"And we're back. I'm Anderson Cooper, and this is AC 360. Before the break we asked our viewers what they thought of the Obama administration's response to the oil disaster."
Pwnface69: Obama is gr8 n I think it we have a black president
"That's a good point. Good input. Let's bring up an opposing view."
RedNeckBeck72: oblama blew up the rig himself and acorn for the stopping drilling cus global warming scam
BushLiedKidsDied: it was bush fault lobbyists and haliburton made backdoor deals
"Quite a diverse array of opinions we have here. Next up, what is the Achilles' Heel of elephants? The answer may surprise you. Stay tuned."
Quite. There is one upside though, it gives Jon Stewart plenty of material, and makes it possible to watch The Daily Show without having to sit through so much footage from Fox News.
It wasn't the media's job to be equally positive or negative to both candidates in the 2008 election. It was the media's job to report what actually happened, even if that means one candidate is making a good impression and the other is not. Obama ran a better campaign than McCain, McCain's running mate was as thick as two short planks, and that's what the media reported (with the exception of one network). Oh BTW, how does health care reform, lifting bans on stem cell research, re-setting NASA's priorities, reducing the number of nuclear weapons, etc. "continue the policies of Bush"? Bush did the opposite of all of these things.
Moderators, by all means do your usual conservative hit job, but I have karma to burn and you'll be meta-moderated. Just thought you should know.
Wow so where exactly does it say government officials have to regulate every thing about our lives?
Two things. 1 - This is about toys included as an incentive to buy unhealthy meals, not "everything in our lives." 2 - These "government officials" as you call them are the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors. You can vote them out at the next election if you don't like what they're doing. In the meantime they were elected into power by the voters and have a mandate to make legally enforceable decisions like this. Deal with it.
What happened to parents parenting???
It has sunk to such a low standard that intervention by elected officials has become necessary.
then surely since the Government is for the people and doing nothing is against the people, the Government must step in.
Spoken in the finest tradition of totalitarian dictators everywhere.
Hey jd...Chavez is calling!
California is the world's best example of government of the people, by the people, for the people run amok. Democracy is supposed to work if the citizenry is properly educated and knows how to make the right decisions. What do we have in California? A population who will believe anything the special interests will tell them (google for Prop 16 for an example) and who vote against every attempt to raise the necessary taxes to pay for the services that they feel entitled to or oftentimes just don't know about. Democracy doesn't work very well if the voters are as thick as two short planks.
California doesn't need more democratic control. California needs a good slap upside the head, and a king installed to put the stupid voters in their place. I mean it. The voters of this state are so fucking stupid I have seriously lost faith in democracy.
There was nothing in the universe. Not one atom. All of a sudden a tiny thing showed up (out of thin air) and exploded and gave birth to the physical universe.
Who cares that the most basic laws of physics say that there is absolutely no possible way the physical universe should be here. There should not be ONE SINGLE ATOM in the universe. But there they are.
Then... life popped up all over the place.
Yeah I feel sooo dumb for wondering why the physical universe could not have just popped into place from thin air for no reason.
The atheists of this age are a wonderful irony. Elitist simpletons who simultaneously think they are genius yet have no ability to think for them self.
So you think the "invisible man in the sky" explanation is more credible than what science has come up with so far?
Let's not forget that it wasn't so long ago that our knowledge didn't even go back as far back as the Big Bang. As recently as the period leading up to the renaissance we weren't all that sure how the Earth fits into the neighbouring planets and the local star, to say nothing of how old or big the universe was. Just because science has frontiers now or because you don't understand the science (which you clearly don't) doesn't make it all bunk.
First in space, first satellite, first man in space, first orbit, first woman in space, first probes on Venus and Mars, first space station--not bad for a bunch of thugs, eh comrade?
That was communism, not the new thugarchy. I don't see the Russian space industry innovating quite as much lately. The US neither, by the way.
Depends what you mean by 'innovate'. NASA has taken each design, used it for a while, and tossed it away in favour of the next thing. The Russians have incrementally improved the design of their rockets since Sputnik. Result? Cheaper launches and less of the reliability issues of the shuttle.
Riiiight. And then you'd be complaining about the redundancy of saying that it wasn't dropped from a carrier plane, it would have been easier to just say that the plane took off itself (which is what TFA actually says).
The plane stayed aloft for 87 minutes, performing test maneuvers as well as completing a successful takeoff and landing.
Gosh, that is novel. So first it flies for 87 minutes, does several maneuvers and THEN even manages a successful takeoff. Didn't see that one coming. I thought it had crashed on takeoff, but no.
Pedantic? You bet.
It as bad as, "he died from his injuries which are believed to have been lethal". No kidding.
Less is more editors. Some of us can read between the lines, especially when they are written in editor crayon. What next, "the red firetruck was red"?
You must be a lot of fun at parties.
Did it not cross your mind that there was the possibility that such a plane was dropped from a carrier aircraft, and hence it was necessary to specify in the article that this thing took off under its own steam?
This weakness on foreign policy is going to result in another war. Fortunately, it is easy to monetize the new socialism. My stock portfolio consists of oil, defense, guns, and ammo.
An incentive for more state to join the non-nuclear club is going to start a war?
Jesus Christ one or two April Fool stories would have been enough. Is there any chance we could get something informative or interesting posted today? I usually get pissed off when a thread about an interesting topic gets invaded by karma whores trying to score a couple of handy 'Funny' points, but today has just been terrible.
Anyone who voices dissent with Obama administration policies on radio/TV and even on the internet should be prepared. There will be a campaign launched to demonize you, painting you as "dangerous" and "promoting violence" and attempting to smear you by conflating voicing your dissent with a few nutjobs (which exist on both sides) who may commit some violent act. You will be fined, taxed, audited, and they'll ultimately will shut you down & silence you if they can.
A Brave New World, indeed!
Strat
Fuck off! The only people being protrayed as dangerous are the Fox "News" watching Timothy McVeigh types showing up with automatic weapons when the President rolls into town to explain why it's a bad idea to let profit-making insurance companies refuse to treat the sick citing trumped up excuses. You people had no such tinfoil hat tendencies when your freedoms really were being undermined by the USA PATRIOT act. Odd, that.
anything that will make the common people laugh at him, and thereby undermine his social standing from within is just about the only hope Venezuela has left
Well he makes a dick out of himself on an almost daily basis with that TV show of his.
I used to have some sympathy for the guy back in the day when it did look like the Bush administration were likely culprits for trying to oust him, but since then he's proven an old saying of mine that sometimes it's better to let someone keep on talking and let him undermine himself. He lost that last refferendum on the constitutional amendment to banish presidential term limits, so it looks like his support isn't as solid as it was.
References to Ralph Nader and Ross Perot are proposed to be removed,
Both of these characters (while more recent) have actually had very little political impact (less so than Stonewall Jackson). Ralf Nader is a minor political player and Ross Perot a failed presidential candidate (there are plenty of those around, e.g. Kerry, Al Gore, Dan Quale, etc...)
Didn't pay much attention to the 2000 election or those shenanigans in Florida, did you?
The only reason GWB was unpopular was because he didn’t win his wars.
Sure. The fact that he ransacked the economy, broke all spending records to double the deficit, alienated just about everybody else in the world, and was an unapologetic idiot had nothing to do with it.
I went into my local 7-Eleven a few weeks ago and saw that Maxim, which sported an attractive scantily clad girl on the front cover, was covered up. Beside it was the National Enquirer (or one of those tabloids) showing a scantily clad girl parading a horrific and stomach-churning display of stretched skin, fat and cellulite. It wasn't covered up.
Shit man, if I wanted to live in a country where the sight of a human body was offensive I'd move to Saudi fucking Arabia.
What?! Is that what it's supposed to mean?! I've been wondering about that for years! LOL! I'd love to smoke weed with some of those marketing people some time!
WTF is it with this trend of conjuring up completely meaningless words to use as company names?
On NPR in the mornings I hear about a company that used to be called Horn Murdoch and Cole (a sensible name that tells you they've been around for a while and actually means something) who for some unfathomable reason decided to call themselves "Acretive Solutions," or something. I mean, aside from the impossibility of being able to tell if it's "Acretive" or "Acrative" just by listening to it, what the hell is that supposed to mean? It sounds almost like "Excretive" which calls to mind images of someone taking a dump!
Accenture, Cingular, Elementis, Altria, I mean, what the fuck is that? At least the idiots at "Consignia" had the sense to revert back to the name that everyone understood and recognized for decades, i.e. 'Royal Mail.'
Sheesh!
There's a transcript here of a BBC radio show talking about this very subject.
Bottom line is this, if you believe in the Constitution as it is written, there may not be any federal right to entitlements making, but there's no right to having a big army or any of the stuff the right wing wants, either.
The founding fathers were libertarians.
And the UK Parliament began as a royal council to the King in feudal England. Some institutions gradually accumulate more power as time wears on, society becomes more complex, and people agree that more and more power has to be centralized in order to keep things running more smoothly in an increasingly interconnected world. The founding fathers of the US didn't live in an age of nuclear weapons, automatic guns, excessive greenhouse gas emissions, or any of the other trappings of 21st century life. It's OK to deviate from what they wanted.
Episode One (in particular) was a kids movie with little regard for the kids' parents.
The taxation of galactic trade routes is in dispute. A pseudo military/industrial organisation is involved in a sepratist campaign to split the galactic republic. Senators endlessly debate the issue and fail to reach a resolution on allowing humanitarian aid into a world that has been blockaded. Yup, a real kid's movie.
... there really is no story left to tell after the destruction of the second Death Star and the death of the Emperor. At least, not a particularly relevant story. I really hope he doesn't ever head down that road.
Yup. It'd be as pointless as season 5 of Babylon 5 turned out to be. Pity the studio didn't give JMS a guarantee that there'd be five seasons earlier, the shadow war could have been fleshed out better in season 4 and not rushed, and the Earth civil war could have filled season 5. Instead we had season 5 filled with filler material about some silly telepath war that I personally didn't give a toss about, and some faceless motive-less baddies called 'raiders.' When a story's done, it's best to leave it.
...make it hard to make a mainstream version of Dune that is at all true to the books.
Why do people insist on movies being "true to the book?"
Books are books and movies are movies. These are different media, so of course there are going to be differences.
As long as the movie gets across the central concept and emotional impact of the original story, then that's "true" enough for me.
Comparing books to their movie offspring is comparing apples and oranges. I mean, look at The Hitch Hiker's Guide. That started as a radio play, then it was a book, then a TV series, then a movie. Initially I found the radio show (it came on two vinyl LPs) better than the book, but then the more I read the book the more I came to appreciate the extra little touches that only that medium could allow.
Look at the original British version of The Office. Look at the subtle little glances at the camera, how are you supposed to get that across in prose? You can't. So if it were a written story then some other joke would have to go in there in its place, or else it would have to be left out completely.
Look at Lord of the Rings. I tried to watch the movies (never having read the books) and all the fan boys loved it because it was "true to the books." No! Those movies sucked! They were too long and full of too much detail all because somebody was worshiping at the altar of being "true to the book."
It doesn't say one way or another whether Chinese dominance would be a good or bad thing. It's a statement about US attitudes to the developing world and how this "we're #1" hubris does not have an infinite shelf life.
I have to admit I'm at a complete loss when I see people (apparently) hoping for China to replace the US as world superpower.
Yes, we have screwed up, but if you really, truly think that the PRC is going to be better for the world than the USA is... well, I don't know what to say.
WTF? Who said they wanted China to replace the US? Who said the PRC was going to be better for the world than the US? Are you on drugs?
Slashdot Mirror
"And we're back. I'm Anderson Cooper, and this is AC 360. Before the break we asked our viewers what they thought of the Obama administration's response to the oil disaster."
Pwnface69: Obama is gr8 n I think it we have a black president
"That's a good point. Good input. Let's bring up an opposing view."
RedNeckBeck72: oblama blew up the rig himself and acorn for the stopping drilling cus global warming scam
BushLiedKidsDied: it was bush fault lobbyists and haliburton made backdoor deals
"Quite a diverse array of opinions we have here. Next up, what is the Achilles' Heel of elephants? The answer may surprise you. Stay tuned."
Quite. There is one upside though, it gives Jon Stewart plenty of material, and makes it possible to watch The Daily Show without having to sit through so much footage from Fox News.
It wasn't the media's job to be equally positive or negative to both candidates in the 2008 election. It was the media's job to report what actually happened, even if that means one candidate is making a good impression and the other is not. Obama ran a better campaign than McCain, McCain's running mate was as thick as two short planks, and that's what the media reported (with the exception of one network). Oh BTW, how does health care reform, lifting bans on stem cell research, re-setting NASA's priorities, reducing the number of nuclear weapons, etc. "continue the policies of Bush"? Bush did the opposite of all of these things.
Moderators, by all means do your usual conservative hit job, but I have karma to burn and you'll be meta-moderated. Just thought you should know.
Wow so where exactly does it say government officials have to regulate every thing about our lives?
Two things.
1 - This is about toys included as an incentive to buy unhealthy meals, not "everything in our lives."
2 - These "government officials" as you call them are the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors. You can vote them out at the next election if you don't like what they're doing. In the meantime they were elected into power by the voters and have a mandate to make legally enforceable decisions like this. Deal with it.
What happened to parents parenting???
It has sunk to such a low standard that intervention by elected officials has become necessary.
Any questions?
I really HATE the fact that people actually believe that it's OK to mandate things as long as they or their proxy's are in charge.
Is this a sarcastic defense of democracy or an actual condemnation of it? I mean, government is the proxy of the people. You know that, right?
then surely since the Government is for the people and doing nothing is against the people, the Government must step in.
Spoken in the finest tradition of totalitarian dictators everywhere.
Hey jd...Chavez is calling!
California is the world's best example of government of the people, by the people, for the people run amok. Democracy is supposed to work if the citizenry is properly educated and knows how to make the right decisions. What do we have in California? A population who will believe anything the special interests will tell them (google for Prop 16 for an example) and who vote against every attempt to raise the necessary taxes to pay for the services that they feel entitled to or oftentimes just don't know about. Democracy doesn't work very well if the voters are as thick as two short planks.
California doesn't need more democratic control. California needs a good slap upside the head, and a king installed to put the stupid voters in their place. I mean it. The voters of this state are so fucking stupid I have seriously lost faith in democracy.
There was nothing in the universe. Not one atom. All of a sudden a tiny thing showed up (out of thin air) and exploded and gave birth to the physical universe.
Who cares that the most basic laws of physics say that there is absolutely no possible way the physical universe should be here. There should not be ONE SINGLE ATOM in the universe. But there they are.
Then ... life popped up all over the place.
Yeah I feel sooo dumb for wondering why the physical universe could not have just popped into place from thin air for no reason.
The atheists of this age are a wonderful irony. Elitist simpletons who simultaneously think they are genius yet have no ability to think for them self.
So you think the "invisible man in the sky" explanation is more credible than what science has come up with so far?
Let's not forget that it wasn't so long ago that our knowledge didn't even go back as far back as the Big Bang. As recently as the period leading up to the renaissance we weren't all that sure how the Earth fits into the neighbouring planets and the local star, to say nothing of how old or big the universe was. Just because science has frontiers now or because you don't understand the science (which you clearly don't) doesn't make it all bunk.
"Simpletons" indeed!
First in space, first satellite, first man in space, first orbit, first woman in space, first probes on Venus and Mars, first space station--not bad for a bunch of thugs, eh comrade?
That was communism, not the new thugarchy. I don't see the Russian space industry innovating quite as much lately. The US neither, by the way.
Depends what you mean by 'innovate'. NASA has taken each design, used it for a while, and tossed it away in favour of the next thing. The Russians have incrementally improved the design of their rockets since Sputnik. Result? Cheaper launches and less of the reliability issues of the shuttle.
Riiiight. And then you'd be complaining about the redundancy of saying that it wasn't dropped from a carrier plane, it would have been easier to just say that the plane took off itself (which is what TFA actually says).
The plane stayed aloft for 87 minutes, performing test maneuvers as well as completing a successful takeoff and landing.
Gosh, that is novel. So first it flies for 87 minutes, does several maneuvers and THEN even manages a successful takeoff. Didn't see that one coming. I thought it had crashed on takeoff, but no.
Pedantic? You bet.
It as bad as, "he died from his injuries which are believed to have been lethal". No kidding.
Less is more editors. Some of us can read between the lines, especially when they are written in editor crayon. What next, "the red firetruck was red"?
You must be a lot of fun at parties.
Did it not cross your mind that there was the possibility that such a plane was dropped from a carrier aircraft, and hence it was necessary to specify in the article that this thing took off under its own steam?
This weakness on foreign policy is going to result in another war. Fortunately, it is easy to monetize the new socialism. My stock portfolio consists of oil, defense, guns, and ammo.
An incentive for more state to join the non-nuclear club is going to start a war?
Jesus Christ one or two April Fool stories would have been enough. Is there any chance we could get something informative or interesting posted today? I usually get pissed off when a thread about an interesting topic gets invaded by karma whores trying to score a couple of handy 'Funny' points, but today has just been terrible.
Anyone who voices dissent with Obama administration policies on radio/TV and even on the internet should be prepared. There will be a campaign launched to demonize you, painting you as "dangerous" and "promoting violence" and attempting to smear you by conflating voicing your dissent with a few nutjobs (which exist on both sides) who may commit some violent act. You will be fined, taxed, audited, and they'll ultimately will shut you down & silence you if they can.
A Brave New World, indeed!
Strat
Fuck off! The only people being protrayed as dangerous are the Fox "News" watching Timothy McVeigh types showing up with automatic weapons when the President rolls into town to explain why it's a bad idea to let profit-making insurance companies refuse to treat the sick citing trumped up excuses. You people had no such tinfoil hat tendencies when your freedoms really were being undermined by the USA PATRIOT act. Odd, that.
Well it's awfully damn convienient that whenever someone starts a socialist or communist government, they always happen to end up a dictator.
Harold Wilson was a dictator? Tony Blair ended up a dictator?! Gordon Brown is a dictator?
anything that will make the common people laugh at him, and thereby undermine his social standing from within is just about the only hope Venezuela has left
Well he makes a dick out of himself on an almost daily basis with that TV show of his.
I used to have some sympathy for the guy back in the day when it did look like the Bush administration were likely culprits for trying to oust him, but since then he's proven an old saying of mine that sometimes it's better to let someone keep on talking and let him undermine himself. He lost that last refferendum on the constitutional amendment to banish presidential term limits, so it looks like his support isn't as solid as it was.
Didn't pay much attention to the 2000 election or those shenanigans in Florida, did you?
Sure. The fact that he ransacked the economy, broke all spending records to double the deficit, alienated just about everybody else in the world, and was an unapologetic idiot had nothing to do with it.
"Insightful" my ass.
Inconsistency where the female form is concerned?
I see you and I raise you.
I went into my local 7-Eleven a few weeks ago and saw that Maxim, which sported an attractive scantily clad girl on the front cover, was covered up. Beside it was the National Enquirer (or one of those tabloids) showing a scantily clad girl parading a horrific and stomach-churning display of stretched skin, fat and cellulite. It wasn't covered up.
Shit man, if I wanted to live in a country where the sight of a human body was offensive I'd move to Saudi fucking Arabia.
Accent on the Future = Accenture
What?! Is that what it's supposed to mean?! I've been wondering about that for years! LOL! I'd love to smoke weed with some of those marketing people some time!
WTF is it with this trend of conjuring up completely meaningless words to use as company names?
On NPR in the mornings I hear about a company that used to be called Horn Murdoch and Cole (a sensible name that tells you they've been around for a while and actually means something) who for some unfathomable reason decided to call themselves "Acretive Solutions," or something. I mean, aside from the impossibility of being able to tell if it's "Acretive" or "Acrative" just by listening to it, what the hell is that supposed to mean? It sounds almost like "Excretive" which calls to mind images of someone taking a dump!
Accenture, Cingular, Elementis, Altria, I mean, what the fuck is that? At least the idiots at "Consignia" had the sense to revert back to the name that everyone understood and recognized for decades, i.e. 'Royal Mail.'
Sheesh!
There's a transcript here of a BBC radio show talking about this very subject.
George W. Bush spent most of his academic career in private schools in New England.
....drinking.
Bottom line is this, if you believe in the Constitution as it is written, there may not be any federal right to entitlements making, but there's no right to having a big army or any of the stuff the right wing wants, either.
The founding fathers were libertarians.
And the UK Parliament began as a royal council to the King in feudal England. Some institutions gradually accumulate more power as time wears on, society becomes more complex, and people agree that more and more power has to be centralized in order to keep things running more smoothly in an increasingly interconnected world. The founding fathers of the US didn't live in an age of nuclear weapons, automatic guns, excessive greenhouse gas emissions, or any of the other trappings of 21st century life. It's OK to deviate from what they wanted.
Episode One (in particular) was a kids movie with little regard for the kids' parents.
The taxation of galactic trade routes is in dispute. A pseudo military/industrial organisation is involved in a sepratist campaign to split the galactic republic. Senators endlessly debate the issue and fail to reach a resolution on allowing humanitarian aid into a world that has been blockaded. Yup, a real kid's movie.
... there really is no story left to tell after the destruction of the second Death Star and the death of the Emperor. At least, not a particularly relevant story. I really hope he doesn't ever head down that road.
Yup. It'd be as pointless as season 5 of Babylon 5 turned out to be. Pity the studio didn't give JMS a guarantee that there'd be five seasons earlier, the shadow war could have been fleshed out better in season 4 and not rushed, and the Earth civil war could have filled season 5. Instead we had season 5 filled with filler material about some silly telepath war that I personally didn't give a toss about, and some faceless motive-less baddies called 'raiders.' When a story's done, it's best to leave it.
...make it hard to make a mainstream version of Dune that is at all true to the books.
Why do people insist on movies being "true to the book?"
Books are books and movies are movies. These are different media, so of course there are going to be differences.
As long as the movie gets across the central concept and emotional impact of the original story, then that's "true" enough for me.
Comparing books to their movie offspring is comparing apples and oranges. I mean, look at The Hitch Hiker's Guide. That started as a radio play, then it was a book, then a TV series, then a movie. Initially I found the radio show (it came on two vinyl LPs) better than the book, but then the more I read the book the more I came to appreciate the extra little touches that only that medium could allow.
Look at the original British version of The Office. Look at the subtle little glances at the camera, how are you supposed to get that across in prose? You can't. So if it were a written story then some other joke would have to go in there in its place, or else it would have to be left out completely.
Look at Lord of the Rings. I tried to watch the movies (never having read the books) and all the fan boys loved it because it was "true to the books." No! Those movies sucked! They were too long and full of too much detail all because somebody was worshiping at the altar of being "true to the book."
It doesn't say one way or another whether Chinese dominance would be a good or bad thing. It's a statement about US attitudes to the developing world and how this "we're #1" hubris does not have an infinite shelf life.
I have to admit I'm at a complete loss when I see people (apparently) hoping for China to replace the US as world superpower.
Yes, we have screwed up, but if you really, truly think that the PRC is going to be better for the world than the USA is... well, I don't know what to say.
WTF? Who said they wanted China to replace the US? Who said the PRC was going to be better for the world than the US? Are you on drugs?