy "it's natural so it can't do you any harm" routine. You could say the same about opium/morphine, but I really don't think you want that to be handed out like aspirin.
Straw man
PS stop the "FDA shill" nonsense, it just makes you sound like a paranoid crank.
But you (and the GP) SOUND like shills. If you prefer, I'll just call you obstinately ignorant, and selectively ignoring any facts that get in the way of your stated viewpoint. That better?
Most "alternative medicine" is sheer bollocks, and you know it.
Your ignorant opinion is what is bollocks. I'll say this again: If there is an proven, effective treatment for something, that should be the first try. There are MANY serious and terminal diseases with NO traditional treatment. Stop telling people to go home and die because the hospitals and drug companies can't make a profit on their illness. There are also very safe, cheap, and natural treatments for less serious conditions than the big-pharma government-approved stuff. Why should I risk liver damage and death so I can take an "approved" pill for my toe fungus where there are safer and cheaper alternatives?
Homeopathy? Crystal healing? Astrological karmic alignment chiropractcy?
More straw men and/or pure ignorance. THIS is why you get called a shill.
You're being overly paranoid. Newspaper and websites want eyeballs so they can sell advertising and make money. Now, individual authors and writers might have their own point of view, but so does everyone.
Almost. It's more like they want eyeballs so they can sell them to advertisers. Companies provide copy AND news stories, and news organizations sell their consumers to the highest bidder. YOU are the product.
Dude - seriously. When you post a headline that says "Comic-Con Highlights", people click on your click on your link looking for THIS. I mean, come on, right?.
Yea, sure. But "Highlights" from Comic-con should be from the persistent photographers that comb through the throngs of fat geeks to find the rare hot chicks dressed in skimpy fantasy costumes. False advertising, Slashdot! Where are the pics?
Dammit./p?
there'd have been no auto industry bailout, and most of the American automakers would have gone the way of the dodo
Except, of course, for Ford, and the manufacturing plants in Kentucky (Toyota), Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina, Georgia, and Texas. Oh, and of course the Rolls Royce engine manufacturing plant in Virginia. Probably forgotten some others.
Plus no healthcare reform of any kind
I seriously doubt that. It may not have been a gigantic tax that fell 70% on the middle class, and it may not have cut $500 billion from Medicare, but it needed reform. Not that McCain is any less of a big government tyrant than Obama, but whatever reform passed would have had to go through without the Chicago-style bullying-and-bribery that was used to put the travesty of Obamacare in place.
Plus no healthcare reform of any kind, so people like my wife and I - both of whom have pre-existing medical conditions - would have remained locked out of any possibility of obtaining medical insurance.
Do you have it now? Because if you do, it's not because of Obamacare, which has not started requiring insurance companies to ignore them yet. There's the PCIP, but that's as expensive as any private insurance available unless you have something really expensive or can't deal with the typical 6-month to a year waiting period. So I call bullshit on this.
Plus Osama bin Laden would still be alive.
You're claiming that Obama is a bigger warmonger then John "BombbombbombIran" McCain. That's rich. You must be a shill.
So, yeah, as disappointing as Obama's first term has been in many ways, I think there'd be significant differences in the current state of affairs had McLame been elected, instead. And not, you know, in a good way ...
At least that much is true. There would be differences. Hard to imagine it WORSE, but if anyone could accomplish that, it would be McCain.
I can tell you're no where close to the math/engineering/science field of study or work.
Well that shows how much you know. Okay, that's probably too subtle for you - it shows you know nothing.
If you were, you would know that every advanced gadget or piece of machinery we have today is possible due to computer simulations (this is no joke).
It's a joke that you compare computer assisted engineering design with things like climate modelling. They don't design drugs or human surgery robots with computer modelling, because modelling a human being is complex (although it's easier than modelling the earth's climate).
Also, obviously modern warfare isn't anything like modern warfare, but the physics engines used in games are more advanced than you might expect.
Yes, simulating explosions (and the like) is very precise these days. But my point was that you need to play computer games a little less and get out and see how things work in the real world. You might be surprised by a butterfly effect.
Well you called me a liar and then started spouting a bunch of bullshit. What did you expect?
It takes a long time to get people out of their denial - the truths about our current political system are hard to accept, so I can understand your resistance. Of COURSE you think Ron Paul supporters are crazy, they have taken the red pill, so to speak, and you're just saying you would rather have the steak dinner promised by TPTB, and they already know it's just an illusion.
Here's the truth, though - you denied what I was saying by calling me a liar. I can't find stats for the popular vote from ALL the primaries (or caucuses - Paul put all of his campaigning into causes, and didn't even compete in most of the primaries), but looking at the Super Tuesday primaries, the "20%" is closer than the "11%". On Super Tuesday Paul got about 17% of the vote. And, yes, he got 40% of the vote HERE in VA, and that upsets you so much you just fall back into denial.
Just my discussion of it upsets you, too, because you're stuck in the two-sides delusion promoted by the MSM (they do this to make money, BTW). So you've interpreted my response as a flip-flop, when all I am doing is pointing out realities. I never acknowledged your 5% as correct - it's not. But, Ron Paul supporters do not have enough numbers to get him nominated in the party, there's no denying that. So this isn't "switching tact" as your world view causes you to interpret it, just two realities.
Here's another reality that will throw you into an even further tizzy: Pretty much every election (including the election in November) is decided by only 3% of the people. The candidate that gets just over half of those 3% to vote for them (1.5% +1) will win the election (disregarding election fraud, of course). So it doesn't take a lot of people to make a change, just the RIGHT people, properly educated and motivated.
Too bad it's only about 5% of all Americans that want that.
Yea, the American electorate is pretty ignorant. They've given us Bush for 8 years, and now Obama and Romney.
Keep deluding yourself while the rest of us continue to live in the real world.
Well that's the problem, isn't it? Ron Paul is the only "real world" candidate - all the rest are media-propped, cardboard-cutout, tyrant-led actors. As long as the public keeps falling for all that slick PR and getting fooled into supporting these elitist insiders, they will keep getting screwed by the oligarchy club.
Well, note the ephedrine and pseudoephedrine are both considered "ephedrine alkaloids", and are treated the same, legally. Around here, ephedrine was banned as a "supplement" a few years back, courtesy of some PR campaign about kids using it for speed. Phenylpropanolamine was banned even before that - the excuse that time was that some old people with weak hearts could be hurt by it, so it was removed from everything for everyone.
The FDA worked to ban ephedrine from "dietary supplements" years ago, and lost a challenge to that in court, until they passed a ban as part of the USPATRIOT act renewal in 2005. My guess is that the Pharma companies have more profitable stuff used for the same indications, so they have pretty stopped manufacturing in the US. There are some over-the-counter medications for asthma (i.e. Broncaid), but it is regulated now, and will be phased out in favor of patented medications in the near future.