Sadly, it's only after leaving the positions of power that people seem to realize this is true, that you are required to analyze orders and to refuse those that are illegal (and question those that are unreasonable or appear illegal).
In practice, questioning orders is a good way to end up in military prison.
Also, most fear losing their position of power far more than they fear being caught following illegal orders. Few if any have ever been prosecuted.
It's for this reason that we have the crimes exposed by Manning and Snowden, up to and including mass murders, torture, illegal indefinite detention, etc. , that have never been prosecuted, but those who exposed the illegal orders and acts have been prosecuted, whistleblower protection laws be damned.
It's pretty disingenuous for this man to say that Trump's illegal orders would be questioned and ignored when all the illegal orders he received during his tenure were followed without question.

EDIT: Interesting, I just found out he's publicly supported by the KKK, and American National SuperPac, founded by a consortium of white terror groups, but he claims to not know who they are. Reports out of Super Tuesday states Minnesota and Vermont have revealed there are recorded calls telling voters Trump will stop the “gradual genocide against the white race” and to not vote for Marco Rubio because he’s “Cuban.”
Trump has yet to disavow any of these terrorist racial groups, but has accepted money from them. That should certainly disqualify him from holding high public office and really should have him on the terrorist watch list, he's associated with and accepts fudging from well know, active terrorist groups.

There is the grim satisfaction that despite having a GINORMOUS payroll in 2014, and having just been bought by a media consortium for billions...
The Dodgers didn't win the World Series in 2014.
lol

However, they will probably eventually be the Yankees of the West, based on media income...

>> ^quantumushroom:

You know even those numbers are lies, NR. For chrissakes, the liars switched from "jobs created" to "lives touched" late last year.

Hey, you're the one that put that article forward, not me.

I think it's impossible to actually track specific jobs created by the stimulus. You can make estimates based on theory, but that's not really evidence, either for or against.

What's a bit easier to measure is the overall employment trend. You'll love that these are Nancy Pelosi's charts, but they're based on BLS statistics (what the whole economic world uses as the source for data on employment, BTW).

Here's the chart of the recession through to May's jobs report (June's report will probably come out this week). The stimulus bill was passed in February of 2009. The trend changed immediately, with the job losses slowing, and then turning into gains.

>> ^quantumushroom:
Government jobs are not real jobs as they do not reflect market needs.

That's my point, the stimulus wasn't about creating "government" jobs, it was an attempt to reverse the unemployment trend in the private sector. Right now the biggest drag on the jobs reports coming out is job losses in the public sector.

Here's a chart showing the last year in the ongoing march of Obama's supposed socialist revival. Private sector jobs up, public sector jobs down.

>> ^quantumushroom:
Here's a RADICAL idea: let people keep more of their own money, across the board.

I know it was another thread, but that idea's been tried. Hell, it's still being done to a greater degree than it's been done since well before I was born. That idea has clearly and unambiguously been tried, and has utterly failed to produce anything like what Republicans from Reagan forward have claimed it would.

>> ^quantumushroom:
And lay off Herb Hoover, moonbats, he was an unwilling or ignorant ally of yours.
wiki:
<long quote about things FDR said on the campaign trail>

A couple paragraphs above that, you find a description of Hoover's actual policies:

Calls for greater government assistance increased as the U.S. economy continued to decline. Hoover rejected direct federal relief payments to individuals, as he believed that a dole would be addictive, and reduce the incentive to work. He was also a firm believer in balanced budgets, and was unwilling to run a budget deficit to fund welfare programs.[45] However, Hoover did pursue many policies in an attempt to pull the country out of depression. In 1929, Hoover authorized the Mexican Repatriation program to combat rampant unemployment, reduce the burden on municipal aid services, and remove people seen as usurpers of American jobs. The program was largely a forced migration of approximately 500,000 Mexicans and Mexican Americans to Mexico, and continued until 1937. In June 1930, over the objection of many economists, Congress approved and Hoover signed into law the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. The legislation raised tariffs on thousands of imported items. The intent of the Act was to encourage the purchase of American-made products by increasing the cost of imported goods, while raising revenue for the federal government and protecting farmers. However, economic depression now spread through much of the world, and other nations increased tariffs on American-made goods in retaliation, reducing international trade, and worsening the Depression.[46]

In 1931, Hoover issued the Hoover Moratorium, calling for a one-year halt in reparation payments by Germany to France and in the payment of Allied war debts to the United States. The plan was met with much opposition, especially from France, who saw significant losses to Germany during World War I. The Moratorium did little to ease economic declines. As the moratorium neared its expiration the following year, an attempt to find a permanent solution was made at the Lausanne Conference of 1932. A working compromise was never established, and by the start of World War II, reparations payments had stopped completely.[47][48] Hoover in 1931 urged the major banks in the country to form a consortium known as the National Credit Corporation (NCC).[49] The NCC was an example of Hoover's belief in volunteerism as a mechanism in aiding the economy. Hoover encouraged NCC member banks to provide loans to smaller banks to prevent them from collapsing. The banks within the NCC were often reluctant to provide loans, usually requiring banks to provide their largest assets as collateral. It quickly became apparent that the NCC would be incapable of fixing the problems it was designed to solve, and it was replaced by the Reconstruction Finance Corporation.

That all sounds very familiar to me as modern-day Republican policy proposals -- eschew direct assistance to the unemployed, try to boost employment by deporting Mexicans, attempt to defer interest payments on foreign debts, and ask banks to put in place their own policies to fix their own shortcomings rather than resort to regulation, and stick to preserving the gold standard at all costs. The only thing out of place is tariffs, but I've seen those mentioned from the conservative rank and file in discussions about what our response to China's ascendance should be.

In the election year of 1932, with unemployment at 25% and with people throwing things at his motorcade everywhere he went, he did start engaging in a little attempt at mortgage loan stabilization and fiscal stimulus, and they did seem to make a positive impact, but were too little too late, but they weren't policies that were the centerpiece of his administration, they were things he tried to do out of desperation.

It's also quite true that FDR in 1932 ran on a platform that included promises to balance the budget, but that's because it'd been the Democratic that had always been scolds on that topic up to that point. Besides, FDR was no student of Keynes; General Theory wasn't even published until 1936. I don't really know where the ideas for FDR's New Deal came from. I'm guessing just simple populism, and maybe some Keynesian influence amongst his economic advisers.

>> ^jwray:


Chiropractic is not a real medical field in the same way that homeopathy and voodoo aren't. If you have back problems, go to a real GP doctor and they can refer you to whatever kind of specialist you need (which is NOT a chiropractor).


In Australia they allowed the chiropractic profession to join the consortium of medical health professionals governed by our health body (AHPRA)

Carl Sagan, one of the thinkers I admire most in the history of literature and science, wrote quite a bit about the pros and cons of space exploration, particularly in light of the problems we face here on our home planet. Pale Blue Dot is a good place to start for anyone who wants to read his thoughts on the matter.

From the book's introduction ("Wanderers"): "That's what this book is about: other worlds, what awaits us on them, what they tell us about ourselves, and—given the urgent problems our species now face—whether it makes sense to go. Should we solve those problems first? Or are they a reason for going?"

Coincidentally, in the paragraph preceding the quote mentioned above, Sagan writes: "No one on Earth, not the richest among us, can afford the passage. [...] There does not seem to be sufficient short-​term profit to motivate private industry. If we humans ever go to these worlds, then, it will be because a nation or a consortium of them believes it to be to its advantage—or to the advantage of the human species."

I can't imagine how excited he would have been to see private industry beginning to invest in space exploration.

DO NOT listen to people like this guy. He knows absolutely fuckall about this, and is making false connections, uses political innuendo and wacked data every step of the way.

THEOILDRUM.COM is the primary source of knowledge here. Not some douchebag radio talk show host.

I will debunk a few of his points, but the rest of them are just as wrong.


1 - skipped safety test = TRUE.
However, MMS were Bush crew. He's trying to push this on Obama, but to go through every contract, every test, every government contract and every employee in every arm of the government is an unbelievably mountainous task. Our gov fucked up big time. But this is due to Bush/Cheney's gutting of government oversight and regulation, and hiring cronies or completely unqualified lackeys for incredibly important positions. Not some unspecified nefarious Obama reasoning.

2- Halliburton's "Seal" = MOSTLY FALSE
(this guy calls it a "seal", which shows he doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about)
Halliburton followed/s ******* *********'s specifications and instructions. From all accounts, Halliburton warned ******* *********several times of the risks involved in the cement plug and cmt centering devices in the BOP. ******* *********overruled them every time.

"Halliburton, the cementing contractor, advised ******* *********to install numerous devices to make sure the pipe was centered in the well before pumping cement, according to Halliburton documents, provided to congressional investigators and seen by the Journal. Otherwise, the cement might develop small channels that gas could squeeze through.

In an April 18 report to ******* *********Halliburton warned that if ******* *********didn’t use more centering devices, the well would likely have “a SEVERE gas flow problem.” Still, ******* *********decided to install fewer of the devices than Halliburton recommended—six instead of 21"

3- Dispersants with the "blessing" of EPA = FALSE
The EPA has told ******* *********time and time again to stop using the dispersant "Corexic" altogether and to use SeatBrat 4, which dissolves into an organic compound in just four days. There is no truth that Corexic is illegal in the UK. The truth is exactly opposite of what this guy claims.

4- ******* *********= Corexic Disperant = FALSE
The company who makes Corexic is a consortium that includes Blackstone, Apollo and Goldman Sachs. They are called Nalco. 2 out of 14 Directors of Nalco were also Directors for ******* ********* They were NOT "the executives".

5- ******* *********didn't release video = TRUE
But, contrary to what he says, Sec Ken Salazar demanded video be released, and we've now had some three weeks of live video footage from at least 6 different cameras.

6- ******* *********refused to let scientists measure leak = TRUE
But, contrary to what he says, we now know the leak is NOT 20x greater than ******* *********'s figure.



Basically, this guy doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about. He's using one-sourced claims backed by "IF this story is true", making way false connections, and from what I can gather, basically lying out of his ass to be at the top of the Fear Monger class.

Yes, this is an unbelievably horrible moment in our history as a species, but listening to people like this with absolutely zero background in any of the industries related fields, and with no empirical facts whatsoever, is exactly the opposite of who anyone should be listening to.


Again THEOILDRUM.COM is the primary resource for all oil spill knowledge. Shut the rest of these people off. Listen to what the experts, scientists, engineers and technicians have to say.

>> ^bovan:

Mr Tyson... If our DNA is 1% different from chimps, why are they 10 times stronger than us?
2 mindteaseers:
1. The human brain is twice the size of a chimp, which should make the difference in intelligence 50%? (or 100% from the chimps' POV)
(hope I'm not doing too much Glenn Beck math here..)
2. According to the wikipage "Chimpanzee genome project":
"Figures published in Nature on September 1, 2005, in an article produced by the Chimpanzee Sequencing and Analysis Consortium, show that 24% of the chimpanzee genome does not align with the human genome. There are 3% further alignment gaps, 1.23% SNP differences, and 2.7% copy number variations totaling at least 30% differences between chimpanzee and Homo sapiens genomes"
And the project is still ongoing, and apparently they still don't know what all the genes do, if anything, in the human genomes (source: pseudorandom wikipedia pages)


The usage of that 1% statistic always seems a little funny to me.

It's like marveling at how altering only 1% of someone's nervous system between their skull and back means they can no longer move their body. "But his nervous system is 99% the same ... Amazing!"

I think the 1% figure is something of an irrelevant measurement... the measurement we care about (can he move his body or not) clearly is on a different order of magnitude (not a 1% difference).

Mr Tyson... If our DNA is 1% different from chimps, why are they 10 times stronger than us?

2 mindteaseers:
1. The human brain is twice the size of a chimp, which should make the difference in intelligence 50%? (or 100% from the chimps' POV)
(hope I'm not doing too much Glenn Beck math here..)

2. According to the wikipage "Chimpanzee genome project":
"Figures published in Nature on September 1, 2005, in an article produced by the Chimpanzee Sequencing and Analysis Consortium, show that 24% of the chimpanzee genome does not align with the human genome. There are 3% further alignment gaps, 1.23% SNP differences, and 2.7% copy number variations totaling at least 30% differences between chimpanzee and Homo sapiens genomes"

And the project is still ongoing, and apparently they still don't know what all the genes do, if anything, in the human genomes (source: pseudorandom wikipedia pages)

Here's the thing--after you watch that video, pay particular attention to the pathos being elicited, as we watch the hopes and dreams of thousands of children riding on a particular bingo ball being selected. So much emotion, designed to make the viewer ANGRY that it's come to this. But research (reported in Freakonomics and other places) has shown that every child in that auditorium is just as likely to succeed in their respective educational career, whether or not their number is called.

Say what? The authors speculate that, like so much in life, who you are is far more important than what you do. They found positive correlations between the number of books in a home and a child's long term educational success, so Blagojevich, governor at the time, ordered books for every home with children under age six. This is exactly the sort of faulty interpretation of research findings that cause so much consternation in educational reform efforts. It wasn't merely the number of books a child could read--it was the total number of books present in the household. The authors mused that such a collection transmitted a clear set of values to the child. Parents who treasured reading had children who treasured reading, and these children did rather well in testing situations. Similarly, merely the desire to improve one's current state through applying for new educational opportunities seems to be the factor in whether or not a child succeeds. I worked at a magnet high school in Chicago, and I have to be clear--the desire must come from both the parents AND the child. Parents who enrolled in the lottery to place their child in a 'safe' school against that child's wishes were sorely disappointed with the result, which usually included 27 other children (and their parents) annoyed at the disruptive element in their midst.

There are a number of reports from the Consortium of Chicago School Research (based out of the University of Chicago) which finds, quite astonishingly, that the best indicator of a student's long term success is NOT a standardized test score (which in CPS is the Prairie State, which is the ACT plus three other tests) but rather GPA. Think about that for a moment. Here you have BAD teachers in FAILING schools. I mean, that's what the movie's talking about, right? The research shows, though, that these 'bad' teachers are actually fairly good at gauging where the student is at. They're not necessarily dumbing down the material, or handing out C's for having a pulse. You would think that if they were so terrible, they'd avoid the stress of report card pick-up by passing everyone, but they don't. They do the right thing. They pass the ones who are passing, and fail the ones who are failing, and somehow this aggregate does a better job of predicting how well that student will do in life than the standardized test. That one conclusion should be studied at every school in the nation, but it seems to be ignored. Why?

Remember that joke about the guy who finds his best friend frantically looking for his wallet in the street late one night, and helps him out, but after an hour, asks, "Are you sure you lost it here?" The friend replies, "Oh, no. I lost it in the alley over there. The light's better here." That, right there, is most of what's wrong with the current fetishization of accountability in education. In order to hold schools accountable, they've chosen something that's easy to count. However, is what it's counting IMPORTANT? Accountability that doesn't count the right thing shouldn't count at all. The alternative is hard, sticky, prone to errors with few moments of identifiable triumph. In short, it makes the bureaucrats work, and Ghod help us all if they have to do THAT.

A quick statement to establish my bona fides. I was selected to participate in Teachers for Chicago, the spiritual predecessor of Teach for America. I was part of the first group of library media specialists put through the program. We were a different breed of teacher, sent to confront a new breed of student. I have worked 14 years in CPS, six in the elementary school setting, eight in high school. I have watched the rise of charter schools, and know why they're so effective--the Freakonomics folks called it. They do better because they WANT to do better, and that desire manifests with the choice to forego the neighborhood school for the charter school. But the students who wanted into the Charter school and did not are still doing well--they're just drowning in a sea of knuckle-heads, and their successes are being diluted when it comes time to rank schools in how well they prepare their students.

I've written quite a bit, because I have a lot to say. I'll see this movie when it comes out (because I'm that kind of librarian), but I'm almost certain that they'll ignore most of the new evidence that's come out indicating that charter schools don't live up to the hype (read The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education by Diane Ravitch for a comprehensive view of this) and that the problems confronting us seem almost insurmountable. They certainly defy easy metrics that would allow standardized testing to be used to establish accountability. The problem, to me, is plain. When A Nation At Risk came out in the 1980s, the US education system entered triage mode. We've never left it. We've pandered to corporate interests, as they sell us 'proven' tests (the creators of those tests have gone on record as saying that it's useless to test the sort of thing that politicians want tested) and curriculum delivery systems that simply do not work. As anyone will tell you, the entire hospital cannot be run like the ER, and yet we do just that. There is a solution, but it is all but unthinkable in the current climate. I've discussed this with other teachers, and they've rebelled against the notion, even though they later admit that perhaps it's the only way.

One last comment. I am currently working at one of the selective enrollment schools featured in the Freakonomics study. Students merely have to apply, and there's a lottery. There are, as a result, a wide variance of student ability levels, but not 100% bell curved--the very top can score well enough to get into Northside College Prep or Walter Payton College Prep. I arrived at the end of March, when the Prairie State push was in overdrive. Metrics were everywhere, and the pie-in-the-sky target of 18 was pretty much unattainable, if the various practice tests were to be believed. When the school's score came back 19, though, there was the usual jubilant celebration, but undermining this was 'the fear'. One administrator said when asked by a teacher what was done differently this year, he replied, "I don't know." They'd tried a lot of things, and clearly one was the winner, but which? Why is this navel gazing important? Why do I call it "the fear"? Because schools all over the area will be sent to this school, to learn from them. They're a success, after all. They did much better than predicted. Will these schools settle for, "We don't know?" I doubt it.

Wow so I'm not the only person that played Wheel of Time! Balefire em into oblivion!
Perhaps more types of games would be better as FPS bosses can't be made that difficult. But even the most complicated game boss there is always going to be a vid on youtube showing how to glitch kill it in 10 seconds. Spoils the fun I reckon.

The games shown and bosses killed are:

Quake II - Makron
Red Faction - Colonel Masako
Jedi Outcast - Desann
Jedi Academy - Marka Ragnos
Deus Ex - Walton Simons
Deus Ex: Invisible War - J.C. Denton
Blood 2: The Chosen - The Ancient One
No One Lives Forever - Tom Goodman
No One Lives Forever 2 - Super Soldier Lieutenant
Aliens vs Predator 2 - General Rykov
F.E.A.R. - Alma
Hitman 2 - Sergei Zavrotko
Command & Conquer: Renegade - Dr. Petrova
Far Cry - Dr. Krieger
Wheel of Time - Ishamael
Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi - Malachi
Iron Storm - Consortium Officer
Bet on Soldier - Max Balding
Jurassic Park: Trespasser - Alpha Raptor
Kill.Switch - Archer
Klingon Honor Guard - Korek
Thief: Deadly Shadows - Gamall

>> ^joedirt:
>> ^StukaFox:
Also, Americans, World War 2 was over 60 years ago. The Moon landing was almost 40 years ago. What the hell have you done in the near half-century since then to justify your unbridled and grating arrogance?

How about the internet and modern computing you ungrateful twat (and UAVs and cluster bombs and MOAB and GPS)


The internet eh? O Rly?

From Wikipedia:

'Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee OM KBE FRS FREng FRSA (born 8 June 1955) is an English computer scientist credited with inventing the World Wide Web. On 25 December 1990 he implemented the first successful communication between an HTTP client and server via the Internet with the help of Robert Cailliau and a young student staff at CERN. He was ranked Joint First alongside Albert Hofmann in The Telegraph's list of 100 greatest living geniuses. Berners-Lee is the director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which oversees the Web's continued development, the founder of the World Wide Web Foundation and he is a senior researcher and holder of the 3Com Founders Chair at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).'

Sure, the concept of packet switching was first documented in New York, and I'm not about to claim the internet for Britain. But that does mean you can't claim the entierty for the US either. The long and the short of it is that it's a joint effort. No one nation can claim the internet. Which is kinda cool, as it emphasises the point of the thing.

On other matters, such as comedy, there's no point in arguing it seeing as its a matter of personal preference, its like arguing what is the best colour or the best number, fucking pointless. I might think that Michael Mcintyre is one of the most promising comedians I've seen in a long time, alot of other people will find him annoying, personal preference is what makes things interesting, arguing your point on it however is like being one of those dipshit hecklers in the crowd. Sit down, shut your mouth and wait for the next act.

^sure. Just go find yourself some vintage 70's cheese! If you don't have a queue slot open post it here and a member of the cheese consortium will get it up!

[e] I mean put it up, submit it. Unless we're talking about Ms. Newton John, in which case the former verb applies.

Thanks Dag!

In reply to this comment by dag:
^ No, Blu-ray was created by a consortium.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

^ No, Blu-ray was created by a consortium. From the FAQ:

Who developed Blu-ray?


The Blu-ray Disc format was developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), a group of leading consumer electronics, personal computer and media manufacturers, with more than 180 member companies from all over the world. The Board of Directors currently consists of:

Apple Computer, Inc.
Dell Inc.
Hewlett Packard Company
Hitachi, Ltd.
LG Electronics Inc.
Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd.
Mitsubishi Electric Corporation
Pioneer Corporation
Royal Philips Electronics
Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
Sharp Corporation
Sony Corporation
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
TDK Corporation
Thomson Multimedia
Twentieth Century Fox
Walt Disney Pictures
Warner Bros. Entertainment


When will I be able to buy Blu-ray products?


If you live in the US or Canada you can already find Blu-ray players from Samsung, Panasonic, Sony, Philips and Pioneer available in stores, as well as a growing selection of Blu-ray movies. We also expect to see Blu-ray players from LG and Sharp, as well as a second-generation Blu-ray player from Samsung introduced in the near future. The first Blu-ray hardware and software should also be available in many European countries now.

By the way, the math and statistics are very sound. If you aren't a faith-based math believer, then you cannot believe Bush won Ohio in 2004.

Here's the deal, the official story is somehow Bush voters were too afraid to answer exit polls honestly or refused to answer. That is what the pollster consortium maintains is required to "fudge" the polling data to make it match the real precinct results.

Now a couple of fun facts if you believe the official story. Bush voters only in certain precincts responded to exit polls this way. Where Bush got majority of vote, these precincts had over representation of Bush voters lining up for the exit poll (and vice versa). Ok, I could maybe see how you might fall for this (though even in repressive regimes where we send election monitors, they don't need to fudge the exit polls).

(Think about that for a moment.. exit polls have always been used to detect fraud in every country for decades. Elections have been over turned from international election observers. So, you live in some small corrupt country where you might get thrown into dark cell or murdered depending on how you say you voted, but even there the exit polls don't have this "Bush-voter exit poll fear".)

Ok, so now the smoking gun.

In places where they had a lack of Bush voters responding to the exit poll -- (ie. a vote for Bush recorded, but no exit poll vote recorded; meaning for example 60 Bush votes and 40 Kerry votes but of the 10 people exit polled, 4 said Bush and 6 said Kerry) -- these precincts all saw overwhelming support for Gay marriage amendment. So, the President race has this Bush anomaly, but the Gay marriage amendment matches the un-adjusted exit polls.

Either people are both lying to exit pollsters and rural Ohio approves of Gay marriage AND exit polling which has worked for decades NO LONGER WORKS... Or.. They shaved enough votes in enough precincts to pad a victory. And we are only talking about 5% stuffed punchcards.

Would it surprise you to know Ohio election officials shredded the 2004 ballots in violation of a court order, and rigged recounts in most counties (pre-counted the pre-selected precincts), and there were hundreds of optical scan ballots that looked like this one:
http://www.wakeupandsaveyourcountry.com/cheated/imgs/home/ballot.jpg