COLLECTIVE MADNESS
“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."
Doesn't corporate America bum you?
ReplyDeleteBoeing, GD, all the biggies, building rockets, telescopes and stuff.
Reaching out.
Hell it ain't worth it, costs too much.
Too much curiosity.
Down with Corporate America! /sarc off
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Aerospace_companies_of_the_United_States
Rocketdyne! I have a relative worked for them. Helped design solid fueled rockets. Told me the design of the fuel, packed into the belly of the beast, cone, tunnel, hexagon, triangle, octagon, pentagon etc even a kind of ladder design, determined the thrust and burning time.
b
The whole thing might be a plot by the men in dark midnight cover with enormous financial ability, silent men, powerful men, secretive men, men you've never heard of, nor ever will, leaving us and our failing kind behind, as our Cleaning Lady once explained. Maybe she is out of the solar system too.
DeleteI think it's just an effort by some of those a little better among us to find out a little more, one of those fruitful government/corporate efforts and I am all for it.
But if they are looking for the meaning of life, it might be just as well to look to your neighbor here on earth.
b
No, dimwit, it is Government borrowing ever more from the Chinese and the National Bank then GIVING it to Corporations, and the people receive NOTHING in return.
DeleteI know you love it when your cronies are at the pay window, but normal folk, they don't much give a shit where Voyoger is, today.
Just another excuse for the Federals to spend money "other people's money", which they do not have. So the Government borrows or prints ever more, to satisfy their curiosity.
Honest Genius Speaks Out:
ReplyDeleteDebbie Wasserman Schultz: Sequester nearly starving staffers>
Automatic federal cuts are bringing staffers to the brink of starvation, suggested Debbie Wasserman Schultz, at a recent House Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee hearing.
ReplyDeleteRestaurants on the House side of Congress are increasing in cost so much that aides are being “priced out” of a good meal, she said, as Fox News reported. The comments came by way of a discussion about the impacts of the sequester on lawmakers’ office budgets. Rep. Jim Moran said he may be forced to lay off a staffer — and then Ms. Wasserman Schultz weighed in with her tale of hard times.
Just to clarify: An 8-ounce bowl of Ham and Bean soup at the Cannon Office Building’s carry-out café costs $2. A gourmet wrap or sliced bread sandwich sells for about $5. And in the Longworth Building’s sit-down cafeteria, a serving of stuffed chicken, asparagus and mashed potatoes sells for about $7, Fox News finds.
Meanwhile, Ms. Wasserman Schultz’s staffers earn between $60,000 and $160,000 per year, Fox News reports.
Poor Things
Debbie ought to run off with Bob Beckel, now he is on the wagon.
Deleteb
Got Beckel wrong on this new big stir. Misunderstood what he had been reported to have said.
DeleteLet Debbie run off with Ash, or someone.
b
Another Genius:
ReplyDeleteRangel: ‘Millions of kids’ being shot down by assault rifles
here's another
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1WSs9B4H5s
Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) ask if Guam would tip over with more troops
:)
DeleteI'll see you Hank Johnson and raise you a Patty Murray
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4uKEQDDMWc
b
Another candidate:
ReplyDeleteMaxine Waters
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niJAkR_6tKQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAFjq76Uz0k
b
Just let Boeing and John Deere run the country.
ReplyDelete....
Biden's One-Night Paris Hotel Tab: $585,000.50...
$459,388.65 Hotel Bill in London...
And fifty cents, and 65 cents
Those European socialists still know how to run hotels.
b
Overkill?
ReplyDeleteThe Department of Homeland Security responded Friday to questions from Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., about why the agency was allegedly planning to buy some 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition over the next five years.
DHS told Whispers it regularly fills all of its goods and services requirements at one time because it's cheaper for the agency, and that the 1.6 billion number was misleading because the language of DHS's purchase said it would need "up to" a certain amount.....
With more than 100,000 armed law enforcement personnel in DHS,....
http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2013/03/22/dhs-denies-massive-ammunition-purchase
Is that 16,000 rounds per officer? Or did I do the math wrong.
b
Biggest black hole so far found --
ReplyDeletehttp://www.foxnews.com/science/2012/11/29/monster-black-hole-biggest-ever-found/
Big sucker.
But, of course, that depends on your sense of direction.
Dang, now her right leg is over the left, on Redeye.
Maybe it all depends on one's orientation.
b
O god she turns out to be a lawyer, and defends people for a living, and her clients are almost falsely accused.....
ReplyDeleteYou should be watching, Quirk, Deuce, there was a line by the guy that lives under the overpass in a box with a video cam, who said " We are teaching them to get nukes, think Nork on the one hand, Libya on the other. Qadafy gave it up, and where is he?."
ReplyDeleteBolton said, "this thought came out of that face?"
I believe he (Bolton) thought it was more complicated than that.
You both would have liked the interchange.
b
You and another guy are on an island w/Patty Murray.
ReplyDeleteDo you alter your view on Same Sex Marriage?
Health insurers are privately warning brokers that premiums for many individuals and small businesses could increase sharply next year because of the health-care overhaul law, with the nation's biggest firm projecting that rates could more than double for some consumers buying their own plans.
ReplyDeleteRangel,
ReplyDelete"“We’re talking about millions of kids dying — being shot down by assault weapons,” he continued. “Were talking about handguns easier in the inner cities, to get these guns in the inner cities, than to get computers. This is not just a political issue, it’s a moral issue…”
The FBI’s 2011 data says only 323 people were killed by rifles,
compared to 728 people who were killed by hands, fists, feet etc.
Handguns are much more likely to be used in a homicide with 6,220 killed nationwide in 2011.
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/mar/21/rangel-millions-kids-being-shot-down-assault-rifle/#ixzz2OMVUXoMg
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter"
This Fast and Furious debacle started under the Bush administration,” Jackson Lee declared. “And it is been evidenced by various reports that it started under the ATL office in Arizona unbeknownst to leadership in Washington DC, at least leadership that came in under the Obama administration in this instance, Eric Holder.”
ReplyDeleteAttempts by Democrats to pin the Fast and Furious operation on Bush, however, don’t stand. National Review’s Andrew McCarthy explains:
Wide Receiver actually involved not gun-walking but controlled delivery. Unlike gun-walking, which seems (for good reason) to have been unheard of until Fast & Furious, controlled delivery is a very common law enforcement tactic.
…
To the contrary, Fast & Furious involved uncontrolled deliveries — of thousands of weapons. It was an utterly heedless program in which the feds allowed these guns to be sold to straw purchasers — often leaning on reluctant gun dealers to make the sales. The straw purchasers were not followed by close physical surveillance; they were freely permitted to bulk transfer the guns to, among others, Mexican drug gangs and other violent criminals — with no agents on hand to swoop in, make arrests, and grab the firearms. The inevitable result of this was that the guns have been used (and will continue to be used) in many crimes, including the murder of Brian Terry, a U.S. border patrol agent.
With Charlie Rangel saying millions of kids are being shot down by assault weapons, and Maxine Waters saying sequester is costing us one hundred and seventy million jobs, which is more than the entire work force, we must be in deep shit, someway.
ReplyDeleteb
Hamdoon was in a cafe in Amsterdam, by the fountain. He looked over to the Nordic youth stoned there, shirtless in the spring, sprawled by the fountain, thoughtless, and then up the street where the whores displayed themselves like manikins in the windows of store fronted buildings.
DeleteHe turned to look away towards the mountains, but there were no mountains. He spat, into his handkerchief, and sat silently.
b
Of course.
DeleteLike Obama knowing Jack shit about Medicine, or Healthcare directing us dumb shits and our Doctors how to behave, pay, and paid.
Brilliant.
BUT, you failed to answer the question:
"You and another guy are on an island w/Patty Murray.
Do you alter your view on Same Sex Marriage?"
new option;
Build a raft for Patty and set her adrift!
How about, build a raft for me?
Deleteb
aka, is space available on Voyager?
Deleteb
Breakthrough study shows that small children don’t like sharing
Deletehttp://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/03/21/174941524/little-kids-know-how-to-share-but-dont-want-to?ft=1&f=1001
Who would have guessed?
Maybe Saint Augustine, or Freud.
b
Breakthrough study shows that Moslems want to kill Jews...
Deletedeveloping.
"Maybe little kids think, 'I know I should share equally, but why should I?' " Smith says. "There's a sort of cynicism."
DeleteNope. Smith's littlest test subjects were optimists, predicting that other children would share stickers with them.
Well, maybe they really meant to share, but at the last minute just couldn't stand to see those brightly colored scratch-and-sniff stickers go. They were too impulsive.
But when asked, the youngest children correctly predicted all along that they weren't going to share. It was like a miniature version of the reality show Hoarders.
"They're showing a funny sense of self-awareness," Smith tells Shots. His results were published online in the journal PLOS One.
Liberals are Quick Studies:
DeleteThey've discovered women are different than men:
...and kids will be kids.
California produced 21% of its electricity from Renewables, yesterday.
ReplyDeleteCAISO
Movin' right along. :)
I'm not sure exactly why but this site is loading very slow for me. Is anyone else having this problem or is it a problem on my end? I'll
ReplyDeletecheck back later and see if the problem still exists.
My webpage - play roulette
The oil companies seem to have badly miscalculated. They saw the "blend wall" coming, but decided that their republican candidate would probably win the White House, and (b) if he didn't they could just buy some RINS, since they were plentiful, and selling cheap.
ReplyDeleteWell, the voters put the kibosh on plan A, and the owners of the RINS, being companies that were smart enough to accumulate the RINS in the first place, decided that they would rather hang onto their RINS than sell them cheap.
There will be a surfeit of caterwauling, and rending of garments from the blenders all Spring, and Summer, and, I would guess, a rush to install some E85 pumps as the year wends on.
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteQuirk, being reasonable, has removed what must have been an unusually unreasonable and critical or not factual comment.
DeleteIn late February, the EIA reported that "Saudi Aramco's CEO Khalid al-Falih warned that rising domestic energy consumption could result in the loss of 3 million barrels per day (bbl/d) of crude oil exports by the end of the decade if no changes were made to current trends." The New York Times reported that Chinese consumption by 2020 could be almost two-thirds greater than it was in 2011, resulting in a 6 million barrels per day (mbd) increase. Thus, viewed in context evidence indicates that U.S. domestic oil production could max out as early as 2017 and then begin a slow decline -- just as Saudi Arabia could be exporting 3 mbd less and China could be needing 6 mbd more. The consequences to the U.S. economy of such a confluence could be drastic.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of oil "independence" understandably appeals to Americans. It is likewise understandable that individuals and groups who have a financial interest in the American oil industry would argue and lobby for the investment in the means of producing energy for the U.S. that would most benefit them. But at some point America's leaders must recognize the physical evidence indicates the alleged "energy revolution" is likely to be merely a relatively short-term bump. If we fail to acknowledge the likely realities, we may be setting the stage for an energy crisis in the near term that might have been minimized. The consequences of such a failure are difficult to predict, but given the already weakened health of the U.S. economy, they would likely be severe and long-lasting.
Awash in Oil?
Yet the Energy Information Administration (EIA) and independent analysis confirm that far from the "energy revolution" of the century, the increase in domestic oil production represents a temporary bump in production that will be short-lived. If we recognize the probability the impressive increases we've seen in shale gas and "tight oil" production are of limited volume and duration and set policies accordingly, we can reap great benefit; pretend these increases herald a new and ever-increasing permanent condition and we risk setting ourselves up for an avoidable economic contraction when the expected drop in production occurs. Geologist David Hughes, a 32-year veteran of the Geological Survey of Canada, recently conducted a detailed examination of the years-long performance of 65,000 shale gas and tight oil wells. The results were telling.
DeleteIn the February 21 issue of Nature Magazine, Mr. Hughes reported that "much of the oil and gas produced [in shale formations] comes from relatively small sweet spots within the fields. Overall well quality will decline as sweet spots become saturated with wells, requiring and ever-increasing number of wells to sustain production." More ominously, he notes, "high-productivity shale plays are not ubiquitous, as some would have us believe. Six out of 30 plays account for 88% of shale-gas production, and two out of 21 plays account for 81% of tight-oil production." Even the typically optimistic EIA echoed the concerns about sweet spots and the likelihood high levels of production cannot be sustained.
In a little-noted press release last December, the EIA projected there would be a considerable increase in tight oil production in the next few years, but then conceded, "The growth results largely from a significant increase in onshore crude oil production, particularly from shale and other tight formations. After about 2020, production begins declining..." But as Mr. Hughes points out, evidence is growing that the production is not likely to rise as high as hoped, and his analysis indicates the drop in production could begin by 2017.
DeleteIt’s still unclear whether chemical weapons were used earlier this week in attacks in Syria's Aleppo province, and if so who’s responsible—Syrian president Bashar al-Assad’s troops or rebel forces. The U.N. is opening an investigation, as is the White House.
ReplyDeleteAn investigation.....whoa!....developing.....details probably never.....if ever....
Why Obama Won't Move Against Assad
He fears angering Iran.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/why-obama-wont-move-against-assad_708817.html
bob
.
ReplyDeleteBloomberg is at it again; but many would say there is a big difference between Big Gulps and teenage pregnancy. His latest campaign is against teen pregnancy.
The answer is: You are more likely to be born prematurely and at low birth weight, according to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. More likely to be abused or neglected; less likely to complete high school.
If you are a boy, twice as likely to end up in prison as the sons of mothers aged 20 and 21. If you are a girl, you are three times as likely to become a teen mother yourself compared to mothers who had a child at age 20 or 21.
Statistics for teenage mothers themselves are similarly daunting. Only half obtain a high school diploma by age 22 compared to 89 percent of women who did not give birth as teenagers. Less than 2 percent of mothers who give birth before age 18 obtain college degrees by age 30. Half live below the poverty line -- and as their children grow older, the family's chances of living in poverty increase.
But pointing out these facts apparently transgresses the boundaries of political correctness. "This campaign seems laser-focused on shaming already struggling teen parents or, ludicrously, convincing teens not to get pregnant because really bad things will happen," said State Sen. Liz Krueger. Teenage mothers across the city, lamented City Councilwoman Annabel Palma, herself once a teen mother, will feel "shamed and stigmatized."
Most disappointing was the griping from Planned Parenthood of New York City, where Vice President Haydee Morales complained that the ad campaign "creates stigma, hostility and negative public opinions about teen pregnancy and parenthood."
Excuse me, but we're not supposed to have a negative opinion about teen pregnancy and parenthood? Isn't that the planned part of Planned Parenthood?
Read more: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/03/23/the_truth_about_teens__out-of-wedlock_births.html#ixzz2OOVLwODr
.
ReplyDelete.
College improves your earning prospects. So does marriage. Education makes you more likely to live longer. So does marriage. Yet while many economist vocally support initiatives to move more people into college, very few of them vocally favor initiatives to get more people married. Why is that, asks Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry? His answer:
"Meanwhile, economists’ “cosmopolitan perspective” (as Cowen puts it) makes them not feel good at the idea of public policy that would interfere with personal choices (allowing for a second that getting married is a “personal choice” in a way that going to college isn’t). Most economists think that government should not interfere or have a stance one way or another with decisions that feel intimate to people. That is a complete value judgement. And it’s a completely defensible one.
But at the level of the economics profession, this leads to bias: much more ink is spilled on, and thought given to the college wage premium than the marriage wage premium. One is mostly praised and interpreted in a certain way, while the other is mostly ignored. And, of course, the thing that academic economics focuses on has an effect on elite debate and public policy, especially when the socially liberal, pro-higher ed biases of economists line up well with those of the rest of the elite..."
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/20/why-do-economists-urge-college-but-not-marriage.html
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Wife texts husband on a cold winter's morning:
ReplyDelete"Windows frozen won't open."
Husband texts back:
"Gently pour some lukewarm water over it."
Wife texts back 5 minutes later:
"Computer really fucked up now."
Kid was an ISP Support Tech in his Teens.
DeletePeople would stick various disks and floppy disks in the wrong slot and wonder why it wouldn't fit.
Some needed to be reminded to check that it was plugged in, etc etc.
Rufus:
ReplyDeleteWhy do they report "Small Hydro" but fail to mention large hydro?
Cost of electricity in CA 15 cents, North Dakota, 8 cents.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/10/27/141766341/the-price-of-electricity-in-your-state
Hawaii = 33.2 cents.
DeleteAlaska is 17.2 cents.
Maine is 15.5 cents.
What is your point, doug?
Why ignore Hawaii and Alaska?
Why live in Hawaii, if you are such a fan of the economy of North Dakota?
DeleteYou reside in the socialist paradise of Hawaii, while praising the accident of geology that created a oil boom in North Dakota as some kind of "Conservative" miracle.
...warm and beautiful, although at present my former state of gratitude, is difficult/nearly impossible to attain.
DeleteHaving nothing to do w/Hawaii.
Hawaii runs on Diesel, which will supposedly be outlawed soon.
I bought the kid a 10 kw PV system so he will be largely shielded from the inevitable outcome of an enourmous dependency on oil.
...although windpower continues to grow on Maui, and Honolulu has long had a large Trash Powered Electrical Generation Plant.
Not a conservative miracle, just a shining example of the idocy of the left with their NIMBY attitude of trying to stop all coal and oil here, while living on the energy from coal and oil from (anywhere) elsewhere.
DeleteI always used to read article in news papers but now as I am a user
ReplyDeleteof net so from now I am using net for content, thanks to web.
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