Ah, you mean those legislative acts, which are born, debated, and passed in Congress? To which both parties contributed? Or do you really not understand the nature of legislation?
And if you do understand it, are you suitably horrified by the monstrosities brewing in both houses right now? Complete with attempts to make it impossible for future legislators to undo some of its worst parts? Keep your eye on the ball, here, rather than spouting nonsense.
You can't hijack a train, and take it somewhere else, later ramming it into a huge building full of people in some other city.
And... try going the combination of things you need to do in order to, say, steer a train pulling large payloads of dangerous chemicals someplace it's not supposed to go. You have to take over the locomotive and get control of the railyard switching systems and be able to magically control other trains to make sure they're not in your way.
Simply blowing up some passengers in the trains, a la Madrid, isn't as sexy in the US, since the attackers need to rise to the same level as their last large domestic attack, or appear to be (as they are) not as capable as they once were.
Climate scientists don't have a political agenda to "make life painful for businesses".
Just like the scientists who are asked by an energy company to study something don't have an agenda to kill polar bears... despite what people doubting their credibility seem to continually imply. Right? Hmmm?
You do understand that natural gas is also a hydrocarbon, right? Tha burning it also gives off combustion byproducts (like C02) just like anything else? Less sulfur, which is nice.
As for credibility: I'm simply saying that your casting doubt on a researcher because of who happened to pay for the research is a slipperly slope. If you have doubts about science done by someone who got a grant from an energy company, then you should also have doubts about science done by someone who is paid by people, with, say, a political agenda that happens to include making life painful for businesses.
That does not have an effect on GDP per se.
Of course it does. There is no alternative energy source that can replace oil, coal, natural gas, etc., anywhere even close to being on the horizon for the next several decades - at least, none that can possibly meet the hugely expanding economies of India, China, and soon to be Africa. Taxing energy use is simply a tax on economic activity. Period. That will incredibly impact GDP.
Lindzen is paid by the fossil fuel industry. Not credible as a researcher
Ah. And someone who is paid by anyone but them, including by entities that expressly want to see them destroyed, are, of course, entirely neutral and without any agenda whatsoever.
Taxes do not reduce GDP. After all, that money has to go somewhere
Are you that obtuse? Taxes suppress the activities that are taxed. People do less of the thing that is taxed. If that thing is "commerce with each other," then that's exactly what you get less of. Conversely, when you lower taxes on things like... starting businesses or hiring people, you get (demonstrably, over and over again) more of those exact things. Raise taxes on cigarettes? You get less smoking. Raise taxes on luxury goods? The market drifts to those products that are just under whatever threshold you've capriciously set as "luxury."
The U.S. counts every baby that shows any sign of life, irrespective of size or weight at birth. In much of Europe, on the other hand, births before twenty six weeks aren't considered live births. In Switzerland, a birth is only considered live if the baby is 30 centimeters long. In Canada, Austria and Germany, the have to way at least a pound. But in the U.S., a delivery under those standards - even if followed very quicky by death - is considered a live birth, and thus a case of infant mortality (as opposed to a miscarriage). By handling the statistics this way, a third of the live births that would be counted as such in the U.S. are instead called miscarriages in those countries, thus taking a big bite out of their infant mortality rates. And then you've got entire third world countries that don't even bother with the record keeping in the first place when a baby doesn't make it past the first minutes or days.
And then you've got more industrialized places like Hong Kong, Japan, and France that don't even consider a death within the first 24 hours to be a case of a dead infanct, but rather a miscarriage. Yet almost half of infant deaths in the U.S. occur in that same first day - and we count them as such. You get the idea.
back to the subject - US aggression and lack of respect for international law
Do tell! We just keep taking over countries, don't we? Yes, we just move in, rob them, rape the villagers, illegally copy their DVDs, and then move on to the next one. How about being specific? Like how we are now running the countries of Germany, or Japan, or Kuwait, or Panama, or Serbia, or Croatia. Yes, we're just as aggressive as can be.
You've got the worst healthcare system of any developed nation (certainly measured by infant mortality...
Yeah, except infant mortality in other countries is measured in entirely different ways. Adjusting to use the same standards completely changes your pointless point, and you know that.
When's the last time you had *any* say over anything happening within your country?
Every time we have an election, we have a say. Locally - impacting everything from how schools are run to how roads are built or property is taxed - as well as at the state and federal level. Large changes in policy are driven by how this republic's voters vote. I'm sure it greatly annoys you to know that, because it doesn't fit well with your fantasy. Sorry.
The whole world has deep concerns over American lack of respect for international law and aggression
Then why doesn't "the whole world" actually step up, pay their share and risk their own share of lives when it's necessary to do so? The US pays, per capita, wildly more than any other nation on earth to do things like mitigate HIV/AIDS in Africa. In fact, that was Bush's policy initiative. Why isn't "the whole world" meeting or exceeding that same level of commitment? Because it's cheaper to whine about it.
Let's see - how about when things fell apart in Serbia, Croatia, and their neighboring little hell holes? The Europeans couldn't be bothered to stop the slaughter of Muslims in their own back yard, so the U.S. had to foot almost the entire bill, risk the most arms and soldiers, and deploy the most material and support. Way to go, Europe. Act horrified that it's happening, wait for the U.S. to do most of the work, and then wag your fingers, again, at the fact that we have the very same big military that you guys won't pay for yourselves, or have the decency to deploy when your neighbors are on an ethnic cleansing jag.
This hasn't changed since World War II. You can't have it both ways.
he's actually putting his, and people who feel the same way, money where his mouth is
No, he's using the shrewed marketing of magical thinking, slickly packaged fear mongering and bad/half-baked information to create a market from which he and his partners can wildly profit while other people's tax money his pumped through their networks and contracts whether they want it to be or not. I can understand how you'd rather not make that distinction, since it's an unpleasant realization. People who've detected his smarmy hypocrisy, hot air and hucksterism since he was using the same skills to gain plain ol' political power aren't surprised. I have to give him credit, though, for new heights of incestuous "movement marketing," in talking the Nobel committee into squandering the last drop of their credibility to give him more cash market share.
As for Kyoto... nothing like it has to come to pass for him to still make billions in this new scam. The liberals and going to pass a cap-and-tax bill regardless, and the "cap" part of that will rely on trading carbon credits. Gore's operation will end up handling most of that, and skim transaction fees. That's what it's all about.
How exactly are you imagining Al Gore stands to make billions on carbon credits?
Spend a little time reading up on the company he and partners founded for exactly this purpose. GIM ("Generation Investment Management") sells carbon offset credits. So, when people complain that Al's burning up a whole lot of carbon when he flies to global warming religious events, he says it's OK, because he purchases carbon offset credits that make his carbon footprint completely neutral. What a relief! It's also extra convenient that he buys those credit from his own company, and that he gets millions in grants to carry on this way. His firm also invests in companies that are lined up to get enormous new grants as our supposed run-away man-made global warming is combatted through the spending of colossal amounts of federal borrowed-from-China dollars on anything labeled "green" or "alernative."
It helps that some of the people who have helped him set up arrangements in this area had investigations of their dealings called off by Janet Reno at the time. Yes, we wouldn't want a lot of extra scrutiny while setting up investment vehicles and finaancial instruments so that you can be the first mover to offer services in a market that you then publicly create by whipping up fear over bad PR and cropped photographs of polar bears.
His company handles over a billion in investment cash that chases any green-smelling contract or startup. It's no surprise that his associations with the very people who generate the hype, and his connections with the party in power that is now screaming about the need to spend trillions in new taxes on the use of carbon, happen to result in firms that use his capital being ready to get incredibly rich. And of course he's busy establishing carbon exchanges that will allow guilty carbon users to swap cash for guilt, and he, of course, will reap huge commissions in facilitating those trades. Hey, somebody has to do it, right? Why not the guy who had movie posters with hurricanes coming out of factory cooling towers? He must know a lot about that market right? Of course, because he's created it.
Let's see... ah! It leads to Al Gore, and his fellow investors, who are positioned to make billions of dollars through the absurd selling and trafficking in carbon credits. Just like priests selling absolution in the dark ages. In fact, exactly like that.
As for those climatologists, who were facing the traditional career full of angst over tenure or grants? For people like that, a steady job is rolling in cash. If you can also crank out an alarmist book or two, and score some face time on BBC so that you'll be invited to travel the world and get in some rubber chicken meals at conferences on someone else's account? Frosting on the cake.
Per person China uses less then a quarter of the emissions than we do and they have been doing it for 100 years less then us
Are you paying attention at all? China is going through our last 100 years of growth in roughly a tenth of the time. And they're doing it with a much, much larger population that is hungry for a middle class way of life. They're on track to use more energy than the US and Europe combined, and are devastating their environment like only the Eastern Europeans did under the Soviets. Wake up.
a carbon free economy
Are you actually familar with carbon, as a substance? I take it that you're not.
We can either work together globally, people from every culture and every nation... it is unfortunate that westerners in general, and Americans in particular, habitually see enemies wherever they look.
You don't get it, do you? The enemies, in this case, aren't the Chinese or the Indians. It's the people who don't want them to be held to the same standards as everyone else. Who is it, do you suppose, that thinks it's fine for China to fire up three new dirty coal plants every day, while also proposing enormous new taxes on US coal burners (but not on China's!)? Who is it that's deliberately seeking a division in how that issues is addressed, globally? Really: name names, and then re-imagine who it is that you think is actually causing (rather than very appropriately talking about and reacting to) the international friction, here.
Are you operating under the delusion that China is just a small, backwards country that isn't, and never will be, smart or capable enough to be held to the same standards that you think a poor town in West Virginia should be taxed into tolerating? Are you that patronizing, or that dismissive of China's enormous population?
because when you are trying to tell the world some important information, use of language is important. It's called nuance
It can also be called "oily hucksterism" or "lying" or "spinning" etc.
We're talking about a movement that wants to re-arrange trillions of dollars of productivity by reallocating its output. We're talking about a movement that's prepared to wildly punish western economies that are doing more than any culture in human history to re-invent how they use energy, recycle materials, transport people and goods... even as "developing" economies that are actually far more massive are being given a pass while they carry on as if nobody on the planet has learned anything since 1960.
Yes, it takes some real PR to make a kid matriculate from elementary school thoroughly in the grips of this new brand of Original Sin, and seeking salvation for it by cutting giant new polluting economies a whole lot of perpetual slack. Guys like Al Gore have cleverly positioned themselves to make billions off of that well-packaged guilt and fear trip, and it's well-nuanced PR that got him there.
you never do address the very thought of what you think is wrong with science education
I have no problem with science education. We don't do nearly enough of it, mostly because parents don't actually do enough about it, directly in their own school districts where they should be doing something about it.
What I'm pointing out is that his (Obama's) party always involves itself with the education system - especially at the federal leve - by throwing money at it... money which always props up the politicized unions that vote his way, and which never have the students' actual interests at heart. For examples, note the trouble that science-oriented charter schools have surviving when the public education system is highly influenced in that district by by the teachers' unions. They are all about keeping mediocre teachers (who make terrible science instructors) in their jobs, and avoiding anything that looks like merit-based employment. As long as those union dues keep rolling in, that's what matters. And when the ruling political party leans on unions as one of their main voting blocks, you must look at everything that goes on between them for what it actually is.
hilariously old reference to Hillary Clinton's book
That expression goes back way before she trotted it out, and it's still being used, ad nauseum. Google it. You'll see it being used by everyone from "urban homesteaders" to people writing current study probrams for young students. The "community organizer" industry is littered with programs called the "It Takes A Village [whatever]" where [whatever] is everything from career development programs to child-rearing life-coach nonsense. The phrase is embraced and used, continually, by a very specific type of careerist: the We Know Better Than You program runners. Which isn't to say that some social workers don't know better than some idiots. But the assertion that children simply can't be properly raised without the intercession and stewardship of the government is alive, well, and growing stronger by the minute. And when people like you shrug it off as being a bit of Hillary-bating, you're just allowing it to continue and giving it more credibility.
Community Organizing or Organizer
Really? You stop being interested when you're reminded that your current president's only executive experience prior to his current OTJT, was his holding of that title? Yeah, I can see why you'd rather not be reminded of that.
you're actually claiming that education is actually a political ploy to garner more support for the left?
No. I'm saying that the teachers' unions are dependable voters for Obama's party, as long he continues to throw them a bone in the form of money and power of far-reaching programs that involve the continued employment of their members under their terms. Education (especially as it relates to science) doesn't stick in a kid's head because of large government programs. It sticks in their heads because their parents have made them receptive to it in the first place. Big government programs don't cause parents to be more thoughtful about how they interact with their own kids.
Obama knows this, just like every educator knows this. Which makes large, money-centric programs like this all about the people to whom the money goes: the unions. And the unions then take the dues they collect, and advertize on behalf of the politician than promises to deliver more of the same. Such unions were a big part of how Obama got elected, and he's doing payback, that's all... and investing in the next round, when he'll need organized labor even more, since a lot of independents are going to be WAY more skittish this time around.
You're arguing that your partisan gain is more important than the success of the next generation
No. I'm saying that such programs have nothing to do with the success of the next generation, and are in fact all about the partisan gains pursued by the party dishing out the cash. Simple as that. Of course, you already knew that.
It's just another way to sew up left-handed votes from the teachers' unions.
The actual efficacy of science education is almost entirely driven by culture, and that's almost entirely driven by the way a kid is raised. He's going to be in a science classroom ready to thrive and learn and see the big picture, or not ready to - because of how his parents have armed him for a world view that takes it all rationally into account. Parents with no sense of wonder about science? Kids without one, too.
How this administration thinks it's going to change the culture which sends kids to school - in a way that will make them happy sponges for science - even as it seeks to establish an entitlement Nanny State funded by borrowing money from countries where science (pure and applied) is actually valued and cultivated... no idea. But then, Obama has no idea, either. This is Community Organizing, around a slogan, at its classic best. Empty, meaningless platitudes that don't actually call on parents to actually do the hard work of hatching out and maintaining a curious, intellectually honest child.
Why? Because the left's power comes from asserting that parents can't and shouldn't be responsible - that the state should be in charge of those young meat computers, instead. An administration that's all about lefty group-think and completely empty utterances about Hope and Change is not actually interested in a culture of innovative, self-sufficient thinkers operating in any sphere. The want a thin layer of academics calling the shots from the top, and lot of It-Took-A-Village kids raised to vote for a Nanny State to keep them employed and in power. This particular iniative is a joke, in the context of who's cheerleading for it.
Ah. So, back in the 1990's, when Clinton was running things, and the design wasn't any better and local engineers were saying the same things, that was different? I see. It's different because of your politics, not because of reality. The levees weren't built to withstand a Katrina. That reality goes back well before Bush. Of course you know that, and you're a troll.
Your heros on the left could have spent money to change the levee construction for years and years before Katrina hit. Why didn't they? Well? Did they somehow know that years later, Bush would come into office with pre-existing, poorly built protections around a city that had spent decades making the problem worse - and they were somehow pre-blaming Bush for later political advantage? Sounds about right.
Also, it's Bush's fault that your coffee wasn't very good this morning, and that the traffic lights in your area aren't synchronized very well.
you're legally prohibited from sharing them with your kids
What, you can't play those movies in front of your kids? Of course you can. Oh, I get it... you just don't want to cough up $1.99 for a used DVD of Planet of the Apes to have on the shelf.
Do you really contend that the song was so unbelievably great, so untouchably amazing, that Paul, Ringo, and the estates of George and John should STILL be making money when a radio plays it?
Apparently you do, or you wouldn't be so hung up on it. Why not sit down across from Paul, look him in the eye, and persuade him to wave off on his copyrights? Surely he'll see your point of view. And if he doesn't, and won't give away his work, then why would you want to be entertained by him anyway, since you consider him to be a thief? Show a little intellectual integrity. If entertainers you respect choose to hang onto their rights for as long as the elected congress has said they can, and you can't persuade either congress or the entertainers you claim to respect to change the situation, then go somewhere else for your entertainment so that you don't have to pollute your fragile psyche with words, films, or music made by people whose world view you hate.
Nothing is being stolen from you. You just quoted movies, in a manner perfectly in keeping with Fair Use. Was that so bad, really? Here's a thought: pick up some of the best writing ever done, which is completely in the public domain. Read some Mark Twain. Read some Shakespeare. A lot of people who were 50 when they first picked up a copy of Letters From The Earth had no expectation at the time of outliving its copyright period, either. And - shockingly - their lives were still richer for having actually read the work.
I'm sorry you're too lazy to conjure up something distinct of your own, and too shortsighted to support other artists who do. It's a shame that mashups of Alien and Gilligan's Island are, to you, the life blood of human culture and the fabric of what you imagine society to be at its best.
The only person stealing from you is yourself. Pathetic.
Actually the retailer is getting something in return. It is getting the right to make the sale
Really? So, you don't have the right to sell me something without paying a tax? We can't meet, and mutually agree on the terms by which we'll exchange value for value... because we don't have the right to do so?
Something you have to buy from the government is not a right. You buy services from the government. Rights exist in and of themselves.
Only a dyed-in-the-wool Nanny Stater thinks that rights come (in exchange for cash!) from the government. It's a shame that there are enough I-Want-A-Nanny voters out there to elect Nanny legislators, Nanny governors, and Nanny presidents, but there you have it.
Out of curiosity, what did your right to free speech cost you? Or did someone else pay for that, for you? Yeah, I thought so.
Ah. So, you're of the "since some musicians don't have the following and market clout to negotiate a deal that I think they'd like better than the one they're getting now, I advocate the loss of that artist's rights to their copyrights" camp. Excellent plan.
Nope, however I have neither the time, nor the inclination to respond to your diatribe
Of course you don't. Because you know you trotted out an absurdly wrong-headed analogy, and realize it makes no sense to compare home improvement services with creative works made in advance of, in and in speculation of sales.
unless of course I get paid a penny everytime
By different people? Perhaps. That would be a better fit, conceptually, with the actual topic at hand, as opposed to your earlier bit of nonsense.
I spent a number of years in education, learning how to walk, snog, write, type, ride a bicycle, blow my nose - I should be recompensed, shouldn't I
No, not unless you can find some people interested in what you actually do for them, with all of that fine experience under your belt. But since, given your examples, you don't sound like the kind of person who ever does invest and risk months of your life at a time in the creation of something that you hope you can market to readers/listeners/viewers, I can see how you don't really understand the topic at all. Too many hours of house paint fumes, perhaps.
Comments like yours are always conspicuously missing a proposal for how a market of media buyers will sort out the merit of one artist's work relative to another, and find a way to buy what they like, and ignore what they don't, and still avoid having the truly creative, in-demand artist not simply have their work ripped off by millions the moment it's in the hands of the first person who buys it. Let me guess: you propose some sort of government-based artists' fund and bureaucracy? A tax on everyone, perhaps, so that anyone who says they're an artist can collect money, all so that people who like to pirate entertainment they're too cheap to pay for can finally feel off the hook for stealing from the very artists they claim to admire?
Nah. Artists producing something people actually want, physicists, house painters, people who have no aspiration or drive to do more than pluck chickens - it's all the same. Perhaps there should simply be a national wage for all people. Well, except for the Pay Czars, of course. They need a little something extra, what with the stress and all. It's hard to find just the right amount of currency to make sure that the house painter is just as happy as the person who creates something loved by millions of people, isn't it? Whew! Hard work, comrade.
Yet people keep writing novels without any kind of publishing arrangement in place
Exactly. They are investing their time, and taking a risk. Just like all entrepenuers. And like most ventures, it doesn't work out for most people, because very few are particularly good at what they attempt, or have a clue about the market they're trying to approach.
There are also authors (including published ones) who "give away" their novels. Including as readings, even audio plays (with a large cast).
When, where, and how they choose to. Which is a lot different than having the work ripped of just because someone else who doesn't feel like paying for their entertainment knows a technical way to pirate the work.
Actually the quote was "It's not a news organization so much as it has a perspective." That's the White House's take on it. Not a "news organization." No indication of why NBC is a "news organization" despite their very loud and apparent "perspective."
That's essentially what it boils down to. If I paint a wall in a neighbours house, I charge for the time it takes to paint it. I don't expect to "earn" money every time the poor sods look at the bloody wall, now do I?
Are you even listening to yourself?
1) You're comparing a service (like wall painting), which is arranged for in advance and with terms understood to both parties, to - for example - a novel. Which the author risks his time to write, with no known buyers necessarily lined up (unless a publisher really wants to front some money, against future sales, just to keep in the author's good graces).
2) An author doesn't make money every time you read his book, he makes money when you buy it. If he makes the mistake of only selling it in a way that some readers will find very inconvenient, then he's lost a customer, and has to live with the consequences. But you don't pay a musician every time you pop that same CD in the car's player, or pay a cookbook maker or gourmet magazine publisher every time you make a dish while looing at a printed recipe you bought.
3) The author doesn't make a penny unless he can find himself some customers that will agree to the terms under which he's selling the book. He may not find such a customer for days, or even years after he has invested the time to do the work. He may not find his second (or second millionth) customer until years more have gone by. But he risked the time it took to create the work in anticipation of finding those customers, later. Are you implying that there's a moral difference between selling a novel week after you finish it, and selling it three weeks after you finish it? How bout 30 weeks? Has the author's investment in his own work suddenly become unimportant to you based on which day it is on the calendar?
4) "for 3 hours work." Really. That's what you think is involved in producing, say, a documentary, or a symphony, or a graphic novel, and so on? I suppose you think that because a concert pianist only performs for 45 minutes during a concert, that she's only done 45 minutes worth of work in order to deliver that performance? Are you really that obtuse?
Slashdot Mirror
the PATRIOT act, and the DMCA
Ah, you mean those legislative acts, which are born, debated, and passed in Congress? To which both parties contributed? Or do you really not understand the nature of legislation?
And if you do understand it, are you suitably horrified by the monstrosities brewing in both houses right now? Complete with attempts to make it impossible for future legislators to undo some of its worst parts? Keep your eye on the ball, here, rather than spouting nonsense.
we still don't care about trains?
You can't hijack a train, and take it somewhere else, later ramming it into a huge building full of people in some other city.
And... try going the combination of things you need to do in order to, say, steer a train pulling large payloads of dangerous chemicals someplace it's not supposed to go. You have to take over the locomotive and get control of the railyard switching systems and be able to magically control other trains to make sure they're not in your way.
Simply blowing up some passengers in the trains, a la Madrid, isn't as sexy in the US, since the attackers need to rise to the same level as their last large domestic attack, or appear to be (as they are) not as capable as they once were.
Climate scientists don't have a political agenda to "make life painful for businesses".
Just like the scientists who are asked by an energy company to study something don't have an agenda to kill polar bears... despite what people doubting their credibility seem to continually imply. Right? Hmmm?
towards natural gas
You do understand that natural gas is also a hydrocarbon, right? Tha burning it also gives off combustion byproducts (like C02) just like anything else? Less sulfur, which is nice.
As for credibility: I'm simply saying that your casting doubt on a researcher because of who happened to pay for the research is a slipperly slope. If you have doubts about science done by someone who got a grant from an energy company, then you should also have doubts about science done by someone who is paid by people, with, say, a political agenda that happens to include making life painful for businesses.
That does not have an effect on GDP per se.
Of course it does. There is no alternative energy source that can replace oil, coal, natural gas, etc., anywhere even close to being on the horizon for the next several decades - at least, none that can possibly meet the hugely expanding economies of India, China, and soon to be Africa. Taxing energy use is simply a tax on economic activity. Period. That will incredibly impact GDP.
Lindzen is paid by the fossil fuel industry. Not credible as a researcher
... starting businesses or hiring people, you get (demonstrably, over and over again) more of those exact things. Raise taxes on cigarettes? You get less smoking. Raise taxes on luxury goods? The market drifts to those products that are just under whatever threshold you've capriciously set as "luxury."
Ah. And someone who is paid by anyone but them, including by entities that expressly want to see them destroyed, are, of course, entirely neutral and without any agenda whatsoever.
Taxes do not reduce GDP. After all, that money has to go somewhere
Are you that obtuse? Taxes suppress the activities that are taxed. People do less of the thing that is taxed. If that thing is "commerce with each other," then that's exactly what you get less of. Conversely, when you lower taxes on things like
The U.S. counts every baby that shows any sign of life, irrespective of size or weight at birth. In much of Europe, on the other hand, births before twenty six weeks aren't considered live births. In Switzerland, a birth is only considered live if the baby is 30 centimeters long. In Canada, Austria and Germany, the have to way at least a pound. But in the U.S., a delivery under those standards - even if followed very quicky by death - is considered a live birth, and thus a case of infant mortality (as opposed to a miscarriage). By handling the statistics this way, a third of the live births that would be counted as such in the U.S. are instead called miscarriages in those countries, thus taking a big bite out of their infant mortality rates. And then you've got entire third world countries that don't even bother with the record keeping in the first place when a baby doesn't make it past the first minutes or days.
And then you've got more industrialized places like Hong Kong, Japan, and France that don't even consider a death within the first 24 hours to be a case of a dead infanct, but rather a miscarriage. Yet almost half of infant deaths in the U.S. occur in that same first day - and we count them as such. You get the idea.
back to the subject - US aggression and lack of respect for international law
Do tell! We just keep taking over countries, don't we? Yes, we just move in, rob them, rape the villagers, illegally copy their DVDs, and then move on to the next one. How about being specific? Like how we are now running the countries of Germany, or Japan, or Kuwait, or Panama, or Serbia, or Croatia. Yes, we're just as aggressive as can be.
You've got the worst healthcare system of any developed nation (certainly measured by infant mortality...
Yeah, except infant mortality in other countries is measured in entirely different ways. Adjusting to use the same standards completely changes your pointless point, and you know that.
When's the last time you had *any* say over anything happening within your country?
Every time we have an election, we have a say. Locally - impacting everything from how schools are run to how roads are built or property is taxed - as well as at the state and federal level. Large changes in policy are driven by how this republic's voters vote. I'm sure it greatly annoys you to know that, because it doesn't fit well with your fantasy. Sorry.
The whole world has deep concerns over American lack of respect for international law and aggression
Then why doesn't "the whole world" actually step up, pay their share and risk their own share of lives when it's necessary to do so? The US pays, per capita, wildly more than any other nation on earth to do things like mitigate HIV/AIDS in Africa. In fact, that was Bush's policy initiative. Why isn't "the whole world" meeting or exceeding that same level of commitment? Because it's cheaper to whine about it.
Let's see - how about when things fell apart in Serbia, Croatia, and their neighboring little hell holes? The Europeans couldn't be bothered to stop the slaughter of Muslims in their own back yard, so the U.S. had to foot almost the entire bill, risk the most arms and soldiers, and deploy the most material and support. Way to go, Europe. Act horrified that it's happening, wait for the U.S. to do most of the work, and then wag your fingers, again, at the fact that we have the very same big military that you guys won't pay for yourselves, or have the decency to deploy when your neighbors are on an ethnic cleansing jag.
This hasn't changed since World War II. You can't have it both ways.
he's actually putting his, and people who feel the same way, money where his mouth is
No, he's using the shrewed marketing of magical thinking, slickly packaged fear mongering and bad/half-baked information to create a market from which he and his partners can wildly profit while other people's tax money his pumped through their networks and contracts whether they want it to be or not. I can understand how you'd rather not make that distinction, since it's an unpleasant realization. People who've detected his smarmy hypocrisy, hot air and hucksterism since he was using the same skills to gain plain ol' political power aren't surprised. I have to give him credit, though, for new heights of incestuous "movement marketing," in talking the Nobel committee into squandering the last drop of their credibility to give him more cash market share.
As for Kyoto... nothing like it has to come to pass for him to still make billions in this new scam. The liberals and going to pass a cap-and-tax bill regardless, and the "cap" part of that will rely on trading carbon credits. Gore's operation will end up handling most of that, and skim transaction fees. That's what it's all about.
How exactly are you imagining Al Gore stands to make billions on carbon credits?
Spend a little time reading up on the company he and partners founded for exactly this purpose. GIM ("Generation Investment Management") sells carbon offset credits. So, when people complain that Al's burning up a whole lot of carbon when he flies to global warming religious events, he says it's OK, because he purchases carbon offset credits that make his carbon footprint completely neutral. What a relief! It's also extra convenient that he buys those credit from his own company, and that he gets millions in grants to carry on this way. His firm also invests in companies that are lined up to get enormous new grants as our supposed run-away man-made global warming is combatted through the spending of colossal amounts of federal borrowed-from-China dollars on anything labeled "green" or "alernative."
It helps that some of the people who have helped him set up arrangements in this area had investigations of their dealings called off by Janet Reno at the time. Yes, we wouldn't want a lot of extra scrutiny while setting up investment vehicles and finaancial instruments so that you can be the first mover to offer services in a market that you then publicly create by whipping up fear over bad PR and cropped photographs of polar bears.
His company handles over a billion in investment cash that chases any green-smelling contract or startup. It's no surprise that his associations with the very people who generate the hype, and his connections with the party in power that is now screaming about the need to spend trillions in new taxes on the use of carbon, happen to result in firms that use his capital being ready to get incredibly rich. And of course he's busy establishing carbon exchanges that will allow guilty carbon users to swap cash for guilt, and he, of course, will reap huge commissions in facilitating those trades. Hey, somebody has to do it, right? Why not the guy who had movie posters with hurricanes coming out of factory cooling towers? He must know a lot about that market right? Of course, because he's created it.
Guess where it leads
... ah! It leads to Al Gore, and his fellow investors, who are positioned to make billions of dollars through the absurd selling and trafficking in carbon credits. Just like priests selling absolution in the dark ages. In fact, exactly like that.
Let's see
As for those climatologists, who were facing the traditional career full of angst over tenure or grants? For people like that, a steady job is rolling in cash. If you can also crank out an alarmist book or two, and score some face time on BBC so that you'll be invited to travel the world and get in some rubber chicken meals at conferences on someone else's account? Frosting on the cake.
Per person China uses less then a quarter of the emissions than we do and they have been doing it for 100 years less then us
Are you paying attention at all? China is going through our last 100 years of growth in roughly a tenth of the time. And they're doing it with a much, much larger population that is hungry for a middle class way of life. They're on track to use more energy than the US and Europe combined, and are devastating their environment like only the Eastern Europeans did under the Soviets. Wake up.
a carbon free economy
Are you actually familar with carbon, as a substance? I take it that you're not.
We can either work together globally, people from every culture and every nation ... it is unfortunate that westerners in general, and Americans in particular, habitually see enemies wherever they look.
You don't get it, do you? The enemies, in this case, aren't the Chinese or the Indians. It's the people who don't want them to be held to the same standards as everyone else. Who is it, do you suppose, that thinks it's fine for China to fire up three new dirty coal plants every day, while also proposing enormous new taxes on US coal burners (but not on China's!)? Who is it that's deliberately seeking a division in how that issues is addressed, globally? Really: name names, and then re-imagine who it is that you think is actually causing (rather than very appropriately talking about and reacting to) the international friction, here.
Are you operating under the delusion that China is just a small, backwards country that isn't, and never will be, smart or capable enough to be held to the same standards that you think a poor town in West Virginia should be taxed into tolerating? Are you that patronizing, or that dismissive of China's enormous population?
because when you are trying to tell the world some important information, use of language is important. It's called nuance
... even as "developing" economies that are actually far more massive are being given a pass while they carry on as if nobody on the planet has learned anything since 1960.
It can also be called "oily hucksterism" or "lying" or "spinning" etc.
We're talking about a movement that wants to re-arrange trillions of dollars of productivity by reallocating its output. We're talking about a movement that's prepared to wildly punish western economies that are doing more than any culture in human history to re-invent how they use energy, recycle materials, transport people and goods
Yes, it takes some real PR to make a kid matriculate from elementary school thoroughly in the grips of this new brand of Original Sin, and seeking salvation for it by cutting giant new polluting economies a whole lot of perpetual slack. Guys like Al Gore have cleverly positioned themselves to make billions off of that well-packaged guilt and fear trip, and it's well-nuanced PR that got him there.
you never do address the very thought of what you think is wrong with science education
I have no problem with science education. We don't do nearly enough of it, mostly because parents don't actually do enough about it, directly in their own school districts where they should be doing something about it.
What I'm pointing out is that his (Obama's) party always involves itself with the education system - especially at the federal leve - by throwing money at it... money which always props up the politicized unions that vote his way, and which never have the students' actual interests at heart. For examples, note the trouble that science-oriented charter schools have surviving when the public education system is highly influenced in that district by by the teachers' unions. They are all about keeping mediocre teachers (who make terrible science instructors) in their jobs, and avoiding anything that looks like merit-based employment. As long as those union dues keep rolling in, that's what matters. And when the ruling political party leans on unions as one of their main voting blocks, you must look at everything that goes on between them for what it actually is.
hilariously old reference to Hillary Clinton's book
That expression goes back way before she trotted it out, and it's still being used, ad nauseum. Google it. You'll see it being used by everyone from "urban homesteaders" to people writing current study probrams for young students. The "community organizer" industry is littered with programs called the "It Takes A Village [whatever]" where [whatever] is everything from career development programs to child-rearing life-coach nonsense. The phrase is embraced and used, continually, by a very specific type of careerist: the We Know Better Than You program runners. Which isn't to say that some social workers don't know better than some idiots. But the assertion that children simply can't be properly raised without the intercession and stewardship of the government is alive, well, and growing stronger by the minute. And when people like you shrug it off as being a bit of Hillary-bating, you're just allowing it to continue and giving it more credibility.
Community Organizing or Organizer
Really? You stop being interested when you're reminded that your current president's only executive experience prior to his current OTJT, was his holding of that title? Yeah, I can see why you'd rather not be reminded of that.
you're actually claiming that education is actually a political ploy to garner more support for the left?
... and investing in the next round, when he'll need organized labor even more, since a lot of independents are going to be WAY more skittish this time around.
No. I'm saying that the teachers' unions are dependable voters for Obama's party, as long he continues to throw them a bone in the form of money and power of far-reaching programs that involve the continued employment of their members under their terms. Education (especially as it relates to science) doesn't stick in a kid's head because of large government programs. It sticks in their heads because their parents have made them receptive to it in the first place. Big government programs don't cause parents to be more thoughtful about how they interact with their own kids.
Obama knows this, just like every educator knows this. Which makes large, money-centric programs like this all about the people to whom the money goes: the unions. And the unions then take the dues they collect, and advertize on behalf of the politician than promises to deliver more of the same. Such unions were a big part of how Obama got elected, and he's doing payback, that's all
You're arguing that your partisan gain is more important than the success of the next generation
No. I'm saying that such programs have nothing to do with the success of the next generation, and are in fact all about the partisan gains pursued by the party dishing out the cash. Simple as that. Of course, you already knew that.
It's just another way to sew up left-handed votes from the teachers' unions.
The actual efficacy of science education is almost entirely driven by culture, and that's almost entirely driven by the way a kid is raised. He's going to be in a science classroom ready to thrive and learn and see the big picture, or not ready to - because of how his parents have armed him for a world view that takes it all rationally into account. Parents with no sense of wonder about science? Kids without one, too.
How this administration thinks it's going to change the culture which sends kids to school - in a way that will make them happy sponges for science - even as it seeks to establish an entitlement Nanny State funded by borrowing money from countries where science (pure and applied) is actually valued and cultivated... no idea. But then, Obama has no idea, either. This is Community Organizing, around a slogan, at its classic best. Empty, meaningless platitudes that don't actually call on parents to actually do the hard work of hatching out and maintaining a curious, intellectually honest child.
Why? Because the left's power comes from asserting that parents can't and shouldn't be responsible - that the state should be in charge of those young meat computers, instead. An administration that's all about lefty group-think and completely empty utterances about Hope and Change is not actually interested in a culture of innovative, self-sufficient thinkers operating in any sphere. The want a thin layer of academics calling the shots from the top, and lot of It-Took-A-Village kids raised to vote for a Nanny State to keep them employed and in power. This particular iniative is a joke, in the context of who's cheerleading for it.
funding was denied to pay for Bushs war in Iraq
Ah. So, back in the 1990's, when Clinton was running things, and the design wasn't any better and local engineers were saying the same things, that was different? I see. It's different because of your politics, not because of reality. The levees weren't built to withstand a Katrina. That reality goes back well before Bush. Of course you know that, and you're a troll.
Your heros on the left could have spent money to change the levee construction for years and years before Katrina hit. Why didn't they? Well? Did they somehow know that years later, Bush would come into office with pre-existing, poorly built protections around a city that had spent decades making the problem worse - and they were somehow pre-blaming Bush for later political advantage? Sounds about right.
Also, it's Bush's fault that your coffee wasn't very good this morning, and that the traffic lights in your area aren't synchronized very well.
You're a whiny idiot.
you're legally prohibited from sharing them with your kids
What, you can't play those movies in front of your kids? Of course you can. Oh, I get it... you just don't want to cough up $1.99 for a used DVD of Planet of the Apes to have on the shelf.
Do you really contend that the song was so unbelievably great, so untouchably amazing, that Paul, Ringo, and the estates of George and John should STILL be making money when a radio plays it?
Apparently you do, or you wouldn't be so hung up on it. Why not sit down across from Paul, look him in the eye, and persuade him to wave off on his copyrights? Surely he'll see your point of view. And if he doesn't, and won't give away his work, then why would you want to be entertained by him anyway, since you consider him to be a thief? Show a little intellectual integrity. If entertainers you respect choose to hang onto their rights for as long as the elected congress has said they can, and you can't persuade either congress or the entertainers you claim to respect to change the situation, then go somewhere else for your entertainment so that you don't have to pollute your fragile psyche with words, films, or music made by people whose world view you hate.
Nothing is being stolen from you. You just quoted movies, in a manner perfectly in keeping with Fair Use. Was that so bad, really? Here's a thought: pick up some of the best writing ever done, which is completely in the public domain. Read some Mark Twain. Read some Shakespeare. A lot of people who were 50 when they first picked up a copy of Letters From The Earth had no expectation at the time of outliving its copyright period, either. And - shockingly - their lives were still richer for having actually read the work.
I'm sorry you're too lazy to conjure up something distinct of your own, and too shortsighted to support other artists who do. It's a shame that mashups of Alien and Gilligan's Island are, to you, the life blood of human culture and the fabric of what you imagine society to be at its best.
The only person stealing from you is yourself. Pathetic.
Actually the retailer is getting something in return. It is getting the right to make the sale
... because we don't have the right to do so?
Really? So, you don't have the right to sell me something without paying a tax? We can't meet, and mutually agree on the terms by which we'll exchange value for value
Something you have to buy from the government is not a right. You buy services from the government. Rights exist in and of themselves.
Only a dyed-in-the-wool Nanny Stater thinks that rights come (in exchange for cash!) from the government. It's a shame that there are enough I-Want-A-Nanny voters out there to elect Nanny legislators, Nanny governors, and Nanny presidents, but there you have it.
Out of curiosity, what did your right to free speech cost you? Or did someone else pay for that, for you? Yeah, I thought so.
Ah. So, you're of the "since some musicians don't have the following and market clout to negotiate a deal that I think they'd like better than the one they're getting now, I advocate the loss of that artist's rights to their copyrights" camp. Excellent plan.
Nope, however I have neither the time, nor the inclination to respond to your diatribe
Of course you don't. Because you know you trotted out an absurdly wrong-headed analogy, and realize it makes no sense to compare home improvement services with creative works made in advance of, in and in speculation of sales.
unless of course I get paid a penny everytime
By different people? Perhaps. That would be a better fit, conceptually, with the actual topic at hand, as opposed to your earlier bit of nonsense.
I spent a number of years in education, learning how to walk, snog, write, type, ride a bicycle, blow my nose - I should be recompensed, shouldn't I
No, not unless you can find some people interested in what you actually do for them, with all of that fine experience under your belt. But since, given your examples, you don't sound like the kind of person who ever does invest and risk months of your life at a time in the creation of something that you hope you can market to readers/listeners/viewers, I can see how you don't really understand the topic at all. Too many hours of house paint fumes, perhaps.
Comments like yours are always conspicuously missing a proposal for how a market of media buyers will sort out the merit of one artist's work relative to another, and find a way to buy what they like, and ignore what they don't, and still avoid having the truly creative, in-demand artist not simply have their work ripped off by millions the moment it's in the hands of the first person who buys it. Let me guess: you propose some sort of government-based artists' fund and bureaucracy? A tax on everyone, perhaps, so that anyone who says they're an artist can collect money, all so that people who like to pirate entertainment they're too cheap to pay for can finally feel off the hook for stealing from the very artists they claim to admire?
Nah. Artists producing something people actually want, physicists, house painters, people who have no aspiration or drive to do more than pluck chickens - it's all the same. Perhaps there should simply be a national wage for all people. Well, except for the Pay Czars, of course. They need a little something extra, what with the stress and all. It's hard to find just the right amount of currency to make sure that the house painter is just as happy as the person who creates something loved by millions of people, isn't it? Whew! Hard work, comrade.
Yet people keep writing novels without any kind of publishing arrangement in place
Exactly. They are investing their time, and taking a risk. Just like all entrepenuers. And like most ventures, it doesn't work out for most people, because very few are particularly good at what they attempt, or have a clue about the market they're trying to approach.
There are also authors (including published ones) who "give away" their novels. Including as readings, even audio plays (with a large cast).
When, where, and how they choose to. Which is a lot different than having the work ripped of just because someone else who doesn't feel like paying for their entertainment knows a technical way to pirate the work.
Actually the quote was "It's not a news organization so much as it has a perspective." That's the White House's take on it. Not a "news organization." No indication of why NBC is a "news organization" despite their very loud and apparent "perspective."
That's essentially what it boils down to. If I paint a wall in a neighbours house, I charge for the time it takes to paint it. I don't expect to "earn" money every time the poor sods look at the bloody wall, now do I?
Are you even listening to yourself?
1) You're comparing a service (like wall painting), which is arranged for in advance and with terms understood to both parties, to - for example - a novel. Which the author risks his time to write, with no known buyers necessarily lined up (unless a publisher really wants to front some money, against future sales, just to keep in the author's good graces).
2) An author doesn't make money every time you read his book, he makes money when you buy it. If he makes the mistake of only selling it in a way that some readers will find very inconvenient, then he's lost a customer, and has to live with the consequences. But you don't pay a musician every time you pop that same CD in the car's player, or pay a cookbook maker or gourmet magazine publisher every time you make a dish while looing at a printed recipe you bought.
3) The author doesn't make a penny unless he can find himself some customers that will agree to the terms under which he's selling the book. He may not find such a customer for days, or even years after he has invested the time to do the work. He may not find his second (or second millionth) customer until years more have gone by. But he risked the time it took to create the work in anticipation of finding those customers, later. Are you implying that there's a moral difference between selling a novel week after you finish it, and selling it three weeks after you finish it? How bout 30 weeks? Has the author's investment in his own work suddenly become unimportant to you based on which day it is on the calendar?
4) "for 3 hours work." Really. That's what you think is involved in producing, say, a documentary, or a symphony, or a graphic novel, and so on? I suppose you think that because a concert pianist only performs for 45 minutes during a concert, that she's only done 45 minutes worth of work in order to deliver that performance? Are you really that obtuse?