bradleym

i don't know what i can do for you, this may be a terminal case, but i'll start with some of the claims made in the FOX article: -->Sunshine period SCHIP bill: voted on by Senate 14 January, voted on by House 29 January, considered and signed by president 4 Feb. Source Lily Ledbetter bill: voted by House 9 January, still not voted by Senate, not signed by president. Source Stimulus bill: voted by House 28 January, voted by Senate 10 Feb, considered / signed by president 17 Feb. Source According to my source, OpenCongress, each piece of information cited by your author is false. If my source is accurate, then this particular claim falls to pieces, and furthermore this FOX fellow may have been caught in his own lie, since the Ledbetter bill has not passed the Senate yet. If I have time later, I'll look into your friend's other claims.

So now you are quoting the editorial page of the WSJ, as though what is contained there is 'factual'? Do you really think that 'confirms' something posted in a FOX opinion article? I think it was you who complained that Rush was quoted out of context in the retelling of the 'I hope he fails' speech. Yet you fail to detect the same selectivity (and much more sloppy argument besides) in the FOX screed?

You find? sure, the fringe left is driven by fringe theories--same as always, just like the fringe right. your point? That the left is being driven by its fringe! Not Obama, necessarily, but the Dem congress for sure. check this thread for some fringe nonsense: Slap some Goethe on it and it might impress i hardly think that even the evil twins Pelosi/Frank want to do away with the monetary system. Maybe they do, but i haven't heard it yet. What other 'fringe' theories are you speaking of?

You find? sure, the fringe left is driven by fringe theories--same as always, just like the fringe right. your point?

you neglected to mention the last great hope of the repubniks... Newt

first, i seriously doubt that i addressed merely 1% of the movie. i actually addressed the first 15 minutes, which were so ridiculously off-base that anything they say after that is worthless. second, i don't know that 1% of the world's population control 99% of the world's money--or did you mean income or wealth or debt or economic output or food supplies when you said 'money'? third, the monetary system has little to do with income inequality--there are numerous more significant factors at play there. fourth, whatever the flaws in the system (or systems, or pseudo-systems, or many interrelated systems, or multiple contradictory systems, whatever) there are now 6 billion of us here--primarily because of our industrial and agricultural 'progress' (and its attendent monetary system, though that doesn't matter)--so beware of throwing the baby and bathwater out. understanding the world as it is cannot be accomplished with sound-bytes. causation, motivation, etc. over time are complicated, so think and take your time about it.

pulllleaze, spare us this nonsense. i only watched about 10 minutes of this rubbish, but it clearly is rubbish. the fact of hungry and dying children around the world has so little to do with the monetary system, and so much more to do with economic nationalism, greed, exploitation and just plain apathy. but images of hungry children add power to any presentation, no matter how tenuous the connection. sure, everything is connected somehow, but some connections are worth a little more salt than others. if you don't like what inflation is doing to your money, then do what anyone with half a wit does--convert your dollars into a more stable or appreciating currency, like IBMs or GEs or J&Js. if you don't like to see hungry and dying children, then have a care to your consumption habits, agitate for policies that distribute the wealth of the world more equitably (starting in our own effed up country), and vote in governments that seek to avoid wars rather than start them. this is the equivalent of republican idiots gabbling about socialism or tax-and-spend democrats, or idiot democrats going on about 'buy american' and 'keeping good amurrican jobs here'. it misses the point, over-simplifies everything and laces it all with stupid jingoism and a faux populism. it is actually quite difficult to maintain a money supply that is in equilibrium with economic growth--some periods have seen it done better and some worse--but to present the imperfect system as an evil conspiracy (to do what?) is simply ridiculous. how do you suppose things would have gone in the past century if we still pegged the money supply only to the amount of gold we happened to have dug out of the ground? what do you think happens when too little money chases an increasing output of goods and services? Do you even have an increasing amount of goods and services when the money supply is fixed? these guys can do whiz-bang shit with their video editing software all day long, and they can (mis)quote goethe till they are blue in the face, but that doesn't change the fact that they are either stupid, or worse, seeking to manipulate simpletons for their own selfish ends. OMG! money is debt and there are hungry, dying children in the world! Do something!

my wife mentioned during the speech that Bush was probably watching america's next top model or something...so who knows.

link umm, your sound-byte refers only to the money allocated for the healthcare IT proposal. had you read the entire editorial (I know, lots of those wordy things) you might have learned the CBO estimates $200B of the entire bill will be spent in 2011 or later--implying at least that nearly $600B will be spent this year and next. certainly evokes a little different message than you intended...

yup, there is only a single side to every story, and all people are either producers or welfare queens. thank you for your contribution.

what if we had taken a different approach post-911? what if, instead of 'declaring war on terrorism' we had regarded what happened as a criminal matter, for the police to pursue? such a policy might still have led to the invasion of Afghanistan, since it would likely have been beyond the power of the police to bring down the Taliban. it may seem a subtle point, and namby-pamby to all the red-blooded amurricans out there, but it would have allowed us to focus on who actually did this (a very small number of people) and avoided the 'clash of civilizations' confrontation where the stakes necessarily become much greater and the prospect of dead innocents much more likely. such a path would have allowed us to marginalize the 'terrorists', rather than delivering the bully pulpit to them when the inevitable ocurred, and innocents were killed. PR is important, as it happens, and the fight has now become much larger and pervasive than it needed to be because of the path we took. We wind up debating false extremes in the end--torture v. carpet-bombing--and miss the real issues that motivated that small group of people in the first place, and gave their message power. instead of referring to 'the terrorists' we might recognize that it is actually a bunch of humans out there, some of whom 'may' be terrorists but most of whom probably are not. in an open society such as ours, we have always paid lip-service to the presumption of innocence until proven guilty, though we have on many occasions violated that principle, as now. adhering to such a principle is risky, and 'may' allow 'the terrorists' more freedom to act, but in a way that is what our society is supposed to be about, and we have to recognize the risks we take. that is how, i think, we could actually defeat 'them', but it would require a more subtle approach, it would entail greater risk (though that is debatable) and it would require the nerve to stick to the high ground.

Do you need a cookie?

i read through the bill on OpenCongress and found a line in the text that said this: 'For an additional amount for ‘Confiscation of all Fairweathers guns, and all his friends guns and all his sisters and brothers guns and all guns registered in his childrens names and all guns registered to his cat, dog or sheep’, $4,000,000 for necessary construction, repair, and improvement activities' no wonder he doesn't like it--but at least it will stimulate fairweather's economy. .

[video:youtube]

its medical experiments for the lot of you, i'm afraid.

yesterday, on libtard radio, i heard this line of argument: tax cuts amount to quick(er) stimulus, whereas spending is considered more effective (lower $ per job created) but is slower to take effect. the primary reason, i think, is that obama is trying to include repubs, for the present. soon perhaps, even obama will have to remind boehner that 'i won, you didn't' and get on with it.

may we have your liver?

i'm about to finish a bottle of 10-year-old Auchroisk i recently imported myself. then it will be on to the Blair Atholl, and after that the 14-year Ben Nevis... btw, the wife and i raised a glass in honor of rabbie burns 250th birthday on sunday evening, not that maineiac ever needs to know who he was...

well, i was nearly taken out by a german guy who was having trouble making the switch--more difficult i suppose because he was in his left-hand drive car. but apart from remembering to reverse certain reflexes (e.g. when entering or turning onto a road), it isn't so bad.

ummm, no. you?

Scientific methodology brought us evolution? And all this time I was thinking it happened all by itself. Allow me to clarify then, just for you. the same scientific method that brought us the 'theory' of evolution. better?

BBC Report Another tragedy. Here are some photos of the area taken a few months back. The avalanche occurred in the mountains almost directly left of the first photograph. The roadway is the A82.

all these creation and ID people really ought to turn in their automobiles, computers and vhs players. oh, and stay off airplanes. all of those technologies are courtesy of the same scientific method that brought us evolution. if 'science' can have gotten it so wrong there...

hey fw, i saw you on tv the other night... [video:youtube]

hmmm, let me see, what kind of difference can four years make: -->civil liberties trashed. check. -->dead iraqis. check. -->dead americans. check. -->dead pakistanis. check. -->dead afghanis. check. -->economy in a shambles. check. -->iran closer to nuclear weapons. check. -->n. korea with more weapons-grade plutonium. check. -->more ice sheets melted. check. -->more SUVs. check. -->increased notoriety of pseudo-scientific ID. check. -->further delays in stem cell research. check. -->more people behind bars. check. -->more guns!!!! check. -->successfully ignored israeli-palestinian question. check. -->Social Security invested in the stock market. damn. you're right, what a difference 4 years makes. i'm sure your sampling of headlines is 'fair and balanced', and reflects no editorial bias on your part. actually, i was listening to libtard radio the other day and they tried to tally the cost, from capitol police to park service to mass transit, so i guess that demonstrates your point is invalid. is this the best you can do?