http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/...85537802.shtml

Obama gives all his Nobel money away. Good job, sir.

What? He could have used that money to bomb Afghanistan! Oh well, don't sweat it, the tax payers got his back.

Bombing Afghanistan creates American jobs, Dutch. I thought you knew that.

Some figures from the latest Pew Research study.

Deficit Concerns Rise, But Solutions Are Elusive - Pew Research Center

Sure, but there are so many countries in this world with more brown people than Afghanistan...why did we pick one where all the fancy ones can hide in mountain caves???? :mad:

I can't help but chuckle (sadly perhaps) at the last item in the survey, basically showing that people believe whichever party isn't in power at the moment could do a better job of handling the deficit.

With the exception of currently higher discontent about the deficit from members of the party in power, most of the other is pretty predictable. The deficit typically matters most to the party out of power, which I don't think has as much to do with the deficit itself but rather on what the opposition has been (and/or is perceived as) spending money on.

Really happy to see the FCC lining up a big push to increase the network speeds of some of these online providers. It's embarrassing to see some of the download speeds available in Asian countries while the U.S. flounders around at much slower speeds. Some of these large providers need a bit more competition and a foot in the backside.

omg...I AGREE WITH MBBF IN THE POLITICS THREAD!!! :eek:

You were warned that I agree with some of Obama's policy stances.

{scratches head}

There's a shortage of ISP's? I had no idea.

I mean, even when I was living in Hooterville I had 3 or 4 options (not great ones but options nevertheless). Now I've got at least a half dozen. By comparison that's more choices than I have for buying groceries, how many more options would I have to have to qualify as "competition"?

Not trying to give you a hard time particularly (or specifically), I'm just kind of bumfuzzled at any sort of claim of lack of competition in the niche, at least in most areas (I have to figure that Athens, GA is probably middle of the pack in terms of options)

you lived in Hooterville?? :eek: :eek: :eek:

Do you have neck-problems from whipping your head around all the time?

Corny, but I couldn't resist.

I was more referring to the quality rather than the quantity. The 'Stop the Cap' website has already noted a few examples where a small provider comes in with 50-100 Mbps service in a market (NYC is a good example) and suddenly a Comcast or Time Warner finds the resources to upgrade their technology to provide that kind of speed. They have all the resources needed to boost all markets to that speed, but until a competitor comes in and forces them to do so, they just sit on the technology and pretend it doesn't exist.

The Pres is visiting out local Rec center today. I went there on Friday and I was amazed how many people were involved in the security of the Rec. There had to be 30 Secret Service people along with about 10 At&t vehicles in front of the building. Pretty neat scene to say the least but it makes me wonder how much it cost each time the Pres visits a city...

Color me a tad confused by something, maybe someone here has better numbers than I'm finding.

Today's AP wire story on the FCC bizness says
In addition, the plan is designed to encourage more people to subscribe to broadband. About two-thirds of U.S. households have high-speed Internet access now. Many people in the other one-third could get broadband but choose not to buy it, either because they think it's too expensive or because they don't see a need for it. The FCC plan calls for increasing adoption rates to more than 90 percent of the population.

Okay, 2/3rds of households have high-speed already, the FCC wants it to be 90% of the population (different measurement standards duly noted)

Now here's a blurb for the period ending Q3 2008, the latest one I can find, concerning PC penetration in the US. If you go inside the report (the pdf version) you'll find the number at 80.6% as of December 2008.

So between the two data sources we get
-- 67% already have high speed in the home
-- Only 80% have a pc in the home

So by my math only 13% who have a computer don't have high speed already. So instead of worrying about high-speed, in order to get to the 90% target, don't you have to start first with getting computers into the homes? I have to think it's going to be kind of tough to get subscribers for high-speed at any price out of the group without computers.

I'm posting this one here because this is how I believe politicians think.



Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Cities, towns pull out stops for superfast Google network - The Boston Globe

Google planning to build a superfast (10^9 bps) network in one city in America to see what people do with that kind of speed and to poke and prod ISPs to begin offering better service.

Duh, 3D pron.

Google's a fascinating company. I think I'm just about ready to turn our government over to them. Let them run shit.

Don't worry, molson. With all the info they have on us, they probably will be running things sooner or later. Particularly once Brin and Page sell off their majority voting share by 2015. I think at that point, "Don't be evil" will fall by wayside and the company that people were really comfortable giving way too much information to will be a big problem.

SI

Here is a hope for Obama: I hope he stops going on TV to pick a women's NCAA bracket.

Not looking good for Schiff. Latest GOP primary Q-poll:

McMahon - 44
Simmons - 34
Schiff - 9

I hope he learns how to spell Syracuse.

A little late on this one (as is usual for me these days)...but this is just a faux "arms race" between providers. Very few individuals actually subscribe to these higher tier services due to the cost to provide them and the fact that there just isnt that much need for a nominal 100 Mbps service. It sounds nice, but almost nobody can truly put it to use to warrant such cost.

Businesses have had better options than consumers for some time & these options continue to get better for them. Many have had 50Mbps (or more) access via direct fiber solutions and (if desired or requested) certainly "could" be upgraded to 1Gbps. They just choose not to (and ISP's like mine do not actively offer) those types of speeds because there simply is no demand for the pricepoint.

Everybody loves "free" or "no added cost" but it simply doesn't work that way throughout the distribution chain.

So, is it likely that once this things gets passed and becomes law 1) the Republicans try to repeal it at some point in 2012 if they win the White house back? 2.) Is it REALLY feasible and a possiblility to repeal this Healthcare reform once it is passed? I have read from many conservative sources it really is not reasonable to think this will be easily or at all repealable even if there was a GOP Congress and president in 2012-2014.

I haven't seen a detailed breakdown of how it might be accomplished but my off the cuff guess is that the best hope to stop it would be to defund as much of it as possible, a de facto shutdown of it basically. It could then sit on the books relatively harmlessly until it was removed.

Most of it is going to be very popular once it's law. At that point it will be political suicide to repeal all of it. That's why the fight has been so determined to keep it from passing. Are candidates really going to allow themselves to be targeted in ads as wanting to re-institute the donut hole, recissions and lifetime caps as well as remove health insurance from 30+ million people?

It HCR passes there's no way it gets repealed in the foreseeable future.

As it bankrupts the nation, it'll be repealed one way or another. Legally, or by dragging the worthless bastards who passed it into the streets & killing them one by one.

One way or another, it'll be stopped.

Or not.

One way or another, sooner or later, it will.

Won't be as quickly as I'd like to see, I'm resigned to that.

Mean the country isn't bankrupt already?

Our country is more than 10 trillion dollars in the hole with over a trillion dollar deficit yearly for the forseeable future. At what point do we cross the line into being bankrupt?

+1

If we were going to drag people out in the street for bankrupting the nation, there would have been a lot of dragging done already. I haven't seen any.

The country isn't bankrupt yet. You'll know when it is.

It's an interesting mindset you're expressing though. If we're already bankrupt, why not just borrow/print 100,000X as much money as we already have and pay for everything we want?

The minute people realize the dollar is a commodity, just like any other. It's quite scary if you really think about the serious implications of that.

SI

Hyperinflation comes to mind.

I see the liberal plants are at it again. Frm Talkingpointsmemo:


Is there anything that will cause GOP leaders to distance themselves from these folks?

In brutal honesty, as long as you're talking about a couple of liberal pieces of shit like that, I doubt you'll find many folks voting GOP who give a damn what they're called. Neither word carries so much as half the disdain as many of us intend with the word "liberal".

Sounds similar to what I said when Bush ?(Cheney) drag our asses into a a questionable if not downright illegal war in Iraq and I see what that got me. Hope you have more luck with your lynching than I did on my issue. :D

Because it is unfathomable for a republican to truly yell those things at a rally. Come on get real.

Their base?

This is the truth. The Democrats are never going to win over the racist wing of the Republican party. They should instead focus winning over the ACLU conservative or the anti-war conservative. Instead they waste their time fighting with the idiots.

(Same could be said for the ultra-liberal wing of the Democrats. The Republicans should be after the Democrats that want to cut back government spending instead of arguing with the hippie wing of the Democratc party)

Is that 2% really that critical?

Eh, I guess it could be in some elections, I'll withdraw the question.

I would say the anti-war message is what won Obama the last election.

Don't know about the general, but it certainly won him the primary.

What's that old saying, about having you disagree with me being a sure sign that I'm right?

My disagreements with Lewis extend far deeper than "the size of government".

It's not about winning over though, it's about hate. Hate spurs loyalty. Moderates are boring and not easy to hate. Another benefit is that if you get your side to spend their time hating, they aren't looking at you fucking up.

Then again sometimes hate just is. (point being it isn't even always as deep as having the loyalty/voter motivation purpose)


Umm, see McCain, John.

It's hilarious watching people expecting Jon not to agree with what these people are yelling. We are talking about the king racist of the board, so uhm...duh. These guys could be getting slurs yelled at them for repealing farm subsidies or funding a war and Jon would still smile and agree.

You can hate policies without donning a white robe, but people like Jon respond to that and it gets him and his buddies to the polls.

My point was not really whether we're technically bankrupt. My point was that if people were going to be outraged by the government and others driving us towards bankruptcy they'd already be outraged. Plenty of things have already been enacted by the government, for instance, that make it unfeasible for the government to remain solvent in the long run. Yet nobody's dragged anyone into the streets.

Well fuck you too buddy boy.

I harken back to what an old boss once said about me, that I "didn't suffer fools well nor long". I give a shit whether those fools are black, green, white, brown, or purple.

I'm also not big on tolerating the intolerable, excusing the inexcusable, or pretending that I like my enemies (defined loosely in this instance as those who place themselves in consistent diametric opposition to my own desires and/or interests).

I suppose I can see where, if a large percentage of people in an ethnic class happen to fall into one or more of those categories, that might appear to be racially motivated. But you'd be confusing positions based on behavior/actions with those based on race.

For the record, my representative is Emmanuel Cleaver, the man who was spit at the other day. He's the Jesse Jackson of Kansas City. Most in this area would have done far more than spit on him if they had the chance. He got off lightly.

What can they do except say that that shit ain't cool:

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - House Republicans denounce racial slurs hurled at Democrats « - Blogs from CNN.com

Otherwise, I think they do better to just ignore it. The health care debate isn't about race. Concerns about the economy, how the government spends our money, is not about race. Democrats can try to make it a racial issue, but Republicans (or independents), shouldn't take the bait, other than stating the obvious denouncement when asked about it.

I wish more congressman got spit on

It's good they did the right thing this morning. It would be great if they repeated that message at the events they attend, too.

+1

Well, seeing as how I know you are intelligent, it would seem better to make your argument without throwing racially insensitive (understatement) remarks out there. I am not happy with health care reform, I actually wrote a letter to my congressman about a bunch of stuff. I didn't drop the N-word, I didn't put a picture of a noose in the envelope, and I assume it was at least read by a low level staffer (I actually got an email response). I mean, you could have the most intelligent message in the world, but if you're shouting it while holding a stuffed monkey in a noose while carrying a glock strapped across your chest at a town hall, it's just not a good message.

I'm sorry you feel that people are free to act horribly because they want to express an opinion about a bill that will not affect them, but most of all I feel sorry for the rest of us because you are probably raising your offspring to do the similar or worse.

I'd be more likely to have a stuffed congressdoll in that scenario.


What bill would that be? Because it certainly isn't health care, we'll all be paying for that boondoggle.

I'm actually suprisingly calm about the whole thing, I'm already resigned to the loss of this vote just not to the loss of the war. There's many a slip twixt the cup & the lip, it's that possibility that keeps me on a relatively even keel for now.

There are still numerous options to prevent this disaster from ever occurring, right now it's nothing more than the plan for the destruction of health care & the bankruptcy of the nation.

Incidentally, since there's apparently so much ado about race, maybe someone who has studied the likely votes could answer this for me. According to Wiki there are currently 42 black members of Congress. What does the vote scorecard look like for them? I honestly haven't even thought to look at the count that way until a few minutes ago but then again I can't identify every Rep by race (hell, give me a couple named Pat & I might not even be 100% on gender) but if someone is familiar enough I'd be interested in knowing what the numbers are.

So 41-1, give or take a couple most likely.

Thanks for the info, I couldn't honestly have pulled Davis' name from a hat off the top of my head and couldn't have told you whether he was black, white, or green without Googling him.

Do tell what in this bill destroys health care and bankrupts the nation.

I know my congressman (who is black) is voting for HCR (Hank Johnson) but mostly because he represents a largely well educated, liberal area (my guess is John Lewis is voting as well). Moreso about economics than race (at least for Lewis), but it still doesn't really give people the right to dehumanize and incite violence. But apparently that's what it has boiled down to.

Well, he got #1 done. #3 is relatively stabilized (from 2 years ago). Not sure about #4, I think its think its working out as there doesn't seem to be as much America bashing as during the Bush era.

I don't consider anyone who voted for this disaster as having enough intelligence to qualify as "human". If the country, what little is left of it & whether it deserves it or not, is to be saved it will apparently have to be done by any means necessary.


You ain't seen nothing yet.

Wouldn't you be happier posting on a messageboard that was more...attuned to your beliefs and political leanings Jon?

Seems like you're always involved in angsty back-and-forth with folks here - I can't imagine why you continue to post here.

That's pretty easy. Aside from politics, there are a lot of common points a lot of us have with JIMGA. It just turns out that on politics we are wildly divergent.

SI

well i was referring more to the political threads in particular

Go back & take a look at the various political threads DT, check & see how often I start a politopic (hey I made a new word) vs simply replying to targets of opportunity. I pick & choose my moments to respond as the mood strikes me, you'd probably be surprised how rarely I introduce this stuff (indeed if you could go back far enough I'm pretty sure you'd find more than one occasion where I've agreed with the call for FOFC to be declared a politics-free zone).

At the same time, I'm simply not willing to allow an entirely free reign of the left on the interwebz, unresponded to. I pretty much live in the "real world" the same way. I'll let X amount of crap be spewed in my presence, and respond to relatively little. When those responses do come they're, hmm, I'd say about 4/5 calculated and about 1/5 Howard Beale, just boiled over and any & all consequences be damned, becomes a Popeye the Sailor thing ("stands what I can stands", etc)

I do what I can to limit my exposure here, my ignore list is pushing 100 at this point, that allows me to at least function without it being constant. To be sure, I'll click on ignored at times, sometimes for amusement, sometimes for masochistic reasons, once in a very odd while I'll even use it for motivation to remind me what I'm fighting against, but most often to either retain the context of a thread or to get the context of something that had a quoted snippet elsewhere in the thread.

Ultimately it really boils down to what SI kind of alluded to (and what I've said myself outright numerous times), ultimately I stick around because FOFC is as good as I've seen at providing a wide range of information on a wide range of topics. I try to give as good as I get, I do virtually no filtering about the person asking a question if I've got something that could help them (I could probably count on one hand the number of times I've done that & with fingers left over) & I don't believe very many people here act any differently. I've both given & gotten answers to/from people who we otherwise tend to ignore each other here as much as possible, it's a very functional sort of dysfunctional if you will.

Because only posting with people who agree with you is boring?

Personally I like the fact that there is a good range of perspectives on this board.

that makes sense - and you know we do see eye-to-eye on some things, so i wasn't trying to come at you hard or anything.

Eh, I might argue that point a little.

I won't, it's too damned late/early to do it. But I could.

Different strokes for different folks then.

Well hell. I got up early this morning, put on my Stalin wig, Hitler stache and Mao suit and ran outside to see the show trials in our commufascist hellstate. You can imagine how disappointed I was when the world looked just like it did yesterday.

I guess this means I have to go to work.

Patience comrade. Moscow was not built in a day.

Moscow may not have been built in a day, but the Russian Revolution (IIRC) took considerably less than a month. JPhillips' disappointment is understandable.

Good post, good analysis.

The only thing I'd add is that the GOP has done a better job of painting the entire Democratic party as its extreme left-wing hippie element than the Democratic party has done painting the GOP as right-wing nutcases.

The Tea Party, however, may end up doing the Democrats' work for them.

Quite, even with you promising armed revolution every year or so on this board (even in this thread).

Despite the fact that the Simpsons had a great gag where McBain fights the Commu-Nazis with emblems that were half Swastika and half hammer and sickle, it's just odd to me that somehow it's ok in political discourse to put those together like peas in a pod. I mean, ideologically they're as far apart as possible. Tho, I suppose we've never actually seen a Communist state. At the end of the day, Russia, China, Cuba, et al, have all been dictatorships dressed up as Communism and maybe that's where the confusion comes from.

SI

it's just intellectual laziness...or stupidity. take your pick.

Just happened to notice the poll results at this point on this thread. They used to be favoring Obama by a pretty decent margin. They're now basically dead even (maybe slight Obama favor if you include the 'Great' though I can't see how anyone can consider this presidency great before now or even now), which means there's a pretty large turnout of 'Bad' votes in recent weeks/months by posters who didn't vote initially. Seems to mirror the declining poll numbers for Obama.

Cuz most Presidents usually keep the same high rating throughout their presidency? Never have dips. That sort of thing?

Certainly not nor was that my implication. I was just a bit surprised to see that shift given the general leanings of the people involved in the discussion. I didn't think it would ever shift anywhere close to neutral.

You use the word shift, can people change their votes? Is it possible that some of the more conservative posters have come in here and voted no? Also, you say you don't understand what could be great, but the poll is very subjective. The "great", "good", etc all refer to personal expectations. So if you're expectations are rather low, then sure, he's doing a bang-up job. Likewise, if you're biggest desire was to have HCR passed in some format, then another win I suppose.

1. People can't change their vote.
2. I'd assume that the conservative posters voted just as early and often as the liberal posters.

I don't know where you'd make that assumption. But as I said, there is more flawed than just that.

It's open to interpretation. Given how upset conservatives were to lose that election, I would think that they'd vote right off the bat just in spite as much as the liberals would vote out of enthusiasm.

Interpretation of the poll question could play some role on an individual vote basis, but I think it evens itself out in the end.

If this poll is as accurate as Pennsylvania polls, we're all fucked.

:lol:

Wasn't aware I'd ever put a timetable on it, only noting on more than one occasion that it seemed increasingly likely and/or was getting closer.
I don't know that we've been closer at any point in the last 40 years (essentially my lifetime) than we've been today.

On a minorly related tangent, simply since I'm posting anyway ... An entirely anecdotal mention of a point someone mentioned about the conservative angst level on the internet, I was ... hmm, "interested" might be the closest word to my reaction at seeing political comments this morning from acquaintances that I not only didn't know their political leanings but couldn't have sworn they even had any political leanings. By & large, strictly from the subset of people that I know personally & see online, it's probably 75% despair and 25% madder than I am.

The other really quirky thing about my little subset? That nearly all of the comments were from women, not men. Almost to the point that it made me wonder if there was something specifically upsetting to women about the bill as passed (other than the abortion stuff, which I discount since a lot of the commentary came from people I believe are almost certain to be anti-abortion). Further adding to the weirdness, with a couple of exceptions, I haven't seen anything from what I'd consider my usual political suspects.

Means absolutely zilch in the big picture, I just found it to be an interesting phenomenon within my little universe, definitely caught me off guard.

The DKos poll that was cited a while back on Republican beliefs has new confirmation. Here's the results of a new Harris poll:

Sixty percent believe in the story of Noah's ark and a global flood, while 64 percent agree that Moses parted the Red Sea to save fleeing Jews from their Egyptian captors.

18 percent believe the sun revolves around the Earth.

35% of Democrats believe George W. Bush knew about the attacks prior to 9-11.


Conclusion: I wouldn't put too much faith in the American people for critical thinking.

Please tell me this one is made up.

just confirmation that the American people as a whole are fucking idiots.

For those complaining about the Tea Partiers, I give you the NAACP and the ivory tower educational establishment:

Protest, arrests as Wake schools prepare to vote on diversity policy :: WRAL.com

The key thing to note is this schoolboard meeting is beind held at the same time of day / location it has for at least a decade. The previous schoolboard was famous for changing dates at the last minute to avoid any attempt by opposition parents to attend without a single remark by the media. The new board refuses an offer to move the meeting at the last minute to the local opera house so that the NAACP can pack it with protesters (with little time or notice for others who typically attend to take note of the change), and this is what happens.

Interestingly the local newspaper, who we also had nothing bad to say about the prior board and nothing good to say about this one, was one of the ones willing to pay for the change of venue. Nice independent media we have around here.

For those who haven't followed along with my tirades on this issue over the last year or two, the big reason this is getting attention from the national NAACP is that Wake County is one of the pioneers in using "socio-economic status" to implement diversity busing to get around the Supreme Court ruling that you can't use race as a factor, and the new school board just voted in is getting rid of that in favor of a policy favoring locality as a key factor in school assignments.

I'm interested in knowing why the change. Is the bus system too expensive?

The one scenario I think affirmative action is OK is admission to college/law school/private school....I can see why a university would want to have a diverse student body. It's not that we're "paying back" minority races in that sense, it's just that a university should be free to assemble a student body from a variety of backgrounds, if that's what it wants to do.

But the busing/economic diversity thing at the local public school system is so dopey. It just creates labels, and tension, and destroys any sense of community pride in a particular school. I'm all for more equitable funding of schools across a state (nobody should be sentenced to failure by being forced to attend truly shitty public schools), but this shit does more harm than good.

There's something just off in those polls I think, the way they're administered. At least, that's what I choose to believe.

link?

I've only found stories on the poll. I went to Harris, but it seems like they hold onto their data.

Majority of Republicans: Obama is a Muslim

Harris apparently will release the full poll tommorrow

Long story, but it involves massive reassignments every year in order to try and make sure no school is more than 40% Free & Reduced Lunch, kids getting on buses at 5:30 AM and getting home after 5:00 PM so they can be shipped across the county, often driving past many schools, the expense of doing the busing, the complete lack of evidence that it's actually helping the "poor" kids do better in school (and in fact plenty of evidence that the way to fix a poor-performing school is with community programs to get neighborhood pride in the school and educating the children), the school board not following its own rules on these assignments, and the way they were doing the assignments made it clear that what they were REALLY doing was hiding test scores, taking low performing neighborhoods and moving them to high performing schools so that no school was "failing" under No Child Left Behind.

Parents got tired of the constant reassignments and having their kids bused 18+ miles away for pretty much zero return and voted in 4 new board members to give a majority that is in favor of community-based schools.