The studios pulled the infamous Hollywood Accounting scam, of trying to pretend that LOTR didn't make any money, in order to keep from paying Jackson his contractual shares of profits.
I'd suspect that they must have come to some sort of an agreement with Jackson. Either setting up payment on what they owe in LOTR, or sweetening the $ from the Hobbit in some way in order to make up for it.
What's even more interesting to me, is that the article doesn't mention this at all. The article reads so much like a press release that I wonder if it's cribbed directly from a couple of different press releases.
We can not give a fuck. But the companies that build commercial OS's basically have to give a fuck. Therefore torrenting isn't baked into OS's, and will not be until torrents become acceptable to the media companies that these OS's makers want to partner with.
I hope so. But, no matter what happens they will continue blaming Democrats. It depends if the Florida electorate will fall for it. I guess I'll think and hope they won't. If I can't do anything about it and it won't directly affect me, I might as well hope for the best, eh?
I didn't mean it would hurt the Democrats for any LOGICAL reasons.:) Just that *ANY* job losses in Florida will be blamed on the Democrats, because a) they're in control of the White House and Congress, and b) Florida has an especially rabid right-wing presence. Probably the worst of any US swing state.
It would've been my guess that the Constellation program was a rather hastily thrown together afterthought, that the Bush administration wouldn't actually have to deal with implementing. Just kick the can down the road...
Reading the article, Bush actually ended the shuttle program back in 2004. The article further says that if Obama signs a NASA budget bill that authorizes another shuttle mission, those workers could stay employed for one mission longer.
What Obama is ending is Bush's proposed "shuttle replacement" program, the Constellation. Much as I'd like to see space exploration continue, if the Constellation is already behind schedule and over budget I can understand it. Especially in this current climate.
It's definitely going to hurt Democrats in Florida though.
Some conservatives love to say how terrible Social Security and Medicare is. Then when it's time for these conservatives to benefit from them, these programs miraculously transform into being acceptable.
No, single-payer health care would have been liberal. That's not what we got. What we got was a system that leaves insurance companies in place making $, it just imposes restrictions on them.
That's centrist, as opposed to liberal.
Furthermore, extending Bush's policies on surveillance, GITMO and the two wars we're in is most decidedly not liberal.
I completely agree with you in that HCR could and should have been much better, and it may be my number one disappointment with the Obama administration. (And there are quite a few others.) Basically the Democrats got in and **immediately** took single-payer off the table. Somehow thinking this would make the Republicans agree to it, when they still had everything to gain by making the Democrats look bad by dragging their feet and letting nothing happen.
But I will point out that you are not in exactly the same position - now you actually can't be auto-disqualified for pre-existing conditions. So you could actually get insurance now if you wanted it.
I understand and agree that this sort of incremental improvement is cold comfort, when we were led to expect drastic change. But, I am perceiving that the Dmoecrats have come to realize the GOP won't work with them (shocker!), so the Democrats have nothing to go gain from compromise.
but we'll see. I'm not liking how the middle-class tax cuts weren't voted on now, but kept in a package with the tax cuts for the wealthy. The Democrats may blow that one too. They are a frustrating party, in that they seem to be pursuing a path of being just as barely better than the GOP as they can get away with.
It incorrectly limits "our issues" to exclude those in the subset I mentioned. If you'd like another example besides the miserable failure that was supposed to be healthcare reform, then I point you here [slashdot.org] for an example of another issue that the current administration is trying to make worse, not fix.
I don't need another example, I'd like to see **that** example. You just made a flat claim, with nothing to back it up.
If what you're claiming is that:
a) Health Care Reform is making things worse rather than better,
b) this was done under the Obama administration, and therefore is an example of something bad not occurring under Bush, therefore
c) not everything bad from the Fed Gov't came from the Bush Administration or the GOP.
- then that is a very reasonable argument. But that was not at all clear from your original statement. Nor would it "hit my credibility in the testicles" if it meant that one of my 4 arguments should have been phrased "nearly 100%" instead of "%100".
Also, considering the Health Care Reform to be a miserable failure appears to be contrary to CBO figures and other impartial nonpartisan experts.
OK then! Please explain how this other subset, which you've described in one line as the "HMO Revitalization act", destroys my credibility or in fact counters any single thing I said.
Really? It alters polling data, campaign demographics, the Bush Administration's activities from 2000-2008, the GOP's policies running congress and the Senate from 2000-2006, and even ****cause and effect itself***?
That's an interesting interpretation of the law. Do you have any actual information beyond this assertion?
Otherwise, I say it shoots ***your*** credibility in the testicles. Nyah Nyahn pants on fire.
Hm, well, the unions can be corrupt. But there is NO WAY they can be as corrupt as the studios. They aren't even in the same league.
I mean, are there any other industries that are by habit so opaque in their accounting practices, that they will pretend worldwide blockbuster **didn't make a dime** IN COURT just to avoid paying a percentage they agreed on to the writer-director of the film??
I mean, these guys pretended that Forrest Gump didn't make any money! Seriously! And Lord of the Rings made $6 **billion dollars** so far, and they still haven't even paid the Tolkien Estate.
So when looking at a hard line SAG and other unions are taking, it's worth noting that this is the kind of existential $ociopathy they are dealing with. I'd feel bad if I didn't tip a mover an extra 10$ for doing a good job. Somehow they can sleep after screwing over the very people who made them the money they're rolling up and sniffing coke through.
They hijacked the word, and now here in the US it refers to an authoritarian leftist.
....if the person doing the referring is politically conservative.
Liberals and, I think, most independents will note that there is nothing at all "Conservative" about the extremely radical positions and proposed policies of most US conservatives.
1) Liberal does not mean Democrat. Obama is not a liberal, he is a centrist. He only looks like a liberal to conservatives.
2) The Democratic party does not have to go insane left-wingers to win races. It does have to deliver on it's promises. Right now it's having problems with that, because the Democratic party is still convinced it can compromise with the Republicans. Who have decided on a role of saying "No" to anything, and then accepting the benefits of it somehow being passed anyway with no shame or even acknowledgement of the hypocrisy.
3) If you examine the polls on issues from abortion to single-payer health care, when you leave out loaded booga-booga words like "sociallism" and describe the actual policies, the majority of Americans prefer liberal positions.
The majority is to the left of our current Centrist government. And yes, Obama is a centrist, cut right out of Bill Clinton cloth.
4) the notion that the Federal government itself is responsible for our issues is mistaken. What is wrong is the last group of people who were running it, 100% from 2000-2006. We are still digging our way out of the mess.
And a lot of the current frustration with the Obama administration is not that they are "too Left" - it is that they are not nearly Left **enough**. We as a country thought we were voting for FDR. And it feels like we are getting LBJ. Which is better than another GWB, but "it could be worse" isn't a very exciting slogan even when it's very true.
As usual, the Onion got it right first
on
Facebook Is Down
·
· Score: 1
Although they were referring to the entire Internet, not just Facebook - it seems there's less and less of a difference nowadays.
Unfortunately people get bad information that they think settles the issue, and then budging that crap out of there is harder than shoveling gravel because their *pride* is now attached.
Believe it - people who are otherwise smart fall for dumb shit all the time.
My other reply was unnecessarily harsh, my apologies. Too much caffeine.
But the facts by economists do support stimulus spending as well as health care reform. And I do remain doubtful that the Republican party has grown government less than the Democratic party. I know that's the meme - but I don't think that meme is actually in step with reality.
Conservative growth is less than democratic growth.
I dispute that. Show me that in budget form, over the last 40 years. If anything it seems the exact opposite - Republicans for the last 40 years have run deficits and enlarged government far in excess of Democrats. I have no idea how, for example, Reagan is looked at as some small-government hero. He **drastically** enlarged the size, scope, and power of the Federal government - and when even that wasn't enough executive power, he directly violated the Constitution with Iran-Contra.
Not sure how someone older, who usually hangs out with older and younger, is assessed to knowing LESS history given they've lived longer...
People are assessed as knowing less, if what they "know" is proven wrong by the overwhelming preponderance of evidence that's analyzed as experts.
For the overwhelming number of experts, stimulus spending and progressive taxation where the wealthier pay a greater share **works** for America, and "supply-side" aka Voodoo Economics does not.
No, not quite. In theory, Congress has the ultimate power because they can override a veto. But in practice, this is not the case - because going against the President's veto **automatically** loses votes.
OSuch was the practical as well as theoretical brilliance of the founding fathers - if this were note the case, President's veto would be meaningless.
As is evidenced by Clinton **vetoing** the GOP budget, forcing a government shutdown, the resulting public pressure of which forced the GOP to produce a budget more in line with what the President wanted.
If they could have overrode Clinton's veto, they would have. But the President's position was popular with the people, so the opposing party felt the pressure and produced a budget more acceptable to the President.
What do Beck, Stewart and Colbert have in common?
They're entertainers, not political scientists.
Well sure. The scary difference is, Stewart and Colbert's fans know they're entertainers. Beck's fans treat him like some kind of freaking messiah. While he scribbles conspiracy theories on blackboards which his fans take at face value, rather than the crapulent arse-sourced chicanery that they are.
Slashdot Mirror
Peter Jackson actually didn't like Bombadil AND the scouring of the Shire. AND he almost cut the Shelob monster-spider scene.
He did a better job than almost anyone else I can think of, except perhaps Guillermo Del Toro; but his version of LOTR still misses the mark IMHO.
The studios pulled the infamous Hollywood Accounting scam, of trying to pretend that LOTR didn't make any money, in order to keep from paying Jackson his contractual shares of profits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting#Examples
I'd suspect that they must have come to some sort of an agreement with Jackson. Either setting up payment on what they owe in LOTR, or sweetening the $ from the Hobbit in some way in order to make up for it.
What's even more interesting to me, is that the article doesn't mention this at all. The article reads so much like a press release that I wonder if it's cribbed directly from a couple of different press releases.
We can not give a fuck. But the companies that build commercial OS's basically have to give a fuck. Therefore torrenting isn't baked into OS's, and will not be until torrents become acceptable to the media companies that these OS's makers want to partner with.
I hope so. But, no matter what happens they will continue blaming Democrats. It depends if the Florida electorate will fall for it. I guess I'll think and hope they won't. If I can't do anything about it and it won't directly affect me, I might as well hope for the best, eh?
I didn't mean it would hurt the Democrats for any LOGICAL reasons. :) Just that *ANY* job losses in Florida will be blamed on the Democrats, because a) they're in control of the White House and Congress, and b) Florida has an especially rabid right-wing presence. Probably the worst of any US swing state.
It would've been my guess that the Constellation program was a rather hastily thrown together afterthought, that the Bush administration wouldn't actually have to deal with implementing. Just kick the can down the road...
I haven't heard about that. Love to see some info it.
Reading the article, Bush actually ended the shuttle program back in 2004. The article further says that if Obama signs a NASA budget bill that authorizes another shuttle mission, those workers could stay employed for one mission longer.
What Obama is ending is Bush's proposed "shuttle replacement" program, the Constellation. Much as I'd like to see space exploration continue, if the Constellation is already behind schedule and over budget I can understand it. Especially in this current climate.
It's definitely going to hurt Democrats in Florida though.
Some conservatives love to say how terrible Social Security and Medicare is. Then when it's time for these conservatives to benefit from them, these programs miraculously transform into being acceptable.
No, single-payer health care would have been liberal. That's not what we got. What we got was a system that leaves insurance companies in place making $, it just imposes restrictions on them.
That's centrist, as opposed to liberal.
Furthermore, extending Bush's policies on surveillance, GITMO and the two wars we're in is most decidedly not liberal.
Therefore Obama is a centrist.
I completely agree with you in that HCR could and should have been much better, and it may be my number one disappointment with the Obama administration. (And there are quite a few others.) Basically the Democrats got in and **immediately** took single-payer off the table. Somehow thinking this would make the Republicans agree to it, when they still had everything to gain by making the Democrats look bad by dragging their feet and letting nothing happen.
But I will point out that you are not in exactly the same position - now you actually can't be auto-disqualified for pre-existing conditions. So you could actually get insurance now if you wanted it.
I understand and agree that this sort of incremental improvement is cold comfort, when we were led to expect drastic change. But, I am perceiving that the Dmoecrats have come to realize the GOP won't work with them (shocker!), so the Democrats have nothing to go gain from compromise.
but we'll see. I'm not liking how the middle-class tax cuts weren't voted on now, but kept in a package with the tax cuts for the wealthy. The Democrats may blow that one too. They are a frustrating party, in that they seem to be pursuing a path of being just as barely better than the GOP as they can get away with.
It incorrectly limits "our issues" to exclude those in the subset I mentioned. If you'd like another example besides the miserable failure that was supposed to be healthcare reform, then I point you here [slashdot.org] for an example of another issue that the current administration is trying to make worse, not fix.
I don't need another example, I'd like to see **that** example. You just made a flat claim, with nothing to back it up.
If what you're claiming is that:
a) Health Care Reform is making things worse rather than better,
b) this was done under the Obama administration, and therefore is an example of something bad not occurring under Bush, therefore
c) not everything bad from the Fed Gov't came from the Bush Administration or the GOP.
- then that is a very reasonable argument. But that was not at all clear from your original statement. Nor would it "hit my credibility in the testicles" if it meant that one of my 4 arguments should have been phrased "nearly 100%" instead of "%100".
Also, considering the Health Care Reform to be a miserable failure appears to be contrary to CBO figures and other impartial nonpartisan experts.
http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/08/26/cbo-cost-repea/
While HCR could have gone much farther, there seems to be no question that it's better than what we would have without action.
So, I'm curious to know why you consider these experts wrong. Once we've resolved that, I'll be happy to move on to the other issues you mention.
OK then! Please explain how this other subset, which you've described in one line as the "HMO Revitalization act", destroys my credibility or in fact counters any single thing I said.
Really? It alters polling data, campaign demographics, the Bush Administration's activities from 2000-2008, the GOP's policies running congress and the Senate from 2000-2006, and even ****cause and effect itself***?
That's an interesting interpretation of the law. Do you have any actual information beyond this assertion?
Otherwise, I say it shoots ***your*** credibility in the testicles. Nyah Nyahn pants on fire.
Agreed; also some collusion on the part of American union leaders **with** management, thus muddying the waters.
Hm, well, the unions can be corrupt. But there is NO WAY they can be as corrupt as the studios. They aren't even in the same league.
I mean, are there any other industries that are by habit so opaque in their accounting practices, that they will pretend worldwide blockbuster **didn't make a dime** IN COURT just to avoid paying a percentage they agreed on to the writer-director of the film??
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
I mean, these guys pretended that Forrest Gump didn't make any money! Seriously! And Lord of the Rings made $6 **billion dollars** so far, and they still haven't even paid the Tolkien Estate.
So when looking at a hard line SAG and other unions are taking, it's worth noting that this is the kind of existential $ociopathy they are dealing with. I'd feel bad if I didn't tip a mover an extra 10$ for doing a good job. Somehow they can sleep after screwing over the very people who made them the money they're rolling up and sniffing coke through.
They hijacked the word, and now here in the US it refers to an authoritarian leftist.
....if the person doing the referring is politically conservative.
Liberals and, I think, most independents will note that there is nothing at all "Conservative" about the extremely radical positions and proposed policies of most US conservatives.
A primer FROM a Liberal:
1) Liberal does not mean Democrat. Obama is not a liberal, he is a centrist. He only looks like a liberal to conservatives.
2) The Democratic party does not have to go insane left-wingers to win races. It does have to deliver on it's promises. Right now it's having problems with that, because the Democratic party is still convinced it can compromise with the Republicans. Who have decided on a role of saying "No" to anything, and then accepting the benefits of it somehow being passed anyway with no shame or even acknowledgement of the hypocrisy.
3) If you examine the polls on issues from abortion to single-payer health care, when you leave out loaded booga-booga words like "sociallism" and describe the actual policies, the majority of Americans prefer liberal positions.
The country is not "moving to the center".
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/05/18-3 - quoting a Pew poll.
The majority is to the left of our current Centrist government. And yes, Obama is a centrist, cut right out of Bill Clinton cloth.
4) the notion that the Federal government itself is responsible for our issues is mistaken. What is wrong is the last group of people who were running it, 100% from 2000-2006. We are still digging our way out of the mess.
And a lot of the current frustration with the Obama administration is not that they are "too Left" - it is that they are not nearly Left **enough**. We as a country thought we were voting for FDR. And it feels like we are getting LBJ. Which is better than another GWB, but "it could be worse" isn't a very exciting slogan even when it's very true.
Although they were referring to the entire Internet, not just Facebook - it seems there's less and less of a difference nowadays.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/48hour-internet-outage-plunges-nation-into-product,779/
Unfortunately people get bad information that they think settles the issue, and then budging that crap out of there is harder than shoveling gravel because their *pride* is now attached.
Believe it - people who are otherwise smart fall for dumb shit all the time.
So we can finally make the Moon-hoaxers shut up? One of my otherwise smart friends among them?
My other reply was unnecessarily harsh, my apologies. Too much caffeine.
But the facts by economists do support stimulus spending as well as health care reform. And I do remain doubtful that the Republican party has grown government less than the Democratic party. I know that's the meme - but I don't think that meme is actually in step with reality.
Citation needed on the should part. Really?
OK, my citation is Paul Krugman on stimulus spending. Here, let me google that for you:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=paul+krugman+stimulus+spending
Conservative growth is less than democratic growth.
I dispute that. Show me that in budget form, over the last 40 years. If anything it seems the exact opposite - Republicans for the last 40 years have run deficits and enlarged government far in excess of Democrats. I have no idea how, for example, Reagan is looked at as some small-government hero. He **drastically** enlarged the size, scope, and power of the Federal government - and when even that wasn't enough executive power, he directly violated the Constitution with Iran-Contra.
Not sure how someone older, who usually hangs out with older and younger, is assessed to knowing LESS history given they've lived longer...
People are assessed as knowing less, if what they "know" is proven wrong by the overwhelming preponderance of evidence that's analyzed as experts.
For the overwhelming number of experts, stimulus spending and progressive taxation where the wealthier pay a greater share **works** for America, and "supply-side" aka Voodoo Economics does not.
No, not quite. In theory, Congress has the ultimate power because they can override a veto. But in practice, this is not the case - because going against the President's veto **automatically** loses votes.
OSuch was the practical as well as theoretical brilliance of the founding fathers - if this were note the case, President's veto would be meaningless.
As is evidenced by Clinton **vetoing** the GOP budget, forcing a government shutdown, the resulting public pressure of which forced the GOP to produce a budget more in line with what the President wanted.
If they could have overrode Clinton's veto, they would have. But the President's position was popular with the people, so the opposing party felt the pressure and produced a budget more acceptable to the President.
What do Beck, Stewart and Colbert have in common? They're entertainers, not political scientists.
Well sure. The scary difference is, Stewart and Colbert's fans know they're entertainers. Beck's fans treat him like some kind of freaking messiah. While he scribbles conspiracy theories on blackboards which his fans take at face value, rather than the crapulent arse-sourced chicanery that they are.