If the Democrats can’t muster any better than a neck-and-neck contest after the Republicans have been overwhelmingly acknowledged to have made everything vastly worse for the past 8 years, they have lost before they’ve begun.
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Tag: us
Financial Armageddon
i like it already. it brings together a lot of separate topics i have been following (and griping about).
Military Astroturfers
To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented 10000s of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world. Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance
if you get your “analysis” from an old talking head on tv, you get what you deserve
Post-scientific society
the term post-scientific really scared me, but their assertion that
American innovators may have a historic opportunity to convert the scientific know-how from abroad into market gains and profits.
rings true.
Lincoln-Douglas Debates
if ABC ran the lincoln presidential debate:
LINCOLN A house divided against itself cannot stand. STEPHANOPOULOS: Excuse me, did an Elijah H. Johnson attend your church?
John Cleese Letter to USA
To the citizens of the United States of America, in light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today.
Fuel efficiency
Europe / Japan have higher standards today than the US is shooting for in 2020. all to prop up detroit. the best thing that could happen is for all of detroit to go bust.
2008-11-11:
Critics might more justifiably flay the Big 3 for failing long ago to seek a showdown with the UAW to break its labor monopoly. In truth, though, politicians have repeatedly intervened to prevent the crisis that would finally settle matters. Even better would be to dump CAFE altogether and replace it with an intellectually honest gas tax. Mr. Obama promised to transcend the old stalemates — let him begin with the 30-year-old fraud that our fuel-economy rules represent.
Analog Cable Waste
There is a dirty little secret in the cable industry. Its being kept secret not by the cable distributors, but by the big cable networks. End this practice and the United States goes from being 3rd world by international broadband standards, to top of the charts and exemplary. Make this change and Net Neutrality becomes a non issue. There is plenty of bandwidth for everyone. What is the dirty little secret ? That your cable company still delivers basic cable networks in analog. Why is this such an important issue ? Because each of those cable networks takes up 6mhz. That translates into about 38mbs per second. Thats 38mbs PER NETWORK. Transition basic cable networks from analog to digital over the next 3 years and all of the sudden there will be 100s of megabits available on the smallest cable systems and more than a gigabit of bandwidth available on the largest.
shut down the analog cable channels. they each waste 38mbps with their crappy programming
Beyond FOIA
Abolish the Freedom of Information Act. Turn it inside-out. Why should we be asking for information about and from our government? The government should have to ask to keep things from us. Government information — every act of government on our behalf — should be free by default. We must insist on an aggressive ethic of openness. The exceptions should be rare: the personal business of citizens, national security, ongoing criminal investigations and court cases (while they are ongoing), and little else.
argues that all gov data should be public by default, and all gov meetings videoed. now this would be a reasonable policy.
Counterparty
the Fed has officially turned the US government into the counterparty to the US financial system by letting securities dealers borrow directly at the discount window.
wow
Gregor J. Rothfuss 