Again, you're so small-minded that you can't conceive that air pollution (smoke) is bad for other people.
I must have been *imagining* that my dad's woodstove made me use my inhaler more often. Fuckwit.
Perhaps your anger (or passion, if you prefer) is supposed to make you more convincing. It only actually makes you appear more malicious and less reasonable. The more important and close-to-home the subject is, the more critical it is not to succumb to such petty temptations.
The right wing tends to be against regs that they/think/ affect people like them. Other people? Fuck 'em, I got mine.
That's American culture. I am reminded of that each time someone in a car pulls out in front of me, nearly causing an accident, when a five-second wait would have left the entire road to himself. Any sort of kindness or patience is viewed as submission and subservience, it would seem.
The failure of course is a simple misunderstanding. Kindness and patience are about what sort of person I am, not what sort of person the other guy is.
Republicans are the fascists, Democrats are the socialists
. You really should learn to shut your ignorant lie hole. Then we wouldn't know how stupid you are.
Actually Republocrats are the fascists, and Surprise! Demicans are the fascists too. You really don't understand how "good cop, bad cop" is played, do you? Polarization and transfer (or confusion) of identity are key components. It shuts down critical thought and scrutiny by drowning it out in a frenzy of "us against them" tribalism. It's really very simple for something so terribly effective and generally unnoticed.
Once you realize that the modern American political definition of liberal no longer has any basis with the latin word liber, the phrase liberal fascism starts to make sense, particularly in the context of modern American liberalism.
This is where I depart from the licentious anything-goes lazy people who like to say things like "well you know languages evolve over time, so no matter how badly we misunderstand and misuse a word, it's always correct because we will claim it's an evolution of language!" Sometimes the correct way of doing something is the correct way and anything else is a failure, and it's too bad if someone is so self-important and haughty as to get offended by that.
The "nothing is ever wrong, just different but equally valid at all times no matter what" mentality leads to Orwellian Newspeak. It's the inevitable conclusion and it does not depend on the intentions of anyone participating in it.
Poor libertarians had to make up a word to distinguish themselves from "liberals".
Don't you worry. There's a concerted, intense, yet subtle effort to make the general (uninformed, won't do their own research) public believe that each and every "libertarian" is the exact same thing as an "anarcho-capitalist". Got to make sure the whole freedom-loving movement doesn't catch on and become popular, you know, and to make sure of that it must be demonized as emotionally and unreasonably and quickly as possible. When people otherwise sympathetic to the desire for freedom are hesitant to call themselves (small 'l') "libertarian", the job is done correctly. Various political and monied interests will take care of that, not openly through argumentation, but through portrayal, framing, and association. It's the same way any smear campaign is done.
For what it's worth, my personal opinion is that Coulter is a high-strung bitch and that there are already too many people like her. But if the Devil himself says that two plus two equals four, I would have to concede it was correct. That doesn't mean I agree with the Devil on any other issue or support him in any way. You can't get very far in these discussions if you get caught up in the personalities involved. Constructive discourse vanishes at the point where someone does that.
People only call Obama a "commie" because he is expanding an already powerful and far-reaching government, and people have come to associate Communism with out-of-control governments. Yes, Communism is one method and fascism is another and there are others still that produce the same kind of society. I understand that, but this is the way it's meant when most people call him a Commie. They're not evaluating the tenets of Karl Marx and applying them to modern poltiics; they're scared of this man.
When you have the media bought and paid for, they can convince the masses of anything.
The mass media certainly is bought and paid for. It's owned by the people who put both Democrats and Republicans into office, who fund campaigns, who make or break presidents and congresscritters. Do the research sometime and you'll find that various banking interests and others routinely fund both candidates. Why, it's as though they have the same level of control either way so they don't have to care who wins...
Doesn't it strike anyone as odd that the Govt can design and implement a billion+ dollar data storage center for the NSA but can't deploy a website to allow people to sign up for insurance?
The US govt is deeply split on if it wants ACA. Hell, the Dems are rushing to get the ACA in place to make it difficult to undo. The Republicans shut down the govt, to stop ACA, before it becomes difficult to undo. Much like Apollo, the most difficult part, was getting the govt, to decide it wants to pay for it.
Grant me the legal authority to print money anytime I want and make everyone else pay the true cost of it (inflation) and I, too, could pay for anything money can buy. In the Apollo days they at least tried to pretend that debt is important and that there's something deeply wrong with running a government in a way that would bankrupt any business or household.
Oh incidentally, for those who think the group identity of those who suffer is really important, inflation is the most regressive tax there is. The truly wealthy have investments like securities and real estate that scale with inflation. It's the poor who try to improve their standard of living by living within their means, saving, and building wealth over time. That's who is hardest hit by inflation, because it devalues their savings. It's amazing how "regressive taxes" are EVIL and routinely railed against by a certain element, yet this one has gone unnoticed for so long.
For example, the TSA has a huge annual budget. Yet they've never caught a single terrorist.
The purpose of the TSA is to get Americans (even more) used to the idea that government agents can search you whenever they deem it necessary, without a warrant. Sure, a long time ago some old white men wrote a 4th Amendment saying they can't do that, yeah sure, but by stepping into the airport you automatically agreed to waive your inalienable right, EULA-style. So you see it's all legitimate and there's nothing to see here.
That semantic distinction, in practice, is besides the point which was that deflecting blame on a matter of geography doesn't address the root problems of large projects especially with territoriality in play. Again, I have not read much on the issue but did glean that a large number of government databases (of various forms) needed to integrated. One doesn't even have to introduce politics of Democrats versus Republicans in this case. Many agencies and egos were likely involved on the government side while dozens of contractors (likely competitors) were at the service side.
One of the very first requirements for competence (mere competence, not greatness) is the ability to realistically assess what you are (and are not) capable of doing, and in what rough timeframe, and then to plan accordingly.
inability for the government to manage a simple website
It could be, the observed failure exceeded the planners' expectations... The site does not merely suck, which could've been blamed on the evil insurers somehow. It completely does not work.
But I'm not sure, the suspicion is correct myself: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" (Hanlon's Razor)...
The real question is, if they so badly mismanage something so common and widely implemented elsewhere as one Web site, why should they be trusted with anything more complex?
Go to You Tube and search "Obama single payer". In 2009, he was saying that's what he preferred.
He performed a similar flip-flop on the issue of homosexual marriages. It's nothing unusual from a high-level politician.
Personally I believe homosexual marriage is one of those "distraction issues", something that never really goes away so you can pull it out and make a controversy over it anytime something else starts making you look bad. I could speculate that he was initially against homosexual marriage because that is generally consistent with his claim of being a Christian, something that was important at that time because many voters believed he was Muslim (and for some strange reason, people actually care about the private personal beliefs of elected officials whose job couldn't be less personal). I could also speculate that he flip-flopped on it because he perceived that this was the way the winds of popular opinion were blowing.
I doubt very much that any federal politician actually gives a damn about who gets married and whether it's called "marriage" or a "civil union". I do think that getting the federal government involved in a matter that has always been handled by the states is a handy way to grab power and cause people to be even more accustomed than before to federal involvement in daily life. Now that is something politicians really do care about; they rarely miss an opportunity. No Child Left Behind was Bush's method of doing the same thing, since K-12 education had always been the domain of the states.
Abortion, homosexual marriage, gays in the military, flag-burning, rich vs. poor, black vs. white, and others that don't come to mind right now are all distraction issues and have all been used as such. No federal politician actually wants any of them to go away because they like pulling them out when convenient. Sadly the American public (as represented by the mass media) has a terribly short memory.
Jumping on the first flimsy excuse to dismiss the argument is never going to convince anyone who didn't already agree with you. I for one was hoping you would explain why Obama's plan was similar (or maybe, effectively identical) to Romney's. The calmer, more rational person at least provided something to read that I can critically analyze regardless of who's name is on it.
If I had been so deeply affected by a Fox News personality that the mere mention of her Web site made me want to be so childish, I'd be ashamed to admit it. But I would admit it. I don't know you and I don't know the user "mi" but so far he has been the calm, rational, believably sincere person who isn't trying to be dismissive, isn't calling other people names ("moron") and isn't trying to change an abstract debate into a popularity contest concerning who's name is on what.
it performs just fine in spite of that and I can access it anywhere, which is the biggest single reason to stick with it.
I don't understand what you mean here. I can access my isp-privided pop3/imap mail server from anywhere. I can also SSH into my main desktop from anywhere and do it that way. What is Gmail providing that these cannot accomplish (other than targeted marketing)?
Keeping in mind I've only purchased one game pre-launch in the past ten years (Skyrim) so maybe I just "don't get it"
Actually in all the ways that truly matter, that's a sign that you really do "get it". Something so frivolous as commercial amusement should never become so important. The real danger is that companies other than EA may really get this right, make such idolatry comfortable, meaning that the dangers of such horribly faulty priorities in life may never be noticed by those who didn't already understand them.
Look - are you really going to give up a game you've been anticipating for months
There's something horrifically empty and meaningless about a life in which this or any other form of entertainment would be a really important, high-priority concern.
You're EA's bitch, and you'll like what they give you, when they decide to give it to you.
I would say both the customers and EA are the "bitches" of something far more tragic.
...that doesn't give one solitary shred of a damn about its customers. News at 11.
The only reason a large enterprise gives a damn about its customers is because they believe it is more profitable to be seen doing so. If they believe they can profit without bothering, the expense of doing so will be dispensed with.
Giving a damn about your fellow human beings, how you are treating them, what that says about who you are and which ideals you represent, and what kind of world it helps to build one baby step at a time... well, these humanizing things don't scale nearly as well as do organizations and top-down implementations.
People may say "well it's just a game" because they don't appreciate the full effect of the massive acceptance and endorsement of the business practices creating said game. When large numbers tolerate this and reward it with money (the language and lifeblood of corporations), it becomes much more than just a game. It becomes a precedent.
Would you prefer that they stick to their guns and continue doing harm? I prefer politicians who are willing to change their minds based on public opinion, thank you very much.
If we had politicians who didn't give a fuck about public opinion and perhaps even had contempt for the way it was openly swayed and outright engineered by all the fearmongering, we'd have never had a Patriot Act to begin with.
Amending the Constitution to make every Senator an elected official was a huge mistake. It's one of those things that sounds nice until you realize what it actually causes. You really do need state-appointed Senators who can and will halt rash and badly-written laws because they aren't vulnerable to "Senator X voted to make us less safe!" rhetoric at election time. It would also go a long way to curtailing the federal practice of bullying the States by withholding their own damned money if they don't do as they're told.
Norman Finkelstein is a Jewish Antisemite. A useful idiot at best, a self-hating Jew at worst.
Is Chris Rock a self-hating African American for doing a skit about how he "loves black people" but "hates niggers" (his words) and fears getting mugged or assaulted by them and owns guns to protect himself from them?
The general unwritten rule of Political Correctness is that a member of a minority group who criticizes that group cannot be considered a racist or ethnocentrist.
Of course you know, the childish concern over who hates whom and what terrible name with which you should brand them has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO with the truth of what they say. You do know that, right? If the worst racist in the world claims that two plus two equals four, he would be correct, unless you want to give such scum the power to redifine all of mathematics while you're at it.
We have too many people who are products of their environment, knowing only what they were taught,
Sounds like another veiled stab at the education system. Do you think the people would have been better off if schools were abolished? That never made sense to me.
Actually, prior to mandatory public schooling, America was held in awe by the rest of the world because it had one of the most educated populations known. I urge you to read The Underground History of American Education if you would. It will be quite a revelation.
The public schooling system was inspired by the Hindu caste system in which about 1-2% could rule the rest with no fear of revolts, and the system used by Prussia that regimented their society and gained them power. This was done by old-money families and other monied interests who had a dreadful fear of American entrepreneurial ethic in which over 90% of people owned their own business and had their own independent livelihood. That doesn't jive with factory production and corporate systems at all. The founders of public education were quite open about this in the late 1800s when they gained ground. They didn't hide it; they were proud of their reasons and motivations.
To the ones pulling the strings, such an incredibly short memory and inability to draw contrasts is not a bug, it's a strongly encouraged feature.
Most people are passive mentally and believe thinking to be a burden that should be avoided whenever possible. Therefore, if the TV news doesn't specifically highlight something in a nice ADD-friendly 10-second sound bite, it won't be widely known. If this sounds incredible or alien to you, it's because the Slashdot crowd doesn't represent mainstream America (though the way people keep arguing from emotion, that's changing).
There is no one in power who wants a well-informed, smart, savvy, thinking population that has a long memory, is familiar with dialectic and able to easily perform critical thinking. No one running the show wants that at all. It's no surprise that within the little feudal system of a corporation that no one is forced to do business with, this goes unnoticed. It goes unnoticed with huge political changes that affect daily life.
Slashdot Mirror
Again, you're so small-minded that you can't conceive that air pollution (smoke) is bad for other people.
I must have been *imagining* that my dad's woodstove made me use my inhaler more often. Fuckwit.
Perhaps your anger (or passion, if you prefer) is supposed to make you more convincing. It only actually makes you appear more malicious and less reasonable. The more important and close-to-home the subject is, the more critical it is not to succumb to such petty temptations.
The right wing tends to be against regs that they /think/ affect people like them. Other people? Fuck 'em, I got mine.
That's American culture. I am reminded of that each time someone in a car pulls out in front of me, nearly causing an accident, when a five-second wait would have left the entire road to himself. Any sort of kindness or patience is viewed as submission and subservience, it would seem.
The failure of course is a simple misunderstanding. Kindness and patience are about what sort of person I am, not what sort of person the other guy is.
Republicans are the fascists, Democrats are the socialists . You really should learn to shut your ignorant lie hole. Then we wouldn't know how stupid you are.
Actually Republocrats are the fascists, and Surprise! Demicans are the fascists too. You really don't understand how "good cop, bad cop" is played, do you? Polarization and transfer (or confusion) of identity are key components. It shuts down critical thought and scrutiny by drowning it out in a frenzy of "us against them" tribalism. It's really very simple for something so terribly effective and generally unnoticed.
Once you realize that the modern American political definition of liberal no longer has any basis with the latin word liber, the phrase liberal fascism starts to make sense, particularly in the context of modern American liberalism.
This is where I depart from the licentious anything-goes lazy people who like to say things like "well you know languages evolve over time, so no matter how badly we misunderstand and misuse a word, it's always correct because we will claim it's an evolution of language!" Sometimes the correct way of doing something is the correct way and anything else is a failure, and it's too bad if someone is so self-important and haughty as to get offended by that.
The "nothing is ever wrong, just different but equally valid at all times no matter what" mentality leads to Orwellian Newspeak. It's the inevitable conclusion and it does not depend on the intentions of anyone participating in it.
Poor libertarians had to make up a word to distinguish themselves from "liberals".
Don't you worry. There's a concerted, intense, yet subtle effort to make the general (uninformed, won't do their own research) public believe that each and every "libertarian" is the exact same thing as an "anarcho-capitalist". Got to make sure the whole freedom-loving movement doesn't catch on and become popular, you know, and to make sure of that it must be demonized as emotionally and unreasonably and quickly as possible. When people otherwise sympathetic to the desire for freedom are hesitant to call themselves (small 'l') "libertarian", the job is done correctly. Various political and monied interests will take care of that, not openly through argumentation, but through portrayal, framing, and association. It's the same way any smear campaign is done.
For what it's worth, my personal opinion is that Coulter is a high-strung bitch and that there are already too many people like her. But if the Devil himself says that two plus two equals four, I would have to concede it was correct. That doesn't mean I agree with the Devil on any other issue or support him in any way. You can't get very far in these discussions if you get caught up in the personalities involved. Constructive discourse vanishes at the point where someone does that.
People only call Obama a "commie" because he is expanding an already powerful and far-reaching government, and people have come to associate Communism with out-of-control governments. Yes, Communism is one method and fascism is another and there are others still that produce the same kind of society. I understand that, but this is the way it's meant when most people call him a Commie. They're not evaluating the tenets of Karl Marx and applying them to modern poltiics; they're scared of this man.
When you have the media bought and paid for, they can convince the masses of anything.
The mass media certainly is bought and paid for. It's owned by the people who put both Democrats and Republicans into office, who fund campaigns, who make or break presidents and congresscritters. Do the research sometime and you'll find that various banking interests and others routinely fund both candidates. Why, it's as though they have the same level of control either way so they don't have to care who wins...
Doesn't it strike anyone as odd that the Govt can design and implement a billion+ dollar data storage center for the NSA but can't deploy a website to allow people to sign up for insurance?
The US govt is deeply split on if it wants ACA. Hell, the Dems are rushing to get the ACA in place to make it difficult to undo. The Republicans shut down the govt, to stop ACA, before it becomes difficult to undo. Much like Apollo, the most difficult part, was getting the govt, to decide it wants to pay for it.
Grant me the legal authority to print money anytime I want and make everyone else pay the true cost of it (inflation) and I, too, could pay for anything money can buy. In the Apollo days they at least tried to pretend that debt is important and that there's something deeply wrong with running a government in a way that would bankrupt any business or household.
Oh incidentally, for those who think the group identity of those who suffer is really important, inflation is the most regressive tax there is. The truly wealthy have investments like securities and real estate that scale with inflation. It's the poor who try to improve their standard of living by living within their means, saving, and building wealth over time. That's who is hardest hit by inflation, because it devalues their savings. It's amazing how "regressive taxes" are EVIL and routinely railed against by a certain element, yet this one has gone unnoticed for so long.
For example, the TSA has a huge annual budget. Yet they've never caught a single terrorist.
The purpose of the TSA is to get Americans (even more) used to the idea that government agents can search you whenever they deem it necessary, without a warrant. Sure, a long time ago some old white men wrote a 4th Amendment saying they can't do that, yeah sure, but by stepping into the airport you automatically agreed to waive your inalienable right, EULA-style. So you see it's all legitimate and there's nothing to see here.
But not by his bootstraps -- with help from wealthy friends and taxpayer subsidies.
That's how a great deal of business gets done, including by those who have no interest in running for office.
That semantic distinction, in practice, is besides the point which was that deflecting blame on a matter of geography doesn't address the root problems of large projects especially with territoriality in play. Again, I have not read much on the issue but did glean that a large number of government databases (of various forms) needed to integrated. One doesn't even have to introduce politics of Democrats versus Republicans in this case. Many agencies and egos were likely involved on the government side while dozens of contractors (likely competitors) were at the service side.
One of the very first requirements for competence (mere competence, not greatness) is the ability to realistically assess what you are (and are not) capable of doing, and in what rough timeframe, and then to plan accordingly.
It could be, the observed failure exceeded the planners' expectations... The site does not merely suck, which could've been blamed on the evil insurers somehow. It completely does not work.
But I'm not sure, the suspicion is correct myself: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity" (Hanlon's Razor)...
The real question is, if they so badly mismanage something so common and widely implemented elsewhere as one Web site, why should they be trusted with anything more complex?
Go to You Tube and search "Obama single payer". In 2009, he was saying that's what he preferred.
He performed a similar flip-flop on the issue of homosexual marriages. It's nothing unusual from a high-level politician.
Personally I believe homosexual marriage is one of those "distraction issues", something that never really goes away so you can pull it out and make a controversy over it anytime something else starts making you look bad. I could speculate that he was initially against homosexual marriage because that is generally consistent with his claim of being a Christian, something that was important at that time because many voters believed he was Muslim (and for some strange reason, people actually care about the private personal beliefs of elected officials whose job couldn't be less personal). I could also speculate that he flip-flopped on it because he perceived that this was the way the winds of popular opinion were blowing.
I doubt very much that any federal politician actually gives a damn about who gets married and whether it's called "marriage" or a "civil union". I do think that getting the federal government involved in a matter that has always been handled by the states is a handy way to grab power and cause people to be even more accustomed than before to federal involvement in daily life. Now that is something politicians really do care about; they rarely miss an opportunity. No Child Left Behind was Bush's method of doing the same thing, since K-12 education had always been the domain of the states.
Abortion, homosexual marriage, gays in the military, flag-burning, rich vs. poor, black vs. white, and others that don't come to mind right now are all distraction issues and have all been used as such. No federal politician actually wants any of them to go away because they like pulling them out when convenient. Sadly the American public (as represented by the mass media) has a terribly short memory.
>Citing anne coulter as a reference
Yeah, and we're done here.
-- BMO
Jumping on the first flimsy excuse to dismiss the argument is never going to convince anyone who didn't already agree with you. I for one was hoping you would explain why Obama's plan was similar (or maybe, effectively identical) to Romney's. The calmer, more rational person at least provided something to read that I can critically analyze regardless of who's name is on it.
If I had been so deeply affected by a Fox News personality that the mere mention of her Web site made me want to be so childish, I'd be ashamed to admit it. But I would admit it. I don't know you and I don't know the user "mi" but so far he has been the calm, rational, believably sincere person who isn't trying to be dismissive, isn't calling other people names ("moron") and isn't trying to change an abstract debate into a popularity contest concerning who's name is on what.
I want to believe you can do better.
Gmail provides better spam filtering.
I have no complaints with SpamAssassin running on my Linux host.
it performs just fine in spite of that and I can access it anywhere, which is the biggest single reason to stick with it.
I don't understand what you mean here. I can access my isp-privided pop3/imap mail server from anywhere. I can also SSH into my main desktop from anywhere and do it that way. What is Gmail providing that these cannot accomplish (other than targeted marketing)?
Keeping in mind I've only purchased one game pre-launch in the past ten years (Skyrim) so maybe I just "don't get it"
Actually in all the ways that truly matter, that's a sign that you really do "get it". Something so frivolous as commercial amusement should never become so important. The real danger is that companies other than EA may really get this right, make such idolatry comfortable, meaning that the dangers of such horribly faulty priorities in life may never be noticed by those who didn't already understand them.
Look - are you really going to give up a game you've been anticipating for months
There's something horrifically empty and meaningless about a life in which this or any other form of entertainment would be a really important, high-priority concern.
You're EA's bitch, and you'll like what they give you, when they decide to give it to you.
I would say both the customers and EA are the "bitches" of something far more tragic.
...that doesn't give one solitary shred of a damn about its customers. News at 11.
The only reason a large enterprise gives a damn about its customers is because they believe it is more profitable to be seen doing so. If they believe they can profit without bothering, the expense of doing so will be dispensed with.
... well, these humanizing things don't scale nearly as well as do organizations and top-down implementations.
Giving a damn about your fellow human beings, how you are treating them, what that says about who you are and which ideals you represent, and what kind of world it helps to build one baby step at a time
People may say "well it's just a game" because they don't appreciate the full effect of the massive acceptance and endorsement of the business practices creating said game. When large numbers tolerate this and reward it with money (the language and lifeblood of corporations), it becomes much more than just a game. It becomes a precedent.
Would you prefer that they stick to their guns and continue doing harm? I prefer politicians who are willing to change their minds based on public opinion, thank you very much.
If we had politicians who didn't give a fuck about public opinion and perhaps even had contempt for the way it was openly swayed and outright engineered by all the fearmongering, we'd have never had a Patriot Act to begin with.
Amending the Constitution to make every Senator an elected official was a huge mistake. It's one of those things that sounds nice until you realize what it actually causes. You really do need state-appointed Senators who can and will halt rash and badly-written laws because they aren't vulnerable to "Senator X voted to make us less safe!" rhetoric at election time. It would also go a long way to curtailing the federal practice of bullying the States by withholding their own damned money if they don't do as they're told.
Norman Finkelstein is a Jewish Antisemite. A useful idiot at best, a self-hating Jew at worst.
Is Chris Rock a self-hating African American for doing a skit about how he "loves black people" but "hates niggers" (his words) and fears getting mugged or assaulted by them and owns guns to protect himself from them?
The general unwritten rule of Political Correctness is that a member of a minority group who criticizes that group cannot be considered a racist or ethnocentrist.
Of course you know, the childish concern over who hates whom and what terrible name with which you should brand them has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO with the truth of what they say. You do know that, right? If the worst racist in the world claims that two plus two equals four, he would be correct, unless you want to give such scum the power to redifine all of mathematics while you're at it.
We have too many people who are products of their environment, knowing only what they were taught,
Sounds like another veiled stab at the education system. Do you think the people would have been better off if schools were abolished? That never made sense to me.
Actually, prior to mandatory public schooling, America was held in awe by the rest of the world because it had one of the most educated populations known. I urge you to read The Underground History of American Education if you would. It will be quite a revelation.
The public schooling system was inspired by the Hindu caste system in which about 1-2% could rule the rest with no fear of revolts, and the system used by Prussia that regimented their society and gained them power. This was done by old-money families and other monied interests who had a dreadful fear of American entrepreneurial ethic in which over 90% of people owned their own business and had their own independent livelihood. That doesn't jive with factory production and corporate systems at all. The founders of public education were quite open about this in the late 1800s when they gained ground. They didn't hide it; they were proud of their reasons and motivations.
Do people really fall for this?
To the ones pulling the strings, such an incredibly short memory and inability to draw contrasts is not a bug, it's a strongly encouraged feature.
Most people are passive mentally and believe thinking to be a burden that should be avoided whenever possible. Therefore, if the TV news doesn't specifically highlight something in a nice ADD-friendly 10-second sound bite, it won't be widely known. If this sounds incredible or alien to you, it's because the Slashdot crowd doesn't represent mainstream America (though the way people keep arguing from emotion, that's changing).
There is no one in power who wants a well-informed, smart, savvy, thinking population that has a long memory, is familiar with dialectic and able to easily perform critical thinking. No one running the show wants that at all. It's no surprise that within the little feudal system of a corporation that no one is forced to do business with, this goes unnoticed. It goes unnoticed with huge political changes that affect daily life.
Correction... WE know all about the intercepts now. But the mass audience the Guardian wants to reach isn't as well informed.
What that puerile bitch Snookie is up to (and like-minded garbage) is sadly much more important to them.
The minority who try their best to be aware don't deserve to reap what the majority have sown.
It's a shame that Congress doesn't grow a pair of balls and press criminal charges against the liars.