OpenMarket.org » Archive » The Road to Serfdom–Illustrated!

"Thanks to CEI colleague Gary Howard for sending along The Road to Serfdom in Cartoons; I’d forgotten all about this capsule version of Hayek’s masterwork."

California Cities Cut Police Budgets - WSJ.com

"Those full-natured benefits created a bidding war among Northern California cities, and Vallejo negotiated lucrative wage increases with police and firefighter unions to stay competitive. Three years ago, the city agreed to a 20% pay increase between 2007 and 2009; an average police officer now makes $121,000. When benefits are included, the number rises to more than $190,000. By 2007, 80% of Vallejo's budget was dedicated to police and firefighters.

As tax revenue plummeted, Vallejo's finances buckled under the pressure of the labor contracts. Retired Vallejo employees are owed almost $220 million in unfunded pension and retirement-health benefits.

'We did a bad job of long-term forecasting,' said Craig Whittom, Vallejo's assistant city manager. 'We made agreements that were beyond our means.'"

Translation: We didn't think ahead at all.

Duh.

Think that lack of planning is going on anywhere else in government?

Commenter Of The Day: macbeach

This guy is smart!

The Markets Are Weak Because the Candidates Are Lousy - WSJ.com

"To state the obvious: The valuation of an individual stock reflects the collective expectation of investors about a company's future profits, dividends and appreciation, and the same is true of the market as a whole. These profits, in turn, are greatly influenced by government policy on taxes, spending, subsidies, environmental and other regulations, labor laws, and the corporate legal climate. Investors have heard enough from both candidates in the last month or two to conclude that prospects for a flourishing, competitive, growing and reasonably free economy in a McCain administration are bad, and in an Obama administration far worse. (In fact, the market's bearish behavior over the last couple of months pretty closely tracks Barack Obama's gains.)"

Lorne Gunter: Thirty years of warmer temperatures go poof - Full Comment

"Prior to the past decade of climate hysteria and Kyoto hype, the MWP was a given in the scientific community. Several hundred studies of tree rings, lake and ocean floor sediment, ice cores and early written records of weather -- even harvest totals and censuses --confirmed that the period from 800 AD to 1300 AD was unusually warm, particularly in Northern Europe.

But in order to prove the climate scaremongers' claim that 20th-century warming had been dangerous and unprecedented -- a result of human, not natural factors -- the MWP had to be made to disappear. So studies such as Michael Mann's 'hockey stick,' in which there is no MWP and global temperatures rise gradually until they jump up in the industrial age, have been adopted by the UN as proof that recent climate change necessitates a reordering of human economies and societies.

Dr. Loehle's work helps end this deception."

OpenMarket.org » Archive » Turning Responsible Citizenship into a Sucker’s Game

"Some people are hopelessly boring. They save money, live within their means, don’t buy too much house, pay their bills, and contribute to the community. Then there are wastrals, who spend and borrow wildly and expect others to clean up after them. The U.S. government is funded by the former but obviously spends an increasing amount of its time catering to the latter."

Motorola Speed Dials Cell Overhaul - WSJ.com

"New Mobile Chief Plans to Slash More Jobs, Focus on Google Software to Simplify Design and Cut Costs"

Ned Desmond: Reorg costs Time Inc. Web chief his job

I used to get a dozen specialty publications which I directed to work where they (mostly unread) filled a corner of my office until I'd shovel them into a dumpster we'd roll around for just such trash.

With transitions to the web, I'm fairly certain that more articles are getting read (in sum total) than ever before, and this should (and to some extent has) translate into more targeted advertising than has ever been possible.

I hope someone has calculated the number of trees not being cut down due to this change, and while it has obviousy been disruptive to some people I can't help but think it is for the better in the long run.

Meanwhile, purely online media is still looking for the magic formula, combining authoritativeness (my spell checker is satisfied that that is indeed a word), reader interaction/feedback, ease of use and other factors that may not be well understood at all at this point (short/memorable URLs, etc. come to mind).

To my way of thinking, there should have been revolutionary changes to AOL/TW print publications at the time of that merger. The two parts of the company should have been rendered indistinguishable by now.

If they don't change, they may soon be indistinguishable in their absence.

Google LatLong: How US has voted since 1980

"In the final days of this captivating presidential election season, are you interested in knowing how US has voted in the past? Together with the Digital Scholarship Lab at University of Richmond, the Google Earth team has mapped historical election results in Google Earth and Google Maps. These maps show how the population has voted in past presidential elections from 1980 through 2004, and include election results at both the state and county levels. The maps also include demographic information derived from the 1980, 1990, and 2000 US Census."

Obama and the Politics of Crowds - WSJ.com

"On the face of it, there is nothing overwhelmingly stirring about Sen. Obama. There is a cerebral quality to him, and an air of detachment. He has eloquence, but within bounds. After nearly two years on the trail, the audience can pretty much anticipate and recite his lines. The political genius of the man is that he is a blank slate. The devotees can project onto him what they wish. The coalition that has propelled his quest -- African-Americans and affluent white liberals -- has no economic coherence. But for the moment, there is the illusion of a common undertaking -- Canetti's feeling of equality within the crowd. The day after, the crowd will of course discover its own fissures. The affluent will have to pay for the programs promised the poor. The redistribution agenda that runs through Mr. Obama's vision is anathema to the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and the hedge-fund managers now smitten with him. Their ethos is one of competition and the justice of the rewards that come with risk and effort. All this is shelved, as the devotees sustain the candidacy of a man whose public career has been a steady advocacy of reining in the market and organizing those who believe in entitlement and redistribution."

What we learned from 1 million businesses in the cloud

"So how does greater than 99.9 percent reliability compare to more conventional approaches for business email? We asked some experts. Naturally, the normal caveats apply for on-premises solutions, since each individual business environment will vary, depending on server reliability, staff response time, and actual maintenance schedules for each application.

According to the research firm Radicati Group, companies with on-premises email solutions averaged from 30 to 60 minutes of unscheduled downtime and an additional 36 to 90 minutes of planned downtime per month."

Archaeologists report finding oldest Hebrew text | Science | Reuters

"Archaeologists from the Hebrew University said they found five lines of text written in black ink on a shard of pottery dug up at a five-acre (two-hectare) site called Elah Fortress, or Khirbet Qeiyafa.

Experts have not yet been able to decipher the text fully, but carbon dating of artifacts found at the site indicates the Hebrew inscription was written about 3,000 years ago, predating the Dead Sea Scrolls by 1,000 years, the archaeologists said."

Pajamas Media » Eyewitness to the Ayers Revolution

Pajamas Media: Was this merely an academic matter to them, or were they serious about killing 25 million Americans that would not bend to their political will?

Larry Grathwohl: I suppose you could consider this a purely academic discussion in that the Weathermen never had the opportunity to implement their political ends. However, I can assure you that this was not the case. There was an absolute belief that they, along with the international revolutionary movement, would cause the collapse of the United States and that they would be in charge. Nixon was of great concern and how his end would be conducted. This may sound absurd in today’s context, but the Weatherman believed they would succeed.

Novell Turns Linux Desktop Setback Into Victory | The VAR Guy

"When Lenovo de-emphasized Novell SUSE Linux on ThinkPads, some skeptics thought it was a serious setback for desktop Linux and Novell’s own open source efforts. The VAR Guy knew better. Fact is, Lenovo was bolstering its Novell relationship in two other areas. Here’s the scoop."

The 'dictator' label - The Boston Globe

"When the National Rifle Association produced a radio ad last month about Obama's shifting position on gun control, the campaign's lawyers sent letters to radio stations in Ohio and Pennsylvania, urging them not to run it - and warning of trouble with the Federal Communications Commission if they did. 'This advertisement knowingly misleads your viewing audience,' Obama's general counsel Bob Bauer wrote. 'For the sake of both FCC licensing requirements and the public interest, your station should refuse to continue to air this advertisement.'

Similar lawyer letters went out in August when the American Issues Project produced a TV spot exploring Obama's strong ties to former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers. Station managers were warned that running the anti-Obama ad would be a violation of their legal obligation to serve the 'public interest.' And in case that wasn't menacing enough, the Obama campaign also urged the Justice Department to launch a criminal investigation."

Found in a rundown Boston estate: Barack Obama’s aunt Zeituni Onyango - Times Online

"Zeituni Onyango, the aunt so affectionately described in Mr Obama’s best-selling memoir Dreams from My Father, lives in a disabled-access flat on a rundown public housing estate in South Boston."

AH, now I've figured out Obama's economic policy:

Get the country to care for all his relatives so that he doesn't have to.

Time Inc. Plans About 600 Layoffs - NYTimes.com

"Power within Time Inc., which through many mergers over the decades became the modern Time Warner, has long been diffuse, with individual publishers and editors essentially running their own shows. That distinct culture is coming to an end."

Sources: Sarkozy views Obama stance on Iran as 'utterly immature' - Haaretz - Israel News

"Sarkozy has made his criticisms only in closed forums in France. But according to a senior Israeli government source, the reports reaching Israel indicate that Sarkozy views the Democratic candidate's stance on Iran as 'utterly immature' and comprised of 'formulations empty of all content.'"

Campaign workers attacked

"Two people were arrested Monday afternoon after an altercation led to five Republican campaign workers being sprayed with Mace at their headquarters in Galax.

Galax Police Chief Rick Clark said officers were dispatched shortly before 1 p.m. to the Galax Republican headquarters on East Grayson Street when a caller reported someone had sprayed office workers with Mace."

Do people not realize?

"Do people not realize that if you have a million dollars in the bank that you make (at least when the economy isn't having real problems) $40k a year doing nothing? How is that accumulation of wealth without adding to productivity into the system good for society?"

Oh my God.

Here is someone supposedly well educated and old enough to know how the basics of our system work. But he seems to think that putting money in the bank is like growing yeast in a little container next to the cook-stove.

This is why Obama is doing so well. We are a nation of retards.

At some point you wear your fingers out trying to educate folks like this, and at the same time keep yourself from throwing something into your monitor.

When progressivism (current euphemism for socialism) is tried here and things go bad (worse than now) as they inevitably will. I guarantee you this guy will be one of the ones crying the loudest.

ABC News: Stevens Jury Catches Indictment 'Typo'

"The jury has correctly found that after reviewing Stevens' forms, the senator did check the 'yes' box. The error is on page 6 of exhibit 884.

'These items do not correspond. What do we do?' the note from the jury read."

What indeed. I don't know whether this guy is nice or honest or what. But I do know it's been open season for small things on Republicans for the past few years and it seems Democrats are getting away with as much or more.

Are people who have conservative views going to have to go into hiding during an Obama administration?

Apple Could Also “Figuratively” Take Over the Laptop Market if MacBooks Were Free | John Paczkowski | Digital Daily | AllThingsD

And if a few other things were true.

The Obama Temptation [Mark R. Levin]

"I've been thinking this for a while so I might as well air it here. I honestly never thought we'd see such a thing in our country - not yet anyway - but I sense what's occurring in this election is a recklessness and abandonment of rationality that has preceded the voluntary surrender of liberty and security in other places. I can't help but observe that even some conservatives are caught in the moment as their attempts at explaining their support for Barack Obama are unpersuasive and even illogical. And the pull appears to be rather strong. Ken Adelman, Doug Kmiec, and others, reach for the usual platitudes in explaining themselves but are utterly incoherent. Even non-conservatives with significant public policy and real world experiences, such as Colin Powell and Charles Fried, find Obama alluring but can't explain themselves in an intelligent way."

Microsoft Battles Low-Cost Rival for Africa - WSJ.com

"Some of Africa's poorest countries also have discovered that they can't meet the terms of a special $3 Windows package for 'underserved' students around the world, announced last year by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates. For governments to be eligible, they have to buy at least 10,000 computers that students get to keep -- an expensive proposition for cash-strapped countries. To date, Microsoft says only four countries have qualified -- Libya, Egypt, Russia and Mexico."

Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: What Tim O'Reilly gets wrong about the cloud

"The fact that my neighbor uses Google's search engine, rather than Yahoo's or Microsoft's, does not increase the value of Google's search engine to me, at least not in the way that my neighbor's use of the telephone network or of Facebook would increase the value of those services to me. The network effect underpins and explains the value of the telephone network and Facebook; it does not underpin or explain the value of Google. (Indeed, if everyone other than myself stopped using Google's search engine tomorrow, that would not decrease Google's value to me as a user.)"

Meltdowns: The layoff lie

"To paraphrase Tolstoy: Successful startups are all alike. But every unsuccessful startup is unsuccessful in its own way.

And so with all the startups whose managers have jumped on the firebus. If they had run their businesses efficiently, they wouldn't have needed to fire anyone. They are laying people off now not because of an economic imperative, but because they have a convenient excuse to cover their mistakes."

It used to be much easier for a company to fire (or to be kind in some other way to dismiss) workers who were not top performers.

While being let go in times like this is no indication you are a slacker, you can bet companies are packing the lay-of lists with as many of those as they can manage.

Media's Presidential Bias and Decline

"No, what I object to (and I think most other Americans do as well) is the lack of equivalent hardball coverage of the other side -- or worse, actively serving as attack dogs for the presidential ticket of Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Joe Biden, D-Del.

If the current polls are correct, we are about to elect as president of the United States a man who is essentially a cipher, who has left almost no paper trail, seems to have few friends (that at least will talk) and has entire years missing out of his biography.

That isn't Sen. Obama's fault: His job is to put his best face forward. No, it is the traditional media's fault, for it alone (unlike the alternative media) has had the resources to cover this story properly, and has systematically refused to do so."

Obama Shuns Press Conferences, Sits With 'EXTRA!'s' Mario Lopez

"On Oct. 24, 2007, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said that as president he would hold regular press conferences and 'not just call on my four favorite reporters.'

But the Democratic presidential nominee hasn't held a full press conference -- submitting himself to more than a handful of questions from his whole press corps -- in more than a month, since Sept. 24, 2008, in Clearwater, Fla."

Russia military offers Cuba air defence aid - Yahoo! News UK

"'The Russian and Cuban military will exchange experience in organising tactical air defence and in training officers,' Interfax quoted Russian Land Forces spokesman Igor Konashenkov as saying.

The two sides will 'discuss the prospect of training Cuban servicemen at the tactical air defence academies and training centres in Russia, using upgraded Russian-made military hardware,' Interfax quoted him as saying."

You have to wonder, with Castro and Chavez publicly supporting Obama (as all of America's 20th century foes apparently do) why do they need to step up defense readiness? Who are they going to be defending against?

Does it sound like 1962 all over again to you too?

World Community Grid - 'I Dedicate' Short Video

YouTube - the intro to idiocracy

Is it about time we started thinking about this as a documentary rather than a comedy?

Thomas Sowell : Obama and "The Left" - Townhall.com

"Some people take solace from the fact that Senator Obama has verbally shifted position on some issues, like drilling for oil or gun control, since this is supposed to show that he is 'pragmatic' rather than ideological.

But political zig-zags show no such moderation as some seem to assume. Lenin zig-zagged and so did Hitler. Zig-zags may show no more than that someone is playing the public for fools."

Report: Iranian president has fallen ill

"TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has fallen ill due to exhaustion brought on by his heavy workload, a close associate has told the Iranian state news agency."

Proof that running your mouth can consume great amounts of energy. I've always suspected as much.

Venezuela's Chavez wants to jail rival | International | Reuters

"Chavez provided no specific evidence for the charges against the main leader of a fragmented opposition who has solid support in the oil-producing west of the OPEC nation.

Human rights groups say Chavez has increasingly exerted control over branches of power such as the judiciary and become intolerant of critics in almost a decade in power.

The former soldier typically takes to the offensive to stem a rise in support for potential rivals."

The Point Of No Return - Forbes.com

"You can trace the constrained vision back to Aristotle; the unconstrained vision to Plato. But the neatest illustration of the two visions occurred during the great upheavals of the 18th century, the American and French revolutions.

The American Revolution embodied the constrained vision. 'In the United States,' Sowell says, 'it was assumed from the outset that what you needed to do above all was minimize [the damage that could be done by] the flaws in human nature.' The founders did so by composing a constitution of checks and balances. More than two centuries later, their work remains in place.

The French Revolution, by contrast, embodied the unconstrained vision. 'In France,' Sowell says, 'the idea was that if you put the right people in charge--if you had a political Messiah--then problems would just go away.' The result? The Terror, Napoleon and so many decades of instability that France finally sorted itself out only when Charles de Gaulle declared the Fifth Republic."

Thomas Sowell : Do Facts Matter? - Townhall.com

"Unfortunately, the future of this country, as well as the fate of the Western world, depends on how many people can be fooled on election day, just a few weeks from now.

Right now, the polls indicate that a whole lot of the people are being fooled a whole lot of the time."

...

Facts don't matter much politically if they are not reported.

The media alone are not alone in keeping the facts from the public. Republicans, for reasons unknown, don't seem to know what it is to counter-attack. They deserve to lose.

But the country does not deserve to be put in the hands of a glib and cocky know-it-all, who has accomplished absolutely nothing beyond the advancement of his own career with rhetoric, and who has for years allied himself with a succession of people who have openly expressed their hatred of America.

Election 08: Galt Gulch, or Canada Here We Come?

"it might be time to start thinking about the mechanics of Galt's Gulch. Actually, this is probably a great time to buy property in the Rockies. Love to see the video for that..."

But in the mean time, fantasize with me that McCain wins...

The Rosenbergs: case closed - The New Criterion

"We say “now,” but in fact the Rosenbergs’ guilt has been established “beyond a reasonable doubt” at least since Ronald Radosh and Joyce Milton published The Rosenberg File: A Search for the Truth in 1983. It has taken until now, however, for the news to penetrate the carapace of leftist denial. The Rosenbergs were spies for one of the most brutal tyrannies in history. Their treachery collaterally aided in blighting the lives of those nameless millions who suffered under the jackboot of Soviet Communism. Yet the Left adamantly denied the Rosenbergs’ guilt almost as vociferously as they did Alger Hiss’s. But just as it has been incontrovertibly demonstrated that Hiss was guilty of espionage, so it is with the Rosenbergs. Last month, Morton Sobell, co-defendent with the Rosenbergs, finally came clean at the age of 91. Sobell had been sentenced to thirty years in prison for his role in the case. He had always protested his innocence. Now, fifty years on, he finally acknowledged that he and Julius Rosenberg were both Soviet agents."

Dr. Sanity: LACK OF CURIOSITY KILLED THE CAT

"I remember a really excellent Mark Steyn piece that came out in The New Criterion in 2007. This article discussed the 20th anniversary of Allan Bloom's book, The Closing of the American Mind.

Bloom's controversial exposé of the shallowness and meaninglessness of American pop culture was a bombshell when it first was published in 1987; and, his analysis seems even more prescient when one considers the evolution of that pop culture over the last 20 years.

Bloom was the quintessential academic and a true liberal intellectual (in the traditional meaning of that word), and he could not help noticing that the university--which used to see its mission as the maintainence and transmission of civilization and learning--was failing in that mission. Instead of countering the pervasively vapid 'pop' psychology that passed for deep thought about the meaning and purpose of life, it gave credibility to the emptiness and facilitated and celebrated the shallowness."

Orlando Sentinel - Obama campaign cuts off WFTV after interview with Joe Biden by Hal Boedeker

"'I don't know who's writing your questions,' Biden shot back.

Biden so disliked West's line of questioning that the Obama campaign canceled a WFTV interview with Jill Biden, the candidate's wife.

'This cancellation is non-negotiable, and further opportunities for your station to interview with this campaign are unlikely, at best for the duration of the remaining days until the election,' wrote Laura K. McGinnis, Central Florida communications director for the Obama campaign."

The left can dish-out media bias, but they can't take it. As demonstrated here. Clinton campaigns of the past have been guilty of similar things... you either ask us softball questions like the David Lettermans of this world, or you are cut off. Fortunately for them, 90 percent of the media are fawning sycophants and will line up for the abuse.

Woman admits making up McCain sticker attack, police say - CNN.com

"A Republican campaign worker who told police she was assaulted by a man angered by a John McCain sticker on her car admitted she made up the report, the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, assistant police chief said Friday."

As they say: "With friends like these, who needs enemies?"

Woman Attacked At ATM, Assailant Carves Letter Into Her Face - Pittsburgh News Story - WTAE Pittsburgh

"Richard said the robber took $60 from the woman, then became angry when he saw a McCain bumper sticker on the victim's car. The attacker then punched and kicked the victim, before using the knife to scratch the letter 'B' into her face, Richard said."

Would it do any good for the Democrats to officially call of their dogs?

No. Didn't think so. Nor do I suspect they will make the effort.

Study: Coverage of McCain Much More Negative Than That of Obama | washingtonpost.com

"Fifty-seven percent of the print and broadcast stories about the Republican nominee were decidedly negative, the Project for Excellence in Journalism says in a report out today, while 14 percent were positive. The McCain campaign has repeatedly complained that the mainstream media are biased toward the senator from Illinois.

Obama's coverage was more balanced during the six-week period from Sept. 8 through last Thursday, with 36 percent of the stories clearly positive, 35 percent neutral or mixed and 29 percent negative."

DUH!

Radical Loon When Obama Was Only 47 - HUMAN EVENTS

"'When I first met Barack Obama, he was giving a standard, innocuous little talk in the living room of those two legends-in-their-own-minds, Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. They were launching him -- introducing him to the Hyde Park community as the best thing since sliced bread.'

The Times has now stripped this item from its Web page, but the great blogger Patterico has preserved it for posterity on his Web page."

Dr. Sanity: AYERS IS DEAD SERIOUS ABOUT HIS 'SOCIAL JUSTICE'

"This is the final destination on the collectivist [psycho]path. Ayers and his crowd, in their quest for what they call 'social justice' are dead serious about it--even if they have to kill 25 million people or so to make that 'justice' come about. Oh yes, they are kind, they are compassionate, they are benevolent (with other people's money, particularly); but don't you dare oppose them because in their ethical system, your life isn't worth spit to them, compared to their ideology.

And that is why their atrocities on the world stage make even those originating from the grandiose self of some two-bit dictator pale in comparison. Both are malignant, but the Ayers and Dohrns subscribe to the warm, fuzzy utopian variety of malignant narcissism; and their psychopathy always ends in the coldly calculated death/sacrifice of literally millions of human beings on the altar of their ideological god.

Unrepentant? You don't know the half of it."

X-rays emitted from ordinary Scotch tape - Innovation- msnbc.com

"It turns out that if you peel the popular adhesive tape off its roll in a vacuum chamber, it emits X-rays. The researchers even made an X-ray image of one of their fingers."

Obama's Money Blowout - WSJ.com

"The ultimate irony -- perversity, if you're a Republican -- is that the great champion for today's system is none other than John McCain. Having pushed for the government to limit money in politics, he is being outspent -- and, should the polls hold, beaten -- thanks in part to the laws he worked tirelessly to put on the books. The same media that celebrated him as a 'reformer' have abandoned him now that they've found a better progressive."

Argentina Makes Grab for Pensions Amid Crisis - WSJ.com

"BUENOS AIRES -- Hemmed in by the global financial and commodities bust, Argentina's leftist government found a novel way to scrape up the money to stay afloat: cracking open the piggybank of the country's private pension system."

A glimpse into our future?

Argentina Makes Grab for Pensions Amid Crisis - WSJ.com

"BUENOS AIRES -- Hemmed in by the global financial and commodities bust, Argentina's leftist government found a novel way to scrape up the money to stay afloat: cracking open the piggybank of the country's private pension system."

A glimpse into our future?

Dead goldfish offered the vote in Illinois - Yahoo! News

"The Illinois mailing generated 63,500 returned voter applications, Johnson said. Applicants were instructed to fill in a driver's license number or the last four digits of their Social Security number so election officials would be able to validate their identity.

'We obviously don't want to add more work for any election official,' Johnson said. 'At the end of the day, our goal is same as theirs: To give as many people as possible the chance to make voices heard in our democracy.'"

Obviously.

Op-Ed Columnist - Here the People Rule - NYTimes.com

"Most of the recent mistakes of American public policy, and most of the contemporary delusions of American public life, haven’t come from an ignorant and excitable public. They’ve been produced by highly educated and sophisticated elites.

Needless to say, the public’s not always right, and public opinion’s not always responsible. But as publics go, the American public has a pretty good track record."

Eric Schmidt: Google CEO auditions for America's CTO

Which reminds me (haven't heard this tech czar concept mentioned lately as I guess I'm not listening to enough Obama speeches): Whoever gets this job will instantly create a lot of winners and losers.

Will the Tech Czar support Windows or Apple (or Linux)? For every winner in the Tech Czar sweepstakes there are multiple losers. Maybe he (or she) won't like Google's dominance for some reason and we'll "nationalize" search, or mandate that all official government search function go through a newly selected vendor of choice.

I like to remind people that Windows and Office first got real traction when agencies of the federal government started standardizing on it (and required contractors to do the same). I happened to be working with an agency where Windows machines were the exception and Apple computers or PCs running OS/2 and/or Novel networks were the norm. The change was quite disruptive for us.

These days agencies pretend to go through an OS selection process every few years but the outcome is a forgone conclusion and the only thing in doubt is how much Microsoft will charge this time around for the licenses.

When the government starts (or should say continues?) to pick the winners and losers based on, well, whatever they base it on, then you can bet company heads will be on-board with it because the alternative to being on-board will be to be set adrift with a can of sardines.

Yes, having a Tech Czar will certainly "simplify" a lot of technology decision making in Amerika.

Biden Predicts Problems of Biblical Proportions if He and Obama Win

'Gird your loins,' Biden told the crowd. 'We're gonna win with your help, God willing, we're gonna win, but this is not gonna be an easy ride. This president, the next president, is gonna be left with the most significant task.

Sununu Shows How to Fight

"Only seven months into his term, Mr. Sununu introduced legislation to give a new federal regulator power to oversee Fan and Fred's holdings, and to ratchet up their capital requirements. Far from creating the economic mess, Mr. Sununu in 2003 (and in 2005) was trying to stop it. Democrats didn't listen until this summer, when they finally included Mr. Sununu's reforms in their Fannie/Freddie rescue legislation. That was five years too late."

National Black Republican Association

"Obama Once Confessed That He Is A Radical - In his book 'Dreams from my Father', Obama confesses that he harbors the same negative racial stereotypes as Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his mentor for 20 years. On pages 198 to 204, Obama says that black nationalism, a steady attack on the white race would be justified if it could deliver. On page 100, Obama says he went out of his way to choose Marxist professors as his friends. Obama wrote: 'To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully, the more politically active black students, the foreign students, the Chicanos, the Marxist professors and punk rock performance poets.'"

Economically Clueless - HUMAN EVENTS

"Obama's energy plan is superficial and naive. He proposes a 'windfall profit tax' but fails to define what such a profit is. How does one distinguish an ordinary profit from a 'windfall profit'? Even at their record highs, oil company profits are in line with other industrial profit rates -- roughly 9 percent.

So does Obama believe that a 9 percent profit is an 'outrageous windfall profit'? If so, should every company that is successful and earns 9 percent or more have the government confiscate those profits as a 'windfall profit'? In 2007, the chemical industry earned an average profit of 12.7 percent. The electronics and appliances industry earned 14.5 percent in profits. The computer industry earned profits of 13.7 percent. Are these 'windfall profits' that Obama will confiscate? Apparently so."

The Left's Big Blunder

In every instance, the correct answer was quite self-evident, as only one of the lines was even close to the correct length. The volunteer, who was always placed in the second-to-last position, was only allowed to state his answer after he had heard most of the other faux-volunteers give their answers. For the first two rounds, these confederates were instructed to give the obviously correct answer; in each instance, the test subject would then also give the correct answer. But starting on the third round, the confederates, as instructed by Asch, intentionally gave a consistently wrong answer; the goal of the experiment was to see if the volunteer would "break" and also begin to chime in with the wrong answer as well. Most volunteers would resist for a few rounds, but eventually the majority would cave in at least part of the time and give the wrong answers in complete defiance of their own perceptions. Overall, the test subjects gave the wrong answers 36.8% of the time -- an astonishing result.

What would you do if you had the ability to conduct this "experiment" on a vast scale? And if the results of the experiment were not just of academic interest, but affected the real world? What would you do if you had a monopoly on the media, and could affect each individual's perception of how the general public felt? You could take the Asch experiment nationwide. You could deceive every single individual voter into thinking he was all alone in his opinions. And consequently, due to social pressures to conform, they'd change their allegiances. You could use it to win elections.

That's the position in which the Left -- the Obama campaign, its supporters, and the liberal media -- imagine themselves to be. They're trying to use the principle of behaviorial conformity as a weapon in the campaign. But there is a terrible flaw in their plan. The Asch experiment doesn't work unless the test subject is unaware that he is being duped. And I'm telling the subject right now: you're being duped.

The Irrational Electorate

"The ideal of rational voting behavior is further undermined by accumulating evidence that voters can be powerfully swayed by television advertising in the days just before an election. A major study of the 2000 presidential election by Richard Johnston, Michael Hagen, and Kathleen Hall Jamieson tracked prospective voters’ responses to changes in the volume and content of campaign ads as well as to news coverage and other aspects of the national campaign. Their analysis suggested that George W. Bush’s ­razor-­thin victory hinged crucially on the fact that he had more money to spend on television ads in battleground states in the final weeks of the campaign.13"

Is It Time to ‘Go John Galt’?

Since the Communist Party USA as well as Castro and Chavez have all endorsed Obama, I'm telling my friends that if Obama wins I will be referring to them thenceforward as "comrade".

Finally, an old theme made new, and from a woman in Tennessee of all places, on "Going John Galt":

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/ask-dr-helen-is-it-time-to-go-john-galt/

and

http://drhelen.blogspot.com/2008/10/going-john-galt.html

Since I've already gone John Galt to a large extent I guess I need to think of ways to go more so. Buying enough land to raise my own vegetables might help.

Hmmmm, that'll never happen.

Will Joe Biden be the next Dan Quayle?

P-O-T-A-T-O-...

Google Answers the iPhone | Walt Mossberg | Personal Technology | AllThingsD

If you’ve been lusting after the iPhone’s functionality, but didn’t like its virtual keyboard or its user interface or its U.S. carrier, AT&T, the G1 may be just the ticket for you. But it does have some significant downsides.

OBAMA FIRES A 'ROBIN HOOD' WARNING SHOT - New York Post

Then, Obama explained his trickle-up theory of economics.

"My attitude is that if the economy's good for folks from the bottom up, it's gonna be good for everybody. I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

Critics said Obama let the cat out of the bag.

"It's clear that his main goal is redistribution of wealth, not growth," said Andy Roth with the anti-tax group Club for Growth. "He's perfectly happy to destroy wealth as long as he can redistribute it."

Obama has been meticulous, Roth said, to conceal the "socialistic" nature of his tax plans. "But every once in a while, he lets it slip," he said.

As one commentator said today, this is an insult to Robin Hood, who took money from the government and re-distributed it to the people. The best place to be in a socialist system that Obama envisions is working for the government (as the Sheriff of Nottingham did) where you get your needs taken care of before what is left (if any) is passed on for its intended purpose.

US military: No. 2 al-Qaida in Iraq leader killed - Yahoo! News

"BAGHDAD - American soldiers killed the alleged No. 2 leader of al-Qaida in Iraq, a Moroccan who trained in Afghanistan, recruited foreign fighters and ran operations in northern Iraq where Sunni insurgents remain a potent threat, the U.S. military said Wednesday."

Got that?

In IRAQ!

American Solutions - How would you spend $1.45 trillion?

"But here's the thing: Has anyone ever asked the people who are footing the bill -- the taxpayers -- how we'd like this money spent?

In a word, no. Washington has seemingly endless ideas on how to save the economy and spend our money, but they've never asked for our input."

Dr. Sanity: EVOLVING DISPLACEMENT

"Well, President Bush is soon not going to be the President. Who will the desperate Democrats and their leftist base have to displace/project all that rage? Who will they have to focus their own inadequacies and unacceptable feelings onto?? In anticipation of that dreadful day, they have had to find a substitute for him so they can make the upcoming election all about that person, instead of answering any questions about their ideal, blemish-free Messiah (who they project all their fantasies of perfection onto).

Sarah Palin is perfect for the part because--as in the case with Bush--her very existence is an affront to all they believe about themselves and the world. In other words, she fits their psychological needs perfectly and can become the projective vessel for all their displaced and unacceptable emotions. Obama is the probably the most unqualified person ever to run for the office of President from a major party, but Democrats in droves (and a few Republicans) have accepted the idea that somehow it is Sarah Palin's 'inexperience' that is a threat."

Pinch yourself

"You have to pinch yourself – a Marxisant radical who all his life has been mentored by, sat at the feet of, worshipped with, befriended, endorsed the philosophy of, funded and been in turn funded, politically promoted and supported by a nexus comprising black power anti-white racists, Jew-haters, revolutionary Marxists, unrepentant former terrorists and Chicago mobsters, is on the verge of becoming President of the United States. And apparently it’s considered impolite to say so."

Shudder.

I've already decided that if Obama wins I'll commence calling everyone "comrad" until he leaves office. To anyone who knows me, be on notice that I'll be a total pain in the ass to be around for the duration.

This has been a public service announcement.

Dr. Sanity: HE SHOOTS, HE SCORES ! GOAL !

Great BIG article (excerpts):

Reinier Alcantara did not believe he would have another opportunity to pursue freedom, so on Thursday night, as he and his Cuban soccer teammates were preparing for a team dinner at the Crystal City Doubletree Hotel, the 26-year-old forward made his break.

Sharing details in a telephone interview with The Washington Post last night, Alcantara said he was in the lobby, wearing a casual shirt, shorts and tennis shoes, when he saw the coaches wander into the gift shop. He rode the escalator down to street level and "started running like crazy and didn't look behind," he said through an interpreter who arranged the interview and requested anonymity for political reasons.

...

How is it that these freedom-hating, poverty-generating revolutionaries hope to stage their comeback on the world stage? Not with the traditional guns and revolution of old, but through the indoctrination of young minds into their failed ideology--a process already underway here in the U.S. Communism and socialism has a new lease on life in the 21st century, in spite of the devastation and misery they unleashed in the 20th. Their "scholars", aided and abetted by postmodern philosophy have managed to erase history and shift the blame for all their own failures onto the capitalist system.

The evils of capitalism are being drilled into our consciousness on a daily basis; and as for our children, learning contempt for the capitalist system begins as soon as they enter the educational system.

...

In the minds of all the neo-Marxists, dead-end communist stooges and anti-war idiots who participate regularly in anti-American and anti-capitalist protests, cosmic megalomaniacs and dedicated communists like Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Hönecker, Ceaucescu, Kim, and Castro are simply misguided humanitarians whose atrocities are not worth mentioning--especially compared to the crimes against humanity perpetrated by George W. Bush and Dick Cheney (and, of course now by John McCain and his evil sidekick Palin).

In the free market of ideas, socialism and communism have had their chance and they immediately shut down any ideas that threatened them. In the real world they have been show repeatedly to bring human misery, poverty, slavery, death and oppression--notwithstanding all that glorious rhetoric and propaganda about their wonder achievenments and the ideological purity of their healthy youth as depicted in the third poster above, marching in lockstep to bring the wonders of communism to a skeptical world.

BARONE: The coming liberal thugocracy

"Today's liberals seem to be taking their marching orders from other quarters. Specifically, from the college and university campuses where administrators, armed with speech codes, have for years been disciplining and subjecting to sensitivity training any students who dare to utter thoughts that liberals find offensive. The campuses that once prided themselves as zones of free expression are now the least free part of our society."

Restoring Confidency - WSJ.com

It doesn't matter what the article says, except for the fact that it doesn't contain the non-word "confidency". Is it a pun? Some other inside joke I just don't get?

One thing that shakes my "confidency" these days are the ever increasing numbers of typos, misspellings, bad grammar and punctuation goof-ups in the mainstream media. I was never good at these things myself, but I did have the good education to know where my deficiencies were and compensate for them. Kids today aren't taught that, because our lefty culture teaches them to have self confidence, even when it isn't warranted.

The young retards that intern at and then work for these "news" sources along with their counterparts in the computer field, law, and maybe most scary of all medicine are already taking over the levers of the world.

Color me depressinated.

-----


Update: My message to the WSJ trying to helpfully correct their headline got a response:

thanks for your note. the word is official presidential coinage (!) but i guess you missed President Bush's televised statement on the financial crisis on friday. holman.

-----Original Message-----
From: PoliticalDiary
Sent: Monday, October 13, 2008 10:24 AM
To: Jenkins, Holman; Knoebel, Christian
Subject: FW: Restoring Confidency


-------------------------------------------
From: Williams, Grace
Sent: Monday, October 13, 2008 10:24:05 AM
To: PoliticalDiary
Subject: FW: Restoring Confidency

So I guess that settles it. The new WSJ headline policy will be to mock the mistakes of our political figures in their headlines.

I can hardly wait to see congress people with headlines that include the word "axe" rather than "ask", not to mention all of Barney Frank's Elmer Fudisms: "We would wike to get our wepubwican coweegs on bowud wiff dees new pwans we have." He's a gold mine!

Mac (I onwy weed WSJ fow duh siwy headwines!) Beach

Bush's North Korea Surrender Will Have Lasting Consequences - WSJ.com

"North Korea is the world's most accomplished serial violator of international agreements, beginning with the Korean War Armistice Agreement it signed in 1953 and including every other significant subsequent DPRK commitment. Most pertinent here, these breaches include repeated promises to give up its nuclear capabilities, beginning with the 1992 Joint North-South Declaration and the ill-fated 1994 Agreed Framework.

The only upside is that the Bush administration may not have time to concede anything more to Pyongyang before it limps into history. It is hard to see how Barack Obama could do worse. John McCain penetratingly observed on Friday that the U.S. must 'avoid reaching for agreement for its own sake.'"

The Crisis Goes From Bad to Worse - WSJ.com

Each of the past six recessions has been accompanied by a bear market, with the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index losing, on average, 31%. By that measure, the stock market's current decline -- with the S&P 500 down 43% from its peak -- is already worse than usual.

But stocks lost only 3%, on average, between the start and end dates of those recessions, as defined by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Stocks gained, on average, 6% during the six months after the recessions ended. That suggests buying and holding stocks during a recession is not a bad idea.

Community Service for all Middle and High School Children

"Obama began his organizing life in the mid-1980s in a community group whose progress mirrored that of the rest of the industry: the Developing Communities Project, formed on Chicago’s South Side as a “faith-based grassroots organization organizing and advocating for social change.” Though founded with resources from a coalition of churches, over time the DCP evolved, like many left-leaning religious organizations, into a government contractor essentially subsisting on tax money—with nearly 80 percent of its revenues deriving from public contracts and grants."

To What Extent Would Service Under Obama be Mandatory?

"One question that has arisen in discussions is the extent to which his 'Universal Voluntary Service Plan' is nonetheless mandatory.

Because Obama calls his plan voluntary, it’s important to understand exactly what he says and doesn’t say. In the first two of his main speeches on national service – on July 2, 2008 and on December 5, 2007 – Barack Obama set his goal of 50 hours of service a year, promised that “We'll reach this goal,” and explained how he would do so for middle and high school children:

So when I'm President, I will set a goal for all American middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of service a year, and for all college students to perform 100 hours of service a year. This means that by the time you graduate college, you'll have done 17 weeks of service.

We'll reach this goal in several ways. At the middle and high school level, we'll make federal assistance conditional on school districts developing service programs, and give schools resources to offer new service opportunities."

Many convicted felons remain on voter rolls, according to Sun Sentinel investigation -- South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com

"Florida's elections chief, Secretary of State Kurt Browning, acknowledged his staff has failed to remove thousands of ineligible felons because of a shortage of workers and a crush of new registrations in this critical swing state.

Browning said he was not surprised by the newspaper's findings. 'I'm kind of shocked that the number is as low as it is,' he said."

Same-o-same-o.

As We See It: Elect Obama as next president

Not surprisingly the San Hose Mercury News has come out in support of Obama. But look at their closing words on the candidate (emphasis mine):

Unfortunately for Obama, if he wins -- and he should, if for no other reason than the economy -- he'll face a series of challenges that will make it difficult to deliver on many of his campaign promises.

In addition to the crisis in the financial markets, he'll be faced with the rising costs of entitlement programs, a huge national deficit, and an unpopular war in Iraq that is going better than a year ago, when Obama pledged to bring our troops home.

Terrorism will remain a potential danger, and America's declining position in the world, will need to be addressed quickly. Issues such as climate change and energy will have to be dealt with during a painful recession.

Our next president will need the kind of qualities that Barack Obama has demonstrated in his long and historic fight to lead the United States of America.

We urge his election.

Huh?

If you read the article there is not one mention of these qualities he supposedly has, simply a note the he has had successful campaigns.

Remember, two of his early campaigns involved his opponents dropping out due to scandals (of the same sexual nature that Dems tell us shouldn't be important) stirred up by Obama himself.

We don't know where he stands on many issues because the "debates" and the press in general haven't forced him to say.

Look SHMN and others, support the liberal Democrat as you are always inclined to do, just don't pretend to give us a rational for it (unless you actually can).

Greenwashing socialism | Gristmill: The environmental news blog | Grist

"Regulated electric utilities in the U.S. are only half as efficient as they were in 1910, in no small part because they are not allowed to make money off of conservation ... and because no matter how many philosophers may dream otherwise, five smart dudes sitting in a room making forecasts of supply and demand to set price are never as efficient as a competitive market."

Bush the Socialist and Destroyer by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

"What is striking here is the level of public opposition. It is somewhere between 55 and 90 percent, depending on the way the question is worded. Also, it is wide and deep opposition. It is made up of Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, blacks, whites, rich, poor, men, women – just about everyone, with no systematic bias among the polled groups. In other words, we have here a wonderful thing: a clash of group interests, as Mises would say. It is the state and its friends vs. the American people."

I haven't seen this observed much by the media.

Salena Zito : A President Barack Obama - Townhall.com

“First of all, let’s dismiss any talk of socialism,” says Democrat strategist Bob Beckel, who worked in Jimmy Carter’s White House with a Democrat-controlled Congress. “The idea that Barack Obama is going to bring socialism to this country is just crazy.”

I wonder what Beckel's definition of socialism is.

George Will : Term Limits Aren't Appropriate in "Tough Times"? - Townhall.com

"Two amusing arguments against term limits are that political novices are too susceptible to the wiles of lobbyists, and that term-limited legislators, worrying too much about their next jobs and too little about their current ones, are constantly in campaign mode, thinking of the next election rather than the next generation. The idea that when term limits are absent, these difficulties are absent is refuted by one word: Congress."

Branchflower report on Tasergate: Just one guy's opinion that contradicts itself and ignores the relevant facts and law

"Please understand this, if you take nothing else away from reading this post: The Branchflower Report is a series of guess and insupportable conclusions drawn by exactly one guy, and it hasn't been approved or adopted or endorsed by so much as a single sub-committee of the Alaska Legislature, much less any kind of commission, court, jury, or other proper adjudicatory body. It contains no new bombshells in terms of factual revelations. Rather, it's just Steve Branchflower's opinion — after being hired and directed by one of Gov. Palin's most vocal opponents and one of Alaska's staunchest Obama supporters — that he thinks Gov. Palin had, at worst, mixed motives for an action that even Branchflower admits she unquestionably had both (a) the complete right to perform and (b) other very good reasons to perform."

Dodd and Countrywide - WSJ.com

"That a 'Friends of Angelo' program existed is not in dispute. It was crucial to the boom that Countrywide enjoyed before its fortunes turned. While most of the company was aggressively lending to risky borrowers and off-loading those mortgages in bulk to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Mr. Feinberg's department was charged with making sure those who could influence Fannie and Freddie's appetite for risk were sufficiently buttered up. As a Banking Committee bigshot, Mr. Dodd was perfectly placed to be buttered."

OpenMarket.org » Archive » Being Male Is a Disability Under ADA, Says Prominent Lawyer

"Now, a prominent lawyer has concluded that being male is a disability, too, reports the National Law Journal. “If sleep disorders and sex problems can be used as criteria for filing disability claims, as courts have held, “being male” could also be a legally recognized disability. So claims Louis Solomon, a partner and co-head of the Global Litigation Department at Proskauer Rose, who believes ‘maleness’ is on its way to becoming a new category for disability claims."

I knew it!

Now where's my check?

EU Climate Plan Further Disintegrates | cooler heads

"The European Union’s promise to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 20% by 2020 looks doubtful as member countries increasingly dilute their climate strategies to allay economic concerns."

I don't know what the left is going on about. A world economic meltdown will certainly cut back carbon emissions. Most people won't be able to afford to drive. Inability to use big machines to harvest food could lead to mass starvation. World population reduced by half could "save the planet"! There must surely be celebrations in Goreland.

Shock, Shock ... the Climate Catastrophe Lobby is Telling Fibs | cooler heads

"The shore-dwellers of Bali need not fear for their homes. The IPCC now says the combined contribution of the two great ice-sheets to sea-level rise will be less than seven centimeters after 100 years, not seven meters imminently, and that the Greenland ice sheet (which thickened by 50 cm between 1995 and 2005) might only melt after several millennia, probably by natural causes, just as it last did 850,000 years ago. Gore, mendaciously assisted by the IPCC bureaucracy, had exaggerated a hundredfold."

FOXNews.com - World Bank Under Cyber Siege in 'Unprecedented Crisis' - International News | News of the World | Middle East News | Europe News

"It is still not known how much information was stolen. But sources inside the bank confirm that servers in the institution's highly-restricted treasury unit were deeply penetrated with spy software last April. Invaders also had full access to the rest of the bank's network for nearly a month in June and July.

In total, at least six major intrusions — two of them using the same group of IP addresses originating from China — have been detected at the World Bank since the summer of 2007, with the most recent breach occurring just last month."

Yahoo Activist: “I Sold My YHOO Stake” | John Paczkowski | AllThingsD

"I had no idea idea it would fall this much but I finally decided to stop pushing a rope by calling for change from the inside [as a shareholder]. I voted with my feet. This board has the blood of its shareholders on its hands, and I hope they wear that scarlet letter stigma for a long time."

Politics: How Lessig made the GOP's hit list

Here is my explanation ow why Laurence Lessig might not be popular with Republicans (in addition to donating tend grand to Obama):

On the political spectrum there is Richard Stallman at the far left, Eric Raymond almost as far to the right, and Larry Lessig somewhere in the middle (but probably closer to Stallman's than Raymond's end of things).

It seems to confuse people to no end that all these people can agree on Open Source software and agree at least to some extent on copyright issues.

Let me 'splain: Software is IDEAS, hardware is THINGS. Certainly people have a right to get credit for their ideas, and even to get paid for them in one way or another. But some sort of negotiation has to take place and one option producers have is to put their ideas/software/other intangible things out there and let people re-use them under certain circumstances (usually involving credit, reciprocal use, etc.)

Here is where they differ: My lawnmower.

Stallman thinks everyone should have the right to use my lawnmower, in fact it really isn't my lawnmower in the first place, it's really OUR lawnmower.

Lessig thinks it's my lawnmower, but I should be glad to have others use it, and if I'm not glad, the government should intervene, take my lawnmower for others to use, and afterward, if there is anything left of it, return it to me.

Raymond thinks it's my lawnmower and nobody can use it without my permission.

I tend to agree with all of them on software, and Raymond on my lawnmower.

(Actually I don't own a lawnmower any more, I was too afraid of it being confiscated.)

Hope that helps.

YouTube - Marshall McLuhan on the TODAY Show

Dr. Sanity: JUST A THOUGHT...

I hate it when someone suggests that the best way to get back our freedoms in this country are to vote for the other side in the hope of waking the rest of America up. (I may have even suggested such a think from time to time myself, but I hope not publicly).

Anyway, here is my blanket reply to such a thought:

If I were an Obama supporter that's exactly what I'd be posting here.

Sorry, but "gaming" the system that way doesn't work. Show me some countries that clawed their way out of socialism having once gotten there. The Soviet Union collapsed, but it is still as much a control economy as ever.

This country is the freest in the world, and when our freedom goes it will be gone from the world for generations if not for good.

I blame those most who allowed their children to be brainwashed by our public school systems and media. Until those things are fixed there is no going back. Sorry to break the news to you.

I'll continue to vote that our trip to totalitarianism be as slow as we can possibly make it.

Arianna Huffington: Are Editors 'Retards' And Servants To Arianna?

"The stories about Huffington's difficult temperament as a manager seem to have evolved into lore, and likely some of the anecdotes that have circulated among her burned detractors are apocryphal. And yet at least some appear to go beyond mere myth, unsurprising for a competitive, multitasking mogul like Huffington, who the New Yorker compared to a typical 'highpowered, if high-strung, boss.'"

Can McCain Still Win? - HUMAN EVENTS

"The Obama media are well aware of Obama's Achilles' heel, his great vulnerability, the doubts about him that still exist in the public mind. That is why they are near hysterical about Palin's ripping of Obama for 'palling around' with 'domestic terrorists' like William Ayres, the 1960s and 1970s Weatherman radical who conspired to bomb the Capitol and Pentagon and was quoted the morning of 9-11 as saying he wished he had set off more bombs.

The mainstream media call this irrelevant, as it was so long ago.

Yet, can one imagine how the media would have reacted had they learned that a GOP presidential nominee was introduced to politics and worked in harness with a KKK bomber of black churches in the 1960s, who was quoted the morning of Oklahoma City as saying he wished he had planted more bombs?"

2008 Presidential Election Becomes Laughing Matter

'They're making fun of us, too,' said Obama spokeswoman Adrianne Marsh, referring to the 'SNL' debate spoof that included Jason Sudeikis as Biden as well as Fey/Palin. 'A good characteristic for an elected official to have is a sense of humor.'

McCain spokesman Mario Diaz referred to Palin's comments on Fey.

In an interview with WFLA, Channel 8's Keith Cate this week, Palin said of Fey, 'She's a hoot. She's very talented and you know what, looking in your monitor, too, I'm like, dangit, I look just like her.'

Consider the title and there is no mention of spoofing Obama, because none of the networks (apparently) have the balls to do so. Now I would grouse about media bias, but they all claim to be neutral, so I can only conclude it is artistic incompetence. They wouldn't lie to us would they?

The Obama campaign almost sounds like they are sorry to be left out.

Can you imagine four or eight years of no presidential humor? It's going to get pretty sickening.

Here mainstream media outlets, I'll help you get started:



Now you try.

gary vaynerchuk » You Down With ROI?…Yeah You Know Me - my 2 minute take on life

YouTube - Stories by Googlers

YouTube - BTW I'm Voting For Mccain / Palin

American Thinker: How allies of George Soros helped bring down Wachovia Bank

"While the Sandlers personally made 2.4 billion dollars on the 24 billion dollar sale of Golden West Financial to Wachovia, the employees (including their own former employees) and shareholders of Wachovia, including those who have invested their retirement money and children's college funds in Wachovia stock and bonds, are not doing nearly so well. Communities where Wachovia has branches that may be closed as a cost-saving measure will also suffer. But worst hurt of all will be the homeowners who were sold mortgages that they should have never been offered, by a lender far more sophisticated than they were."

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Email Archiving Made Simple

"For a flat fee of $45 per user per year, you can now add hosted archiving with the ability to retain messages for up to 10 years, along with spam and virus filtering, all powered by Postini. With this package, you can:

* Set the retention policy that makes sense for your organization
* Never worry about hitting storage caps
* Give end users access to years of historical mail
* Search and recover messages quickly for legal discovery
* Ensure secure, spam-free delivery of email
* Be fully up and running within days of signing up"

Meltdowns: Neel Kashkari reveals a coder's plan to save the world

Sometimes Owen, you surprise me.

Home run!

The dirty little secret of "progressive" politics is the false notion that socialist experiments of the past failed simply because they didn't have ENOUGH control over the economy.

We now have computers that can play a perfect game of checkers. That wasn't the case for a long time. Chess is harder, many more combinations than a computer can exhaustively search even today.

Compare that with an economy, where the number of "positions" at any point of time is for all practical purposes infinite and the number of possible next moves equally infinite.

But somehow, these deluded control freaks continue to think they are just one more "patch" away from getting it all under control. And in the mean time of what value are the freedoms of action that not only large companies but we as individuals are losing while these people build their planned economy?

Your own state of California, with every well-meaning social program imaginable and probably the strongest economy in the world is on the verge of a breakdown, and you have the nerve to ask the rest of us to help you out?

What ARE you people smoking?

In the debates last night, Obama said he wanted to approach cost savings with a scalpel rather than a hatchet. That's like saying I'm going to start mowing my lawn with a pair of scissors. The waste in the Federal government alone is enormous. It NEEDS a hatchet. Much easier to eliminate the Department of Energy and then restore the one or two valuable things they do than to take ten years to "trim" the hundreds of things they do that serve no purpose. And exactly how do you "trim"? By shuffling idle bureaucrats to other overstaffed agencies? Again, all we have to do is look to California for how it is going to go once our government realizes that it is too big (and I'm not sure most Americans have even come to that conclusion yet).

John Stossel :: Townhall.com :: Try Free Enterprise

"Economist Robert Higgs of the Independent Institute looked at the credit numbers kept by the Federal Reserve. He writes: 'Although certain financial institutions are undeniably in deep trouble -- difficulties of their own making ... -- credit markets in general have not ceased to operate. Moreover, lenders are extending credit in historically great amounts'."

New: Gmail for Drunks and Dopers!

"When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you're really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you're in the right state of mind?"

Wachovia: A Split May Boost the Banking Industry - BusinessWeek

"If Bush is right, that could mean the era of regulators forcing troubled banks into shotgun marriages—with no recovery for investors in banks such as Wachovia or investment firms like Bear Stearns—could be coming to a close. And the Wells Fargo deal, which Wachovia's board embraced on Oct. 3, prompting Citigroup to sue, could convince investors that for all the bad loans and soured investments these firms are sitting on, acquirers are getting a steal."

Thomas Sowell - Do Facts Matter?

"Abraham Lincoln said, 'You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time.'

Unfortunately, the future of this country, as well as the fate of the Western world, depends on how many people can be fooled on election day, just a few weeks from now.

Right now, the polls indicate that a whole lot of the people are being fooled a whole lot of the time."

Microsoft Profits vs. $700 Billion Wall Street Bailout | The VAR Guy

"If Uncle Sam invoiced Microsoft for the entire $700 billion bailout (and let’s assume we don’t charge Microsoft interest…), the software giant could pay off the $700 billion balance in roughly 39 years and seven months."

I LIKE it!

YouTube - Democrats messed up big-time on the Economy

YouTube - Burning Down The House: What Caused Our Economic Crisis?

Better version of this I think.

Certainly This Will Gain Me Some Karma

Top 10 Tax Sweeteners in the Bailout Bill

"Current law places an excise tax of 39 cents on the first sale by the manufacturer, producer, or importer of any shaft of a type used to produce certain types of arrows. This proposal would exempt from the excise tax any shaft consisting of all natural wood with no laminations or artificial means to enhance the spine of the shaft used in the manufacture of an arrow that measures 5/16 of an inch or less and is unsuited for use with a bow with a peak draw weight of 30 pounds or more. The proposal is effective for shafts first sold after the date of enactment. The estimated cost of the proposal is $2 million over ten years, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation."

And according to Taxpayers for Common Sense the primary beneficiary of this bit-o-pork is Rose City Archery

Let's give a hand to those that got a bigger piece of the pie than the rest of us.

But this is just the silliest example, not the most expensive. Click the title to see the list.

Debate analysis: Palin spoke at 10th-grade level, Biden at eighth - CNN.com

Unfortunately CNN News analyst's comprehension level is way down at fifth, and the average CNN viewer is still being fed by mommy out of one of those little jars.

I fear for our country after discovering that far too many voters know nothing about the candidates other than what they can recall from TV in the last 48 hours.

Dr. Sanity: BLOWING BUBBLES

"I can live for four years with a President I despise (and certainly without the delusional insanity that has been the hallmark of those with BDS for the last 8 years since their candidates lost). I have done it multiple times before this point in history.

But what I cannot live with is a media that is no longer capable of giving reasonably fair and objective reporting on the critical issues of our time. I cannot live with propaganda. I cannot live with the opinionated nonsense that today passes for serious journalism on the front pages of our major newspapers--and I am not talking about op-ed pieces. Those are clearly marked as 'opinion.' But the day to day burying of important information to the end of articles; the misleading headlines; the rampant unfairness of a press that is obsessed with Sarah Palin's tanning bed and facials, but indifferent to Barack Obama's connections to homegrown and Islamic terrorism. A media that joyfully exposes what conflicts of interest Palin has had; but ignores Joe Biden's. A journalistic corp that joyfully and openly supports Barack Obama and hides or misleads about his lack of experience to be POTUS; but is so very sincere and courageous about getting it out to the public that Sarah Palin is 'not qualified' to be VP."

Well said.

Bruce Perens: A Big Change for Open Source

"An appeals court has erased most of the doubt around Open Source licensing, permanently, in a decision that was extremely favorable toward projects like GNU, Creative Commons, Wikipedia, and Linux. The man who prompted that decision could be described as the worst enemy a Free Software project could have. This is the story of how our community was able to benefit from that enemy."

...

Now that a reasonably high court in the U.S. has made such a finding, Open Source developers are sure that they aren't restricted to the legal penalties against people who violate contracts, which are generally just the amount of money lost, but can pursue the far greater penalties against copyright infringers. So, all of the tools that publishers, movie studios, and record companies have managed to win from a too-willing Congress over the past century are suddenly available to the Free Software developer to enforce their licenses.

Gambling Barney Frank Bankrupts Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac

"When the Democrats took over the House of Representatives and the Senate back in January of 2007, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was at an all-time high of 12,400 and gas prices hovered around $2.15 per gallon. The Republican-led Congress of the previous 4-years had left a strong-economy in the hands of Socialist Democrats."

Wells Fargo acquiring Wachovia for $15.1 billion: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

"While Wells Fargo has logged three straight quarters of profit declines, the bank has been weathering one of the nation's worst credit crises much better than most of its competitors, in part because it had less exposure to the subprime mortgages whose failure undermined the financial sector.

That means it hasn't been forced to take the huge number of write-downs that other banks have needed. Under Stumpf the bank also has continued raising its dividend at a time when many other financial institutions are slashing theirs to preserve capital."

Google Docs - Wikipedia Vandal Study - US Senate

Study of vandalism of US Senator entries in Wikipedia, presented as a Google Docs spreadsheet.

Ifill says: "Let them eat pudding!"

'I've got a pretty long track record covering politics and news, so I'm not particularly worried that one-day blog chatter is going to destroy my reputation,' Ifill said. 'The proof is in the pudding. They can watch the debate tomorrow night and make their own decisions about whether or not I've done my job.'

Official Google Blog: Saving electricity one data center at a time

"The graph below [follow link] shows what we've achieved: our data centers use considerably less energy for the servers themselves, and much less energy for cooling, than a typical data center. We achieved this milestone by significantly reducing the amount of energy needed for the data center facility overhead. Specifically, Google-designed data centers use nearly five times less energy than conventional facilities to feed and cool the computers inside. Our engineers worked hard to optimize every element in the data center, from the chip to the cooling tower."

Microsoft will soon release 'Windows Cloud' OS, Ballmer says

Best comment from Slashdot:

MS Cloud computing and a fix for people not purchasing MS Office and Windows X+1 every two years. A carrot out there with "light" capability to keep you interested and to generate a more consistant revenue stream. This product is not the answer or a solution to a computing problem that people have, it is an answer to a financial problem that MS has.

ABC News: Candidates Leave Campaign Trail, Head to DC for Bailout Vote

He did not identify the insurance company, and later in the day Reid spokesman Jim Manley said the senator was speaking broadly and not referring to anything specific.

'[Majority Fuckwit] Senator Reid [piss be upon him] is not personally aware of any particular company being on the verge of bankruptcy,' Manley wrote in an e-mail to ABCNews.com. 'Rather, his comments [made up lies] were meant to refer to the conditions in the financial sector [caused by Democratic meddling] generally. He regrets any confusion his [retarded] comments may have caused.'

Apple - Support - Discussions - "Your network settings have been changed..."

Rather than fix a problem or even acknowledge it, Apple lets users experiment with which system files to erase!

Picture our brainwashed future

Before disabling comments and marking all negative comments as "spam" the poster of this video had this to say (emphasis mine):

Because I am a musician, I believe in the power of music to concretely change the collective consciousness, to strengthen and broaden our communal idea of who we are as families, nations and as citizens of the planet. Our children are the most powerful reason for us to come together.

I don't know whether to pity or fear the citizens of California.

Commenter Of The Day: macbeach

I win so few "awards" I have to make the best of what I can get.

WindPower articles

"The ONLY legitimate reason industrial wind power should exist today is for it to live up to its promoter’s assurances that it will meaningfully help reduce greenhouse gas emissions (e.g. CO2). However, in almost all cases, wind power development is instead sold to a community based on the financial incentives offered by the developers."

Virginia High Court Wrong About IP Addresses

"Maybe I'm projecting my thoughts too much on the rest of the populance, but I know very few people my age (~30 years old) who have even started building a family, and that's quite frankly, distressing. The economy isn't everything. We will survive. The crash will happen. Let it happen swiftly and let the recovery happen in the near term."

I don't know what this has to do with the subject at hand, but I agree with you to some extent. I don't agree that it has to do with people addicted to their jobs, although there are certainly people who are. There are also people addicted to the Internet, or addicted to TV viewing or going to those bars you mentioned. If the people who promote the abandonment of religion (and that would be the majority here on Slashdot) can't find a substitute better than just sitting all day hitting refresh on your browser, I don't think there is much hope for things improving.

I'm not saying necessarily that religion is the answer (although it certainly is an answer). But I see few alternatives presenting themselves. Marx said that The State would for a while become our religion, and I don't care what anyone here [Slashdot] claims, we are going down the same path as the Soviet Union, only without a bloody revolution. Der Spiegel is today celebrating the death of capitalism and American dominance, except we haven't been practicing capitalism since the 1800s. Popular belief among American "intelligentsia" is that we now have the power to control every aspect of our society and I foresee that after the next election any failure of such control will simply engender a feeling that the controls weren't strict enough. That's what I'm seeing every day in the mainstream media.

That control, ever more sophisticated, will soon, even if it hasn't already, make anonymity impossible. The novel 1984 may have been a failure in terms of the timing, but I don't think it is far off the mark in terms of where we are going, and the direction as well as end-point to me seems fairly inevitable.

CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - Fact Check: Did McCain warn about Fannie, Freddie 2 years ago? « - Blogs from CNN.com

"The Verdict: True. While it's impossible to know what the impact of his legislation would have been, the ad accurately describes McCain's stance and comments."

It must have killed some people at CNN to give this an nuance-free "true".

Maybe they figure the election is already so much in the bag for Obama that it no longer matters.

Pelosi paid husband with PAC funds

"House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has directed nearly $100,000 from her political action committee to her husband's real estate and investment firm over the past decade, a practice of paying a spouse with political donations that she supported banning last year."