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On 1/25/2012 2:57 AM, Invisible wrote:
> On 24/01/2012 10:44 PM, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>
>> But yeah, lot of idiots claiming this is the worst president we ever
>> had, and a lot legitimate complaints about him, but he managed in a few
>> months what Bush and Co. couldn't do in a decade, along with a fair long
>> list of other things, none of which would have happened with one of the
>> idiots calling him "the worst" in office instead.
>
> I've noticed that some people regard Obama was the Messiah, the most
> wonderful thing ever to happen in American history. And others regard
> him as pure, liquid evil. Clearly these two viewpoints cannot both be
> correct. Having no clue what Obama has actually done, I have no idea
> which one to believe.
>
The right claims that there are people on the left that think he is like
a messiah. The left, exaggerates, but only slightly, the behavior of the
right, which has literally called him everything from a socialist, to
the anti-christ, to merely, "The worst president ever".
>> Could have been better, but hell.. what can you do when you couldn't
>> probably even pass a law saying, "The sky is blue", without having the
>> less insane Republicans first agree with it, then tack on 50 idiot
>> things that undermine civil liberties, or mandate insane shit, at the
>> behest of the Tea Party, then claim, due to pressure from the same Tea
>> Party crazies that they disagree with it, then finally come out
>> insisting they never thought it was blue in the first place (because
>> they might lose their job, if they went against the crazies now running
>> the Republicans), and all, at least in part, because they want to, "make
>> Obama a one term president".
>
> ...OK, you *do* sound like you're constantly angry.
>
> Also: WTF is this "tea party" I keep hearing about?
>
Complicated... But, in simple terms, early on in the economic problems
there was a semi-grass roots group that started, calling themselves the
"Tea Party", named after the old "Boston Tea Party" in American history.
Certain groups in the right wing noted it, and decided to create a
special bus tour, called the Tea Party Express, which went around and
hijacked the original intent of the movie, spreading a mixed message of,
"Yeah, we believe in the stuff you do, but also.. {big government
rhetoric, anti-liberal rhetoric, pro-evangelical rhetoric, etc., etc.}"
They basically took what might have been an early version of Occupy Wall
Street, and used a lot of rhetoric to distort the facts, including flat
out making them up, so that, by the time election time came along, it
was 100% republicans that got elected from this "movement". Those that
did then went on to do things like:
1. Pass anti-union laws.
2. Pass laws to mangle local voting systems, often, in some cases,
passing one in state A, which made all votes count, so that the
*majority* conservative electorate would be a majority, and passing on
in B, where the existing "everyone's vote counts", was replaced with one
based on "region", because the majority of regions where conservative,
but the actual electorate was *slightly* more liberal. Uh, basically,
lets say you have three districts in both A and B state. In A, 80% of
the voters are conservative, but most of them live in one place, so the
votes would end up being 1 Conservative region:2 Liberal regions.,
while, in B, the "regional" was 2 Conservative:1 Liberal, but 70% of the
"voters" where all liberal. One law changed to prevent the liberal
"regions" winning, against the majority, the other changed, to make sure
the majority vote didn't count, only the regional distribution of them.
3. Pass laws to make more states "right to work", which basically
defangs unions, without eliminating them entirely.
4. Created special rules, by which, in at least one state, every
*elected* official can be arbitrarily fired, as an *emergency measure*,
effectively side stepping the right of the public to determine who runs
the government, and a *appointed* dictator put in place, instead, who
can also fire anyone he likes, move money around any way they like, and
undermine any part of the city government they feel they need to,
including schools, if they *think* its somehow going to fix the cities
finances. The one city this started in, now has massive new problems,
and is *still* not operating on a balanced budget.
And, finally, 5. Pretty much every single one of them, in Washington DC,
has stated that a) they will not do one thing that helps Obama, b) don't
want him to have a second term, c) have even gone so far as to say it
should be their #1 priority to stop that, and d) have the moderate
Republicans conned into thinking these evangelical, anti-gay, anti-roe
vs. wade, anti-poor, pro-rich people, anti-health care, anti-social
safety net, pro-war, pro-oil, anti-AGW, "Tea Party" people, who got
themselves elected in one of the biggest small government, pro-people,
con jobs in American history, are powerful enough they can't apposed
them, and scared shitless about it.
>> We are dealing with some true nuts right now, like the one Senator that
>> has just proposed a bill banning the use of fetuses in human food, on
>> the theory that this is the **only** possible thing that someone might
>> use "recombinant methods" to do, in food manufacturing... WTF?
>
> ...the HELL?! o_O
Yeah, and, that is only the top of the list of stupid. Most are also
pro-Abstinence. They literally deny the very fact that it is an abject
failure, and that *no* evidence exists to suggest it works, for anyone,
including in the places the themselves implemented it. Many of them have
attempted to put in legislation to either distort, sideline, or replace
Evolution, with Intelligent Design, or Creationism. They managed to,
recently, have one of their cronies get arrested for *real* voter fraud,
while trying to prove non-existent fraud. The same morons that where
responsible for destroying a company called Acorn, which a) was
eventually found to have a few irregularities, of the same time found in
many other companies, including some still existing banks, but which
where, after the company was bankrupted, and gone for good, acquitted of
any of the crimes the two, now voter fraud suspects, had originally
accused them of. It should be noted that, despite the fact that Acorn is
4 year old news, some of the "Tea Party" nuts that conned the public
into electing them are *claiming* that Obama somehow "protected" the
company, and its secretly working under another name, to fund is
reelection campaign...
Real conspiracy vs. complete bullshit, and some people are willing to
back the real criminals, because they are *sure* Obama is secretly being
funded by unknown entities, connected with a defunct company, who
offered financial advice to poor people, when they where still
operating. Huh?
Oh, right, and then there is, "Citizens United", a idiot ruling from the
conservative appointed, conservative Supreme court, which is being used
to field multimillion dollar attack ads, using secret, undisclosed,
money, from who the hell knows, but likely multimillionaire business
men, and then flunkies (since there is no way to get that much out of
the public). And, in some cases, the means by which the money is
shuffled around, makes it impossible to tell if the person being elected
is being "supported" by attack ads, put out by groups, who are secretly
funded, by companies, that those officials have connections to, or stock
in. So, as long as, say Romney doesn't directly tell some group called
"Romney PAC" what to put in the ads, they an get millions from some
company Romney owns stock in, or who like him, because of what he will
do for them, once elected, to run them, and say anything they like in it.
Steven Colbert and one of the other comedians from Comedy Central have
been running a gag for a while now, generating ads "for" Colbert,
through such a PAC, without "coordinating" their messages, with unknown
funding sources, for weeks now, to highlight the idiocy of the whole
thing. lol
Yeah, all you need to know about "Tea Party", is that its the extreme
end of the conservative spectrum in the US, has the moderate
conservatives backed into a corner, at the moment, and they lied their
way into office, on the premise of supporting effective government, when
in reality it was all about rich people getting perks, the poor shafted,
and a shift from legislating things like environment, or health care, to
"moral issues", like abortion, and gay marriage. (the two things they
tried passing bills on, over and over, for the first nearly one year,
after elected, after being elected on a platform or "job creation").
Its kind of hard not to seem a bit... pissed, at these obstructive
assholes, or the way the rest of the Republicans have been bowing and
scraping to them, not to mention how fast *ever* current Republican
presidential candidate has made a run for the bottom, to support the
same idiocy, knowing that its these nut cases that will be deciding,
through bullshit and unbridled funding for campaign commercials, not the
public (who already proved they can be conned), which one of them gets
to try to take out Obama in the election.
They may find that the public isn't quite that stupid though, when it
comes to actually voting, I hope...
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On 1/25/2012 6:44 AM, Francois Labreque wrote:
> Le 2012-01-25 04:57, Invisible a écrit :
>
>>
>> Also: WTF is this "tea party" I keep hearing about?
>>
>
> In the late 1700s, the British colonies in America were getting fed up
> of the King of England raising taxes without letting them have a voice
> in Parliament, so they decided to rebel against the King and declare
> their independence.
>
> One of the first incident of the American revolution was the "Boston Tea
> Party" where tea growers decided to punish the king by dumping all the
> tea bound for England into the harbor. There! Neener! Neener! No you
> can't have tea. Not yours!
>
> Flash forward 240 years.
>
> Groups of people angry about the rising taxes on the working class and
> the runaway government deficit decided to form a protest movement called
> "Taxed Enough Already" or T.E.A. for short. Thus were formed the modern
> day Tea Parties.
>
> Nevermind the fact that taxes on the working class had been going down
> for a few years, that these people were mysteriously very silent while
> the previous president was spending money he didn't have playing war
> games all over the world and that these people - who were for the most
> part very angry at having an uppity negro in the White House - were
> being lied to by millionaires and talk show hosts who were trying to get
> the government to ease restrictions on their investments.
>
Well, you got it partly right. The initial party was what the Occupy
movement replaced. All the other stuff you mention was what it got
hijacked into, by right wing conservatives, and clueless, people, like
Palin, Macheal Backman, and others, who had no damn clue about anything,
other than that: lots of angry people, with confused ideas = opportunity
to derail the new movement, and distort the facts to support what became
the exact opposites (i.e., high taxes for the people out protesting, and
lower ones for rich people, as just one example).
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On 1/25/2012 12:53 PM, Warp wrote:
> Invisible<voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> I've noticed that some people regard Obama was the Messiah, the most
>> wonderful thing ever to happen in American history. And others regard
>> him as pure, liquid evil. Clearly these two viewpoints cannot both be
>> correct. Having no clue what Obama has actually done, I have no idea
>> which one to believe.
>
> I think that the major problem is that he promised to do a lot of things
> to make Americans' lives better, but in the end he didn't. Instead of
> standing firm and pushing his original agenda no matter what, seemingly
> he started making compromises and caving in. (Sure, the president cannot
> pass laws, but in the US the president, AFAIK, has quite a lot of influence
> which he can use to influence law making.)
>
His greatest failure was, I believe, taking 3 years to figure out that
the other was scared to death of their newest members, and would *never*
cooperate to do jack shit, via "compromise".
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> Also, he promised to close Guantanamo, but he didn't.
Actually, he did sign the order to close the prison at Guantanamo. The
only problem he has is that Congress passed a law that prevents money
from being used to relocate the prisoners anywhere else, and apart from
a few Really Bad Guys(tm) that they want to keep in prison, there are
prisoners at GTMO that no one wants, or who will more than likely be
executed if they are sent home.
--
/*Francois Labreque*/#local a=x+y;#local b=x+a;#local c=a+b;#macro P(F//
/* flabreque */L)polygon{5,F,F+z,L+z,L,F pigment{rgb 9}}#end union
/* @ */{P(0,a)P(a,b)P(b,c)P(2*a,2*b)P(2*b,b+c)P(b+c,<2,3>)
/* gmail.com */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }
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>>> When's the last time you looked at a map, young'un?
>>
>> Of the Middle East? Never.
>
> Maybe that's part of the reason why you have little sense of how the
> world actually is. Just a thought.
Forget Iraq - I don't even know where Cumbria is. And *that* is
something I might plausibly need to actually know at some point. :-P
>> I'm the guy who thought that Brazil was in Europe, remember? Geography
>> was never my strong point. (Or history, actually.)
>
> That's correctable, but you have to correct it. Both of these things are
> quite important.
Notice how this sentence is in the past tense? :-P
>>> Because you're in technology and keeping up on technology trends is
>>> important to furthering a career in technology
>>
>> Really? In what sense?
>
> If you don't know what technology is out there, how do you expect to know
> when a proposed solution is good or not?
By researching it, obviously.
I'm not saying it's unnecessary to know anything about technology. I'm
saying it seems unnecessary to know about technology we're not actually
using. (Whether it would help my job prospects is another matter... but
you have to find jobs to apply for first.)
>>> and those are two places
>>> where LOTS of news about technology are posted or linked from?
>>
>> Well, that's news to me.
>
> <boggle>
I got the impression that Slashdot was more a forum for idle gossip and
bored people starting flamewars. I wasn't aware any useful information
existed there.
I also got the impression that The Register was a satire site. Hell, it
even subtitles itself "biting the hand that feeds IT". I'm not making
this up. The few times I've read it, it was amusing, but contained no
real-world data.
>> PS. What is Netflix? And does it only operate in America?
>
> It's a streaming movie service, and if you'd been reading Slashdot or The
> Register, you'd know they've just started operating in Europe as well. :)
I still don't comprehend what "streaming" actually means in this context...
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>> I've noticed that some people regard Obama was the Messiah, the most
>> wonderful thing ever to happen in American history. And others regard
>> him as pure, liquid evil. Clearly these two viewpoints cannot both be
>> correct. Having no clue what Obama has actually done, I have no idea
>> which one to believe.
>
> It's subjective.
>
> You could probably learn a lot by reading his Wikipedia entry.
Yeah, but... it's subjective. ;-)
The other day, I read about something called "the church of
scientology". From what Wikipedia said, this is /obviously/ a criminal
organisation that should be shut down immediately. And yet, various
national governments have investigated it and decided either to take no
action, or to officially recognise it as legit. So clearly Wikipedia
isn't presenting the full picture here.
I imagine the same can be said about any topic which people are likely
to have strong opinions about.
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Francois Labreque <fla### [at] videotronca> wrote:
> there are
> prisoners at GTMO that no one wants, or who will more than likely be
> executed if they are sent home.
Isn't it quite ironic for the US to be worried about that?
--
- Warp
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On Thu, 26 Jan 2012 09:33:17 +0000, Invisible wrote:
>>>> When's the last time you looked at a map, young'un?
>>>
>>> Of the Middle East? Never.
>>
>> Maybe that's part of the reason why you have little sense of how the
>> world actually is. Just a thought.
>
> Forget Iraq - I don't even know where Cumbria is. And *that* is
> something I might plausibly need to actually know at some point. :-P
Well, then look that up.
>>> I'm the guy who thought that Brazil was in Europe, remember? Geography
>>> was never my strong point. (Or history, actually.)
>>
>> That's correctable, but you have to correct it. Both of these things
>> are quite important.
>
> Notice how this sentence is in the past tense? :-P
Yes, but my point was to a larger point of not being aware of some fairly
basic information about the world.
>>>> Because you're in technology and keeping up on technology trends is
>>>> important to furthering a career in technology
>>>
>>> Really? In what sense?
>>
>> If you don't know what technology is out there, how do you expect to
>> know when a proposed solution is good or not?
>
> By researching it, obviously.
>
> I'm not saying it's unnecessary to know anything about technology. I'm
> saying it seems unnecessary to know about technology we're not actually
> using. (Whether it would help my job prospects is another matter... but
> you have to find jobs to apply for first.)
It's easier to find jobs to apply to when you have a broader awareness of
the world than just what's relevant to you right now.
Remember I got laid off last May? I'm actually still looking for full
time work, but I've been doing contract work. My current contract is
with the engineering department of the company I got laid off from (it
ends tomorrow, unfortunately - it's been a really fun project). The work
I'm doing is with a cloud technology product.
Now, if I had stuck my head in the sand when cloud technology came along,
I wouldn't have been able to qualify for this contract very well. But I
knew about the product (even though I hadn't used it) and knew what the
capabilities are and what customers might actually want from it.
And the engineering department has been impressed with my ability to
learn their specific technology very quickly. I like to think they'd be
willing to hire me if there was an open position (indeed, that's
something I'm hoping to talk with them about before the end of the day
tomorrow).
I'm not a software engineer. But I have skills that they've seen benefit
them greatly. I can write, I can pick up a product very quickly, and I
can run into a problem and try to fix it myself (indeed on Monday, I was
working with a component that needs to be in the release coming up later
this year, but the engineer assigned to it has taken it over from one who
left and knows very little about the implementation details. I logged 10
bugs against it, and was only able to because I'd hit one, figure out how
to work around it, and continue with the installation until I hit the
next point).
Today and tomorrow, I'm hoping to actually patch the scripts involved to
make the actual fixes quicker for them to implement.
>>>> and those are two places
>>>> where LOTS of news about technology are posted or linked from?
>>>
>>> Well, that's news to me.
>>
>> <boggle>
>
> I got the impression that Slashdot was more a forum for idle gossip and
> bored people starting flamewars. I wasn't aware any useful information
> existed there.
It is, but the articles are good pointers to what's important. I rarely
read the comments (unless I'm bored). But I have an RSS feed set up from
the stories page so I can see what's 'hot', read the story, and follow
the link to the source story so I can learn more.
> I also got the impression that The Register was a satire site. Hell, it
> even subtitles itself "biting the hand that feeds IT". I'm not making
> this up. The few times I've read it, it was amusing, but contained no
> real-world data.
It has elements of satire, but it actually reports on real stuff. They
do hardware reviews and talk about software and technology companies in a
real and non-satirical way.
For example:
http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2012/01/25/
amazon_cloud_enterprise_storage/
(That's in today's feed)
>>> PS. What is Netflix? And does it only operate in America?
>>
>> It's a streaming movie service, and if you'd been reading Slashdot or
>> The Register, you'd know they've just started operating in Europe as
>> well. :)
>
> I still don't comprehend what "streaming" actually means in this
> context...
2 seconds with Google yielded this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streaming_media
Jim
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On Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:55:39 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> The right claims that there are people on the left that think he is like
> a messiah. The left, exaggerates, but only slightly, the behavior of the
> right, which has literally called him everything from a socialist, to
> the anti-christ, to merely, "The worst president ever".
Oh, you missed the best one, Patrick....
The lady who asked Rick Santorum (Aside to Andy: He's one of the
Republican candidates trying to get the nomination. While I often
suggest that you google stuff, googling "Santorum" is something you
should NOT do from work. Seriously, wait until you're home. Dan Savage
- a columnist here in the US - Google-bombed his name to mean something
that you're probably better off not knowing.) a question and stated that
Obama isn't our legitimate president because he's an avowed Muslim, etc,
etc, etc - and Santorum didn't correct one thing, later using the excuse
"well, she's an old lady and she was leaning on a cane" as if that had
any relevance to it. Stephen Colbert did an awesome send-up of that
response on Tuesday's Colbert Report.
Jim
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On Thu, 26 Jan 2012 09:35:37 +0000, Invisible wrote:
>>> I've noticed that some people regard Obama was the Messiah, the most
>>> wonderful thing ever to happen in American history. And others regard
>>> him as pure, liquid evil. Clearly these two viewpoints cannot both be
>>> correct. Having no clue what Obama has actually done, I have no idea
>>> which one to believe.
>>
>> It's subjective.
>>
>> You could probably learn a lot by reading his Wikipedia entry.
>
> Yeah, but... it's subjective. ;-)
Wikipedia is often a starting point rather than an ending point.
> The other day, I read about something called "the church of
> scientology". From what Wikipedia said, this is /obviously/ a criminal
> organisation that should be shut down immediately. And yet, various
> national governments have investigated it and decided either to take no
> action, or to officially recognise it as legit. So clearly Wikipedia
> isn't presenting the full picture here.
CoS is an interesting organisation because of how closely they try to
protect their identity and information, to the point of making it
difficult for anyone to objectively write about them.
They're classified as a religion. "Cult" is probably much more apt a
description, and a cult with some very high-profile members. But what
I've read on the history of it, apparently L. Ron Hubbard (the author)
had a bet with his son that he could create a religion and get people to
donate lots of money to it.
> I imagine the same can be said about any topic which people are likely
> to have strong opinions about.
Certainly.
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