Politics
- Started
- Last post
- 33,755 Responses
- ukit0
It's just ridiculous when you think about all the crap these companies make you pay for and hoops you have to jump through.
Ever look at your phone or cable bill? Fees and shit...I mean, you know what's so ironic is that they is in almost every respect exactly what the right-wingers say they want to avoid. A huge, unaccountable bureacracy that squeezes you with extra fees and steadily rising costs while there's absolutely no incentive to improve or come up with new ideas.
- DrBombay0
Capitalism squashes all in America. Why would we want to have the fastest networks on the planet? If the speed increases 6-fold so should profits.
- BusterBoy0
DrBombay, the Australian Government is trying to implement the National Broadband Network here that will be similar to what you are describing in Japan. Costs associated with setting this up range from $25b to $40b - that's billion! For a country with just over 20 million people, that seems a bit extravagant to me.
- ********0
The tel-cos in the US have quite a history. And more then i know for sure. All i know is heavy subsidies got it going and then corporations with heavy lobbying kinda stalemated it. The larger buying up all competition leaving us with a handful of companies all happy to maintain profit margins for shareholder approval, vs healthly competition. At least thats the way it seems to me. A very broad generalization and im sure in certain spot lights is an absurd generalization. I'll cross my finger and hope gov stays out and a ballsy powerful player ignites the competition. Reminds me ofsomethign i read about with cost of food rising due to costs of oil and how when costs lowered the prices of the products made didnt, until one company decided to compete and lowered their costs causing everyone else to have to lower there costs and drop the profit margins their shareholders wanted for all involved. Collective competition. When everyone competing holds their line and works together for larger profits without fear of upstarts because they're easily bought off with stock options is a scary thing. In this situation a government who is just could help regulate markets by increasing competition, through incentive basis's without competition taking boost and selling out (probably what they think will help with gov option in healthcare, however theyre missing some LARGE points of supply and demand). And then the copyright stuff of digital media... I guess ill take what i have for now and hope for a google solution vs gov to open competition
- Was that one huge run-on sentence?DrBombay
- yup thats the way i roll
********
- TheBlueOne0
I think Enron basically spoke for all of these companies:
“Yeah, grandma Millie, man. Yeah, now she wants her fucking money back for all the power you've charged right up, jammed right up her asshole for fucking $250 a megawatt hour.”Replace "power" with "bandwidth" or "healthcare" or whatever you want to do. It's just grabbing rent from the peons at this point.
- Well, let's not get carried away, its not like they actually said those exact...OH WAITukit
- Hahaha. Sad ting is they did...the beating heart of corporate america on displayTheBlueOne
- Have fun!********
- TheBlueOne0
..ah..and case in point. This just in:
"In connection with its acquisition of Bear Stearns in March 2008, defendant JPMorgan acquired massive short positions in the silver futures market. Thereafter, JPMorgan, with HSBC, artificially depressed the price of silver dramatically downward. The conspiracy and scheme was enormously successful, netting the defendants substantial illegal profits. The conspiracy and scheme has been corroborate by a 40-year industry veteran and former employee of Goldman Sachs (the "Informant") who was told by representatives of the defendants about the conspiracy and scheme. The Informant has stated that he had been told first hand by traders at JPMorgan that JPMorgan manipulates the silver market. The JPMorgan traders would brag to the Informant about how much money they were making as a result of such manipulation. The informant reported the defendants' activities to the CFTC which has opened an investigation into the manipulation of the silver market."
http://www.zerohedge.com/article…
Bush, Obama, et al. should have let these fraudulaent financial banks all fucking fail. They took highly leveraged risks, swam in corruption, and all failed. In a market economy, not one hallmarked by corporate capture, this idiots would all have taken our lumps.
It was both the Dems & the GOP who are these guys buddies. That's what drives me nuts about you rightwing nutjobs here as you, almost to a man, fail to see this is failure of the market and vorporate capture of the state. You asshats wave "Tea Party!" like it means something, and you hold up your little "Obama is a socialist" gifs like your a proud two year old showing his pooh to his parents.
THEY'RE all fucking corporate socialists. Dems, GOP, Tea Party - all are bought and sold by the corporations and you guys think the answer is to give MORE power and MORE money to them and that squash any real way that people can express power through collective action against them.
Whatever. Fucking midgets.
- ukit0
I realize Salamanderdood or whatever his name was is trying to up the fear level by posting this story about terrorists in Iraq stuffing bombs in dogs. And don't get me wrong, that's some pretty fucked up shit. OK, it's not quite as fucked up as this but it's close.
But wait a sec...can we use this to officially declare victory? Because if this is the level Al Queda is operating on (asses, dogs), then we have reduced them to such a level of pathetic desperation that it's laughable. We may as well quit burning 400 billion a year just so we can use the Middle East as a giant firing range or whatever Bush's original idea was. We can leave now.
See, every year we waste in Afghanistan and Iraq we are talking hundreds more who hate the U.S. Not because "they hate our way of life" but because one of our stray bombs killed their fucking family, thereby radicalizing them and perhaps creating another ass bomber and/or dog sewer.
So...bring the troops home....enough of this crap. And I don't want to hear any of this shit from Republicans about confronting Iran. You know, what, let Iran go nuclear if they want to. No one appointed us the fucking Charles Bronson of the world running around defeating ass bombers and exploding dogs.
- Reminds me of an old mate of mine. Bluey Zarzoff.BusterBoy
- Not fear level duder, just fucked up story man.********
- ukit0
Former US President George W Bush has defended some of his most controversial decisions, in his first television interview since leaving office.
He told US network NBC that use of the interrogation technique waterboarding - simulated drowning - had prevented terrorist attacks and saved lives. He said his legal adviser had told him that the use of waterboarding on several Guantanamo inmates was legal.
"He said it did not fall within the anti-torture act. I'm not a lawyer," Mr Bush said.
Mr Lauer asked him of the "sickening feeling" he describes in Decision Points every time he thinks about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
"Was there ever any consideration of apologising to the American people?" Mr Lauer asked.
"I mean, apologizing would basically say the decision was a wrong decision," Mr Bush replied. "And I don't believe it was the wrong decision."
History would judge him a success, he added, but he would be dead by then.
- cerberus0
Here we go again. Crank up the war machine.
http://www.npr.org/templates/sto…
- ********0
- So says Giant Imaginary Truck-Robot Hybrid OverlordTheBlueOne
- ********0
First lady’s handshake with conservative Muslim raises Indonesian eyebrows
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_up…Indonesia's pious information minister, Tifatul Sembiring, is in hot water for touching the hand of First Lady Michelle Obama, in what he describes as forced contact. The politician flaunts his conservatism as a Muslim and claims to avoid touching women who aren't family members.
HA HA HA
- ********0
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/ar…After two years of waiting, Indonesians are finally getting the chance to welcome back their adopted son. But the euphoria that swept the predominantly Muslim country after Barack Obama's election victory has been replaced by a dose of reality.
- ********0
- ********0
- Sociopath = Things being taken away from people makes you happy.DrBombay
- ********0
Illegal immigrants worked on Lou Dobbs' home, horses in Palm Beach County
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/new…A new article in The Nation magazine says undocumented immigrants labored on the West Palm Beach home of former CNN anchor Lou Dobbs, an outspoken critic of illegal immigration — and tended the champion horses of his daughter Hillary at equestrian events in Wellington.
*cough, H-Y-P-O-C-R-I-T-E, ehhhh?
- This dog reminds me of Al Gore and his carbon footprint. *cough********
- Im sure lou dobbs hired them and not the contractor that is working on his house.********
- yeah, and when he sees a bunch of mexicans working on his yard, does it not occur to him that they might be illegal?********
- being the person he is (or touts himself as) he should've went up to the contractor and asked if they were legal or not.********
- but paying them 3 dollars per hour is too hard to pass up i guess.********
- 3 dollars..wow you are nice, i would have went with a dollar and a burrito platter!********
- This dog reminds me of Al Gore and his carbon footprint. *cough
- ********0
US charges 17 over '$42m theft' of Holocaust funds
The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-…
Seventeen people have been charged in the US with the theft of $42m of Holocaust compensation funds provided by the German government.The indictment said some of the claims were made by people born after World War II. One claimant was not Jewish.
