If I had to guess, it's probably a reaction to the ridiculous alarmist end-times rhetoric from the less competent believers.
This is why the US has done nothing about global warming. The actions of fetishist environmentalists are only tangential to the issue. You see, all you have to do is *claim* that radical environmentalists are doing yadayada, then have some liberal say something snarky, rinse and repeat ad-neuseum on Fox and conservative radio, and the oft-repeated lie becomes the truth. Just as Hitler claimed.
Every time an industry is up for regulation, they claim that the world is going to end. Think: acid rain (it will ruin the economy, and do nothing about acid rain anyway!!!), think: CFCs (it will ruin the economy, and do nothing about the ozone anyway!!!). This whining works, for decades and decades, because they buy laws and politicians, and lobby the public with all sorts of disinformation.
The largest segment of alarmists in the climate change "debate" are those that claim action will ruin the economy, when there is empirical evidence today that this is simply not the case.
And the GOP is apparently the party against crony capitalism.
How else can you explain how Democrats who once shredded GWB on his horrid civil liberties record, clam up and circle the wagons around Obama when Obama is even worse than GWB.
True. The Dems have adopted as "see no evil" policy. Incipit. Read Lofgrens book. it is great.
This plane is delivery military aid. If you include military aid as part of war (which is a valid point of view), then the US is at war with half the world.
There were ongoing military operations in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. Seriously, the GP has a point. Obama didn't start three wars. All these actions (save Libya) are just an extension of the Bush politices.
There needs to be less "Us vs. Them" in American politics. There needs to be more "Right vs. Wrong".
Here, here. I second that. Unfortunately, the incentive structures for political organisations are stacked against dialogue. Instead, they are encouraged to inspire hatred and anger in their base with snarky comments, since this increases the likelihood that people will repeat the dribbly snark, and eventually show up at the polls. It is amazing how transparent some of the lies are, but we, as human beings, refuse to look at counter-evidence.
Both parties in the (root of most evil) 2-party system are effectively identical from the standpoint of corporations.
Mainly because of how fund-raising works. And now the GOP are all ra-ra about citizens-vs-united, and the campaign financing is even more susceptible to the corruption that turns congress-critters into corporate whipping boys.
One of the first acts of the newly appointment George W DOJ was to throw in the towel on the US vs. Microsoft litigation, and give them a soft and warm pat on the wrist. Yep, that's the party that's against crony capitalism.
Safari is great, and in many ways, a faster and more stable version of Chrome. Chrome is also great on the mac. So is firefox. It is trivial to use which-ever browser you want. No tricks, no games. No install even. Just download, and click, and surf.
The fine is a deterrent, and a sign that in Europe, the government is more powerful than business interests. Guess all those years of fascism left a mark. Score 1-0 for democracy and rule of law.
It is such a pain to use other browsers and search engines on WIndows7 (by design), that I end up using them in the lab because I'm sick of the rigmarole of constant re-configuration. By contrast, it is easy to use any compatible browser and search engine in the Mac labs. There is a world of difference.
This is why the asparagus claim is spurious nonsense. The CO2 you breath out was first fixated from the atmosphere by the plant, and quite recently. If you burn oil, then it was fixated by plant millions of years ago. In the first case, you are just breathing out what the plan just fixated. When you burn oil, you add CO2 back into the atmosphere that hasn't been there for millions of years. Furthermore, the cost-benefit analysis for exercising over driving is going to work differently.
There are vilified becasue of the accuracy and effectiveness.
They are vilified because of this little thing called sovereignty. And aside from that, we don't know they are effective, just that the military industrial complex tells us so. Just what is the collateral damage? How many terrorists are we making through collateral damage? For example, someone with a vested interested may think that 80% collateral damage is accurate and effective.
The program is vilified because it violates sovereignty, and we don't really know what is going on.
In our system of government, it's the courts that determine truth, not Congress, not the voter, and not the president.
This is true, but also naive. Tobacco companies thwarted progress by cleverly manipulating public opinion. Millions were knowingly killed -- even those who did not smoke. The penalties the courts dished out were peanuts. The same techniques of manipulating public opinion continue.
What was your point again? Oh, the courts should stop powerful vested interests? That's not how power works in our society. Billionaires have successfully moved the locus of blame for crony capitalism away from them by brainwashing 30% of the electorate with fairy-tales that don't stand up to scrutiny.
The article is spot on. Do you think that these organisations are funded because of the word conservative in them? Heartland and co. whine about the "liberal" conspiracy to warp the public's mind, yet that is exactly what they do with crackpot science on the like of climate, evolution, and smoking. Rich billionaires fund them, because they help get sheeple to the polls in order to pressure congress critters into protecting them from economic disappointment. This is crony capitalism in action.
Firstly, including science and policy funding is dishonest, since their aim isn't to massage people's beliefs. All those weather satallites are not an environmentalist's conspiracy.
Also, your numbers look made up by some ideologue, and copy-pasted ad-nauseum, since it is too good a story to disbelieve or double-check. The environmentalist lobby spends about $1 for every $10 of its opponents. What is true? Discovering that is left as an exercise for the reader, and in doing so, if you don't find information that challenges your pre-existing beliefs, then you haven't checked shit.
So, private citizens exercise their right to free speech
Look up the abuses of power in the gilded age because powerful individuals became laws unto themselves. It all happens through propaganda, which costs money, and a weakness in democracy. It is amazing how people consume political snark and it because their reality. It all costs money, of course, but conservative propaganda is funded by our addiction to petrol, guns, and cigarettes.
Do you want cigarette companies writing the laws? After-all, according to them, they have a metric tonne of scientific evidence that smoking is benign, and protecting their bottom line has nothing to do with killing innocent people.
Read Hayek, "The Road to Serfdom" for an argument why powerful vested interests should not be able to change the rules to protect themselves from economic disappointment. Powerful private citizens can and do propagandize the sheeple for just this effect.
The Fed Reserve bank is complicate in the on-going money laundering schemes, along with the major private institutions, that have been going on for the last 20 or so years, washing clean the money from drug cartels and terrorists networks...
How do you know that? Did you read a collection of paranoid websites put together by equally uninformed people? Know what the cognitive bubble is? Just how much do you really know about how the Fed works? Could you give a 50min lecture on it to people who work there, without having them alternatively roll their eyes and roll on the floor laughing.
Reducing the conflicts of interest are a more effective solution than having corrupt government agencies watch harder.
I do find the knee-jerk assumption of government corruption rather tiresome. Here's a thought: comparatively speaking, the governments of western democracies are way less corrupt than their private sectors. Is it true? Having worked in private and public spheres, I can say there is madness in both. But the incentive structures are different in government. Greed is not the most noble motivator, and private industry is full of tyrants.
Get it? Incentive structures are different.
There is some nuance there.
Hayek, the libertarian high-priest, id not go on a tirade against government in "The Road to Serfdom", but rather, he argued coherently that the government should not prevent economic misfortune for individuals or businesses. (That *is* the road to serfdom.) Hayek argued that the main threat to market economics is large power structures that skew the system towards themselves. That *included* businesses. That's right, Hayek was against large business interests skewing the economy.
And about half the nation thinks that printing money is a great idea - I don't, but hey, democracy, not dictatorship of lgw
Nobody thinks printing money is a good idea, including Bernake.
The Fed has increased the amount of money to balance to books, (and the Dems have increased the capital requirements of banks), but none of that money has entered general circulation, because the Fed has set up incentive structures for the banks to park their money with: us treasury bonds.
Those bonds/must/ be repaid.
The price of creating money in this way is the interest on the debt.
Printing money would be simply stupid. Nobody wants to do that.
Basically every economist (with a few notable exceptions) thinks that the US government/should/ be taking on debt right now, but that is no the same as printing money.
So the government is more competent then you are on economic matters. Who would have thunk it.
Slashdot Mirror
If I had to guess, it's probably a reaction to the ridiculous alarmist end-times rhetoric from the less competent believers.
This is why the US has done nothing about global warming. The actions of fetishist environmentalists are only tangential to the issue. You see, all you have to do is *claim* that radical environmentalists are doing yadayada, then have some liberal say something snarky, rinse and repeat ad-neuseum on Fox and conservative radio, and the oft-repeated lie becomes the truth. Just as Hitler claimed.
Every time an industry is up for regulation, they claim that the world is going to end. Think: acid rain (it will ruin the economy, and do nothing about acid rain anyway!!!), think: CFCs (it will ruin the economy, and do nothing about the ozone anyway!!!). This whining works, for decades and decades, because they buy laws and politicians, and lobby the public with all sorts of disinformation.
The largest segment of alarmists in the climate change "debate" are those that claim action will ruin the economy, when there is empirical evidence today that this is simply not the case.
And the GOP is apparently the party against crony capitalism.
How else can you explain how Democrats who once shredded GWB on his horrid civil liberties record, clam up and circle the wagons around Obama when Obama is even worse than GWB.
True. The Dems have adopted as "see no evil" policy. Incipit. Read Lofgrens book. it is great.
This plane is delivery military aid. If you include military aid as part of war (which is a valid point of view), then the US is at war with half the world.
There were ongoing military operations in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. Seriously, the GP has a point. Obama didn't start three wars. All these actions (save Libya) are just an extension of the Bush politices.
The Tea Party was actually started by big tabacco in the 1980s to stop taxation on cigarettes.
And these people think they are against crony capitalism.
There needs to be less "Us vs. Them" in American politics. There needs to be more "Right vs. Wrong".
Here, here. I second that. Unfortunately, the incentive structures for political organisations are stacked against dialogue. Instead, they are encouraged to inspire hatred and anger in their base with snarky comments, since this increases the likelihood that people will repeat the dribbly snark, and eventually show up at the polls. It is amazing how transparent some of the lies are, but we, as human beings, refuse to look at counter-evidence.
Surely the majority of the blame for that should go to companies like Netscape for not providing a decent alternative for such a long time.
lol!
IE6 was a disaster from a technological point of view, but Microsoft sure got a lot of vendor lock-in from it!!!
Both parties in the (root of most evil) 2-party system are effectively identical from the standpoint of corporations.
Mainly because of how fund-raising works. And now the GOP are all ra-ra about citizens-vs-united, and the campaign financing is even more susceptible to the corruption that turns congress-critters into corporate whipping boys.
There is a solution to the problem.
In the end the court largely threw in the towel
One of the first acts of the newly appointment George W DOJ was to throw in the towel on the US vs. Microsoft litigation, and give them a soft and warm pat on the wrist. Yep, that's the party that's against crony capitalism.
Safari is great, and in many ways, a faster and more stable version of Chrome. Chrome is also great on the mac. So is firefox. It is trivial to use which-ever browser you want. No tricks, no games. No install even. Just download, and click, and surf.
The fine is a deterrent, and a sign that in Europe, the government is more powerful than business interests. Guess all those years of fascism left a mark. Score 1-0 for democracy and rule of law.
It is such a pain to use other browsers and search engines on WIndows7 (by design), that I end up using them in the lab because I'm sick of the rigmarole of constant re-configuration. By contrast, it is easy to use any compatible browser and search engine in the Mac labs. There is a world of difference.
This is why the asparagus claim is spurious nonsense. The CO2 you breath out was first fixated from the atmosphere by the plant, and quite recently. If you burn oil, then it was fixated by plant millions of years ago. In the first case, you are just breathing out what the plan just fixated. When you burn oil, you add CO2 back into the atmosphere that hasn't been there for millions of years. Furthermore, the cost-benefit analysis for exercising over driving is going to work differently.
More specifically, why would anyone want to invade Canada?
Fresh water & oil.
There are vilified becasue of the accuracy and effectiveness.
They are vilified because of this little thing called sovereignty. And aside from that, we don't know they are effective, just that the military industrial complex tells us so. Just what is the collateral damage? How many terrorists are we making through collateral damage? For example, someone with a vested interested may think that 80% collateral damage is accurate and effective.
The program is vilified because it violates sovereignty, and we don't really know what is going on.
Many servers of course don't need much if any graphics,
People do scientific calculations on servers with lots of gpus.
In our system of government, it's the courts that determine truth, not Congress, not the voter, and not the president.
This is true, but also naive. Tobacco companies thwarted progress by cleverly manipulating public opinion. Millions were knowingly killed -- even those who did not smoke. The penalties the courts dished out were peanuts. The same techniques of manipulating public opinion continue.
What was your point again? Oh, the courts should stop powerful vested interests? That's not how power works in our society. Billionaires have successfully moved the locus of blame for crony capitalism away from them by brainwashing 30% of the electorate with fairy-tales that don't stand up to scrutiny.
The article is spot on. Do you think that these organisations are funded because of the word conservative in them? Heartland and co. whine about the "liberal" conspiracy to warp the public's mind, yet that is exactly what they do with crackpot science on the like of climate, evolution, and smoking. Rich billionaires fund them, because they help get sheeple to the polls in order to pressure congress critters into protecting them from economic disappointment. This is crony capitalism in action.
Firstly, including science and policy funding is dishonest, since their aim isn't to massage people's beliefs. All those weather satallites are not an environmentalist's conspiracy.
Also, your numbers look made up by some ideologue, and copy-pasted ad-nauseum, since it is too good a story to disbelieve or double-check. The environmentalist lobby spends about $1 for every $10 of its opponents. What is true? Discovering that is left as an exercise for the reader, and in doing so, if you don't find information that challenges your pre-existing beliefs, then you haven't checked shit.
So, private citizens exercise their right to free speech
Look up the abuses of power in the gilded age because powerful individuals became laws unto themselves. It all happens through propaganda, which costs money, and a weakness in democracy. It is amazing how people consume political snark and it because their reality. It all costs money, of course, but conservative propaganda is funded by our addiction to petrol, guns, and cigarettes.
Do you want cigarette companies writing the laws? After-all, according to them, they have a metric tonne of scientific evidence that smoking is benign, and protecting their bottom line has nothing to do with killing innocent people.
THAT IS THE PROBLEM
Read Hayek, "The Road to Serfdom" for an argument why powerful vested interests should not be able to change the rules to protect themselves from economic disappointment. Powerful private citizens can and do propagandize the sheeple for just this effect.
Renewable Energy can NEVER satisfy 100% of the total energy requirement to run the current human civilization.
Never is a long time. Pop quiz: if you were going to build a power plant today, what technology would you use? What is cheapest? Don't know?
The Fed Reserve bank is complicate in the on-going money laundering schemes, along with the major private institutions, that have been going on for the last 20 or so years, washing clean the money from drug cartels and terrorists networks...
How do you know that? Did you read a collection of paranoid websites put together by equally uninformed people? Know what the cognitive bubble is? Just how much do you really know about how the Fed works? Could you give a 50min lecture on it to people who work there, without having them alternatively roll their eyes and roll on the floor laughing.
Stop fooling yourself.
Set irony metre to full.
Reducing the conflicts of interest are a more effective solution than having corrupt government agencies watch harder.
I do find the knee-jerk assumption of government corruption rather tiresome. Here's a thought: comparatively speaking, the governments of western democracies are way less corrupt than their private sectors. Is it true? Having worked in private and public spheres, I can say there is madness in both. But the incentive structures are different in government. Greed is not the most noble motivator, and private industry is full of tyrants.
Get it? Incentive structures are different.
There is some nuance there.
Hayek, the libertarian high-priest, id not go on a tirade against government in "The Road to Serfdom", but rather, he argued coherently that the government should not prevent economic misfortune for individuals or businesses. (That *is* the road to serfdom.) Hayek argued that the main threat to market economics is large power structures that skew the system towards themselves. That *included* businesses. That's right, Hayek was against large business interests skewing the economy.
And about half the nation thinks that printing money is a great idea - I don't, but hey, democracy, not dictatorship of lgw
Nobody thinks printing money is a good idea, including Bernake.
/must/ be repaid.
/should/ be taking on debt right now, but that is no the same as printing money.
The Fed has increased the amount of money to balance to books, (and the Dems have increased the capital requirements of banks), but none of that money has entered general circulation, because the Fed has set up incentive structures for the banks to park their money with: us treasury bonds.
Those bonds
The price of creating money in this way is the interest on the debt.
Printing money would be simply stupid. Nobody wants to do that.
Basically every economist (with a few notable exceptions) thinks that the US government
So the government is more competent then you are on economic matters. Who would have thunk it.
Cue libertarian and economically incoherent rant.