|
|
|
|
|
| Our New President
Posted: 10/15/2009 1:05:10 AM |
Israel will strike before I find Miss Right and pick out the towels.
I don't think they'll wait much longer, either. And there are no guarantees they'll succeed. (See Anthony Cordesman's article a couple weeks ago, reassessing the chances of a strike in light of Qom.) It will take everything they've got, partly because so many planes would have to be assigned to the buried centrifuges at Natanz.
Israel has a couple hundred 4,800 lb. bombs it bought from the U.S. last year, and that's as big as its F-15's can carry, anyway. But they're marginal. The new 30,000 lb. bomb, which the 20 B-2's have been converted to carry, is about ten times as powerful. So, while the U.S. could have destroyed a dozen or more sites without too much strain, Israel's going to have to just try to get a couple, and it will have to go to the wall even to do that. We should be ashamed of ourselves for ever allowing this sorry situation to develop. | |
|
| Our New President
Posted: 10/19/2009 10:37:05 PM | Another Government Trojan Horse and redistribution
Editorial: Net neutrality not so neutral
You don't want the government camel's nose under the tent of regulating the Internet.
An Orange County Register editorial
The phrase "net neutrality" has an ingratiating appeal. Net neutrality rules proposed by the Federal Communications Commission would "prohibit Internet service providers from interfering with the free flow of information" over their networks, the Associated Press reports. Proposed rules also would "bar Internet service providers such as Verizon Communications Inc. ... from slowing or blocking certain services or content flowing through their vast networks."
What's wrong with that?
If we take the government at its word – always problematic at best – all Web traffic will be treated equally, and Internet users will have more freedom to download music, video and other services.
But to bring about a utopian desire for virtually unlimited access over a limited resource, government would require broadband providers to operate in ways not necessarily in the best interest of the companies or their paying customers.
Who doesn't enjoy access to the Internet's wealth of information and entertainment? But many have come to regard access as an entitlement. Indeed, FCC proposed regulations, open for public comment next month, are described as ensuring what "consumers are entitled to."
One difficulty with government guaranteeing entitlements at the expense of others is the problem of those who abuse the free ride. Bandwidth-hogging services such as person-to-person file sharing and downloadable video from sites like YouTube and Google strain network capacities. Broadband providers legitimately claim they have a right to regulate such traffic over their networks, which may mean giving priority to their own services or charging varying rates.
That's why large bandwidth providers such as Verizon and AT&T have opposed previous "net neutrality" proposals. Their networks would be abused. And that's why operations like Google want net neutrality mandated by federal regulations. They could offer services without sharing the whole cost to provide them over broadband networks.
What's at stake is who gets control, and who pays the cost. We believe businesses, yes even big corporations like AT&T, have a right to control what they own and to operate without financial penalty imposed by the government.
Although net neutrality purports to ensure fairness and competition, its government regulation would do the opposite, writes Adam B. Summers in The Freeman, a publication of the Foundation for Economic Education. "In the free market, competition ensures that customers receive the services they demand. Government control, by contrast, ensures that they receive whatever services the politicians and bureaucrats in power at the time deem appropriate."
As the libertarian Cato Institute concluded, net neutrality's regulatory regime "would also open the door to a great deal of potential 'gaming' of the regulatory system and allow firms to use the regulatory system to hobble competitors" as well as "encourage more FCC regulation of the Internet and broadband markets."
Some may gain at first by government manipulation of the broadband market. But even they could later find themselves out of favor under ever-changing regulatory mandates dictated by politicians and bureaucrats responding to special interests.
More government control of the Internet isn't neutral. It's the nose under the tent everyone will come to regret, save perhaps those politically connected interests who manage to "game" the system. | |
|
| Our New President
Posted: 10/19/2009 10:44:45 PM | All very Orwellian. We're too dumb to understand the "truth", without the Dear Leader and his gang of 8 (that was Mao's group near the end, wasn't it?) we could trick ourselves into confusion.
Only the John Birch Society and Joe McCarthy could ever imagined us getting into such a mess, a population willing to trade their freedom for free false teeth, and the rest of the world smugly cheering our decline while giving a few million and a hollow prize to an empty suited charm boy desparate for approval. | |
|
| Our New President
Posted: 10/20/2009 12:00:37 AM | | The only good part is the fanny whipping his party's headed for next fall. We may have to listen to this crook's glib baloney for two more years, but after he loses a lot of his support in Congress, he'll be a lot less able to harm America. I thought no U.S. president could ever combine sheer incompetence with disdain for his own country as well as Mr. Carter did, but on both counts, our present embarrassment's got him beat by a mile. | |
|
| Our New President
Posted: 10/20/2009 8:53:28 AM | What's at stake is who gets control, and who pays the cost. We believe businesses, yes even big corporations like AT&T, have a right to control what they own and to operate without financial penalty imposed by the government.
Let's be clear on what the Internet is. It is a government-invented, government funded, communications protocol. It is a product of DARPA research. Just like the radio spectrum, it is our common property that ISPs used by license. Just as you don't own your copy of MS Windows, they don't own the Internet. You might well own the equipment that it runs on, as might they. However, you right to use a copy on your equipment is predicated on you following the terms of your license. Same with the ISPs.
Because the Internet is a common medium, ISPs are common carriers. Like phone companies and the mail service, they must provide equal service to all regardless of the content of the messages being delivered. ISPs understand the terms and responsibilities when they agree to the license, and if the can't make a go of it then they should find another business. But that's silly because they do just fine.
This is one of those persistent and pervasive lies of the right. Privatizing public goods without proper compensation and oversight so that those goods are used in the public interest is not capitalism, it is theft. | |
|
| Our New President
Posted: 10/20/2009 9:04:39 AM | And we've got a crew in power now all too ready to tell us what the public interest is. A pack of authoritarian slugs like's of which Orwell, Huxley, Rand and the founders told us to dislike and avoid. Turning all the news outlets into Pravda, err, NPR, finding controllable good media, and uncontrollable bad media is job one of this crimianl element you deadbeat Dem's have delivered us to.
This blather about the founder's is as germaine as a discussion about the the founder of fire having a right to control steam produced by powerplants.
The web is unlikely to be controlled in reality, like jello it will slip away and be rediscovered in a less government statist intrusive place. | |
|
| Our New President
Posted: 10/20/2009 10:15:45 AM | Sometimes I get to wondering if I'm being a lone voice in dissapointment in our DEAR LEADER, but then I read a Chicago Sun Times poll today...
POLL RESULTS ::
Do you approve of the job President Obama has done so far?
Yes 7% 1010 votes
No 92% 13109 votes
Total Votes: 14119
Now granted this poll is not scientific because it primarily involves people who can actually read and think but assuming the poll does not reverse course as the ACORN folks get up and "rock the vote" after a hard night of drug dealing and street walking I think it should hold up. | |
|
| Our New President
Posted: 10/20/2009 10:35:04 AM |
And we've got a crew in power now all too ready to tell us what the public interest is. A pack of authoritarian slugs like's of which Orwell, Huxley, Rand and the founders told us to dislike and avoid. Turning all the news outlets into Pravda, err, NPR, finding controllable good media, and uncontrollable bad media is job one of this crimianl element you deadbeat Dem's have delivered us to.
Net neutrality is not new. When people like the Free Software Foundation and other libertarian organizations consistently advocate a policy like this over the space of a decade, I tend to listen to them.
In this case, the public interest means simply and precisely that the carriers don't exert de facto censorship by making bandwidth available to those whose messages they favor and denying bandwidth to those they don't. If you can tell me how that policy is _not_ in the public interest, I'd be all ears.
But unless a line is blessed by your corporatist shills, I guess it must be another commie plot, right? | |
|
| Our New President
Posted: 10/20/2009 11:19:34 AM | the public interest means simply and precisely that the carriers don't exert de facto censorship by making bandwidth available to those whose messages they favor and denying bandwidth to those they don't
You trust to the government to do this without bias or political persuasion. Once the fed has control where will you turn if you don't like what they are doing. At least now I can just change my provider or upgrade my service, MY CHOICE
The U.S. Postal Service was established in 1775 - you have had 234 years to get it right; it is broke.
Social Security was established in 1935 - you have had 74 years to get it right; it is broke.
Fannie Mae was established in 1938 - you have had 71 years to get it right; it is broke.
The "War on Poverty" started in 1964 - you have had 45 years to get it right; $1 trillion of our money is confiscated each year and transferred to "the poor"; it hasn't worked and our entire country is broke.
Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965 - you've had 44 years to get it right; they are broke.
Freddie Mac was established in 1970 - you have had 39 years to get it right; it is broke.
Trillions of dollars were spent in the massive political payoffs called TARP, the "Stimulus", the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009... None show any signs of working, although ACORN appears to have found a new b***h, the American taxpayer.
And finally, to set a new record:
”Cash for Clunkers" was established in 2009 and went broke in 2009! It took cars
(that were the best some people could afford) and replaced them with high-priced
and less-affordable cars, mostly Japanese. A good percentage of the profits went
out of the country. And the American taxpayers take the hit for Congress' generosity
in burning three billion more of our dollars on failed experiments.
So with a perfect 100% failure rate and a record that proves that "services" you shove
down our throats are failing faster and faster, you want Americans to believe the
government can do this right. | |
|
| Our New President
Posted: 10/20/2009 12:06:40 PM |
You trust to the government to do this without bias or political persuasion. Once the fed has control where will you turn if you don't like what they are doing. At least now I can just change my provider or upgrade my service, MY CHOICE
I trust investment brokers to lie and engage in insider trading if they can get away with it. I trust that the existence of an SEC, even an imperfect one, will keep such abuses to a minimum, and help consumers who are harmed to recover their damages.
I trust ISPs to sell off bandwidth to the highest bidder and allocate the remainder to their buddies if they can get away with it. I also trust them to consolidate the industry until you have no viable choices left. That is what large-scale businesses do left unchecked. As a consumer, the effect of your personal choice on those trends is negligible. You simply don't have enough market power to stop them or even slow them down.
I trust that the various players will use the FCC to hold each other accountable in ways that consumers can't. I trust that even when the entire FCC has been bought and paid for, the people will have an opportunity to elect leadership that will appoint consumer-oriented commissioners. There will be no such opportunity in the absence of a regulatory agency.
The market cannot protect you against a monopoly, or monopolistic collusion. Net neutrality is a rule that supports the free market. I'm surprised that you haven't thought it through.
It might well be that the government should have gotten out of the mail delivery business a long time ago, but in terms of regulating mail delivery, I think you'd agree that Fed Ex must not be able to open up your letters and decide not to deliver a check you wrote to one of their competitors or a business they're trying to buy. The USPS should be a regulatory agency that keeps the delivery services honest, not a delivery service itself. | |
|
| Our New President
Posted: 10/20/2009 1:23:22 PM |
ISPs are common carriers. Like phone companies and the mail service, they must provide equal service to all regardless of the content of the messages being delivered.
Not exactly. A lot of Islamic jihadist groups use websites based in the U.S. I read about someone who'd contacted a number of (mostly small) providers to make them aware of the federal law they were violating by hosting these vermin. They'd been grateful and had immediately taken steps to dump the jihadists. All but one, in Texas. When I read about the snotty way one of their executives had responded, it made me so angry I phoned the local FBI office there and gave them all the contact info. The agent I talked with was glad to hear about it--it's a serious federal crime. | |
|
| Our New President
Posted: 10/20/2009 1:52:42 PM | http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWYJRtKHthk&feature=related
Ya, because I want Mark Lloyd deciding who gets what at the FCC. | |
|
| Our New President
Posted: 10/20/2009 2:58:46 PM | A lot of Islamic jihadist groups use websites based in the U.S.
It is also illegal to conduct a criminal conspiracy through the mail. That's what warrants are for. Law-abiding customers should all get equal service. Otherwise, it's pay to play, which is anticompetitive. You do favor the market don't you? | |
|
| Our New President
Posted: 10/20/2009 11:35:20 PM | GE will be the biggest benefactor of the Cap and Trade and the Health Care bill.
CEO of GE is on Obamas economic advisory panel.
GE owns MSNBC and they push the Obama agenda.
I wonder why?
NEA has been tasked to create propaganda art for the the Obama agenda?
He want to turn Newspapers into Non-profits, wonder what will hapeen to there non-profit status if they print stories the government don't like.
International treaties that will dissolve our dovetail.
Its simple to me, CZARS, health care, cap and trade, push push push and overwhelm the system so that no one can pay attention to it all and push as much through as he can. Once its done it will be hard to undo.
It is all a Trojan horse for control, being sold to the idiot masses that it will make their lives better, and the idiots believe it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOZ-Etb0k0Q | |
|
| Our New President
Posted: 10/20/2009 11:59:14 PM | fzr.... Some good points.... but you forgot the killing of the dollar bill... to make it easier for a world wide currency... the indoctrination of our youth.... teaching them how bad our history is... (Not the greatness of our history)... and to praise Obama as our hero and savior.
The way Obama's administration and the Dems in Washington are acting.... they want to RULE... not govern.... with their arm of the unions and acorns and media.... using things like healthcare and Global warming to make people think they are for their better interest.... while gaining control of our lives.... It is funny how many people have bought into this ... and actually think people who see it happening are only paranoid or fanatic conspiracy theorists.
Right Ace? 
And I am a kool-aid drinker.... but I drink the cherry and the blueberry... I try the orange and the grape.... It's just.... that cherry tastes so much better. | |
|
| Our New President
Posted: 10/21/2009 12:22:33 AM |
You do favor the market don't you?
All I meant to say is that there's at least one exception I know of to the rule you stated. Isn't there a question about what's legal, though? I doubt if internet providers have to serve everyone, but I'm not up on the law on this. | |
|
| Our New President
Posted: 10/21/2009 12:51:55 AM |
Law-abiding customers should all get equal service.
equal service? or adequate service... for what you pay for?
Otherwise, it's pay to play,
Your right.... In order to play.... one must pay... unless it's free like POF
If I don't want to pay... I don't join match.com.... I come here. and one gets what they pay for.
which is anticompetitive.
anticompetitive?.... I've heard this term a lot lately.... What is it really that people are trying to say? If one doesn't think the way another persons program will work, when they believe their program will create more competition.... Now someone is being anticompetitive?
You do favor the market don't you?
I know this wasn't directed towards me... but Ace... come on.... Do you even notice your spin? | |
|
| Our New President
Posted: 10/21/2009 9:10:34 AM | I do notice my spin. Some regulation supports the market, some interferes with it, and sometimes market solutions are the wrong way to go.
Cap and trade was intended to be a market-based solution to monetize the cost of CO2 emissions, yet all the free marketeers hate it. Why? Because they don't want to recognize that those emissions represent actual costs that their grandchildren will be paying. Why shouldn't those who profit from the creation of those costs be held accountable for them? Right now, they aren't, and they're investing the money they owe your grandkids in China.
If you don't know what anticompetitive means, perhaps a referesher course on Standard Oil and the railroad monopolies would be in order. The free market actually has rules. It also requires a certain degree of regulation to continue operating without degenerating into a monopoly situation or other modes of failure.
The only completely self-regulating system is nature, and even there we've found ways to break it. Do you honestly think people can't get around the market or that they wouldn't break it in a heartbeat if they could get ahead by doing so? | |
|
| Our New President
Posted: 10/21/2009 9:28:23 AM | If I thought CO2 had anything to do with anything I might be disposed to entertaining the full absorption costing concept. Since it's a fraud, I see it as simply re-branded failed communism repackaged for the easily confused, or terminally authoritarian types.
if you are still fighting the battle of Standard Oil you have other issues. Frankly, were i to have any interest in Standard Oil I'd argue the problem was not capitalism but government, wherein Rockefeller bought it. Why didn't government respond by putting in place stronger rules for preventing government being purchased as the root cause? Answer: they had the same issue as you, wanting to have a chip in the game but too dumb to have any value to add in a sane world. | |
|
| Our New President
Posted: 10/21/2009 10:55:45 AM |
It is all a Trojan horse for control, being sold to the idiot masses that it will make their lives better, and the idiots believe it.
I can't buy everything in Joshua Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism." But it offers a lot of evidence of just how anti-democratic statists are, at their core. They tend to believe their moral and intellectual superiority entitles them to control how everyone else lives. They want to make the state into their heaven on earth, and make the individual dependent on it. Which also means subservient to it. Like the Islamists, they're not happy unless they're intruding on other people's lives.
In this country, statists like Mr. Obama are swimming upstream, because the kind of government they want is nothing like what our Constitution provides for. President Wilson, a full-out progressive intellectual and internationalist who sneered at traditional "Fourth of July" sentiments, had the same problem. One way around it is to get federal courts--and especially the Supreme Court--to misinterpret the Constitution to allow what they want. Or, they try to ram laws through quickly, in the hope they'll be too hard to undo when someone finally sues to do that. Right out of the FDR playbook. The Social Security Act, for example, is probably unconstitutional, but imagine trying to abolish the whole program after all this time.
Some people have heard of Anita "Mao" Dunn, Obama's communications director. Can anyone imagine a person in the last administration praising a tyrant who had tens of millions of his people killed, without it being all over the regular news channels, and that person soon being forced to resign? But these "journalists" protect their pets and attack their enemies--only several months later has what Dunn said even come out, and then only because someone outside the media establishment investigated it. They would have buried it for good.
Same with Dahlia Moghed, Obama's adviser on Muslim affairs and a member of his council on faith-based initiatives. She's spoken several times recently in defense of sharia--the law of the Koran that jihadists want to force the whole world to follow. She talked about how well women are treated in the Muslim world, how sharia makes for higher public morality, etc. Reading what she said, I had the strong feeling she's an apologist for radical Islam. Isn't it radical Islamists what we've sent our troops to fight? It's like someone in the administration in 1942 talking about the good features of the fascist governments in Italy and Germany. Could she be where she is because Obama largely agrees with her? | |
|
| Our New President
Posted: 10/21/2009 11:42:07 AM | Ace.... I believe most here... me included have never said we need no regulation... That we want anarchy in our free market.
People are tired of over regulation... bad regulation that falters growth and ones ability to compete. Just because some Big Business has failed and may not have been regulated in a way someone may feel would have kept them from over stepping... Doesn't mean you go nuts and start hitting every business over the head to beat them down.
It's like watching the Government over reach and over stepping... We the People want to regulate that over reaching... Not just squash Government because we think Government is bad... Just an over reaching out of control government.... It doesn't matter which political party is in control... a bad government is a bad government... just like a bad business is a bad business.
It isn't that we have chosen sides and want an out of control free market... and hate government... We want the proper balance. Not all government or social programs are bad.... Not all free market is bad... We need both... There needs to be a balance.... But that balance is out of whack.... The Government is taking over..... Most all the jobs created by Obama are Government jobs.... Not helping the economy... just growing the government.
They are just now talking about small business and how to help them... Sure they are.... sorry... But I don't think they really care.... Unions kill off small business... They are more about the unions... the community organizing.... hand outs and volunteering.... People can organize their own communities and do their own volunteering... they don't need the government to step in and make that about them... What the people need the government to do is create opportunity for the individual... for small businesses... who will create opportunity and jobs for others.... But these guys want to RULE, control us... and the way they are going to do this is by making us think we cannot survive without them, without the unions and the government, with their hand outs... and they are killing our economy to make this happen.... and will go after anyone who sees it and says anything against it.
Wait.... I hear a knock at the door.....
Hello...
What do you mean I'm getting audited?
Wait... you can't just take my computer......
Hey... get away from my Bike! | |
|
| Our New President
Posted: 10/21/2009 11:47:40 AM |
They tend to believe their moral and intellectual superiority entitles them to control how everyone else lives.
How does this differ from your position that it's OK for a majority to outlaw harmless behavior? If the majority turns out to be progressive/statist, how can you argue that they're wrong? | |
|
| Our New President
Posted: 10/21/2009 11:50:55 AM |
If I thought CO2 had anything to do with anything I might be disposed to entertaining the full absorption costing concept. Since it's a fraud, I see it as simply re-branded failed communism repackaged for the easily confused, or terminally authoritarian types.
What is your basis for claiming it's a fraud? Did you actually look into it or are you just schilling some more? Good vocabulary, though. Full absorption costing is the right term, and it applies just as well to sin taxes as it does to pollution taxes. | |
|
| Our New President
Posted: 10/21/2009 11:58:26 AM |
People are tired of over regulation... bad regulation that falters growth and ones ability to compete. Just because some Big Business has failed and may not have been regulated in a way someone may feel would have kept them from over stepping... Doesn't mean you go nuts and start hitting every business over the head to beat them down.
Couldn't agree more. Bad regulation creates needless barriers to entry. Generally, any regulation that inhibits fair competition is bad. Unfortunately, corporatists who have big pots of money can use it to monkey-wrench the regulatory agencies and they do. The regulators have to be accountable too.
Still, the simplistic notion that our problems will magically vanish if we just get rid of the regulators is wishful thinking at best. We have to have regulation, and we have to have a way to hold the regulators accountable for their performance. One way to do it is to have enough competitors in a regulated industry so that actions favoring one competitor or group will raise objections from among the others. The competitors will keep an eye on the regulators that way. But even that isn't enough because consumers also need representation. We aren't getting it through legislative oversight, so the way we structure regulatory agencies needs to be thought through again.
Time for some serious head scratching. | |
|
| Our New President
Posted: 10/21/2009 12:07:47 PM | I've expounded/bloviated several times on anthropogenic global warming as a fraud. But since you not only are ignorant you have a short memory I'll run over the high spots.
1. World temps have been falling for 11 years while CO2 rises, ergo, questionable correlation.
2. When temps and CO2 were rising simultaneously, the theory of creating a heat trap argues for an elevated temp at high(er) which in fact did not occur whereas temps at ground stations rose. Explanation for that of course is 25% of monitoring devices being out of government compliance...too near highways, in heat sinks that grew up around these stations over a 100 year period.
3. There is an 800 year CO2 cycle which accounts for increasing CO2, 800 years ago being a particularly warm period in earth history AND, CO2 is a trailing event, not a leading event to warming. Earth warms, life forms flourish, CO2 expended, ocean traps CO2, 800 years later voila.
4. If anyone seriously believed this crap who had interest and power it would seem to indicate behavioral change. peolosi spends $5M per year commuting in a 757 which I would conservatively compute would by itself be the equivalant of a 500 families CO2 load. Arnold, a true believer, commuted from Santa Monica to Sacramento by private jet throughout most of his terms. I won't talk about Gore or Edwards, only the terminally stupid would not be convinced by this point. | |
|
|
| Page 71 of 78
|
38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78 |
|
Home
login 
