Notary Sojac

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Commented on Hope is fading
I've been on the libertarian fringe of conservatism for most of my life, and although I have voted for a few Republicans for national office, I have never voted for a Democrat. Had Obama only opposed the TARP bailout in...
Commented on Hope is fading
Obama could have taken steps to end the bailout, crony capitalism culture. Instead, the Morgan/Goldman/Fed/Treasury revolving door continues apace. He could have realized that asset bubbles are what has crippled our economy, and that the federal government should not encourage...
Commented on Pfizer abandons property it won in Supreme Court housing battle
"people are paid just compensation for their property when it is condemned through an eminent domain action" Nonsense. No compensation is "just" when one party has the power to (eventually) evict, and the other has no counterweight. Just compensation would...
Commented on Pfizer abandons property it won in Supreme Court housing battle
The vote breakdown in Kelo Vs. New London: For Susette Kelo - Scalia, Thomas, O'Connor, Rehnquist. For Pfizer/New London - Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter, Kennedy, Breyer. Those damn conservatives, always on the side of Uncle Moneybags, tryin' to keep the little...
Commented on Energy Literacy part One: Energy is invisible
So if we could get everyone in the world to cut their energy use by one watt a day we could close down six coal fired plants. Building six nuclear plants accomplishes the same amount of CO2 reduction and takes...
Commented on Guest blogger - Saul Griffith's "Energy Literacy Series"
I'm an AGW skeptic who will gladly make common cause with anyone who wants to help America develop an ample and growing supply of reliable energy to wean us off dependence on imported oil. Unfortunately this puts me at odds...
Commented on Guest blogger - Saul Griffith's "Energy Literacy Series"
Okay, speaking as a skeptic I'll grant you that AGW "might be real" and suggest my personal contribution. I promise to take no flights on private jets. Not only this year, but for the rest of my life. This should...
Commented on Conservative children's book vilifies Nancy Pelosi
The last time we reduced the national debt, we had a Democratic president and a Republican congress. It's worth trying again....
Commented on Conservative children's book vilifies Nancy Pelosi
Exactly. This is the first generation of Americans to beggar its own children and grandchildren so that we ourselves don't have to make any sacrifices. And whether we elect Republicans who think we can make all the problems go away...
Commented on Quebec solves H1N1 vaccination queues with Disneyland Fastpasses
I would rather we see politicians not as "managers" or "representatives" but as the "mildly learning impaired hired help"....
Commented on Richard Metzger on Ayn Rand
There is just one paragraph in all of Rand's turgid life work which I keep handy and occasionally insert into a conversation. It's from what's known as "D'Anconia's Money Speech" ""Do you wish to know whether that day is coming?...
Commented on How EFF saved Indymedia from an unconstitutional subpoena for all its visitors' IP addresses
Great post. The silence is deafening, innit??...
Commented on 9/11 Truth and the Paranoid Style
"They sound like bog-standard, racist right-wingers to me." Most of the "truthers" I have heard wouldn't dream of accusing Obama of being a Hitler. They are far more likely to crank up a Two Minutes Hate directed at Cheney, Bush...
Commented on 9/11 Truth and the Paranoid Style
Back in the days immediately following 9/11, scarcely an hour would pass since someone described it as "the worst attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor". The parallels run deep when you look at how those two attacks have been...
Commented on What MP3 player should I buy?
"The missing piece of the puzzle is for rockbox to provide support for keeping track which podcasts have been listened to and current location within." Not sure I understand what is missing here. If I download five podcasts to my...
Commented on What MP3 player should I buy?
There was no mp3 support in car stereos until some sort of critical mass of mp3 files was out there on millions of systems. Until there is some sort of similar breakthrough for ogg (ogg files sold on Amazon, iTunes,...
Commented on Toronto Star copyeditor edits memo announcing the elimination of copyeditor jobs
Too bad we can't see the first marked-up version. The one which starts with a short paragraph announcing "we're outsourcing the copy editors", lays it side by side with a buzzword bingo card, and line by line merges the two....
Commented on An Insider's View of the Fort Hood Tragedy
You may find that there are some bloggers, blog posters, and columnists that attribute this incident to violent tendencies within Islam. But as far as the mainstream media and our elected officials, you can pretty much breathe easy. They bend...
Commented on What MP3 player should I buy?
Answering a couple of upthread questions: Rockbox will play ogg files on anything but the old Archos platform. Rockbox also has full balance control and can in addition downmix stereo into either the left or right program. If a player...
Commented on An Insider's View of the Fort Hood Tragedy
"I'm not sure that I want to return to the mindset..." That wasn't quite the issue I was raising. I'm trying to figure out how to distinguish an act of a lone nutcase from the act of someone schooled in...
Commented on What MP3 player should I buy?
I guess I'm the umptieth person to suggest the Sansa e200 series with Rockbox. I have two, the functionality is marvelous, the audiobook bookmarking is the best of any player I've ever owned, and they are stone solid reliable. Rockbox...
Commented on An Insider's View of the Fort Hood Tragedy
Like I said, you can be a Muslim and a soldier, no problem, I am fine with that. If you are a soldier (regardless of religion) and make statements supporting suicide bombers and sharia law (and yes, this is unconfirmed...
Commented on An Insider's View of the Fort Hood Tragedy
You can certainly be a Muslim and an American soldier at the same time. You can make statements supporting the other side in a war, as an American civilian. But you can't make statements supporting the other side in a...
Commented on John McCain vs. Baby Sea Turtles vs. Rachel Maddow
There are a lot of things that I like, including baby turtles. But I know the difference between "I like X" and "I want to take money from my neighbor's paycheck, under threat of imprisonment, to support X"...
Commented on An Insider's View of the Fort Hood Tragedy
"If a campus shooter was wearing a swastika, we probably wouldn't characterize the shooting as a Nazi attack." Your observation is correct for 2009, when only the likes of Mike Malloy's audience truly believe Naziism is alive and well. Had...
Commented on An Insider's View of the Fort Hood Tragedy
"some cultural element unique to Western society" I think that cultural element is the separation of church and state. And when you look at countries that have established that principle, you find majority Christian countries, majority Buddhist countries, majority Jewish...
Commented on An Insider's View of the Fort Hood Tragedy
"The Qur'an doesn't have more potential than the Bible to make people do horrible stuff" In nations where Christianity is the dominant religion, women sometimes can't get abortions and gays aren't allowed to marry. In nations where Islam is the...
Commented on An Insider's View of the Fort Hood Tragedy
If I walk into a crowded room and shoot several people before being apprehended on the spot, I may well be found to not be a "murderer". But there is no way I am not the "shooter"....
Commented on An Insider's View of the Fort Hood Tragedy
I'm always bemused by the usage "alleged shooter" in a case like this. By comparison, if a body turns up in a ditch today, and after six weeks of detective work the cops point the finger at me, it's entirely...
Commented on 20-year old Iraqi woman dies; father ran her over for being too Westernized
Moniker - I have met a number of Muslims personally, although probably not as many as you. I have learned that the vast majority agree with me that separation of church and state is a bedrock principle. I welcome them...

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lhughes commented on Hope is fading
He's a fraud. If you 30 or younger be afraid. You've either signed up for (or you are a victim) of a generation of low wages, unemployment, underemployment, spiraling health care costs, social security costs, property taxes (in blue states) and a crushing federal deficit. If you're not worried then you're probably a looter and on the public dole. Otherwise, do something to change this....
deckard68 commented on Hope is fading
"To end the wars." I believed, like many others, that when Obama-the-candidate said he was for the war in Afghanistan and against the war in Iraq, that he was just saying that about Afghanistan only to win some Republican votes. I thought he was saying it with a wink, and that once in office, he'd say that he was actually for ending both the wars. So he did not fool me, but I fooled myself. My only remaining hope is that the only reason he's continuing to fund the war in Afghanistan is because he's afraid that if he stops...
zyodei commented on Hope is fading
With regards to "self-reliance" - again, I truly do believe that, on an individual level, this is what made America great. Not assuming that others will do stuff for us; and conversely, seeing that if someone is down there is no one but us to lend a helping hand. That's my definition of self-reliance, and on an individual level it has been one of the most powerful goods in the American character. Now, I certainly see where you're coming from - it's hard to crow about American self-reliance when we collectively rely on slave labor in China to make everything...
claybarham commented on Hope is fading
Here's why Obama and his crowd are losing Americans. Martha Stewart, in a recent TV interview, demonstrated why the elite hate ordinary people who stray into the public eye. She earns the title of Mean Martha with her demeaning responses to questions about Rachael Ray and Sarah Palin. She did us a great service, however, because she gave us a concrete example of the differences between the elite herding class and the herd, them and us. The few elite rule the many, as is tradition in the world outside of America. The elite herding class has moved into most all...
davedorr9 commented on Quebec solves H1N1 vaccination queues with Disneyland Fastpasses
Although there are some good points about this being old technology, there are a number of excellent reasons to highlight this technique: 1) Electronic scheduling of specific procedures, like a 'flu shot', solves some major issues regarding the supply vs. demand problems and the time-cost and frustration of waiting. 2) aggregation of these systems is very slow in the US: the google api for flu shots is a great start, but it requires that the majority of people who receive supply actually post availability, which does not happen today. 3) these kinds of issues should be the primary focus of...

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