News Stories

[Haruka_Kitten]

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

You forgot The Biggest Loser.

Ugh, Dance your ass off is another one. A really bad cross between The Biggest Loser and So You Think You Can Dance? It's truly shocking. I hate that sort of reality TV, and agreeing with cors8, The Amazing Race is the only one I'd watch, only for suggestions on where I'd wanna go for holiday and what car I should take?

Originally Posted by mg1942

More Toyota woes...

Oh I so wish I could see those, but I'm on a phone, is it about their new Camry Hybrid?

[justinstrife]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100128/...ate_debt_limit

Dear God has any of these morons ever balanced a checkbook in their lives?

[iLney]

This should take care of the spending habit of the Government:

Spoiler for Ron Paul -Legalize Competing Currencies:

Much has been made recently about the supposed economic recovery. A few blips in a few statistics and many believe our troubles are all over. Of course, they have to redefine recovery as “jobless” to account for the lack of improvement on Main Street. But the banks have money, Wall Street is chugging along, and the administration would like to get on with other agendae.

They have even set up a commission to investigate the crisis as if it were all in the past.

The truth is that Americans are still losing jobs, the Fed is still inflating, and more regulations are in the works that will prevent jobs and productivity from coming back. We are on this trajectory for the long haul. The claim has been made many times that this administration has only had a year to clean up the mess of the last administration. I wish they would at least get started! Instead of reversing course, they are maintaining Bush’s policies full speed ahead. They are even keeping the Bush-appointee in charge of the Federal Reserve! They are not even making token efforts at change in economic policy. And for all the talk of transparency, we hear that some powerful senators will do all they can to block a simple audit of the powerful and secretive Federal Reserve.

We have been on a disastrous course for a long time. The money supply has doubled in the last year, our debt is unsustainable, the value of the dollar is going to continue its drop, and those Americans who understand where we are headed feel helpless and held hostage by foolish policy makers in Washington. When the bills finally come due and the dollar stops working we are in for some real social, economic and political chaos. That is, unless we take some major steps now to allow for a peaceful transition in the future. These steps are laid out in my legislation to legalize competing currencies.

First of all, no one should be compelled by law to operate in Federal Reserve notes if they prefer an alternative. We should repeal legal tender laws and allow Americans to conduct transactions in constitutional money. Only gold and silver can constitutionally be legal tender, not paper money. Instead, it is illegal to conduct business using gold and silver instead of Federal Reserve notes. Simply legalizing the Constitution should be a no-brainer to anyone who took an oath of office. Consequently, private mints should be allowed to mint gold and silver coins. They would be subject to fraud and counterfeit laws, of course, and people would be free to use their coins or stay with Federal Reserve notes, as they see fit. Finally, we should abolish taxes on gold and silver, which puts precious metals at a competitive disadvantage to paper money.

The Federal Reserve is a government-sanctioned banking cartel that has held far too much power for far too long and is in the end stages of running the dollar into the ground, and our economy along with it. The very least Congress can do, if they are not willing to abolish the Fed, and perhaps not even conduct a serious audit of it, is to allow citizens the freedom to defend themselves from being completely wiped out by their monopoly power.

Damn, legalizing the Constitution! What a novel idea!

[Vexx]

No objections to requiring a balanced budget... many states seem to manage. However.... as we've seen senators from both sides don't seem to have a problem with keeping large operations off the books so they can pretend they've balanced things.

[justinstrife]

Originally Posted by Vexx

No objections to requiring a balanced budget... many states seem to manage. However.... as we've seen senators from both sides don't seem to have a problem with keeping large operations off the books so they can pretend they've balanced things.

Might be time to bring back the tar and feathering procedure that was so famous centuries past.

[FDW]

Originally Posted by Vexx

No objections to requiring a balanced budget... many states seem to manage. However.... as we've seen senators from both sides don't seem to have a problem with keeping large operations off the books so they can pretend they've balanced things.

I object, given the way the government is run in the state that I live in (California) I'm inclined to believe we need more government spending on realistic projects, like repairing existing roads (not building new roads to nowhere), getting the HSR line between SF and LA built right, (to take pressure off of in-state air routes) and investing in local rail transit projects (as a catalyst for developing both cities and suburbs, and also to take pressure off of roads and freeways).

[Tsuyoshi]

America's been digging its own grave ever since Bush came to power. It's a matter of time before China or another asian country will push America in it.

[Haruka_Kitten]

Originally Posted by Yoko Takeo

America's been digging its own grave ever since Bush came to power. It's a matter of time before China or another asian country will push America in it.

That's a huge claim. I don't think they'll go down without a fight though.

[Tsuyoshi]

Originally Posted by Harufox

That's a huge claim. I don't think they'll go down without a fight though.

They will fight, of course. America's pretty proud of its achievements, but how can it fight? It has a huge debt to take care of, and it can't afford a war with another country now when it's in a position where it would be better for the US to worry about its own hide. And if by fight, you actually mean economic competition, China's already paving its way up the mountain while the US isn't getting anywhere the way it is now. People have been saying it for many years that there's a huge chance that China's going to replace the US. As things look, we're getting closer and closer to that.

[Kamui4356]

Originally Posted by Yoko Takeo

They will fight, of course. America's pretty proud of its achievements, but how can it fight? It has a huge debt to take care of, and it can't afford a war with another country now when it's in a position where it would be better for the US to worry about its own hide. And if by fight, you actually mean economic competition, China's already paving its way up the mountain while the US isn't getting anywhere the way it is now. People have been saying it for many years that there's a huge chance that China's going to replace the US. As things look, we're getting closer and closer to that.

The thing you have to remember about the US debt, yes, it's the largest in absolute terms of any nation, but that's misleading. If you look in terms of debt as a percentage of GDP, the US isn't anywhere near Japan in debt, and well behind Italy too.

Further, militarily speaking, the US is unmatched and will remain so for a long time. Quite simply there is no other nation on earth with the logistical capability to match the US. There are nations like China with a larger army, but they don't have the ability to deploy it much beyond their border. A lot of US military spending isn't in combat troops, tanks, ships, or aircraft, but in logistics troops, trucks, transport ships, transport aircraft, and overseas bases to deploy from. As a result the US has far more power projection capability than any other nation and that isn't going to change any time soon.

As for the US economy not growing as fast as nations like China or India, of course it isn't. Those are developing nations. The US on the other hand is already developed. Most new American growth is the result of making existing industry more efficient. there's simply less room to grow. China's economy can't continue growing at it's current pace either. It's going to have to slow, if not sink into recession.

[Nosauz]

Originally Posted by Yoko Takeo

They will fight, of course. America's pretty proud of its achievements, but how can it fight? It has a huge debt to take care of, and it can't afford a war with another country now when it's in a position where it would be better for the US to worry about its own hide. And if by fight, you actually mean economic competition, China's already paving its way up the mountain while the US isn't getting anywhere the way it is now. People have been saying it for many years that there's a huge chance that China's going to replace the US. As things look, we're getting closer and closer to that.

If anything America has been going under ever since Ike Eisenhower. Because after Reagan's failed star wars, and the failure of trickle down economics and supply side economics that Reagan claimed, America has been on a slow march toward mediocrity and the fact that the US is being more and more like a colonial power is what's frustrating. If you look at the history of nations, colonialism is a sign of decay and I just hope that we can get out of Iraq, get out of Afghanistan, if we really need to worry about terrorists, we just need better intelligence, but occupying a foreign country is going to get us nowhere.

[JMvS]

Obama Plan Privatize Astronaut Launching.

President Obama will end NASA’s return mission to the moon and turn to private companies to launch astronauts into space when he unveils his budget request to Congress next week, an administration official said Thursday.

The shift would “put NASA on a more sustainable and ambitious path to the future,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. But the changes have angered some members of Congress, particularly from Texas, the location of the Johnson Space Center, and Florida, the location of the Kennedy Space Center.

“My biggest fear is that this amounts to a slow death of our nation’s human space flight program,” Representative Bill Posey, Republican of Florida, said in a statement.

Mr. Obama’s request, which will be announced on Monday, would add $6 billion over five years to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s budget compared with projections last year. With the increase, NASA would receive $100 billion over the 2011 through 2015 fiscal years.

The new money would largely go to commercial companies that would provide transportation to and from the International Space Station. Until now, NASA has designed and operated its own spacecraft, like the space shuttles.

The commercial rockets would displace the Ares I, the rocket that NASA has been developing for the past four years to replace the shuttles, which are scheduled to be retired this year. Companies expected to seek the new space taxi business include United Launch Alliance, a partnership between Boeing and Lockheed Martin that launches rockets for the United States Air Force, and Space Exploration Technologies, a start-up company led by Elon Musk, who founded PayPal.

Speaking at a news conference in Israel on Wednesday, Gen. Charles F. Bolden Jr., the NASA administrator, gave hints of the new direction. “What NASA will focus on is facilitating the success of — I like to use the term ‘entrepreneurial interests,’ ” General Bolden said.

Skeptics wonder whether the commercial approach would be significantly faster or cheaper than completing the Ares I and the Orion capsule that would carry the astronauts, and how astronaut safety would be maintained. NASA has spent about $9 billion on Ares I and Orion.

“We have already spent valuable time and billions of dollars developing this program,” Representative Michael McCaul, Republican of Texas, said in an e-mail statement. “It makes no sense to throw away a plan backed by 50 years of NASA experience and institutional knowledge in favor of start-up operations, which may encounter delays and unknown obstacles.”

So goodbye Constellation Program. Guess the Moon is gonna be Chinese (personally I still root for the old Russian challenger and it's European partners ).


Now that I think about it, isn't that the reverse of what the Russians have been doing? Instead of financing the scientific program with space tourism, they are gonna end funding the space tourism sector with public money!

[LynnieS]

This came out a week ago, but it doesn't seem to be on many people's radar. It's not earth-shattering news, but on the medical front, it's rather promising.

Study detects stomach cancer from [endoscopy] waste fluid

Researchers have discovered the early detection of stomach cancer is possible by studying the waste fluid pumped from the stomach carried out before an endoscopic examination.

The study was conducted by a research team led by Prof. Fumio Ito of St. Marianna University School of Medicine. The team detected gene abnormalities peculiar to stomach cancer in the mucosal cells of the stomach that flaked off from water pressure during endoscopic cleansing of the stomach.

[Kamui4356]

Originally Posted by JMvS

Obama Plan Privatize Astronaut Launching.

So goodbye Constellation Program. Guess the Moon is gonna be Chinese (personally I still root for the old Russian challenger and it's European partners ).


Now that I think about it, isn't that the reverse of what the Russians have been doing? Instead of financing the scientific program with space tourism, they are gonna end funding the space tourism sector with public money!

So short sighted. Not only does this kill the US manned space program for the foreseeable future, it's also going to cost jobs. People need to build the things after all and now those people will be looking for work. Why is NASA always one of the first government agencies on the chopping block when the government is looking to save some cash? Reform military procurement policies and you can probably save more money than NASA's entire budget without negatively impacting anything besides the bank accounts of corrupt executives. I'm not just talking about weapons there, also things like tools, food, and other logistical concerns as well.

[justinstrife]

Originally Posted by Yoko Takeo

America's been digging its own grave ever since Bush came to power. It's a matter of time before China or another asian country will push America in it.

America's been digging it's own grave for far longer than Bush's Presidency. Not one President in the past 60 years hasn't done some of the digging.

[Tsuyoshi]

Originally Posted by justinstrife

America's been digging it's own grave for far longer than Bush's Presidency. Not one President in the past 60 years hasn't done some of the digging.

True, very true, but Bush's been working 10 times harder than all his predeccessors, except maybe his father.

Originally Posted by Nosauz

If anything America has been going under ever since Ike Eisenhower. Because after Reagan's failed star wars, and the failure of trickle down economics and supply side economics that Reagan claimed, America has been on a slow march toward mediocrity and the fact that the US is being more and more like a colonial power is what's frustrating. If you look at the history of nations, colonialism is a sign of decay and I just hope that we can get out of Iraq, get out of Afghanistan, if we really need to worry about terrorists, we just need better intelligence, but occupying a foreign country is going to get us nowhere.

LOL, failed Star Wars. America's always had colonial tendencies but it was never very direct about it. In all the skirmishes the US involved itself in, like the liberation of Afghanistan from Soviet oppression, were ultimately aimed at promoting US democracy. That was also the intent in Iraq when Bush decided to _ironically_ oppose Saddam. The US was like this even before WW1 even. They changed their tac after the first great depression but changed back when Japan attacked Pearl Harbour.

You could even say Globalization is a ploy for US colonialism, it being a byproduct of capitalism. If it wasn't for that, the world wouldn't be in such a huge debt right now. Because world economies are connected to one another through franchises and outsourcing, what happens to Mr. X will affect Mr. Y. But, I've already said this before, so I don't feel the need to go on.

[justinstrife]

Originally Posted by Yoko Takeo

True, very true, but Bush's been working 10 times harder than all his predeccessors, except maybe his father.

I'd say FDR has done more damage to the U.S. than Bush could dream about doing. The social programs he started, gave birth to new ones decades later. Those social programs have been used, and mis-used, and have taken over much of our economy, while they are going bankrupt in the process.

[Nosauz]

Originally Posted by Yoko Takeo

LOL, failed Star Wars. America's always had colonial tendencies but it was never very direct about it. In all the skirmishes the US involved itself in, like the liberation of Afghanistan from Soviet oppression, were ultimately aimed at promoting US democracy. That was also the intent in Iraq when Bush decided to _ironically_ oppose Saddam. The US was like this even before WW1 even. They changed their tac after the first great depression but changed back when Japan attacked Pearl Harbour.

You could even say Globalization is a ploy for US colonialism, it being a byproduct of capitalism. If it wasn't for that, the world wouldn't be in such a huge debt right now. Because world economies are connected to one another through franchises and outsourcing, what happens to Mr. X will affect Mr. Y. But, I've already said this before, so I don't feel the need to go on.

Uh during world war I the united states general sentiment was of isolationist tendencies, it was because of Wilson and the forcing of American troops to the european theatre that America got invovled. FDR had to fight tooth and nail to get "our" boys into the war against hitler due to the bad taste of WWI in the american publics mouth. I mean it took the sinking of a majority of the pacific fleet to rouse Americans in a call to action. For the most part US democracy is more or less tied into western thinking, because in that case the brits, spanish, portugeese, french, dutch all had the notion of spreading "democracy" although at the time under the name of republics, which America has since cast of and claimed the name Democracy instead.

@justinstrife
FDR saved the world and with American tax dollars turned the great depression and made the US the supreme super power of the past century. He is the reason why America is the most dominant nation, his spiritual successor Johnson on the other hand was an utmost failure. Those programs you say you hate? They are the reason why there is a middle class, when nobody would hire people FDR did the hard thing and hired those people, you must have forgotten about the great depression to solely blame fdr for this. Not to mention his push to go to war and fund the allies when congress was set to appease the Nazi establishment.

[Xellos-_^]

Originally Posted by Yoko Takeo

True, very true, but Bush's been working 10 times harder than all his predeccessors, except maybe his father.

i like bush sr, they guy knew when not to play politics. he raise tax when it need to and not blindly stick to his guns like jr.

Originally Posted by justinstrife

I'd say FDR has done more damage to the U.S. than Bush could dream about doing. The social programs he started, gave birth to new ones decades later. Those social programs have been used, and mis-used, and have taken over much of our economy, while they are going bankrupt in the process.

Reagan with his deficit spending did more harm then any modern president.

Spoiler:

http://zfacts.com/p/318.html

[TinyRedLeaf]

No regrets, no remorse — Tony Blair's last stand

London (Jan 29): The appearance of Tony Blair before the Chilcot inquiry is a reminder, after a long absence from British politics, of just what an articulate and convincing politician he is.

His testimony was not that of a man at bay, of one proven to be in the wrong, but of one who seeks still to persuade us of the coherence of his world view and decisions at the time. He has today trenchantly restated his belief that Iraq posed a threat because of its alleged weapons of mass destruction, or willingness to acquire them.

That said, listening now to Mr Blair's testimony, the flaws in his arguments are striking. The most remarkable element of his testimony has been his insistence on the importance of the Sept 11 attacks on the United States. Before that time, he said, Britain's policy would have been one of containment of Saddam Hussein's regime. After 9/11, Mr Blair's view was that Britain could not leave that regime in possible possession of weapons of mass destruction. The world, he emphasised, is inter-related; the actions of rogue states such as Iraq could affect us all and the 9/11 attacks proved as much.

Yet there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and the attacks on the US. Indeed, Saddam Hussein was an enemy of Al-Qaeda. To make the leap from a vigorous response to the 9/11 attacks — which undoubtedly justified the war in Afghanistan — to a showdown with Iraq was a very big step. Yet 9/11, according to Mr Blair, changed everything in regard to the way we dealt with Iraq because it was a reminder of the damage a rogue state allied to terrorists could perpetrate in the world, including Britain. His opponents are entitled to counter that he patently picked on the wrong target, which was, in any event, not proven to possess WMDs.

- LONDON EVENING STANDARD

In the end, Blair will be judged by history

London (Jan 29): Finally, the Prince appeared in Hamlet. Witness 69 in the inquiry into Britain's decision to go to war in Iraq took his seat looking tanned, fit and thoroughly unapologetic. Outside, protesters waved placards denouncing Mr Tony Blair for making what they considered to have been a mendacious case for war; inside, he made his position clear: "I would not have done Iraq if I had not thought it was right. Full Stop. It is a decision I would take again."

It matters little that Mr Blair will never be persuaded he was mistaken. That is not the task of the Chilcot Inquiry, as its chairman was at pains to emphasise at the outset. It is not to make findings of guilt, as many of Mr Blair's detractors would like; it is to learn the lessons of what, if anything, went wrong so that a future government will avoid making the same errors.

To that end, this has been a seminal week for the governance of the nation. What has emerged is something that the inquiry chaired by Lord Butler had previously concluded, albeit sitting in private – that the style adopted by Mr Blair during his decade in Number 10 was inimical to good decision-making. His notorious "sofa government" approach gave too much influence to cronies and yes-men, to the exclusion of experienced officials and experts who found their advice either ignored when offered, or not even sought.

Mr Blair said he had been advised of likely humanitarian difficulties in Iraq once Saddam was ousted from power but was not prepared for the mayhem that followed. Yet anyone with a knowledge of the country knew that Saddam's brutal regime was preventing the disparate forces inside Iraq falling on each other. It is another example of the morally righteous attitude that prevailed in No 10 that such warnings went unheeded.

Mr Blair also maintained that the context – the calculus of risk, he called it – had been changed by the Sept 11 attacks on the United States, as indeed it had, especially once Mr Blair had promised that Britain would "stand shoulder to shoulder" with the US; yet Saddam, as the leader of a secular government, could just as easily have been seen as a bulwark against the Islamist fundamentalists who threatened Western interests.

Where Mr Blair was at his most characteristically persuasive was when he said that the question to ask was "not the 2003 one, but the 2010 one": had Saddam not been toppled and had developed his weapons of mass destruction with the finances available to Iraq from the big increase in oil prices in the intervening years, what level of menace might the West be confronting today? Whatever one thinks of Mr Blair, that remains a good question.

- TELEGRAPH.CO.UK

See also:

• Key quotes from Blair testimony (CNN)
• How did Blair do? (Channel 4 News)

=====

Originally Posted by Yoko Takeo

You seem to also be taking account of individuals on the internet when you mention the bolded part. I was only referring to the more massive organizations such as NBC, CNN, what have you. Thanks for your contribution though.

The irony is that even the most massive organisations are made up of just that: many individuals; each with very strong opinions, and all very vocal if they want to be.

The idea that any one media organisation operates like a hive mind, deviously scheming as one, to fleece gullible laymen of their pennies — while making for terrific Hollywood fare — is at best only half true and, at worst, no better informed than some of the supposedly learned opinion in the West on how best to tackle difficult social, political and economic issues of multi-layered problems like those in, say, the Middle East.

Can media organisations be deceptive? Of course! Do they sometimes get their facts wrong? Of course! Are they all part of a grand conspiracy to brainwash the people? Hmm...