ttogreh

He was from Bay City. I guess the most logical answer is that he couldn't face the work any more, but didn't know how to say that to anyone. He had a five year old daughter.

Peaceful protest of government action is patriotic and not an act of extremism. The tea baggers are not extremists. Unfortunately, right-wing extremists could hold a tea bagging rally, say things similar to right-wingers, and unless you knew what to listen for, you wouldn't know something was wrong until people pulled out a straw Obama soaked in Kerosene....

I feel that it is mathematically impossible for us to be the only ones out here. I do not know whether or not we are being visited, and I have better things to worry about than finding out.

Grand Theft Auto is horrible.

So... you choose to protest waste with even more waste. While I think that is uniquely American, I also think it's really fucking stupid.

Meh. No place is a "safe" place. We should always exhibit caution when engaging with strangers.

All right, let's get this straight... will we owe ON the $7.69 a week, or will we owe BACK the $7.69 a week? Those are vitally different things. As for whether or not he will have to raise income taxes is an entirely different matter altogether. Assuming that the ludicrous spending actually jump-starts economic growth in the way that people who understand it are hoping, he won't have to raise taxes, he will just have to collect taxes on the economic growth. See, let's say in 1990, The gross national product of the economy is projected to be $100. There is the expectation of growth, but damn it all, a recession hits us. So, instead of $100, the economy is only going to make $90. The government could lower spending and let the economy work itself out, or it could start a tidy little war that will cost $10 and get things growing again. So, this war happens, and is over in 100 hours. Now, how is it going to pay for this ten dollars? Well, the economy is growing at three per cent a year now. 1991, $103. 1992, $106.09. 1993, $109.27. 1994, $112.55... Suddenly that ten dollars doesn't really seem like a whole hell of a lot, especially if the government stayed out of it, and 1990 was really $90, and 1991 was $90.9 and 1992 was $91.80... Now, I am mixing the hypothetical with the allegorical here. And indeed, there is a real, concrete limit to how much we can owe other countries before they say "enough". However, I am trying to explain the thinking behind Keynesian economic theory.

Again, I do not dispute the sincerity of the individual protestors, or do I dismiss the concerns of government waste or government oversight out of hand. However, I do believe that several conservative groups that work together spread this TEA party meme as quickly as they could, and they knew that it would get attention because it hijacks the memory of the Boston Tea Party and couples it with the universal disdain for taxes. It really is smart marketing. That being said, "Taxed Enough Already" parties are certainly about taxes, and when 95% of the American public has received a tax cut, it becomes obvious to me that this is about taxes on the rich, and manipulation of populist anger for elitist goals.

$500 billion adjusted for inflation?

No. Hate is an irrational emotion that brings pain and strife. There is never a time to hate. Disagree, sure. Hate just is bad news.

The simple answer is that there is no reason for Europeans to not be proud to be European, as long as they do not advocate anti semitism, denounce the Jewish Holocaust, or do other things that areassociated with being utterly evil. If you want to celebrate your heritage, you have to own up to your heritage's fuck-ups as well.

As disappointing and disingenuous as the Obama administration is, and as scary as fascists are, I am still not longing for the bad old days of the corrupt and inept Bush administration. We shall see if my sentiment holds for much longer, though...

Knife murdering maniacs that attach themselves to weird beliefs as often as they change their hairstyles really ought to stay in prison for a very, very long time. This is a seriously bad idea.

Moveon.org and the Daily KOS? Do you know what the average size of donation to Moveon.org is? Well, here is its page on Opensecrets.org That is just for the 2008 election season. Ok, so it had receipts of $39,860,865. Individual donations exceeding $200 amounted to $4,693,253. Which means that $35,167,612 came from donors of less than $200. Of the "large" ($200 or more) donors, the average donation size was $414.05, with less than thirty of those 1135 donors donating the maximum amount of $5,000. Moveon.org is a grassroots organization by any reasonable definition. The Daily KOS is a collaborative blog founded by Markos Moulitsas, a United States Army Veteran. Its members may indeed donate to Moveon.org and other political groups, but the blog itself is more like Detroitgothic.net than the Fox News Channel. As far as your deliberate misinterpretation of my use of the words "lowest common denominator" or that this is more about taxes, the people that are out in the streets waving tea bags in the air are being led by people that want to keep their Bush Era tax cuts.

This is yet another reason why I find this entire fiasco to be less than genuine. The organizers of these events thought that it was necessary to appeal to the lowest common denominator, the fuzzy memory of the Boston Tea Party. What do you get when you appeal to the lowest common denominator? People that may not have the greatest grasp of the facts, and have enough free time to protest in the middle of a work day. In short, what conservative pollsters refer to as "low information voters". So, what do we have here? We have an unashamedly conservative news network devoting precious time to a protest days and weeks in advance, letting people know where the nearest "Taxed Enough Already" party is going to be held, several conservative think tanks sponsoring such events, and a bunch of people who are going to have more money in their pocket because of this administration's actions protesting this administration. It's astroturf, and it is a cynical manipulation of poorly informed people that are going to be better served by a roll-back of taxes on the rich and tax cuts on themselves.

I will believe it when I see it. Right now, all I am seeing is Fox News Channel endorsed astroturf events. Now, if this actually does become some sort of coherent anti-waste. anti-big government movement, I certainly won't have any room to dismiss it as a bunch of malcontents being manipulated by those that would like to dismantle the welfare state. Right now, I am seeing a bunch of people who have lower income taxes protesting against tax increases.

Ok, 500,000 people, 700 locations. That comes out to about 715 people per location. Obviously, some places had 30 people, and some had 3,000. On February 15, 2003, somewhere between 10 and 15 million people in sixty countries protested the upcoming Iraq invasion. Forgive me if I am less than impressed.

I was inarticulate. I did not mean "low emissions vehicles" in the legal or engineering sense. I meant vehicles that produce low emissions. As in, nearly no emissions. Indeed, you can over-engineer anything. However, extended range battery electric vehicles, such as the upcoming Chevy Volt and the vehicles of several start-up companies have fewer parts, not more. Granted, they are all ran by a small computer that is a single point of failure, but if you build that to be durable AND easily swapped out, then you also only have a battery, four electric motors, an internal combustion engine tied to an electric generator, and the wiring between those elements. That's nine things that can go wrong. The most complex of those things being the wiring. People can learn how to fix those things. The fuel problem will solve itself, I think. See, when extended range battery electric vehicles do come on to the market, we will only need one gear for the engine, and that is optimal revolution. Turbine engines are the most fuel efficient and fuel versatile combustion engines humans have ever made. Once we don't need a drive-train, the need for an engine that can be efficient at idle AND optimal revolution is gone. Fuel companies will pay attention when start-ups selling anything liquid that can burn start eating into their profits. This problem will also solve itself. Coal is king because it is so cheap. However, we only have about sixty years of domestic coal at current consumption levels. Wind is infinite, as is solar, hydroelectric dams, biomass, and wave energy, not to mention geothermal. We have ten thousand years of uranium dissolved in the seas at current consumption levels. The writing is on the wall. If electric utilities want to be in business past 2070, they need to diversify and move towards renewable or alternative fossil fuels. There are ten thousand years worth of natural gas deposits under the sea, but we need to see what will be the cheapest and lowest impact way forward. Coal plants will stay for as long as coal is cheap. Internal combustion engines are never going away, that's for sure. Indeed, we do need to look at the factory-to-tailpipe emissions of our vehicles, but the technology hurdle and pollution parity gap is getting smaller. The old way of doing things is simply unsustainable.

Start checkingfacts, huh? All right. Fact: Petroleum, Natural gas, and coal are finite resources. When they are consumed, they are gone. We can create some liquid fuels and natural gas artificially, but that takes energy. Coal is mostly carbon and hydrogen, and we will never run out of carbon or hydrogen, but we will run out of natural coal. Whether it takes 50 years or five hundred does not make my statement any less true, or less relevant. Fact: The earth is a tiny blue ball in a vacuum next to an ever expanding nuclear holocaust. The climate is changing. We are experiencing climate change. We need to accept this, and prepare for it. Which way to plan for the next 50 years, hotter or colder, depends on where a person is on the planet. The climate is changing. Deal with it, or die. Fact: when we burn something, toxic fumes come from it. When we burn a lot of coal, mercury is released. Mercury is a poison. When we burn gasoline in older engines or in poorly engineered engines, ozone is released, as well as oxides of nitrogen. Ozone and oxides of nitrogen are poisons. We have a fuck-ton of poorly engineered, older engines burning a fuck-ton of gasoline right along with a fuck-ton of coal plants burning a fuck-ton of coal. We... are... poisoning ourselves. Fact: we can do something about all of these things, and harping on the sea ice of antartica totally misses the point. The future is low emissions vehicles, renewable energy, and recognizing that we can't expect to live on barrier islands and continue to get our houses insured. That's all there is to it.

Unfortunately for Bush, he was born into the party of moralism. I do not fault the man for making poor decisions and cleaning up. That took a great amount of will power, as well as an external support system. I don't fault Obama for playing around with substances, and for all practical effects, grew out of them. I do fault both men for attempting to either expand or maintain extra-constitutional powers of the Presidency. Still, I am going to reserve judgement on the actions of the man in the Oval office for a little while longer. I can not withhold judgement forever, though. In any event, it certainly is something that the Republicans can run on in 2010...

Shade, I have refrained from saying that. I feel that that accusation, of "trolling", to be tantamount to forum board treason. If you were not nearly as respected, well... I refuse to speculate on the administrative actions of which I have no purview. This is not to say that I disagree with you, but I cannot support you.

We have to build a barrier between us and the snakes.

Translating your words into an unambiguous and understandable form is not an attack on you, Gaf. However, commenting on your lack of nuance could be bad form. I am far too busy to spend any time at a protest where several participants have expressed themselves with these signs.... Moreover, I highly doubt this will continue to be very big in the coming months. In any event, these astroturf movements are being exposed as such. Still, a protestation of the ever growing federal government can mean many things to many people. I do not doubt the sincerity of the individual protesters, but I do feel that their genuine anger is fueled by a lack of understanding of the complex issues at hand, and the confusion that that breeds. In short, these people are pawns of those that would wish to manipulate the inevitable regulatory structure to create the next bubble.

So, it all boils down to this. Undiluted, chaotic capitalism is the mark of a constitutional republic, and the regulation of an economy by elected leaders is the mark of mob rule. Once again, black and white thinking with absolutely no middle ground whatsoever. Honestly, Gaf, you do not have any nuance at all.

The warrantless wiretaps are unacceptable, no matter if a "D" or an "R" is after the President's name. With that settled, we can assume that unless Obama has a really good reason to pursue this potentially politically suicidal course of action, he would not be doing it. We can also assume that Obama will do his best to express this to an American public and to a rather more conservative supreme court as best that he is able to do so. To be perfectly honest, if there are overseas calls or correspondences going from this country to people that are suspected of terrorism in other countries, I want the NSA to be all over that shit. If there are domestic calls and correspondences going on between suspected terrorists, I want the FBI to be all over that shit. And I want a FISA court to back these people up. I honestly never understood why Bush never wanted to use the FISA court, or why Obama seems to want to not use it either. I suppose a certain personality is attracted to the position of the President. Let us hope Obama can rise above the temptations of his lesser demons, and work towards a country with the rule of law, again.