Obama was elected thanks to the media. They're the ones who refused to cover anyone except Obama, they're the ones who forced the Democratic Party to skip the part of their convention where they count delegates' votes, they're the ones who completely ignored Ron Paul's existence and went out of their way to paint McCain as a senile old man and Palin as a crazy country bumpkin.
Obama owes the media, and you'll bet they'll collect.
Some problems with your storyline. First, remember the months the media spent wringing their hands over Rev. Wright, then google John Hagee. Then there's the fact that John McCain was an incompetent flip flopping machine throughout the campaign.
The media only loved Obama until the moment he passed Clinton in the primaries.
As in the drawn out Democratic primary last year, which went on months after McCain had the Republican nomination sewn up. Of course the press would have talked about Obama more than McCain last year.
Two other parts you conveniently fail to mention: the two months of non-stop concern trolling Obama faced over Rev. Wright and "white working class voters", and how the press bent over backwards to ignore McCain's incompetence and flip flopping.
McCain, with all his supposed foreign policy experience, confused Iraqi Shiites and Sunnissix times, and kept (falsely) claiming that Shiite Iran was training Sunni Al Queda agents. The media would have torn Obama half a dozen new assholes over this, but CBS went so far as to edit the video to cover up for McCain.
And what if Obama had mistakenly called Petraus the chair of the joint chiefs. Opps, new asshole. Or if he talked about the Iraq-Afghanistan border. Whoops, another asshole. Or if Obama had sought the endorsement of John Hagee, who had previously called the Catholic Church "the great whore", a "false belief system", an "apostate church", and that it would be "devoured by the anti-Christ".
Anyone who whines that Obama recieved favorable media coverage next to McCain needs to to drink a nice, warm cup of STFU.
You think that's bad, try being John Edwards. The night of the New Hampshire primary, I read an article on the results that dutifully listed the Republican totals down to the 7-9% range. John Edwards, who won 18% of the vote IIRC, wasn't even mentioned.
It almost seems like the Democrats are anticipating their period of ascendancy to be short, with the pace at which they are creating new laws, and reshaping our institutions and economy.
And on what planet is this happening? Because here on Earth the Democrats are fiddle farting around accomplishing jack and shit, and Jack left town. No action on repealing the industry written Bankruptcy Bill, no Wall Street regulation, no torture prosecutions, no health care reform, no increase in the minimum wage, watering down the stimulus that we need to reverse the 600,000 a month job loss rate, etc.
That's how you got an almost order of magnitude increase in the federal deficit in the first month of a new president. That was of course before any of the other multi-trillion dollar projects come up and get added to the grand total.
That was really the singular reason to vote for McCain to the exclusion of all others good and bad, but the independents who voted for Obama blew it when they could not grasp this fundamental concept (control of the house and senate was never really in question). Never let one party hold all the marbles, it's like crossing the streams...
Wow, where were you teabaggers when Reagan invented the multi-trillion dollar debt and turned us from being the largest creditor nation into the largest debtor nation? Where were you teabaggers when George W. Bush was lying us into the Iraq Boondoogle? Where were the teabaggers when Bush pushed and signed TARP?
And while you can argue about the danger of large deficits, to do so without mentioning WHY the Democrats are doing so (cleaning up the cesspool that Republicans left them) is just pure sophistry.
If this WERE true the computer video card industry, with it's 6 month refresh cycles, would have collapsed years ago.
Except that Nvidia and ATI only unveil new product specs when they are close to launch, and when they're ready to start discounting the current generation. Exactly what Apple does. I know Nvidia will have a faster card next year, and Apple will have iPods with more memory for the same or lesser price, but wont know the details until they've been announced.
I an go to Intel, Microsoft, Sun, Oracle, or IBM, and in return for signing a NDA, they will give a roadmap of what their product lines will be doing in the next 1-5 years.
And how well has Longhorn been running on Itanium for you? How about that RAMBUS memory?
I don't know if the $500,000 I'm spending on Mac hardware will be obsolete and unsupported in 24 hours.
Why are you spending $500,000 on 6+ year old hardware?
Not when the issue is Not Your Fucking Business, it's not. A woman's weight, a man's impotency, a consensual blow job, and cancer firmly fall in that category.
Public healthcare, while seemingly free (most people do pay for it in the end) but I'm not sure such a lawsuit friendly country can handle being told you have to wait months for treatment or that you can't have a certain treatment because it's not cost effective.
Sphincter says what? Private insurance companies delay and deny care as standard operating procedure. This distopian future you describe is already here, only it's worse now. You have company bureaucrats getting paid bonuses for denying care, and for-profit hospitals "reducing excess capacity" - closing emergency rooms and laying off nurses to make another buck.
Yawn - the Constitution goes well past the 10th Amendment. You should try reading it sometime, you might run across General Welfare, which is mentioned. Twice.
The second problem for you is that much of our military and most of our intelligence agencies are just as "unconstitutional" as UHC, because while the Constitution mentions Common Defense in the same sentence as General Welfare, Congress only has the "authority" to raise money for an army and a navy. So the Air Force, CIA, NSA, Border Patrol, NORAD, and all spy satellites are as "unconstitutional" as Social Security and socialized health care.
It's almost like you're partisan hacks making arguments of convenience. Huh, interesting.
Do you hate getting on planes knowing that they're subject to regular maintenance and regulations designed to keep them from flying into other planes?
Do you hate drinking water and being reasonably certain it's not full of arsenic?
Do you hate buying food and knowing it shouldn't be rotten or full of e coli?
But at the same time many of those providers who are putting caps in place *sold* their service as unlimited and I believe they should be forced to honor the original agreement.
Here's a solution even a Libertarian loon could love: tell the ISP's that sure, they can implement their caps and overages. Just as soon as they start paying rent on all the land that their lines run across. The state government could set the rates for public land, and private land owners could set whatever rates they want. You'll never see a corporatist take a nice, warm cup of STFU faster than that.
I'm always slightly baffled at how people can rail against "security theater," saying that it causes massive inconvenience to honest people and is often worse than useless in preventing bad people from doing bad things, then turn right around and swear up and down that the same methodology is the only way to protect us from evil corporations.
You're baffled because you're thick and your logic is shit. Water is a liquid. Drinking water is good for you. Drano is a liquid. So drinking Drano must be good for you too.....?
So yeah, security theater is crappy regulation. But maybe you should re-think your regulation==evil shtick the next time you step on an airplane, take a drink of water, get a prescription drug or even take a bite of food.
Well, the United States Constitution is a pretty easy read.
Indeed it is.
What you are looking for is the 10th Amendment.
But the Constitution doesn't stop at the 10th Amendment - feel free to read Article I, it's easy as well.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
"The Congress shall have power . . . To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes"
You don't much more inter-state and between nations than the Internet.
Not regulating them in the name of "interstate commerce" is indeed quite a stretch.
Fixed that for you, as you can't get much more inter-state and international than the Internet. The Commerce Clause has been stretched to ludicrous levels - regulating seeds a farmer grows for his own use on his own farm - but this isn't one of them.
One question, where is the power to regulate ISPs given to the federal government by the Constitution of the USA? Or for that matter radio, TV, or telephone?
The Constitution does go past the 10th Amendment...something about regulating something or ether between the states...
And if you look at other early documents you'll see government was supported to be strictly limited in what powers it had.
And if you look at the Constitution it provides for flexibility. For example, General Welfare, which is mentioned twice.
First the internet is not commerce between foreign Nations, and among the several States, or with the Indian Tribes. So that would only apply to multi-state ISPs, not all ISPs offer service in more than one state. There are literally dozens of local ISPs where I live. Since the backbones are national and international the feds could regulate them but it can't regulate local ISPs.
...which obviously still falls under interstate commerce as the Internet is a world wide network. However, if Norwegian Cable wants to make an intranet in Minnesota and be free from the FCC, more power to them.
As you say the feds have gone after people in California for marijuana after the state legalized medical marijuana.
Rather atrocious. It boggles the mind that it's conventional wisdom that Prohibition was a complete failure with alcohol, yet we insist on continuing Prohibition 2.0: WOD.
Laws should only be ones wherein harm to others is caused. Crimes like murder, pollution, rape, robbery. The rest can be handled with civil lawsuits.
Which is awesome as long as you 1) know who did what to you and 2) have the money to hire a legal team. For everyone else, it would be a cornholing of Biblical proportions. The whole reason we have regulation and oversight is because we already tried free market Libertarianism and it just got a lot of people killed while shoveling money into corporate hands.
....for large swaths of the country. And then maybe you'd like to explain why socialisticky Asian and European countries have faster personal connections at home for a fraction of the cost, while having more bandwidth than your typical American university.
That's not going to help with a monopoly - you can't take your business elsewhere if there is no other place to go. Instead, pass a law stating that if ISP's start implementing these caps, that they have to start paying rent on all the public and private land that their lines run across. Should get them to STFU real quick.
First of all, what's the point of a netbook besides "I have a cool device"?
Um, the ability to do real work on an ultra portable laptop? I got my wife an HP Mini for her birthday, it runs all the apps she needs and fits in her purse. Good luck doing that with a smartphone or a 13" laptop.
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Obama was elected thanks to the media. They're the ones who refused to cover anyone except Obama, they're the ones who forced the Democratic Party to skip the part of their convention where they count delegates' votes, they're the ones who completely ignored Ron Paul's existence and went out of their way to paint McCain as a senile old man and Palin as a crazy country bumpkin.
Obama owes the media, and you'll bet they'll collect.
Some problems with your storyline. First, remember the months the media spent wringing their hands over Rev. Wright, then google John Hagee. Then there's the fact that John McCain was an incompetent flip flopping machine throughout the campaign.
The media only loved Obama until the moment he passed Clinton in the primaries.
Tada. That's the truth.
No, that's sophistry. Obama raised hundreds of millions, mostly from small donors with $100 being the average.
There's plenty to knock Obama over (FISA flip flop, failing to prosecute torturers) without having to make shit up.
Pri. Mary.
As in the drawn out Democratic primary last year, which went on months after McCain had the Republican nomination sewn up. Of course the press would have talked about Obama more than McCain last year.
Two other parts you conveniently fail to mention: the two months of non-stop concern trolling Obama faced over Rev. Wright and "white working class voters", and how the press bent over backwards to ignore McCain's incompetence and flip flopping.
McCain, with all his supposed foreign policy experience, confused Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis six times, and kept (falsely) claiming that Shiite Iran was training Sunni Al Queda agents. The media would have torn Obama half a dozen new assholes over this, but CBS went so far as to edit the video to cover up for McCain.
And what if Obama had mistakenly called Petraus the chair of the joint chiefs. Opps, new asshole. Or if he talked about the Iraq-Afghanistan border. Whoops, another asshole. Or if Obama had sought the endorsement of John Hagee, who had previously called the Catholic Church "the great whore", a "false belief system", an "apostate church", and that it would be "devoured by the anti-Christ".
Anyone who whines that Obama recieved favorable media coverage next to McCain needs to to drink a nice, warm cup of STFU.
You think that's bad, try being John Edwards. The night of the New Hampshire primary, I read an article on the results that dutifully listed the Republican totals down to the 7-9% range. John Edwards, who won 18% of the vote IIRC, wasn't even mentioned.
then Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a Republican
So stork, did you forget about the New Deal, or did you forget to put your wingnut pants on this morning? Inquiring minds would like to know...
It almost seems like the Democrats are anticipating their period of ascendancy to be short, with the pace at which they are creating new laws, and reshaping our institutions and economy.
And on what planet is this happening? Because here on Earth the Democrats are fiddle farting around accomplishing jack and shit, and Jack left town. No action on repealing the industry written Bankruptcy Bill, no Wall Street regulation, no torture prosecutions, no health care reform, no increase in the minimum wage, watering down the stimulus that we need to reverse the 600,000 a month job loss rate, etc.
That's how you got an almost order of magnitude increase in the federal deficit in the first month of a new president. That was of course before any of the other multi-trillion dollar projects come up and get added to the grand total.
That was really the singular reason to vote for McCain to the exclusion of all others good and bad, but the independents who voted for Obama blew it when they could not grasp this fundamental concept (control of the house and senate was never really in question). Never let one party hold all the marbles, it's like crossing the streams...
Wow, where were you teabaggers when Reagan invented the multi-trillion dollar debt and turned us from being the largest creditor nation into the largest debtor nation? Where were you teabaggers when George W. Bush was lying us into the Iraq Boondoogle? Where were the teabaggers when Bush pushed and signed TARP?
And while you can argue about the danger of large deficits, to do so without mentioning WHY the Democrats are doing so (cleaning up the cesspool that Republicans left them) is just pure sophistry.
Government moves slow, which is probably a good thing.
A rather stupid one sized fits all philosophy - just ask anyone from New Orleans.
If this WERE true the computer video card industry, with it's 6 month refresh cycles, would have collapsed years ago.
Except that Nvidia and ATI only unveil new product specs when they are close to launch, and when they're ready to start discounting the current generation. Exactly what Apple does. I know Nvidia will have a faster card next year, and Apple will have iPods with more memory for the same or lesser price, but wont know the details until they've been announced.
I an go to Intel, Microsoft, Sun, Oracle, or IBM, and in return for signing a NDA, they will give a roadmap of what their product lines will be doing in the next 1-5 years.
And how well has Longhorn been running on Itanium for you? How about that RAMBUS memory?
I don't know if the $500,000 I'm spending on Mac hardware will be obsolete and unsupported in 24 hours.
Why are you spending $500,000 on 6+ year old hardware?
But to LIE about it is deeply morally flawed.
Not when the issue is Not Your Fucking Business, it's not. A woman's weight, a man's impotency, a consensual blow job, and cancer firmly fall in that category.
Too bad your free market concern trolling doesn't change the fact that socialized medicine provides better care, faster, for less money.
Public healthcare, while seemingly free (most people do pay for it in the end) but I'm not sure such a lawsuit friendly country can handle being told you have to wait months for treatment or that you can't have a certain treatment because it's not cost effective.
Sphincter says what? Private insurance companies delay and deny care as standard operating procedure. This distopian future you describe is already here, only it's worse now. You have company bureaucrats getting paid bonuses for denying care, and for-profit hospitals "reducing excess capacity" - closing emergency rooms and laying off nurses to make another buck.
As opposed to all the Americans who were killed by American insurance companies who voted in American polls.....
Yawn - the Constitution goes well past the 10th Amendment. You should try reading it sometime, you might run across General Welfare, which is mentioned. Twice.
The second problem for you is that much of our military and most of our intelligence agencies are just as "unconstitutional" as UHC, because while the Constitution mentions Common Defense in the same sentence as General Welfare, Congress only has the "authority" to raise money for an army and a navy. So the Air Force, CIA, NSA, Border Patrol, NORAD, and all spy satellites are as "unconstitutional" as Social Security and socialized health care.
It's almost like you're partisan hacks making arguments of convenience. Huh, interesting.
I'm torn on this one, I hate regulations.
Do you hate getting on planes knowing that they're subject to regular maintenance and regulations designed to keep them from flying into other planes?
Do you hate drinking water and being reasonably certain it's not full of arsenic?
Do you hate buying food and knowing it shouldn't be rotten or full of e coli?
But at the same time many of those providers who are putting caps in place *sold* their service as unlimited and I believe they should be forced to honor the original agreement.
Here's a solution even a Libertarian loon could love: tell the ISP's that sure, they can implement their caps and overages. Just as soon as they start paying rent on all the land that their lines run across. The state government could set the rates for public land, and private land owners could set whatever rates they want. You'll never see a corporatist take a nice, warm cup of STFU faster than that.
I'm always slightly baffled at how people can rail against "security theater," saying that it causes massive inconvenience to honest people and is often worse than useless in preventing bad people from doing bad things, then turn right around and swear up and down that the same methodology is the only way to protect us from evil corporations.
You're baffled because you're thick and your logic is shit. Water is a liquid. Drinking water is good for you. Drano is a liquid. So drinking Drano must be good for you too.....?
So yeah, security theater is crappy regulation. But maybe you should re-think your regulation==evil shtick the next time you step on an airplane, take a drink of water, get a prescription drug or even take a bite of food.
Well, the United States Constitution is a pretty easy read.
Indeed it is.
What you are looking for is the 10th Amendment.
But the Constitution doesn't stop at the 10th Amendment - feel free to read Article I, it's easy as well.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
"The Congress shall have power . . . To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes"
You don't much more inter-state and between nations than the Internet.
Not regulating them in the name of "interstate commerce" is indeed quite a stretch.
Fixed that for you, as you can't get much more inter-state and international than the Internet. The Commerce Clause has been stretched to ludicrous levels - regulating seeds a farmer grows for his own use on his own farm - but this isn't one of them.
One question, where is the power to regulate ISPs given to the federal government by the Constitution of the USA? Or for that matter radio, TV, or telephone?
The Constitution does go past the 10th Amendment...something about regulating something or ether between the states...
And if you look at other early documents you'll see government was supported to be strictly limited in what powers it had.
And if you look at the Constitution it provides for flexibility. For example, General Welfare, which is mentioned twice.
First the internet is not commerce between foreign Nations, and among the several States, or with the Indian Tribes. So that would only apply to multi-state ISPs, not all ISPs offer service in more than one state. There are literally dozens of local ISPs where I live. Since the backbones are national and international the feds could regulate them but it can't regulate local ISPs.
...which obviously still falls under interstate commerce as the Internet is a world wide network. However, if Norwegian Cable wants to make an intranet in Minnesota and be free from the FCC, more power to them.
As you say the feds have gone after people in California for marijuana after the state legalized medical marijuana.
Rather atrocious. It boggles the mind that it's conventional wisdom that Prohibition was a complete failure with alcohol, yet we insist on continuing Prohibition 2.0: WOD.
Laws should only be ones wherein harm to others is caused. Crimes like murder, pollution, rape, robbery. The rest can be handled with civil lawsuits.
Which is awesome as long as you 1) know who did what to you and 2) have the money to hire a legal team. For everyone else, it would be a cornholing of Biblical proportions. The whole reason we have regulation and oversight is because we already tried free market Libertarianism and it just got a lot of people killed while shoveling money into corporate hands.
....for large swaths of the country. And then maybe you'd like to explain why socialisticky Asian and European countries have faster personal connections at home for a fraction of the cost, while having more bandwidth than your typical American university.
That's not going to help with a monopoly - you can't take your business elsewhere if there is no other place to go. Instead, pass a law stating that if ISP's start implementing these caps, that they have to start paying rent on all the public and private land that their lines run across. Should get them to STFU real quick.
I pay my utilities by usage.
Probably only for power. Water, sewage and garbage, not so much. So your comparison is 25% Scottish, 75% Not Scottish.
Civil war is the first step on the ladder back up out of the hole.
Interesting, and what zealot camp did you go to: one run by Al Queda or one run by Falwell?
First of all, what's the point of a netbook besides "I have a cool device"?
Um, the ability to do real work on an ultra portable laptop? I got my wife an HP Mini for her birthday, it runs all the apps she needs and fits in her purse. Good luck doing that with a smartphone or a 13" laptop.