Recent Comments:
Google Wave dev preview hands-on and impressions {Engadget}
Aug 8th 2009 12:45PM I love Wave, but I don't have any contacts, so it's hard to interact (my username is Californian). I'm working on my extension, but it's not that ambitious. I hope that when the 100,000 invites go out, someone will come up with a "new user" Wave so that we can meet new people. Better yet, people in the dev sandbox now should be able to give out invitations.
Keepin' it real fake, part CCXVII: Not even Obama can sell us on BlockBerry {Engadget}
Jun 19th 2009 10:04PM Wonderful. I didn't want to comment but I've had it with the inaccuracies and foolishness. Don't make statistical claims unless you can back it up with official numbers and DOCUMENT your sources. This is a technology blog, so we should all stfu about politics, but I can't avoid what was already started.
The easiest thing to clear up is someone's incorrect debt numbers. From http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt_histo5.htm (note the .gov address), Bush started with about $5,674,178,209,886.86, as this was the number on 09/302000 (and it didn't increase more than 200,000,000 to the next fiscal year). On 09/30/2008 (before he left office), it was $10,024,724,896,912.49. For those who are bad with estimation, that is about $4,350,546,690,000. I think that is significantly more than even the ~$2,000,000,000 number thrown out before. And on top of that, it was the impractical fiscal and monetary policies of the Bush-era *government* (not only Bush, although he had, perhaps, the largest role of any individual) which necessitated this recent addition to the national debt. This money, it must be noted, has probably had at least some positive effect, which is evidenced by the fact that the NASDAQ has gone up by about 19.1% since the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (to verify this go to finance.google.com and select NASDAQ and put in the date 02/17/2009 for the first one on the chart).
Now let's look at the constitution. The judicial branch, specifically the Supreme Court, interprets the constitution. Until there is a Supreme Court ruling against it, Obama's "meddling" in private corporations is entirely constitutional. The constitution also doesn't give the President the power to choose a pet for the White House; does that make it unconstitutional? More relevantly, it does not give him the power to create the Air Force or make the Louisiana Purchase (Wikipedia's examples). Article I Section 8 of the constitution allows him (and the rest of the government) to do all of these things, including "taking over" corporations.
Personal attacks on commentors (including calling them racist or mindless tools) and the president (Bush or Obama) are irrelevant. There have been plenty of jerks who were right and better at their jobs than "nice" people. And Truth, my parents are Republican but I am (mostly) a Democrat. So don't use your amateur psychoanalysis on too many people. I agree with your sentiments, and they may be right, but let's just objectively argue the facts and not say why the commentors themselves are stupid, okay (even though many are)? I'm not trying to argue to arouse anyone, just to let certain people know the *truth*.
As for what was Bush's fault, let's look at majorities in congress first, shall we John? Referring to http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/history/one_item_and_teasers/partydiv.htm (towards the bottom), you can see that Republicans had a majority for most of Bush's presidency in the senate. When Democrats had a majority, it was never by more than two, whereas Republicans had an 11-person majority at one point, which would make Democrat-initiated bills much harder to pass. When the Democrats had a no-person majority, the VP would override any tie in favor of the Republicans. As for the House of Representatives (refer to the link at the end of the previosly-cited page), it was a Republican majority until 2007. On top of all of this, the president, in reality, "suggests" many things to congress and has major influence with his veto. Many Democrats would not initiate bills for fear of veto.
Let us clear one thing up about the definition of socialism. Wikipedia, indiana.edu, and sonoma.london.edu all state some variation of "Socialism refers to a broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating state or collective ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods". This is not, however, what the government is doing, because they are not involving themselves in the production and distribution of goods, but merely ownership. Ownership does not necessarily effect specific distribution, and the U.S. government is leaving it up to corporations to decide specifics. They are not regulating prices of goods, which is central to *communism* (the economic derivative of socialism, not a more extreme form of it). Thus, capitalism is still promoted. Socialism would be more akin to high tax increases, but even at 50% levels, no one considers France to be a socialist or communist country. It would probably make a lot of sense to stop whining about taxes and increase them for once.
I have to quote this directly to address it.
"“#4 putting 1/5 of the nation's economy (health care) under the control of the federal government.”
"Because it works so well right now."
Yeah it does.
" Lets just leave it to the multi billion dollar insurance conglomerates. They got our back, right?"
Does the federal government got yours?
If i dont like my insurance companies policies, I MOVE TO ANOTHER. If you dont like the way the feds are running it, where do you move to then?"
Right now, most people do not have the option to move to another with ease. On top of that THEY ALL SUCK (see, I can do the all-caps annoyance as well!). Moving from one piece of crap to another doesn't help. Perhaps you don't understand the realities of insurance because you are too young to have dealt with it (I'm not attacking you, I'm just hypothesizing why you wouldn't see the problem in the insurance industry that even staunch Republicans do). "If I don't like the way the feds are running it," I vote the people in control out of office. On top of that, human nature is greed, and I hope everyone can agree that the insurance industry is a private corporation out to make money and with no other explicit purpose. The government, however, is driven by money but rather by voter approval. This is more directly related to consumer approval (and thus making it better for users) than money because, with the effects of insurance similar to interlocking directorates, consumer approval is only relative to the crappy insurance and high prices from other companies. Many countries have properly implemented socialized (now is the proper time to use this non-profane term and sometimes-useful strategy). I personally know many people who have waited less time in Canada for invasive surgery than others I know here.
I believe I already countered your (non-enumerated) point 5. I must say, I appreciate how easy rebuttal is with a clear list like that!
Well, you're a dumbass for taking this to California. That just got me more determined to show how foolish all of your points are. Let's disregard the CO2 emission/greenhouse gas/global warming problem for a minute (although it is much more relevant to this blog). Pretending that isn't an issue, oil, at current consumption rates, will last about until 2050 (http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/headlines/econference_masters.html). Serious talk of drilling in Alaska did not start early enough to have the incredible amount of infrastructure needed to have oil pumping out of there at any reasonably ROI-positive rate. And drilling off of California will have much more severe and negative effects on the environment than positive ones for the price and duration of oil. I'm not going to list the environmental detriments here; you can look those up yourself. There are problems with ethanol (corn prices), but few with wind and solar. Fusion technology is developing quickly, and there are other frontier energy sources that will become more widespread over a few years that are better than fusion. Fission power (classically referred to as "nuclear/nucular" depending on whether you are talking to Bush or not) has problems with disposal, but there are facilities in the desert that are not yet in use and space is a pretty big junkyard (if we can develop a safe way to get it up and keep it up). So I think I'd rather keep the Earth in tact.
Oil speculation is not really possible to directly regulate. That's like saying "no stock market!". So prices will stay on a roller coaster until alternative sources are more used than oil. Which is exactly why we need them. I might be crazy, but I don't think high oil prices are positive, and capitalism is not perfect (recession anyone?). So let's help it out a little.
For some more examples (other than the ones I wrote before and overlapped), refer to appointment of ambassadors. Not in the constitution. How about creating the FCC or TVA or any technology-related agency? Not in the constitution. And let's justify government takeovers like you did the Air Force: part of the government's job is to "promote the general Welfare" (from the preamble, as was your justification). This is helping to keep jobs in America and stabilize the economy (refer to stock numbers previously quoted). Thus, it is justified.
And one last reality check for you, sir. Reducing the deficit *is* a priority of the Obama administration. Emergency spending such as this (and I doubt few in their right minds would not agree that this is a fiscal emergency) is not analogous to the incessant spending of the Bush administration.
On the real issue, I wonder how well this phone would work with Android on it. Obviously pretty crappily, but it would still be interesting!
Vote for the 2008 Engadget Awards! {Engadget}
Mar 16th 2009 7:03PM This is really crappy. I really liked engadget, but you've moved to my "wag of the finger" list. Used to tip my hat, but I guess it's time to give Gizmondo a try unlike the voters here did with *any* of this hardware evidently. Time Capsule? Really? Not a new Intel SSD? This is absurd. I might be an apple dis-fanboy (i.e. I hate apple), but this would be an outrage for anyone who knows anything at all about gadgets. Even as an apple hater, I've probably tried more of their products than most of you voters.
Absurd.
Macbook with Apple logo-turned-LCD now on eBay, naturally {Engadget}
Mar 15th 2009 2:47PM I hope it sells for less than he payed for it. That would be sweet irony. Such a foolish mod, easy to replicate, and on an apple.
Engadget's recession antidote: win a set of Razer Moray earbuds! {Engadget}
Mar 13th 2009 5:49PM This comment thing is making me reconfirm comments every time now and it's getting really annoying.
Engadget's recession antidote: win a Vuzix AV310! {Engadget}
Mar 11th 2009 4:31PM Me?
Engadget's recession antidote: win a Kensington SlimBlade Trackball! {Engadget}
Mar 10th 2009 5:29PM Oh pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease give this to me!!! I want it sooo bad! I love trackballs and this sound like the best one ever from your review.
PPPPPPPLLLLLLLEEEEEEEAAAAAAASSSSSSSEEEEEEE!!!!!!!
Engadget's recession antidote: win a Nokia N85! {Engadget}
Mar 6th 2009 5:19PM I can eat phone?
Joyswag: Halo Wars (Day Two) [update] {Joystiq}
Mar 3rd 2009 6:06PM Killzone
The 2008 Engadget Awards: Nominate the Worst Gadget of the Year {Engadget}
Mar 2nd 2009 9:08PM Haha the poor editors!
I nominate the iphone 3g. Just kidding (although I would)!
I really nominate the real paper epaper display!
http://www.engadget.com/2008/01/11/crapgadget-ces-edition-round-13-e-paper-display-actually-paper/
