#1
In Greece, the government has proposed using Google Earth to identify swimming pools in yards, after which the addresses will be cross-referenced to building permits/real estate taxes, and also to the property owners to match their income tax payments to the cost of the pools. Greek consultants have offered services to camouflage swimming pools so they can't be seen from space.
Reflecting on 15 months as the leader of a polarized nation, President Obama delivered a spirited defense of government Saturday and issued a call for civility in a direct rebuttal to Republicans and "tea party" activists who have attacked his politics and priorities.
Obama called for greater tolerance in a "poisonous political climate." He criticized both ends of the political spectrum for using words such as "socialist," "fascist" and "Soviet-style takeover" and lamented that such thinking has begun "to creep into the center of our discourse."
The White House has watched, despairingly at times, as tea party activists and top Republicans have stirred a pot of anti-tax, anti-government anger. They have labeled Obama a spendthrift
He's not a spendthrift. Spendthrifts are incapable of controlling the outgo. His spending is deliberate and targetted to reward supporters and punish non-supporters, both individuals and groups... and to change the shape of the American economy.
who practices the partisanship he says he abhors and whose policies intrude on individual liberty. At rallies across the country, protesters routinely question his patriotism and say they want to "take back" their country. How dare they! Sedition!
Hours before he was to speak at the annual White House correspondents' dinner, Obama chastised the media for a tendency "to play up every hint of conflict, because it makes for a sexier story." The result, he said, is that aspiring newsmakers "make their arguments as outrageous and as incendiary as possible."
Obama made clear that he was talking about verbal bomb throwers on the left as well as the right. He said politicians are "calling each other all sorts of unflattering names" and "pundits and talking heads shout at each other."
He said invective is nothing new, quoting a newspaper's prediction more than 200 years ago that a presidential victory by Thomas Jefferson would lead to the practice and teaching of "murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest." Izzat so, Zero? Ya got a source for that?
Obama spoke up for government, saying that there are some things that "we can only do together, as one nation." He pointed to the creation of the national parks, the interstate highway system and Medicare - and to his pursuit of a financial regulatory overhaul.
"Government is what ensures that mines adhere to safety standards and that oil spills are cleaned up by the companies that cause them," Obama said to applause. Obama said the country has witnessed the danger of too little government, "like when a lack of accountability on Wall Street nearly leads to the collapse of our entire economy." Uh, what about the start of it? Increasing home sales to people who couldn't afford it? Wasn't that the government?
Along the way, the president gave a brief nod to an argument most often launched by Republicans. "Too much government," he said, "can stifle competition and deprive us of choice and burden us with debt."
Posted by: Bobby ||
05/02/2010 12:33 ||
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#1
"He criticized both ends of the political spectrum for using words such as "socialist," "fascist" and "Soviet-style takeover""
#6
The sudden appearance of bombs, but crude devices that fail to go off, on MayDay, reminds me of an adage an old analyst once told me.....there are no coincidences in intelligence or politics. The September 1939 Poland gambit anyone? Beuhler.....Buehler...?
#7
What a great insight he has on ending polarization and creating a national discourse where the government is not reviled, the elected leaders are not being rancorous towards the other side or to the president. Wow... what an incredibly important insight.
However, like most of the Teh Chosen One's grand responses to anything, this one is woefully late. In this case, it's about nine and a half years too late. Was he not listening to the "poisonous political climate" when his predecessor was in office?
Oh, no... wait... he wasn't listening. He was too busy campaigning and voting "present".
Come to think of it, let's look at the free speech our Founders intended.
Here's an example from our Founders, a pro-John Adams federalist paper, during the presidential campaign of 1796 between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, calling Jefferson "a mean-spirited, low-lived fellow, the son of a half-breed Indian squaw, sired by a Virginia mulatto father raised wholly on hoe-cake made of coarse-ground Southern corn, bacon and hominy with an occasional change of fricasseed bullfrog."
Going after his parentage is one thing, but accusing him of being raised on "Southern corn made hoe-cake"? Now that's hitting below the belt.
It didn't end there. In the 1800 campaign, Adams' allies wrote about what to expect if Jefferson were elected: "Murder, robbery, rape, adultery and incest will be openly taught and practiced, the air will be rent with the cries of the distressed, the soil will be soaked with blood and the nation black with crimes."
The prestigious Jeffersonian Murder, Rape and Robbery Schools were tough to get into, but if you could get a scholarship to one, you were set for life.
Now, no one is advocating for these kinds of smear campaigns, but the point is maybe Bill Clinton should at least know the history of the country before opening his mouth about free speech as our Founders knew it.
Remind me: didn't we have a census like, um, ten years ago? We managed then. And ten years before that. We've been doing them every decade for a couple hundred years. We managed to get them done reasonably well. What's so different about this time?
Posted by: Steve White ||
05/02/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
Paging Herman Hollerith to the white courtesy phone.
#5
It looks (from the article) like the usual- they had to throw out a $700m system designed by cronies, and ad-hoc this system together last-minute (no doubt with other cronies.)
But the government is going to run the nations health-care system... It'll be great!
#6
Probably like the global warming computer problem - input anything and the Dims gain 40 seats.
Posted by: Bobby ||
05/02/2010 7:03 Comments ||
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#7
The main problem is the scanning of the paper census forms. Truly a s-l-o-w, i/o bound operation.
A big lesson about the lack of efficiency in centralized paper handling. Nationalized healthcare, anyone?
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
05/02/2010 9:02 Comments ||
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#8
Paper counting?
It's not like we have millions of literate unemployed people who could be used to do, you know, a manual count. Shovel ready so to speak, constructive use of 'stim' money to perform an actual Constitutionally mandated government function.
#9
I just want to take a moment to enthuse over the latest whateverfuckingshinything Apple has unveiled. I would go into detail except the trailer for the show is 99 cents. I hear it is sweet and should buy one to be disconnected with. Itn temptin, I'm usually just get cheeply disconnection from WINDOZE! lol get it! WINDOZE!
There... that's enough to hold the fan boys for an hour.
#10
SCAM ALERT
What will follow will be some long-winded explanation at forces them to abandon the corrupted data and use either:
(a) controlled manual count that they oversee
(b) some computer generated modeling program to "ensure accurate accounting of underserved populations"
Translation, more safe Democratic seats get created and more minority/union representational demographics are created to serve all their income redistribution needs!
#11
The main problem is the scanning of the paper census forms. Truly a s-l-o-w, i/o bound operation. You mean, this hasn't been a problem ever since, say, 1790?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
