Am I the only one who doesn't see a big difference between the two passages? The second one is pretty much just a rewritten, more detailed version of the first one.
I don't think that he's mentally ill. He files these lawsuits in different federal districts in order to avoid frivolity penalties. In other words, he recognizes that the suits are completely ridiculous. I bet that he's doing it because he's bored.
The Google that built up a superb track record is not the same as the Google of today. The moment they became publicly traded, their mission switched from "Don't be evil" to "Maximize our stock price." I've always thought that the stock market is a little perverse, because a public company making a steady profit is looked upon as stagnating, whereas a private company doing the same thing could be making its investors money hand over fist. Google may not be evil yet, but the moment their IPO hit the market, they sealed their fate.
This was the big test to see if he would collapse under the pressure of the telecoms. More money was offered so he decided to go with it.
I won't pretend to not be upset over Obama's vote, but I really don't think that his vote was bought. His donor base is so large that any one donor is inconsequential. No, this vote was pure politics. Once again, the Democrats are playing into the Republicans' hands.
Superficially, the Fairness Doctrine looked like it was a violation of the First Amendment, but it really wasn't. Broadcast licenses are simply a contract between the People and those who wish to broadcast. If you choose not to follow the rules imposed by the FCC, that contract can and should be revoked. It's the same as any other contract. The First Amendment guarantees the right to freedom of speech, not a platform.
That's 294.15K for anyone who has (somewhat at least) overcome an infantile obsession with water. That's 25.347 meV for anyone who despises Boltzmann's constant.
Make sure to wave when you are over Michigan man. I'll be the one on my lawn green with envy. Am I the only one who read that as "I'll be the one on my green lawn with envy?"
The same web site could be configured to allow for the creation of dummy ballots, in which the voter makes a (fake) record of having voted a certain way. Since the ballot ID would be given in the voting booth, any potential vote buyers or pressurers (e.g., a boss) wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
Wow, I just realized that the people I keep seeing spreading falsehoods about Obama are all the same person. Normally, I find point-by-point refutation to be anathema, but I'll make an exception for you.
The larger point is that all three major candidates have taken in over half a billion dollars, and while Obama may tout his plethora of tiny donations, it still only amounts to a fraction of the total he has received. Campaign finance is nothing more than open, legal bribery. There is a reason why corporations and the wealthy have far more influence in the government than workers, and why corporate interests trump public interests.
As I noted in my other reply to one of your posts, what you call a "fraction" of the total he has received being small is actually about half (where "small" is defined as $200 or less). Now, one half is technically a fraction, so I can't say that you're incorrect.
Obama is a case in point. One of his top contributors is Exelon, one of the US's largest nuclear power corporations. In exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions, Obama successfully watered down legislation that would hold nuclear power plant operators accountable to local governments in the case of leaks or other accidents. Quid pro quo, pure and simple.
You neglected to mention that the bill Obama "watered down" was his own. Politicians water down their own bills all the time in order to get them to pass, especially when the minority party is against it and you cannot overturn a filibuster.
Look at the $4 million he's raked in from the health care industry and you begin to understand why he opposes single-payer healthcare, an issue supported by over 60% of Americans. Obama's no different from other politicians--he just talks a better game.
This is the third time I've seen you repeat the mantra that because an industry is listed as having given donations on OpenSecrets, a candidate is bought and paid for. The simple fact is that when you donate to a candidate, you are required to list your employer. Everyone's donations, from the janitor to the executive, are lumped in the same category. Your $4 million figure includes everyone in the entire ****ing health care industry! Every doctor, nurse, dentist, and medical assistant is included as a "health care professional." Give me a break, and stop repeating that nonsense.
Notably, your OpenSecrets link does not track donations under $200. It also only adds up to $128 million, half of what Obama has raised. Including the untracked donations, this is the true breakdown:
Unfortunately, what Harry Truman said is true: people with median skills and intelligence are more likely to be elected than geniuses. The median voter is afraid of geniuses.
Obama was president of the Harvard Law Review, which means that he was a member of the top ~5% of his Harvard law class. Just saying.
Not true. There are many places where only one of those options is available, in which case there is a local monopoly. Not that it matters anyway, since a two-company oligopoly will be just as bad. AT&T and Verizon won't merge: they know that with the highly probable changing of the guard at the Justice Department this year, they'd be broken up instantly. No, what's far more likely is that unspoken collusion will occur, and they'll independently decide to stay off each other's turf. In a very real sense, two monopolies will exist side-by-side. And since all the good spectrum is locked up, it won't even be possible for competitors to form. The telcos need to go the way of the utility companies.
That may be true, but there is already a major organization dedicated solely to protecting 2nd Amendment rights, the NRA. Given the ACLU's limited budget, I would prefer that they focus on the other freedoms, especially when they're usually the only group doing so.
You should read the fine print on the site you linked to. The contributions are aggregated by employer, regardless of status or influence. For example, anyone working for Google and giving to Obama is lumped under Google: be they Larry Page, a programmer, or a janitor. Each of the companies / universities listed has tens to hundreds of thousands of employees, so it shouldn't be that surprising to find that when added together, they represent a few hundred thousand dollars. Why would he be beholden to a group of individuals that didn't act in concert in any way?
In addition, he routinely lies about not taking money from lobbyists, which is a demonstrably false statement. In fact, both he and Clinton have taken in far more money from corporations than McCain has--which shows where corporate America is placing their bets.
There's a difference between taking money from a lobbyist and taking money from an executive. Obama takes no money from registered lobbyists. Period. Your quip about "corporate America" is also completely meaningless: as I said, those numbers are aggregate. Obama's raised far more money than McCain overall, and he's done it with a greater fraction being small donors. His average donation is about 4 times less than McCain's. Now, by the rules of proportionality, he's also raised more "corporate" money, but that's really a meaningless metric. What do you think he should do? Refuse money from anyone who works for a large corporation?
"Left-biased?" Tell that to Ollie North, Rush Limbaugh, and Fred Phelps, people who have all been represented by the ACLU. Regardless of their position on gun rights, the fact is that there is already a major organization dedicated solely to gun rights. Given the ACLU's finite budget, I'd prefer they focus on the other rights and leave guns to the NRA.
1. The easiest way to slash military spending is to end the war in Iraq, which Obama is in favor of. 2. Why do you think Obama is in the pocket of corporate America? He doesn't take money from lobbyists, and even though he's willing to take money from executives, he's achieved record non-corporate donations. The average Obama donation is under $100, and when you've raised half a billion dollars, someone's bundling of $10,000 means very little to you.
Because politicians decided that it wasn't fair that people with bad credit couldn't get home loans, so they created laws authorizing subprime mortgages, and indeed pressed banks to give these loans to "disadvantaged" borrowers. That's right, your beloved government regulations helped create this mess.
I think you should re-read what you just wrote. In order for the government to have authorized subprime loans, one must assume that they were previously unauthorized. In other words, something which was disallowed became allowed. That is an example of deregulation, not regulation.
And by the way, from an EE's perspective, just because markets are somewhat self-correcting and have feedback, it doesn't mean that they're ideal. The market is an extremely complex dynamical system, but even very simple control systems like an inverted pendulum can be over- or underdamped. It is completely unrealistic to assume that the market is optimal, and regulations are an attempt to fix that. I guess you could make the argument that any regulation could make the market worse, but that is really an argument of FUD.
Yeah, those socialist nut jobs at the World Health Organization who rank Cuba just below the U.S. in terms of health care are the liars. Not the Republican Party, who insist that our health care system is just peachy.
It's not that the population is being dumbed down. Really. It's that a vocal minority combined with a complicit conservative media is making it appear that way.
The key words in that passage are "unreasonable" and "probable cause." You seem to be arguing that government should never have the ability to access banking records, under any circumstances. But even the Fourth Amendment itself permits the government to invade your Fourth Amendment rights when there is a good reason for doing so and they have a warrant.
As for the driverless car thing, I think that it could conceivably happen in my own lifetime, but I don't expect it anytime soon. Certainly not as a common thing in the next decade. Really? I'm going to go out on a limb and give it ten years before driverless cars are commercially available. I'd be very surprised if it took more than fifteen years. The DARPA Grand Challenge contestants did very well this year, and I sincerely doubt that the people involved are just going to stop working on it.
...but why auction off the band in the first place? Why not give control to local governments so that they might offer municipal Wi-Fi, or municipal cell service, or both? I can't think of something that, at its core, is as inherently public as this. Even roads are spatially localized. To give control over it to oligopolistic corporations (which, given ten years, will almost undoubtedly be monopolistic) for a fraction of our GDP seems anti-competitive.
(Yes, I'm aware that it was auctioned off. Nevertheless, the fact is that the corporations which bought it bought it at a fraction of its worth. It's like going to a homeless shelter and auctioning off a BMW.)
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Am I the only one who doesn't see a big difference between the two passages? The second one is pretty much just a rewritten, more detailed version of the first one.
I don't think that he's mentally ill. He files these lawsuits in different federal districts in order to avoid frivolity penalties. In other words, he recognizes that the suits are completely ridiculous. I bet that he's doing it because he's bored.
The Google that built up a superb track record is not the same as the Google of today. The moment they became publicly traded, their mission switched from "Don't be evil" to "Maximize our stock price." I've always thought that the stock market is a little perverse, because a public company making a steady profit is looked upon as stagnating, whereas a private company doing the same thing could be making its investors money hand over fist. Google may not be evil yet, but the moment their IPO hit the market, they sealed their fate.
This was the big test to see if he would collapse under the pressure of the telecoms. More money was offered so he decided to go with it.
I won't pretend to not be upset over Obama's vote, but I really don't think that his vote was bought. His donor base is so large that any one donor is inconsequential. No, this vote was pure politics. Once again, the Democrats are playing into the Republicans' hands.
Superficially, the Fairness Doctrine looked like it was a violation of the First Amendment, but it really wasn't. Broadcast licenses are simply a contract between the People and those who wish to broadcast. If you choose not to follow the rules imposed by the FCC, that contract can and should be revoked. It's the same as any other contract. The First Amendment guarantees the right to freedom of speech, not a platform.
The same web site could be configured to allow for the creation of dummy ballots, in which the voter makes a (fake) record of having voted a certain way. Since the ballot ID would be given in the voting booth, any potential vote buyers or pressurers (e.g., a boss) wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
Yeah, because it's so difficult to go on a person's web site and find out their policy positions.
Wow, I just realized that the people I keep seeing spreading falsehoods about Obama are all the same person. Normally, I find point-by-point refutation to be anathema, but I'll make an exception for you.
The larger point is that all three major candidates have taken in over half a billion dollars, and while Obama may tout his plethora of tiny donations, it still only amounts to a fraction of the total he has received. Campaign finance is nothing more than open, legal bribery. There is a reason why corporations and the wealthy have far more influence in the government than workers, and why corporate interests trump public interests.
As I noted in my other reply to one of your posts, what you call a "fraction" of the total he has received being small is actually about half (where "small" is defined as $200 or less). Now, one half is technically a fraction, so I can't say that you're incorrect.
Obama is a case in point. One of his top contributors is Exelon, one of the US's largest nuclear power corporations. In exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions, Obama successfully watered down legislation that would hold nuclear power plant operators accountable to local governments in the case of leaks or other accidents. Quid pro quo, pure and simple.
You neglected to mention that the bill Obama "watered down" was his own. Politicians water down their own bills all the time in order to get them to pass, especially when the minority party is against it and you cannot overturn a filibuster.
Look at the $4 million he's raked in from the health care industry and you begin to understand why he opposes single-payer healthcare, an issue supported by over 60% of Americans. Obama's no different from other politicians--he just talks a better game.
This is the third time I've seen you repeat the mantra that because an industry is listed as having given donations on OpenSecrets, a candidate is bought and paid for. The simple fact is that when you donate to a candidate, you are required to list your employer. Everyone's donations, from the janitor to the executive, are lumped in the same category. Your $4 million figure includes everyone in the entire ****ing health care industry! Every doctor, nurse, dentist, and medical assistant is included as a "health care professional." Give me a break, and stop repeating that nonsense.
Notably, your OpenSecrets link does not track donations under $200. It also only adds up to $128 million, half of what Obama has raised. Including the untracked donations, this is the true breakdown:
$0-$200: 47%
$200-$500: 4.3%
$500-$1000: 6.5%
$1000-$2300: 14.6%
$2300+: 26.7%
$4600+: 4.5%
Looks bottom-heavy to me. But I'm betting you knew this.
Unfortunately, what Harry Truman said is true: people with median skills and intelligence are more likely to be elected than geniuses. The median voter is afraid of geniuses.
Obama was president of the Harvard Law Review, which means that he was a member of the top ~5% of his Harvard law class. Just saying.
Has Obama voted for any draconian copyright restrictions? Just curious.
Not true. There are many places where only one of those options is available, in which case there is a local monopoly. Not that it matters anyway, since a two-company oligopoly will be just as bad. AT&T and Verizon won't merge: they know that with the highly probable changing of the guard at the Justice Department this year, they'd be broken up instantly. No, what's far more likely is that unspoken collusion will occur, and they'll independently decide to stay off each other's turf. In a very real sense, two monopolies will exist side-by-side. And since all the good spectrum is locked up, it won't even be possible for competitors to form. The telcos need to go the way of the utility companies.
That may be true, but there is already a major organization dedicated solely to protecting 2nd Amendment rights, the NRA. Given the ACLU's limited budget, I would prefer that they focus on the other freedoms, especially when they're usually the only group doing so.
You should read the fine print on the site you linked to. The contributions are aggregated by employer, regardless of status or influence. For example, anyone working for Google and giving to Obama is lumped under Google: be they Larry Page, a programmer, or a janitor. Each of the companies / universities listed has tens to hundreds of thousands of employees, so it shouldn't be that surprising to find that when added together, they represent a few hundred thousand dollars. Why would he be beholden to a group of individuals that didn't act in concert in any way?
In addition, he routinely lies about not taking money from lobbyists, which is a demonstrably false statement. In fact, both he and Clinton have taken in far more money from corporations than McCain has--which shows where corporate America is placing their bets.
There's a difference between taking money from a lobbyist and taking money from an executive. Obama takes no money from registered lobbyists. Period. Your quip about "corporate America" is also completely meaningless: as I said, those numbers are aggregate. Obama's raised far more money than McCain overall, and he's done it with a greater fraction being small donors. His average donation is about 4 times less than McCain's. Now, by the rules of proportionality, he's also raised more "corporate" money, but that's really a meaningless metric. What do you think he should do? Refuse money from anyone who works for a large corporation?
"Left-biased?" Tell that to Ollie North, Rush Limbaugh, and Fred Phelps, people who have all been represented by the ACLU. Regardless of their position on gun rights, the fact is that there is already a major organization dedicated solely to gun rights. Given the ACLU's finite budget, I'd prefer they focus on the other rights and leave guns to the NRA.
Wow, assuming that's accurate, it's pretty compelling. I guess "trickle down" economics really doesn't work.
1. The easiest way to slash military spending is to end the war in Iraq, which Obama is in favor of.
2. Why do you think Obama is in the pocket of corporate America? He doesn't take money from lobbyists, and even though he's willing to take money from executives, he's achieved record non-corporate donations. The average Obama donation is under $100, and when you've raised half a billion dollars, someone's bundling of $10,000 means very little to you.
Because politicians decided that it wasn't fair that people with bad credit couldn't get home loans, so they created laws authorizing subprime mortgages, and indeed pressed banks to give these loans to "disadvantaged" borrowers. That's right, your beloved government regulations helped create this mess.
I think you should re-read what you just wrote. In order for the government to have authorized subprime loans, one must assume that they were previously unauthorized. In other words, something which was disallowed became allowed. That is an example of deregulation, not regulation.
And by the way, from an EE's perspective, just because markets are somewhat self-correcting and have feedback, it doesn't mean that they're ideal. The market is an extremely complex dynamical system, but even very simple control systems like an inverted pendulum can be over- or underdamped. It is completely unrealistic to assume that the market is optimal, and regulations are an attempt to fix that. I guess you could make the argument that any regulation could make the market worse, but that is really an argument of FUD.
Yeah, those socialist nut jobs at the World Health Organization who rank Cuba just below the U.S. in terms of health care are the liars. Not the Republican Party, who insist that our health care system is just peachy.
It's not that the population is being dumbed down. Really. It's that a vocal minority combined with a complicit conservative media is making it appear that way.
The key words in that passage are "unreasonable" and "probable cause." You seem to be arguing that government should never have the ability to access banking records, under any circumstances. But even the Fourth Amendment itself permits the government to invade your Fourth Amendment rights when there is a good reason for doing so and they have a warrant.
...but why auction off the band in the first place? Why not give control to local governments so that they might offer municipal Wi-Fi, or municipal cell service, or both? I can't think of something that, at its core, is as inherently public as this. Even roads are spatially localized. To give control over it to oligopolistic corporations (which, given ten years, will almost undoubtedly be monopolistic) for a fraction of our GDP seems anti-competitive.
(Yes, I'm aware that it was auctioned off. Nevertheless, the fact is that the corporations which bought it bought it at a fraction of its worth. It's like going to a homeless shelter and auctioning off a BMW.)