The day after this November election, conservatives will begin in on how liberals tax and spend. They will disavow any responsibility for the bail-outs, blaming the Democrats for them. Any reply that points out how many Republicans were howling for bail-out intervention will result is teeth-gnashing lamentations about pretend conservatives and RINOs.

Contemporary Conservatives do not really believe that accepting responsibility for their actions is a core tenet of their philosophy. It is instead just a ploy they use, enabling them to hurl derogations at single moms, excepting any who also happen to be the daughter of a Republican politician.

Posted at September 21, 2008 12:41 AM in response to Bailoutmania

Clinton had no choice but to sign the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999. It was veto proof

Now let's do a little name matching: Phil Gramm (R-TX), James Leach (R-IA), Thomas J. Bliley, Jr. (R-VA).

Cowchips alright.

Posted at September 17, 2008 8:49 PM in response to Wall Street Heat: From Summer's Dissent: Clinton, Greenspan & HBG

Scarborough has got 99 problems, but a brain is not one.

Posted at July 26, 2008 6:26 PM in response to Again with the underwear jokes? Ending the blogger hate

What's this, a wikipietistic devotee?

wikipedia:

• The content is often wikipiacular
• The oversight committee is a wikipaedarchy.
• The members engage in wikipedantry far too often.
• The rabid defenders are afflicted with wikipeotillomania.

One of the better Wikipedia Commentaries is still a Slahdot subthread from April 19 2005: "Who Decides The Truth". Make sure you read what the Wiki Admin "Snowspinner" had to say about the "Steak and Blowjob Day" stub.

There are websites that expose Wikipedia's flaws:

• Wiki Truth
• Wikipedia Review
• Wikipedia Watch

I have not contributed content to any of the links supplied in this post, but I have experienced on multiple occasions, asininity and dishonesty at Wikipedia, and have through use of the versioning system discovered many more instances of it.

Open-source knowledge base is an outstanding concept. Wikipedia is irreparably flawed. Note that I did not say the the Wikimedia codebase is flawed, this need be understood. There is an inherent problem of scale in open collaboration projects. There exists a point of membership critical mass, when it can no longer be properly managed, and at that point it is vulnerable to disinformation spew, and nihilistic defacing. There need be better controls, and there need be quality controllers. Wikipedia fails in both instances.

Posted at June 22, 2008 7:47 AM in response to Gates was involved with Iran/Contra!

I stand properly corrected on principle, although I do not rely an spell-checkers too heavily, as they tend to complain about my anti-semantics.

Posted at June 22, 2008 6:49 AM in response to Gates was involved with Iran/Contra!

You are offering up the same tired arguments, used against the extension of hate crimes to cover victims targeted because of sexual preferences and gender identity that fail in analysis: equal application under the law.

The fact is that there exists a tremendous variation in applicability of laws.

Should an arsonist to burned down a church out of animosity towards the sect be sentenced differently that an arsonist who burned down an abandoned building used as a crackhouse in the neighborhood the perpetrator lives in, if in both instances, there was no bodily harm, or intent to cause bodily harm?

Should a person who committed a violent felony against an individual be treated differently by the government if the victim was specifically targeted because they were:

• a small child or infant
• greatly afflicted with the infirmities of advanced age
• employed as a governmental law enforcement officer
• afflicted with extreme mental disabilities
• members of a specific religion
• perceived to be members of a racial group
• a Federal Judge
• a elected governmental official

Should a society that sentences child offenders into adult penal institutions segregate them from adults who are incarcerated for child molestation?

The list of examples could continue on for a very long time. You advance a strawman argument predicated upon a sense of equality that you yourself do not adhere to.

Posted at June 21, 2008 1:32 PM in response to AP: NY Juvenile Detention Centers and "Gender Expression Issues"

I never learn not to trust my handcoding html with out double-checking it for errors. Here, let me fix the typo:

wikipediculous - adjective - the quality of data obtained in a controversial subject from wikipedia

Posted at June 21, 2008 12:52 PM in response to Gates was involved with Iran/Contra!

http://www.merriam-webster.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=pediculous - adjective - the quality of data obtained in a controversial subject from wikipedia

Wikipedia is a good tool, providing a platform base from which to start topical research, if the matters being researched are non-controversial. Robert Gates is greatly controversial politically, and religiously, largely for the same reason: he was a principle in the Reagancomedy. It is better for anyone who is curious about Robert Gates' role in Iran/Contra to start with:

Final Report of The Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters
Volume I: Investigations and Prosecutions
Lawrence E. Walsh; Independent Counsel
August 4, 1993; Washington, D.C.
Chapter 16: Robert M. Gates

Posted at June 21, 2008 12:49 PM in response to Gates was involved with Iran/Contra!

That Washington Post article is extremely lame.

The law being referred to is S. 1145: The Patent Reform Act Of 2007, and in a Senate report Published January 24, 2008: Senate Report 110-259 (GPO PDF), there is a reasonable argument against the validity of the patent (pp 33,34).

Personally, I believe this patent should have never been OK'ed in the first place. It is nothing more than a scheme to profit off of a simple and logical flow chart to achieve a goal on the internet; in this instance to process checks digitally. There was no underlying technology that came with the patent. All it did was describe the process for digitalising checks in broad terms. It is akin to having a patent for the hyperlink, or the click-through.

The real story in this though it the Amendment pushed by Jeff Sessions that would disallow the patent without finding it to be invalid, and that is where Gonzales comes into the picture. By doing it this way, Sessions assures that it becomes a taking of property, and the patent holder is guaranteed fair-market value for the taking.

The Congressional Budget Office Cost Estimate for S. 1145 (PDF), published February 15, 2008, currently places the governmental cost of this amendment at
$1 billion between 2009-2018.

Posted at June 7, 2008 12:23 PM in response to Gonzales Gets a Job

The fact that Kit Bond still has any credibility whatsoever on the issue of torture speaks poorly of the American people.

Senator Bond was one of the Nine Reprehensible Republican Senators who voted against the McCain Anti-Torture Amendment on October 5, 2005. Bond should be chased from the public forum in shame, whenever he opens his mouth about torture.

Posted at May 13, 2008 7:57 PM in response to GOP Senator Floats Compromise Torture Measure