You are a dumbass. A greedy, self-centered dumbass. Public education means more educated workers and more customers with more money in their hands for whatever business you are in or are invested in. What you pay out in taxes is more than made up for with economic and societal gains.
There are easy counter-arguments to the old marketshare chestnut. Apache vs IIS - the latter (since improved) had far more exploits than Apache, despite the former having much greater marketshare. The trophy factor - you write the latest Code Red and it shuts down a million Windows machines - whoop de do, it's been done before. But imagine the bragging rights if you wrote the first virus to take down a million Macs instead.
And for the malware snooping for credit information, a large chunk of PC's are set up in education, government offices, or in businesses, where they are unlikely to have personal information. Whereas a higher percentage of Macs are going to be personal computers, with owners who probably have more disposable income since Apple doesn't make $400 POS specials like Dell or HP.
But in any case, it's not marketshare that made Windows the object of attacks, it was Microsoft's sloppy coding. If Apple integrated the browser into the operating system, made Active X, and had services and ports open all over the place, they'd have had problems too.
I suppose that could be your only basis of comparison, if you were a total moron as well in addition to being illiterate. As I said:
However, Vista's requirements are a 343%/800%/1000% increase over XP's. And for what? The only interesting feature of Vista that wasn't stripped out was ReadyBoost, which is overcome by the bloat and DRM.
Bloat and increased hardware requirements might be worth it if they came with increase in functionality. Vista doesn't come close to doing that.
Military spending in its entirety isn't even a quarter of the federal budget.
Actually it was almost exactly a quarter of the budget in 2007. And yes, defense spending is #1 on the budget - remember how the Bush Administration likes to pretend the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are a separate part of the budget.
We're surrounded on two sides by the largest oceans in the world, and on the other two sides by large, friendly nations. Our actual defense needs are pretty minuscule.
Which would be a disaster. You're right about Wall Street; greedy investment bankers can reap what they sow. But the reason the rest of the economy is in bad shape is because the middle class doesn't have any damn money but does have a lot of debt. Welfare and medicare keep people from starving to death or dying in the streets. Social Security prevents the elderly and the disabled from becoming homeless.
After those, you could start whacking a lot of the unconstitutional things the feds are involved with, such as the department of education.
General Welfare. It's in the Constitution. Twice. If you're response to that is the canned "promote, not provide", Article 1, Section 8 uses the word "provide". If your response to that is that General Welfare is limited to the enumerated list in Section 8, then Common Defense is equally limited.
In other words, if the Department of Education is unconstitutional, so is the Air Force, because Congress only has the power to raise funds for an army or a navy. In addition to the USAF, our spy satellites would be unconstitutional, as well as the border patrol, large parts of the FBI, as well as any intelligence agency not a party of the Army or the Navy. Instead of bailing out CitiGroup, pass single payer health care. Spend a trillion dollars on rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure rather than on bailing out greedy investment bankers.
And all the "green" subsidies should go away too.
Too bad we can't put climate change on pause while we resuscitate the economy.
Follow this up by cuts to foreign aid. Should we really be giving tons of money away when we can't even keep our government in the black at home? That's a recipe for disaster.
Ignoring the rest of the world, now that's a disaster. Foreign aid is a drop in the bucket, yet it helps maintain stability around the world. Even if you're a self-centered elitist, you want foreign aid because it means more customers for American products.
And for everything else in the budget, cut it by 10% but demand they provide the same level of service. I GUARANTEE you that could be done. In the private sector, companies are always having to drive out costs to remain competitive and profitable, especially in down times like this when their revenues drop.
You can tell your high school gymnastic team that they all need to lose 10 pounds. Might be great for the less motivated athletes, not so great for the ones who are already down to 3% body fat. So yes, there's a great deal of wasteful spending that could be cut - but you don't want to take money from underfunded programs.
One last thing to do, this time on the revenue side: cut taxes.
Only if you are talking about cuts for the middle and lower classes. There has never been a single tax cut for the rich that has ever produced a single job in this country. Not one. If a business owner thinks his business will benefit from expansion, he'll go ahead and expand it - and write off the costs on his tax returns. His personal income tax rate is irrelevant to the economics of scale.
A fact ignored by the media is that when Bush cut taxes, revenue actually rose.
A dishonest argument that started with Reagan. The reason you can cut taxes on the richest Americans and see tax receipts rise is simple: our population is growing. A nation of 300 million people and a top rate of 35% will produce more tax receipts than a nation of 280 million and a top rate of 38%. What puts the lie to your argument is the fact that Clinton raised the top tax rate and receipts went up more than they did under Bush.
If you want to see a real tax policy in an economic crisis, look to the Great Depression and WWII. We had 91% marginal rates and a tax on windfall profits. Go ahead and temporarily slash taxes on the middle and lower classes - but bring back the 91% marginal rates and tax the hell out of Exxon.
Cutting it would be a disaster, yes. That's why it needs to be replaced instead of eliminated. Instead of spending hundreds of billions on weapons systems, we spend hundreds of billions on infrastructure, education and research. Rather than building stealth bombers, Boeing and Lockheed Martin could develop a high speed rail system. Rather than throwing money away at a missile shield that probably will never work while pissing off Russia, spend it on cancer treatments, etc.
The U.S. is surrounded by two large, peaceful neighbors and the world's two largest oceans. Our actual defense needs are pretty damned small. Given the last 100 years of military history, it should be the EU outspending the rest of the world combined on defense. Yet somehow they don't and are just fine today.
No, because Clinton refused to blow up the budget with the tax cuts the Republicans were demanding.
The only time we get relatively sensible Government is when one party does not control both the Legislative and Executive branches.
FDR and the overwhelmingly Democratic Congress of the 30's debunked that chestnut.
God forbid the Dems get complete control of Congress after Dec. 4.
God forbid they don't. For all their previous wailing about "up or down votes", the Republicans in the Senate have broken all filibuster records. John Kyl of Arizona, one of those wailers, has already vowed to block Obama's court appointments. It was a lame campaign slogan, but we do need change - change that the Republicans will try to block every step of the way. Once the Republican party has had a complete enema and moved past race baiting and anti-intellectualism, or the Democrats have caught up to them in incompetence and corruption, we can talk again about the virtues of divided governments.
Ted Kennedy wouldn't turn into a hard boiled conservative if he visited Cuba anymore than Cheney would suddenly be liberal if he hung out with Fransisco Franco. Anyone who thinks that Obama is "far left", even in the U.S., needs to see a nice doctor in North Korea for their anal obstruction. Once the doctor has finished removing the person's head from their ass, they can take a look around and see what "far left" really looks like.
On the other hand, if we keep going the way we are, the cost of servicing the federal debt will eventually exceed tax revenues. We're already to the point where a third of taxes collected go to interest payments. I understand what you're saying, but we simply cannot keep overspending forever, and the theory that we'll pay the debt down in good times has proven to be a fantasy. Yes, Clinton did manage to reduce the debt, slightly, during the end of his term of office, but the net result of his presidency was an increase in debt.
The solution is quite easy, the problem is the lack of political courage. Bring back the 91% marginal tax rates, tax windfall profits, update mining laws, repeal the Taft-Hartley act, pass single payer health care, subsidize secondary education, and spend a couple trillion dollars rebuilding our national infrastructure instead of bailing out greedy investment bankers. Once the economy rebounds, leave the 91% tax rate in place until the national debt is paid off.
They get an equal helping of scorn and blame for the dollars wasted in this decade.
Too many Democrats have been complicit in enabling Bush's agenda, but to claim that the mess in Iraq and the mess at home aren't majority owned by Republicans is pure nonsense.
Most of the deficit racked up over the last 8 years has been because of profligate spending in pursuit the war on terrah and tax cuts for the rich
Fixed your sophistry.
I guess I'm just disappointed that people clamored for and swallowed a line about change and reduced deficits, yet elected a candidate who campaigned on increasing spending and cutting taxes while excoriating the current Administration for that same policy as the source of increased deficits.
I don't know if you got the memo, Hoover, but cutting spending in the face of a severe recession and a possible recession is one of the worst things you can do. We need increase public demand (created through government spending) to make up for falling private demand.
Previous new versions of Windows offered increased usability or stability (NT -> 2k -> XP, 95 -> 98), while seeing system requirements rise by an average of 177%/122%/282% for processor/memory/hard drive space on NT based operating systems. XP's annoying product activation at least came with instant user switching and the "run as" contextual menu, which made it much less of a pain in the ass to have your user account not be an administrator.
However, Vista's requirements are a 343%/800%/1000% increase over XP's. And for what? The only interesting feature of Vista that wasn't stripped out was ReadyBoost, which is overcome by the bloat and DRM. Visa is a big sinking pile of shit, just like ME.
But ME was a stop gap release, it wasn't supposed to be the future of the company. And now, as Apple lampoons, Microsoft's solution to the problem is to spend a bunch of money to fix consumer's impression of Vista, rather than fixing Vista.
but it's a fantastic story with a scope that I've never seen anywhere before. Book 1 (Quicksilver) doesn't seem to do too much on it's own, but most of what happens in that book comes back to haunt you (and the characters) in book 3 (System of the World). I'm more than impressed with Stephenson's ability to see a story this big.
Obama voted for cloture on immunity, and voted for the final bill with immunity. The provision to strip it from the legislation was only a fig leaf set up by Harry Reid to cover for fools and cowards. But even if you think immunity is the greatest thing since sliced bread, that doesn't change the fact that Obama broke his pledge to support a filibuster to block telecom immunity.
Because there's a huge difference between authorized government agents looking for criminal activities and regular employees looking through clients' records as mere entertainment.
Like when they listened to troops in Iraq calling their wives for phone sex?
Obama voted for the resolution to strip the FISA bill of the telecom immunity provision.
A fig leaf from Harry Reid, who set up the differing legislation so telecom immunity would be the version to pass. The important vote was the one on cloture for immunity - and Obama voted for that one too. He completely went back on his pledge to support a filibuster of immunity.
Absolutely nothing can be done in the Senate without compromise.
"Absolutely nothing" was the preferable approach. The existing FISA laws were more than sufficient for intelligence needs, and besides, the supposedly vital parts of the bill were already in the Protect America Act, which was extended until 2009. No new law needed to be passed, no new action needed to be taken, and no voter constituencies were demanding telecom immunity. It was a CYA bill for telecom executives and complicit politicians in both parties.
Letters and phone calls through approved channels come to mind. They also have visitation.
Letters, sure. Phone calls are insanely expensive (high priced collect calls) and so is visitation, unless you live in the same town. And if you really are a kingpin from prison, you're still going to find ways to manage your drug empire and order hits. If they want a draconian ban on cell phones, fine, but then they need to make regular phone calls reasonable.
Complete straw man. If a doctor wants to go see a movie while on call, he can do it just as they did before cell phones. He'll give the hospital the number for the movie theater and tell them which movie he'll be watching.
Unless you have a few million dollars and are self-insured, other policy holders with your auto/health insurance company will be footing the bill for your dumb ass. And even if you do have millions of dollars and are self-insured, other drivers don't want your dumb ass hitting their car after you're ejected from your seat in an accident. So stop being a tool and wear your damn seat belt.
Speed limits are designed for the safety of everyone involved, and that includes pedestrians.
No, they're designed for generating revenue. Otherwise, speed limits would be based on the 85th percentile and enforcement would be based around dangerous areas as opposed to busy areas. "Safety" is merely the marketing term they use for another sin tax.
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I'd say that Apple's worse.
That's because you're an idiot.
When you buy a PC, you normally buy a box that happens to have Windows on it.
Yes, you buy an HP or a Dell and it comes with Windows on it. They both make more machines than Apple, and yet you aren't blathering about suing them.
and proprietary hardware
Name one part of a Mac that's proprietary. Then name all the parts that aren't and get back to us with the percentage.
You are a dumbass. A greedy, self-centered dumbass. Public education means more educated workers and more customers with more money in their hands for whatever business you are in or are invested in. What you pay out in taxes is more than made up for with economic and societal gains.
There are easy counter-arguments to the old marketshare chestnut. Apache vs IIS - the latter (since improved) had far more exploits than Apache, despite the former having much greater marketshare. The trophy factor - you write the latest Code Red and it shuts down a million Windows machines - whoop de do, it's been done before. But imagine the bragging rights if you wrote the first virus to take down a million Macs instead.
And for the malware snooping for credit information, a large chunk of PC's are set up in education, government offices, or in businesses, where they are unlikely to have personal information. Whereas a higher percentage of Macs are going to be personal computers, with owners who probably have more disposable income since Apple doesn't make $400 POS specials like Dell or HP.
But in any case, it's not marketshare that made Windows the object of attacks, it was Microsoft's sloppy coding. If Apple integrated the browser into the operating system, made Active X, and had services and ports open all over the place, they'd have had problems too.
I suppose that could be your only basis of comparison, if you were a total moron as well in addition to being illiterate. As I said:
Bloat and increased hardware requirements might be worth it if they came with increase in functionality. Vista doesn't come close to doing that.
Military spending in its entirety isn't even a quarter of the federal budget.
Actually it was almost exactly a quarter of the budget in 2007. And yes, defense spending is #1 on the budget - remember how the Bush Administration likes to pretend the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are a separate part of the budget.
We're surrounded on two sides by the largest oceans in the world, and on the other two sides by large, friendly nations. Our actual defense needs are pretty minuscule.
Next we could start cutting social programs.
Which would be a disaster. You're right about Wall Street; greedy investment bankers can reap what they sow. But the reason the rest of the economy is in bad shape is because the middle class doesn't have any damn money but does have a lot of debt. Welfare and medicare keep people from starving to death or dying in the streets. Social Security prevents the elderly and the disabled from becoming homeless.
After those, you could start whacking a lot of the unconstitutional things the feds are involved with, such as the department of education.
General Welfare. It's in the Constitution. Twice. If you're response to that is the canned "promote, not provide", Article 1, Section 8 uses the word "provide". If your response to that is that General Welfare is limited to the enumerated list in Section 8, then Common Defense is equally limited.
In other words, if the Department of Education is unconstitutional, so is the Air Force, because Congress only has the power to raise funds for an army or a navy. In addition to the USAF, our spy satellites would be unconstitutional, as well as the border patrol, large parts of the FBI, as well as any intelligence agency not a party of the Army or the Navy. Instead of bailing out CitiGroup, pass single payer health care. Spend a trillion dollars on rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure rather than on bailing out greedy investment bankers.
And all the "green" subsidies should go away too.
Too bad we can't put climate change on pause while we resuscitate the economy.
Follow this up by cuts to foreign aid. Should we really be giving tons of money away when we can't even keep our government in the black at home? That's a recipe for disaster.
Ignoring the rest of the world, now that's a disaster. Foreign aid is a drop in the bucket, yet it helps maintain stability around the world. Even if you're a self-centered elitist, you want foreign aid because it means more customers for American products.
And for everything else in the budget, cut it by 10% but demand they provide the same level of service. I GUARANTEE you that could be done. In the private sector, companies are always having to drive out costs to remain competitive and profitable, especially in down times like this when their revenues drop.
You can tell your high school gymnastic team that they all need to lose 10 pounds. Might be great for the less motivated athletes, not so great for the ones who are already down to 3% body fat. So yes, there's a great deal of wasteful spending that could be cut - but you don't want to take money from underfunded programs.
One last thing to do, this time on the revenue side: cut taxes.
Only if you are talking about cuts for the middle and lower classes. There has never been a single tax cut for the rich that has ever produced a single job in this country. Not one. If a business owner thinks his business will benefit from expansion, he'll go ahead and expand it - and write off the costs on his tax returns. His personal income tax rate is irrelevant to the economics of scale.
A fact ignored by the media is that when Bush cut taxes, revenue actually rose.
A dishonest argument that started with Reagan. The reason you can cut taxes on the richest Americans and see tax receipts rise is simple: our population is growing. A nation of 300 million people and a top rate of 35% will produce more tax receipts than a nation of 280 million and a top rate of 38%. What puts the lie to your argument is the fact that Clinton raised the top tax rate and receipts went up more than they did under Bush.
If you want to see a real tax policy in an economic crisis, look to the Great Depression and WWII. We had 91% marginal rates and a tax on windfall profits. Go ahead and temporarily slash taxes on the middle and lower classes - but bring back the 91% marginal rates and tax the hell out of Exxon.
Cutting it would be a disaster, yes. That's why it needs to be replaced instead of eliminated. Instead of spending hundreds of billions on weapons systems, we spend hundreds of billions on infrastructure, education and research. Rather than building stealth bombers, Boeing and Lockheed Martin could develop a high speed rail system. Rather than throwing money away at a missile shield that probably will never work while pissing off Russia, spend it on cancer treatments, etc.
The U.S. is surrounded by two large, peaceful neighbors and the world's two largest oceans. Our actual defense needs are pretty damned small. Given the last 100 years of military history, it should be the EU outspending the rest of the world combined on defense. Yet somehow they don't and are just fine today.
Ummm, we had roads and police before a national income tax was instated.
Not for a nation of 300 million people with 2+ cars per family, we didn't.
The government can't fix anything well.
Myth, see health care, fire protection, police protection, infrastructure...
The income tax, along with the federal reserve act, have basically destroyed the American free market.
Delusional.
Maybe give a study of Austrian economics
You first, Mr. Pot.
Because the Reps were in charge of Congress.
No, because Clinton refused to blow up the budget with the tax cuts the Republicans were demanding.
The only time we get relatively sensible Government is when one party does not control both the Legislative and Executive branches.
FDR and the overwhelmingly Democratic Congress of the 30's debunked that chestnut.
God forbid the Dems get complete control of Congress after Dec. 4.
God forbid they don't. For all their previous wailing about "up or down votes", the Republicans in the Senate have broken all filibuster records. John Kyl of Arizona, one of those wailers, has already vowed to block Obama's court appointments. It was a lame campaign slogan, but we do need change - change that the Republicans will try to block every step of the way. Once the Republican party has had a complete enema and moved past race baiting and anti-intellectualism, or the Democrats have caught up to them in incompetence and corruption, we can talk again about the virtues of divided governments.
Ted Kennedy wouldn't turn into a hard boiled conservative if he visited Cuba anymore than Cheney would suddenly be liberal if he hung out with Fransisco Franco. Anyone who thinks that Obama is "far left", even in the U.S., needs to see a nice doctor in North Korea for their anal obstruction. Once the doctor has finished removing the person's head from their ass, they can take a look around and see what "far left" really looks like.
On the other hand, if we keep going the way we are, the cost of servicing the federal debt will eventually exceed tax revenues. We're already to the point where a third of taxes collected go to interest payments. I understand what you're saying, but we simply cannot keep overspending forever, and the theory that we'll pay the debt down in good times has proven to be a fantasy. Yes, Clinton did manage to reduce the debt, slightly, during the end of his term of office, but the net result of his presidency was an increase in debt.
The solution is quite easy, the problem is the lack of political courage. Bring back the 91% marginal tax rates, tax windfall profits, update mining laws, repeal the Taft-Hartley act, pass single payer health care, subsidize secondary education, and spend a couple trillion dollars rebuilding our national infrastructure instead of bailing out greedy investment bankers. Once the economy rebounds, leave the 91% tax rate in place until the national debt is paid off.
They get an equal helping of scorn and blame for the dollars wasted in this decade.
Too many Democrats have been complicit in enabling Bush's agenda, but to claim that the mess in Iraq and the mess at home aren't majority owned by Republicans is pure nonsense.
Most of the deficit racked up over the last 8 years has been because of profligate spending in pursuit the war on terrah and tax cuts for the rich
Fixed your sophistry.
I guess I'm just disappointed that people clamored for and swallowed a line about change and reduced deficits, yet elected a candidate who campaigned on increasing spending and cutting taxes while excoriating the current Administration for that same policy as the source of increased deficits.
I don't know if you got the memo, Hoover, but cutting spending in the face of a severe recession and a possible recession is one of the worst things you can do. We need increase public demand (created through government spending) to make up for falling private demand.
Name for me one piece of legislation during the era of republican control that the democrats wanted to spend *less* on than republicans.
The war in Iraq. Any more questions?
The amount finally agreed to always was a compromise between a higher value the democrats wanted and what the republicans proposed.
And on what planet do you live on where that doesn't translate to "mostly the fault of Republicans?"
But to somehow use that fact to imply that the dems would have spent less is misleading.
The Democrats in Congress signed on for the Iraq invasion in large numbers, but there weren't demanding it.
Previous new versions of Windows offered increased usability or stability (NT -> 2k -> XP, 95 -> 98), while seeing system requirements rise by an average of 177%/122%/282% for processor/memory/hard drive space on NT based operating systems. XP's annoying product activation at least came with instant user switching and the "run as" contextual menu, which made it much less of a pain in the ass to have your user account not be an administrator.
However, Vista's requirements are a 343%/800%/1000% increase over XP's. And for what? The only interesting feature of Vista that wasn't stripped out was ReadyBoost, which is overcome by the bloat and DRM. Visa is a big sinking pile of shit, just like ME.
But ME was a stop gap release, it wasn't supposed to be the future of the company. And now, as Apple lampoons, Microsoft's solution to the problem is to spend a bunch of money to fix consumer's impression of Vista, rather than fixing Vista.
Or, you could just sit by the aisle and tell the ushers where you are sitting. Duh.
Just make it a reality TV show, you'll have plenty of volunteers.
but it's a fantastic story with a scope that I've never seen anywhere before. Book 1 (Quicksilver) doesn't seem to do too much on it's own, but most of what happens in that book comes back to haunt you (and the characters) in book 3 (System of the World). I'm more than impressed with Stephenson's ability to see a story this big.
He must be a Babylon 5 fan.
Obama voted for cloture on immunity, and voted for the final bill with immunity. The provision to strip it from the legislation was only a fig leaf set up by Harry Reid to cover for fools and cowards. But even if you think immunity is the greatest thing since sliced bread, that doesn't change the fact that Obama broke his pledge to support a filibuster to block telecom immunity.
Because there's a huge difference between authorized government agents looking for criminal activities and regular employees looking through clients' records as mere entertainment.
Like when they listened to troops in Iraq calling their wives for phone sex?
Obama voted for the resolution to strip the FISA bill of the telecom immunity provision.
A fig leaf from Harry Reid, who set up the differing legislation so telecom immunity would be the version to pass. The important vote was the one on cloture for immunity - and Obama voted for that one too. He completely went back on his pledge to support a filibuster of immunity.
Absolutely nothing can be done in the Senate without compromise.
"Absolutely nothing" was the preferable approach. The existing FISA laws were more than sufficient for intelligence needs, and besides, the supposedly vital parts of the bill were already in the Protect America Act, which was extended until 2009. No new law needed to be passed, no new action needed to be taken, and no voter constituencies were demanding telecom immunity. It was a CYA bill for telecom executives and complicit politicians in both parties.
Letters and phone calls through approved channels come to mind. They also have visitation.
Letters, sure. Phone calls are insanely expensive (high priced collect calls) and so is visitation, unless you live in the same town. And if you really are a kingpin from prison, you're still going to find ways to manage your drug empire and order hits. If they want a draconian ban on cell phones, fine, but then they need to make regular phone calls reasonable.
The doctor example is not a straw man
Complete straw man. If a doctor wants to go see a movie while on call, he can do it just as they did before cell phones. He'll give the hospital the number for the movie theater and tell them which movie he'll be watching.
Unless you have a few million dollars and are self-insured, other policy holders with your auto/health insurance company will be footing the bill for your dumb ass. And even if you do have millions of dollars and are self-insured, other drivers don't want your dumb ass hitting their car after you're ejected from your seat in an accident. So stop being a tool and wear your damn seat belt.
Speed limits are designed for the safety of everyone involved, and that includes pedestrians.
No, they're designed for generating revenue. Otherwise, speed limits would be based on the 85th percentile and enforcement would be based around dangerous areas as opposed to busy areas. "Safety" is merely the marketing term they use for another sin tax.