What gets me the most here, is not Coulter’s ham fisted attempt to link communists, liberals and murderers, its the little laugh they both have, as if it’s difficult to keep a straight face during this ridiculous fraud of a conversation. If this is typical of the political discourse happening in the US, there is no hope.
Should ISPs Be Liable For What Passes Through Their Systems?
Published in November 5th, 2009
The MPAA and RIAA want ISPs to police their traffic for pirated material. Others wants them to police for child porn. Now this. When are phone companies going to be held liable for chuckleheads drunk dialing when I sleep? When are cable companies going to be held liable for allowing stations to up the volume on commercials or playing bad shows? This is just idiotic, irresponsible, pointless lawmaking on so many levels.
The House Financial Services Committee has approved a bill, the Investor Protection Act, which requires to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block any traffic on their networks which fraudulently invokes the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, Failure to do so will make the ISPs subject to court injunctions and liable for any damages that result from the fraud.
The SIPC’s job is to protect investor assets when a brokerage firm fails. The committee found that fraudulent actors on the Internet and elsewhere sometimes represent themselves as legitimate.
[...]
Note that the rules include any data simply routed through the network. This amounts to a requirement that all data on the network be subject to deep packet inspection and contextual analysis. This is an enormous, potentially crippling burden for ISPs, both large and small. Even if representations are found that someone represents the SIPC, it’s not clear how the ISP is supposed to determine if it’s fraudulent. And the bill doesn’t appear to make any allowances for data encryption, which would probably make the ISPs duties impossible to implement.
Capitalism and democracy a disappointment to people of former communist countries
Published in November 5th, 2009
Public enthusiasm for democracy and capitalism is waning in many former communist countries
THE fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 marked the beginning of the end of communism in Europe and, for many, the dawn of a new, democratic era. Two decades later, however, enthusiasm for democracy and capitalism east of the former Iron Curtain appears to have waned considerably. In a survey of nine countries in 1991, large majorities of citizens in each said they approved of the move from a single-party state to a multi-party political system. But a new poll shows support has now fallen drastically, especially in poorer countries such as Ukraine and Lithuania. And in every country, fewer people now approve of the change to a free-market economy. The belief that the changes have benefited business and political elites far more than ordinary people is widespread.
The poorer countries listed have been continually looted by criminal cartels since the fall of communism so its no wonder the people are feeling ripped off. The big worry, for mine, is that the ultra right will get a foothold there.
Al Gore could become world’s first carbon billionaire
Published in November 3rd, 2009
Last year Mr Gore’s venture capital firm loaned a small California firm $75m to develop energy-saving technology. The company, Silver Spring Networks, produces hardware and software to make the electricity grid more efficient.
The deal appeared to pay off in a big way last week, when the Energy Department announced $3.4 billion in smart grid grants, the New York Times reports. Of the total, more than $560 million went to utilities with which Silver Spring has contracts.
The move means that venture capital company Kleiner Perkins and its partners, including Mr Gore, could recoup their investment many times over in coming years.
Critics, mostly on the political right and among global warming sceptics, say Mr. Gore is poised to become the world’s first “carbon billionaire,” profiteering from government policies he supports that would direct billions of dollars to the business ventures he has invested in.
Goldman Sachs Bet (ie, Knew) The Housing Crash Would Happen
Published in November 2nd, 2009
It says something about the powers that be at the time that no one was watching for this crap, Madoff, etc.
In 2006 and 2007, Goldman Sachs Group peddled more than $40 billion in securities backed by at least 200,000 risky home mortgages, but never told the buyers it was secretly betting that a sharp drop in U.S. housing prices would send the value of those securities plummeting.
Goldman’s sales and its clandestine wagers, completed at the brink of the housing market meltdown, enabled the nation’s premier investment bank to pass most of its potential losses to others before a flood of mortgage defaults staggered the U.S. and global economies.
Only later did investors discover that what Goldman had promoted as triple-A rated investments were closer to junk.
Now, pension funds, insurance companies, labor unions and foreign financial institutions that bought those dicey mortgage securities are facing large losses, and a five-month McClatchy investigation has found that Goldman’s failure to disclose that it made secret, exotic bets on an imminent housing crash may have violated securities laws.
Is America sucking up to Israel?
Published in November 2nd, 2009
Barack Obama has been busy – offering the Jewish People blessings for Rosh Hashanah, and recording a flattering video for the President’s Conference in Jerusalem and another for Yitzhak Rabin’s memorial rally. Only Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah surpasses him in terms of sheer output of recorded remarks.
In all the videos, Obama heaps sticky-sweet praise on Israel, even though he has spent nearly a year fruitlessly lobbying for Israel to be so kind as to do something, anything – even just a temporary freeze on settlement building – to advance the peace process.
Before no other country on the planet does the United States kneel and plead like this. In other trouble spots, America takes a different tone. It bombs in Afghanistan, invades Iraq and threatens sanctions against Iran and North Korea. Did anyone in Washington consider begging Saddam Hussein to withdraw from occupied territory in Kuwait?
But Israel the occupier, the stubborn contrarian that continues to mock America and the world by building settlements and abusing the Palestinians, receives different treatment. Another massage to the national ego in one video, more embarrassing praise in another.
This is an absolute cracker of an article, albeit with a left wing bias, on a question that is on the minds of many. Does Levy have a point?
John Bolton advocates nuking Iran while speaking at peace conference
Published in November 1st, 2009
For most people, the use of nuclear weapons is probably not even a matter for debate. But there’s another opinion. Its current champion, in the media at least, is John Bolton, George W. Bush’s former ambassador to the UN.
I would guess that, for most people, the use of nuclear weapons is not even a matter for debate. Indeed, since the last actively deployed nuclear weapon showed its true colours 64 years ago, even the most belligerent of world leaders have yielded to a saner instinct and kept their fingers off the button, to few complaints.
But there’s another opinion. Its current champion, in the media at least, is John Bolton, George W. Bush’s one-time pick as Ambassador to the United Nations. In a conference ironically entitled “Ensuring Peace”, Bolton argued that the only sure way to stopping a nuclear first strike is – to initiate a nuclear first strike.
“So we’re at a very unhappy point — a very unhappy point — where unless Israel is prepared to use nuclear weapons against Iran’s program, Iran will have nuclear weapons in the very near future.”
I would expect something a bit more intelligent from a former UN ambassador. I’m not posting this to bash Republicans, but does this guy still have influence over GOP foreign policy? He’s clearly barking.
Did Clinton meet with a phony Kim Jong-il?
Published in November 1st, 2009
A number of analysts here are convinced that not all the photos being released of North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-il, are really photos of Kim Jong-il.
Instead, they say, a look-alike has been standing in for him on some of the 122 trips he’s reportedly made this year to the countryside, factories, cultural events, military units, and all sorts of other venues.
Some observers say the North Korean leader is too ill to make all these appearances. One Japanese analyst claims President Clinton didn’t meet with Kim Jong-il in August – he met with a Mr. Kim double.
Shigemura suspects that a skilled actor delivered the lines to Mr. Clinton during their three-hour, 17-minute meeting, which ended with Mr. Clinton flying back to the US with two journalists who had been held for 140 days.
Shigemura is equally convinced that an actor played Kim in recent meetings with China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, and the head of Hyundai Asan, the South Korean company responsible for developing special economic and tourist complexes in North Korea.
Well Clinton is a phony emissary so I suppose its only fair.
GOP enlists Oliver North as foreign policy advisor
Published in November 1st, 2009
House Republicans have a new foreign policy adviser with a controversial pedigree: Oliver North.
North, an aide on Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council who is best known for his role in the Iran-Contra scheme to sell arms to Iran and divert the funds to Nicaraguan revolutionaries in the 1980s, was the special guest at a House Republican Conference meeting on Tuesday. North was convicted on three counts related to the Iran-Contra scandal and his efforts to cover it up, but the convictions were later overturned.
Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence of Indiana and Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.), who is the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee, joined forces to issue the invitation to North.
“Col. North is someone who enjoys the very broad respect of the House Republican Conference,” Pence said.
He’s baaaack!
More Evidence The Republican Party Is Imploding
Published in October 31st, 2009
You might not like what the Democrats are doing, but can anyone actually say they think the Republican party is worthy of public office? It’s like they keep pulling dirty tricks but end up being the ones caught. Potential supporters who oppose Obama & Co. only see jack-booted clowns running the Republican show.
Barack Obama’s most devilish political move since the 2008 campaign was to appoint a Republican congressman from upstate New York as secretary of the Army. This week’s election to fill that vacant seat has set off nothing less than a riotous and bloody national G.O.P. civil war. No matter what the results in that race on Tuesday, the Republicans are the sure losers. This could be a gift that keeps on giving to the Democrats through 2010, and perhaps beyond.
[...]
That this pastoral setting could become a G.O.P. killing field, attracting an all-star cast of combatants led by Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, William Kristol and Newt Gingrich, is a premise out of a Depression-era screwball comedy. But such farces have become the norm for the conservative movement — whether the participants are dressing up in full “tea party” drag or not.The battle for upstate New York confirms just how swiftly the right has devolved into a wacky, paranoid cult that is as eager to eat its own as it is to destroy Obama. The movement’s undisputed leaders, Palin and Beck, neither of whom have what Palin once called the “actual responsibilities” of public office, would gladly see the Republican Party die on the cross of right-wing ideological purity. Over the short term, at least, their wish could come true.
Clinton: ‘We tax everything that moves and doesn’t move’
Published in October 31st, 2009
The leadership of Al Qaeda is in Pakistan, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Thursday. “I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn’t get them if they really wanted to,” she added.
“Maybe that’s the case; maybe they’re not gettable. I don’t know… As far as we know, they are in Pakistan,” Clinton told senior Pakistani newspaper editors in Lahore, AFP reported. “The percentage of taxes on GDP (in Pakistan) is among the lowest in the world… We (the United States) tax everything that moves and doesn’t move, and that’s not what we see in Pakistan,” she said.
That’s great, Hillary!
Saved or created? W.H. can’t tell
Published in October 31st, 2009
White House officials announced Friday that they had counted exactly how many jobs were created or saved by recent stimulus spending: 640,329.
So how many were saved and how many created? They don’t know. They said they also can’t tell the difference between private sector jobs and government jobs.
And they said that they had found and corrected significant errors in the data submitted in 57,000 separate reports to the federal government by Recovery Act funding recipients.
The only number that we can actually count: about 6 million jobs lost since September 08.
British drugs czar sacked for confusing the public over tobacco and alcohol
Published in October 30th, 2009
The decision follows the publication of a paper by the Centre for Crime and Justice at King’s College London, based on a lecture Nutt delivered in July. He repeated his familiar view that illicit drugs should be classified according to the actual evidence of the harm they cause and pointed out that alcohol and tobacco caused more harm than LSD, ecstasy and cannabis.
A Home Office spokesman said: “The home secretary expressed surprise and disappointment over Professor Nutt’s comments which damage efforts to give the public clear messages about the dangers of drugs.”
Richard Garside, director of the centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King’s College London, accused Johnson of undermining scientific research. He said: “The message is that when it comes to the Home Office’s relationship with the research community honest researchers should be seen but not heard.”
Good work BLP. Clearly the public was in danger of being exposed to common sense.
Goldman and JP Morgan CEOs met Obama 9 times in the White House
Published in October 30th, 2009
It is quite interesting to see some part of the list of people who visited the White House over the last ten months.
Some of the biggest names in finance, including individuals with clear legislative interests before the executive branch, stopped by the White House during Obama’s first nine months in office.
The list includes Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein – who made three visits, and JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon – who stopped by six times. These sessions were primarily to chart the government bailout of their respective institutions and other big banks.
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