What bothers me the most about this nonsense of "moving forward" is all the poor schmucks who get thrown in jail for smoking joints while these "professionals", supposedly highly paid for their decision making capabilities, get a free ride because they were just obeying orders which most ordinary fools would have shied away from. The elitism of these people being more equal than others stinks. No responsibility required of these criminals, nor of the Wall Street criminals; the common thread seems to be that the bigger the crime, the less likely you'll do time, and if it gets big enough, the punishment goes negative and you get a free ride.

Whoosh!

It's so easy to blame despotic corporations, but they don't raise the pigs just because they like raising pigs, but because people eat them. People ate pigs during the last swine flu epidemic, it's not a novel new food.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to speculate that swine flu is more likely to come from areas with lots of pigs than places with few pigs. But it does take a brain to not have knee jerk reactions about this being the fault of (ahem) piggish corporations putting profit before people.

Knee jerk reactions are not useful. They just give the other side of the wingnut aisle an opportunity to show off their own knee jerk abilities.

Apple is a bully, always has been, and they are absolutely clearly in the wrong here, morally and legally.

Why on earth should anyone compromise with a bully who is going to lose anyway?

Good ole Bank of America sent me two letters recently for the same credit card account. One was the usual packet of checks with their horrendous transfer fees and "promotional" 8.99% rate for the next several months, after which it would no doubt zoom to something 20%+. The other letter informed me they were lowering the credit limit by $1800.

Wheee! Greed on the one hand vs paranoia on the other. Which will win?

I checked Mein Kampf out of the library a couple of times when I was kid, and found it impossible to read, full of just such language. Not obscene words, but obscene thoughts repeated over and over.

This quote reminds me of that book. I doubt it is a coincidence. Small minds with small thoughts and a large audience of true believers will probably use the same method.

Seems to me there is a simple step towards reforming the current insurance-paid health care system without need for radical reform and huge bureaucracies.

Insurance companies must accept anybody who can pay their premiums. Premiums can be age related, and possibly gender related (which makes sense health insurance-wise but is a political hot potato), and possibly voluntary condition related (rock climber? smoker) but there can be no differences for involuntary conditions. No waiting periods. You sign up and get coverage from that instant on. You have to sign up with some insurance company, you can only switch once a year, and if you don't sign up, you get some minimum deduction for a minimal plan contracted for by the government at zero tax cost. This is especially important -- the government would put it out to bid once a year with the minimum coverage defined and take the lowest bidder. No huge bureaucracy, no taxpayer support.

This stuff matters more than what policies are made because no two voters agree on policies, and not a single politician has perfect policies for any voter.

Voters know this. They also know that they can't predict what policies politicians will have in the future, because the future is unknown. Thus the only measure they have of who to vote for is who shows the best general behavior, who looks the most predictable, who seems to have the best personality to deal with the coming crises.

That's how Ronald Reagan got elected and re-elected; he put on a better act in Sacramento and Washington DC than in Hollywood and had better press agents.

When a politician cheats on stuff like trouser presses and moat cleaning, it shows his arrogance and elitism and lack of ethics, and that is why the public cares about it.

So the greedy arrogant loaners restrict their loaning market, making funds cheaper for those borrowers because of the increased supply. Meanwhile, the realistic loaners loan to the unionized companies and make more money because of the reduced supply. Pretty soon, the idealistic union-bashers see their profits shrink while the union-agnostic loaners see their profits grow, and the bashers become loaners, and things are back to normal.

Sounds like a free market solution to me.

Check out the Wikipedia article in my sig. The US Army court martialed one of their own for waterboarding a Phillippino after the 1898 Spanish American war. It was known to be torture then.

Of course, Dick Cheney "had better things to do" than be drafted and fight in Vietnam; otherwise perhaps the US Army could recall him and court martial him, at least in my dreams.

"The ones who say they are going to shoot you never do" says the man who has never been shot.

The ones who were shot and killed have nothing to say on the matter.

It's like finding something in the last place you look. Just as you don't keep looking once you've found what you are looking for, you don't keep saying that talkers don't shoot once you've met the talker who does shoot.

Give it a try, and not just for a minute or two. It is a nice change from sitting down and it sure does aid concentration.

They're doing this so they know where all the young valuable virgins are. They plan to sell them to the highest bidder I bet.