Censorship... it's not just for authoritarian states anymore. Such issues are increasingly part of the discourse in democracies, including Indonesia, the most populous Muslim-majority democracy. The government there is working up Internet censorship rules to crack down on sites that offend "public decency," including pornography (child and otherwise). In a sign that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has rather peculiar views on freedom of speech, he complained at...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_incandescent_light_bulbs#United_States http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/business/energy-environment/01iht-bulb.html?_r=1 Various governments around the world are banning Incandescent light bulbs in favor of "greener alternatives" such as CFLs. Specifically: Philippines, European Union, Ireland, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Canada, Cuba, Oceania, Australia, New Zealand, Argentina, Venezuela, and the USA. In the USA, California, Connecti...
I can hardly believe it, it is as if a huge weight lifted off of my chest. I had already written off america, certain it is doomed to fall into a third world communist country due to the people wanting such "change". I was listening to the radio and heard that martha coakley was defeated in Massachusetts. A republican in victory in that state is amazing enough, but it finally sealed the deal with the horrible healthcare nationalization bill. Democrats are jumping ship left and...
People have discovered that people are naive, trusting fools... you just need to frame something the right way to gain instant support. This is why the american "creationist" movement have renamed themselves "intelligence design" and later "scientific critique"... (see the book "of people and pandas", the book on which the movement is based and the 3 crazy leaders of the movement. the book has had several editions where the term creationism was simply replaced with intelligent desig...
I wonder what soldiers who were waterboarded to be "toughened up" think about this whole "waterboarding is torture and should be illegal to use on terrorists" crap. To quote wikipedia: All special operations units in all branches of the U.S. military and the CIA's Special Activities Division [ 14 ] employ the use of a form of waterboarding as part of survival school ( Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape ) training, to psychologically prepare soldiers...
I wonder if I will get banned from wikipedia for this. In the water boarding article, waterboarding is declared torture (if looking to edit, there is a warning that a "wikipedia discussion" declared it to be so. Only evidence supporting such a claim is presented. If you go through the entire article, way near the bottom, is a short section that details the use of waterboarding on american troops to toughen them up... yap, its a training exercise for the military. Well, lets do a little experi...
Our President has started out as a lawyer, he should know better than that! Obama is setting out to have terrorists, enemy combatants, tried in a criminal case instead of military tribunal. Military Tribunal law in the USA meets or exceeds all international laws and protections, it has a variety of protections against abuse set out by congress over more than 200 years in this country. Every country has military courts, criminal courts, and civil courts that are separate entities, and for a good ...
I recently heard a liberal describe her faith in the government, it struck me (again), how similar liberalism is to religion. When people often try to convert me to religion they often say things like "but how can you go on not knowing that there is an after life", and "wouldn't you prefer to know that you are going to heaven"... My answer is, very much so, I would love nothing more. But I do not know such a thing, everything indicates to me that it isn't going to be the case, and clos...
I was listening to one of my favorite radio stations, full of good conservative talk show hosts. One of them was discussing healthcare with a liberal caller. She kept on changing the subject and making an appeal to emotion, that being "tell me where I can find healthcare now that I can afford? I could afford it when it was 172$/mo, now its 400$/mo and I can't afford it, I tried blu-cross, aetna, etc?" I think he really dropped the ball on answering her. He said he doesn't know her exact si...
Why are people pretending that we have never tried socialized medicine in the USA? We have medicare and medicaid, both of which are bankrupt. Comrade Obama, you want us to trust in you to nationalize healthcare? You claim it will work? Prove it by fixing medicare and medicaid first. Prove it by doing it in a single state and have it work (two states tried socialized medicine, it was a failure in both).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqUmuZnmf7A&NR=1 I noticed something about obama, he tends to make very accurate observations I agree with... and then draws very odd conclusions from those. For example, he made the argument that a problem healthcare faces is crushing corporate bureaucracy, so far so good... but then he concluded that the solution is government bureaucracy instead. In the link above he makes the argument that FedEx and UPS do great while the post office is...
We have seen government run healthcare in many nations before. We have seen medicare and medicaid in the USA, as well as the experiment in hawaii and other states. But we are told that this is different, that this government can do better. We are told that if only we had nationalized health insurance, people who currently do not receive basic care (such as prescription drugs) will stop dying, and if it saves lives, isn't it worth the cost? Well, lets look at the H1N1 vaccine. The governmen...
From the whitehouse, you can get a transcript of obama's address to the UN: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-to-the-United-Nations-General-Assembly/ Excerpt from address to UN (bolding and italicizing done by me - nothing removed or changed or reordered in this portion of the speech. Portions before and after dealt with other issues, such as climate change): I will also continue to seek a just and lasting peace between Israel, Palestine, and the Ar...
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-by-the-President-at-Cairo-University-6-04-09/ here is a good analysis, although it doesn't even touch about the iran issue... http://www.bloggersbase.com/articles/partnerships/jpost/why-the-obama-cairo-speech-was-bad-for-israel-the-jews-and-western-civilization-in-general/ A few of the worse parts of obama's speech: 1. At the same time, Israelis must acknowledge that just as Israel's right to exist cannot be denied, neither ca...
The white house put out a statement claiming that the health-care "reform" is a wonderful thing, and that people are spreading lies about it to undermine it... they ask the people to report all dissidents to the whitehouse by forwarding emails that they receive containing such "lies" (read: truth) http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Facts-Are-Stubborn-Things/ As "facts" they present the infomercials the president has done, and if you receive a "fishy email" forward it to the governme...