Random Thoughts (Political Edition)

[jetsetter]

I don't know which countries would fall at the "privatised" extreme of the line, as even in the US services such as the fire department and police are publicly owned.

A small number of U.S. fire departments are privatized, that is, operated by for-profit corporations on behalf of public entities. Port Columbus International Airport in Columbus, Ohio is among the largest public entities protected by privatized fire departments.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefighting_worldwide#United_States

Private/for profit EMS

Ambulance services operating on a private/for profit basis have a long history in the U.S. Often, particularly in smaller communities, ambulance service was seen by the community as a lower priority than police or fire services, and certainly nothing that should require public funding. Until the professionalization of emergency medical services in the early 1970s, one of the most common providers of ambulance service in the United States was a community's local funeral home. Funeral home ambulance operations were sometimes supplemented by 'mom and pop' operations, which weren't affiliated with funeral homes but rather operated on much the same basis as a taxi service. Such companies continue to operate this way in some locations, providing non-emergency transport services, fee-for-service emergency service, or contracted emergency ambulance service to municipalities, as in the public utility model. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, more than 200 private ambulance companies in the U.S. were gradually merged into large regional companies, some of which continue to operate today. As this trend continued, the result was a few remaining private companies, a handful of regional companies, and two very large multinational companies which currently dominate the entire industry. These services continue to operate in some parts of the U.S., either on a fee-for-service basis to the patient, or by means of contracts with local municipalities. Such contracts usually result in a fee-for-service operation which is funded by the municipality on a supplementary basis, in exchange for formal guarantees of adequate performance on such issues as staffing, skill sets, resources available, and response times.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emerge...in_the_United_States#Private.2Ffor_profit_EMS

 

[nouseferaname90]

Well, the Central Valley will be in a dustbowl within the next 2-5 years. In the north valley, there is an E85 plant that was just finished. As a result, there are HUGE subsidies on Corn. Corn destroys the nutrients in the soil (from my knowlege) to make a fuel that is not at all efficient. The farms and orchards that used to be making useful stuff like wheat, walnuts, apples, ect. are now making corn. Now, thanks to the stupid government subsidies, the soil will be raped and farmers will complain about bad soil all because of their move to make corn.

Thank you government.

Sooooooooooo many farms are doing it.

 

[gaasc]

the situation is getting worse over here, Zelaya supporters are destroying malls and over-exaggerating things. Multiple arrests have been made but it still doesn't quite live up to the ?thousands of dead people and jails full of innocents? that Zelaya has been mind-raping the international organizations with. still there are some injured and there is one in critical condition, at this point i'd rather not leave home that much.

 

[h-p]

^Oh crap, hope nobody dies and things get better soon.

 

[Hidden_Hunter]

IT won't matter if Australia doesn't have its emissions trading scheme finalised by December's Copenhagen climate change talks, the head of the UN's climate change agency says.

Other nations will only care that the Federal Government has made a commitment to reduce emissions targets ahead of the summit, Yvo de Boer says.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,25861191-1702,00.html?from=public_rss

No shit, instead we've got Rudd and his pals cramming down a poorly thought out system that will decimate our businesses for no real gain.

 

[nate_bartlet]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8180195.stm

I hate Harriet Harman with the fury of a sun. Whenever she opens her mouth, pure bile comes spilling out. This time she's gone on record saying that there should always be a woman in a top post in the government so that it rules out a 'men only' club.
The only thing i have to point out there is that she really should think about what she says before she opens that gateway to hell she calls her mouth. Now, i'm not being chauvinstic and before you lot set you rep's to neg. I would just like to point out my reasoning. I don't believe that a top post should be held by a man or a woman just to fill the numbers. It should be filled by the right person for the right job. If it was a all woman government fine, if it was a all man government fine there as well. I don't want to see people being pushed into jobs just so you can go on national tv and say "oh we're all about equalities"
Also Harman still seems to be keeping that Labor impression that they don't have a chance of losing the next election. Ufortunately, while they still have that one eyed scottish twat at the helm i really can't see them doing that well.

 

[Cobol74]

I agree 100% - now Mrs Thatcher; proves the point as far as I am concerned.

Right Woman in the job for most of the time - she made some awesome mistakes though, the ones Americans are unaware of.

Oh and was replaced by that arse John Major - nice but dim.

 

[nomix]

John Major is a man I'd like to have a pint of bitter with, but I would not let him run my government. He is a bit like a buddy of mine, let's call him Bob (Yes, I've just watched Poirot, The silent vitness). He is nice, in a soft, cuddly kind of way, but obey is commands? Well..

-

On a completely different note, this in from Israel.

BBC: Palestinians evicted from homes in East Jerusalem to accomodate Jewish settlers

Israeli police have evicted nine Palestinian families living in two houses in occupied East Jerusalem.

Jewish settlers moved into the houses almost immediately. The US has urged Israel to abandon plans for a building project in the area.

This is appoling, and I am filled with distate and anger. This is something you usually see when some Latin American dictator forcefully moves some native indians to make way for a golf court. It is not something I usually expect from a democratic nation, although, coming from Israel, it does not suprise me.

If this was Iran evicting Jews from their homes, we would be speaking of ethnic cleansing. But it isn't Iran. It's Israel. So we don't.

And it effing sickens me.

Dear God, please remove that prick government from office as soon as you are able.

/Rant

 

[nate_bartlet]

also just seen this on BBC news and tracked down the report on the BBC News website

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8180115.stm

to dumb it down, basically a priest is saying that kids should not be using facebook and myspace and instead they should go to church because that teaches them values about community and friendship.
Religion should keep its nose out of kids upbringing. to say "you can only have true wholesome friends when you come to church" just makes me scream. Its this type of scare mongering and how crackpot priests go around saying "everything is a sin, unless you go to church" that just makes me believe more and more that religons today just haven't got a true handle on the world.

 

[nomix]

In the words of Mames Jay, that's what the French call "idiotique".

 

[Cobol74]

Right - I'll uninvent the internet - done

 

[freeferrarisdonotexist]

also just seen this on BBC news and tracked down the report on the BBC News website

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8180115.stm

to dumb it down, basically a priest is saying that kids should not be using facebook and myspace and instead they should go to church because that teaches them values about community and friendship.
Religion should keep its nose out of kids upbringing. to say "you can only have true wholesome friends when you come to church" just makes me scream. Its this type of scare mongering and how crackpot priests go around saying "everything is a sin, unless you go to church" that just makes me believe more and more that religons today just haven't got a true handle on the world.

I have had similar realisations (note however that I'm not talking of normal religious people so much as the institutions themselves). For example, one of my friends is a Christian and she subscribed to a newsletter. She unsubscribed after a week. Why? The entire thing was (in her words, mind) "creepy". The "lessons" it taught were either obvious or in some way discriminatory, whether against women, other religions, modernity, gays etc. And absolutely every sentence had to have the word "God" or "Jesus" or "Holy" in it. It was like playing Holy Buzzword Bingo. That to me emphasized modern religion's disconnection from not only reality but also science and society, not to mention its worst problem: inability to reaffirm its core ethical beliefs (against murder rape and what have you) without also sticking on illogical "rules" against where a certain group should be in society, etc.

 

[nate_bartlet]

I have had similar realisations (note however that I'm not talking of normal religious people so much as the institutions themselves). For example, one of my friends is a Christian and she subscribed to a newsletter. She unsubscribed after a week. Why? The entire thing was (in her words, mind) "creepy". The "lessons" it taught were either obvious or in some way discriminatory, whether against women, other religions, modernity, gays etc. And absolutely every sentence had to have the word "God" or "Jesus" or "Holy" in it. It was like playing Holy Buzzword Bingo. That to me emphasized modern religion's disconnection from not only reality but also science and society, not to mention its worst problem: inability to reaffirm its core ethical beliefs (against murder rape and what have you) without also sticking on illogical "rules" against where a certain group should be in society, etc.

more and more when it comes to these things it just makes me want to watch Life of Brian. The pythons were right on the money with that film.

 

[gaasc]

Things are NOT getting better over here, now there are 2 types of protests:

1. the sensible protests in favor of Micheletti

and this ones

that is a ?protest? (fuck that it is a goddamn riot) created in the local university created by students (and Venezuelan and Nicaraguan people) aswell as people with crime records in favor of zelaya they destroyed the local university, a burger king, a starbucks (we call then espresso americano here) and...yeah almost forgot...

^kia spectra in it's natural state

 

[Interrobang]

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/08/05/nkorea.journalists/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

"We feared at any moment that we could be sent to a hard labor camp, and then suddenly we were told we were going to a meeting," a tearful and emotional Ling said at a news conference Wednesday morning in California shortly after arriving by plane with Lee and Clinton.
She spoke minutes after the two women were reunited with their families at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank outside Los Angeles. They had been detained in North Korea since March.
North Korea pardoned Ling, 32, and Lee, 36, after Clinton's brief trip Tuesday to Pyongyang.

"We were taken to a location, and when we walked through the doors, we saw standing before us President Bill Clinton," Ling said, with Lee standing beside her.
"We were shocked, but we knew instantly in our hearts that the nightmare of our lives was finally coming to an end."

... don?t want to be disprespectful or anything and I do feel with the two journalists ... but my first reaction was "that sounds like one of those bad TV-shows with 'surprise'". :lol:

I just hope the US didn?t pay N-korea any money for that ...

 

[tigger]

Sooooooooooo many farms are doing it.

You think it's bad there? Come to the midwest :?. Corn can wreck the soil, and its energy content is so low that it's practically useless for ethanol. Switchgrass or sugar beets would be vastly superior and can be grown just about anywhere. But no, corn is the politically popular one. If you want to get really sick go look into how the increased demand for corn raises the price of everything here.

BBC: Palestinians evicted from homes in East Jerusalem to accomodate Jewish settlers

If this was Iran evicting Jews from their homes, we would be speaking of ethnic cleansing. But it isn't Iran. It's Israel. So we don't.

True. But like you said: this isn't a surprise to anyone. And evidently it's going to keep happening until someone does something to force Israel to change the policy because none of their administrations have shown any real interest in stopping settlers. Hell, they'll clear the way themselves and build roads and walls for them.

I just hope the US didn?t pay N-korea any money for that ...

I'd like to think that Bill just went up there and convinced Kim Jong Il that letting the women go was a win-win for him.

Or he brought a bunch of double-cheeseburgers to the DMZ and said, "Hey y'all, I know you're hungry, wanna let me in? Where's that little fella in the pantsuit and shades?"

But I'm just a little too cynical to believe that there wasn't a real price to pay for those women.

 

[Plissken]

I wonder what the result had been if, instead of talking to North Korea, the US Government had pursued its previous tactic of blustering about the Axis of Evil and threatening to bomb it?

Lesson, right there, folks.

 

[jetsetter]

I wonder what the result had been if, instead of talking to North Korea, the US Government had pursued its previous tactic of blustering about the Axis of Evil and threatening to bomb it?

Lesson, right there, folks.

Not really, no. When the United States threatened to bomb it was not over American citizens taken but on other issues. And the threats to bomb were always more of a veiled threat that all understood even had it not been said.

 

[ChelsDS]

Forgive me for not knowing how the process works for getting a nominee voted in to the Supreme Court, but how in the hell did Sotomayor get in when she pussy-footed around issues she was directly asked on? Abortion, immigration and a few others I can't remember (trying to look it up). I thought the point of the hearings was to find out their true colors for issues that they have faced and will have to face as a judge. She might be a good judge on the Supreme Court but the fact that she did pussy-foot around some issues confuses me.

 

[phuckingduck]

Most justices since O'Connor in the 80's and whats his name in the early 90's have pussy footed around most questions. I can't remember Alito or Roberts giving direct answers, but I may be wrong.

May have gotten the dates wrong on those first two.