StrangeSox

QUOTE (bmags @ Aug 23, 2012 -> 01:10 PM) He said it really stupidly. And I don't even like the framing. Why not flip it and try to convince people that these public services we pay for are important because they help our small businesses grow. He opened himself up for this by creating a framework where he's confronting small business owners for taking sole credit for their success...that's a tough framing. People like small business owners. And in general, small business owners do have a s*** ton of legal frameworks to jump hoops around that we should be working to simplify. Yeah, he did phrase it stupidly. No disagreement there.

Well it was a polemic, not a detailed and nuanced policy proposal.

Just because it's funny: GOP CONVENTION’S ‘WE BUILT IT!’ THEME NIGHT TO BE HELD IN ARENA THAT GOVERNMENT BUILT

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 23, 2012 -> 11:40 AM) I'm not disagreeing with you, but i'm telling you why Obama's statement, while technically true, is idiotic and disingenuous. He could not stand behind his podium and tell Google or Amazon or Facebook that they didn't build their businesses on their own, that the government did it for them. Good thing he never told anyone that, that's just the silly quote-mined version. He was very explicitly referring to infrastructure in the dozens of sentences surrounding "you didn't build that," not their individual businesses. His speech was no different than the one Elizabeth Warren made last winter. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office...oanoke-virginia You're free to disagree with the philosophical point behind the message, but anything that pretends he was 'attacking' business owners is just silly.

QUOTE (farmteam @ Aug 23, 2012 -> 11:44 AM) Nope, I just read it a bunch. Since I started law school a year ago, I've wanted to stay somewhat abreast of current legal issues. Even though it has a slant (libertarian) I don't agree with most of the time, it's still pretty thoughtful, and a great place to just get legal news. One of my professors used to post there, too, and we'd mention it in class a few times. It's gotten more political since the run-up to and fallout from the ACA decision, particularly with Zywicki and Bernstein. But other than those two, it's one of my daily reads.

QUOTE (farmteam @ Aug 23, 2012 -> 11:42 AM) Frankly, I didn't have time to read the article yet, so I have no idea if the title is an accurate representation (nor do I think it's an accurate portrait of the GOP), but...I love any headline that says Texas Judge Warns of Civil War if Obama Re-elected The Wonkette version is funny UN Shock troops coming to take over Lubbock, Texas!

QUOTE (farmteam @ Aug 23, 2012 -> 12:27 AM) Yeah, I'm not down with this. I've seen you link them several times--do you post over there?

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Aug 23, 2012 -> 10:47 AM) Nobody that knows anything about the Internet (DARPA/ARPA, etc.), would actually say this as, "He said it, and he meant it!". In the interview in which he says it, he merely used the wrong words, the point was then taken and stretched out of context. The issue is, the GOP did not "invent" him saying those words...he said them. It simply wasn't in the context in which he meant. Anyone that works on the Internet (such as I do), understands that this is a out of context joke. Even Al Gore knows it's become something of a joke. Go read some breitbart article comments on any article relating to Al Gore or the internet. Many of those people still whole-heartedly believe that Al Gore claimed to have invented the internet. Sorry for unfairly associating you with those circles. Al Gore made fun of it at least once on Futurama.

libruls are dumb

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Aug 23, 2012 -> 10:40 AM) If we had left it up to the government, and private industry did nothing to push innovation...you'd probably still be in the late 90's web...which was garbage in comparison. I beg to differ.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Aug 23, 2012 -> 10:41 AM) I do NOT disagree with you on this. There is no self made man/woman/child. That we agree on. IMO government IS necessary...it's reach, however, is where we seem to disagree. Some people do disagree with that, at least on a polemic level. And then you have earnest disagreement with the radical libertarians who believe private enterprise can do everything better, including police and courts, or anarchists, both left and right, who are weary of government power.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 23, 2012 -> 10:38 AM) Yes, please hold me to my made up 99% figure. The point is the vast majority of the internet has nothing to do with the government. The government created the skeleton at most, but everything since is private innovation. But that point is wrong. The Internet remains an excellent example of beneficial government spending and the symbiotic relationship between public and private.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 23, 2012 -> 10:36 AM) Yeah, his last line is my point. What the internet is today has nothing to do with what the government created in the beginning. So to come back later and tell Google or Amazon that they didn't build the internet because in reality the government started it is completely disingenuous. and it's worse in the example of real businesses when you're talking about education and roads and whatnot because those businesses actually contribute to those services. The internet, or at least the skeleton of the internet and WWW was provided to private business. But it wasn't just ARPA that the government created. It was central in the development and privatization of the internet into the mid-90's. It's not worse in the example of physical businesses. The whole point (yes, ss2k5, there is one!) is that there's a symbiotic relationship and abandoning that relationship because you fail to recognize that nobody is a completely self-made person and everyone relies on society in some way will only hurt the economy and individuals in the long run.

You know what, I'm not going to argue with someone who still clings to the "Al Gore invented the internet!" This post has been edited by the Soxtalk staff to remove objectionable material. Soxtalk encourages a free discussion between its members, but does not allow personal attacks, threats, graphic sexual material, nudity, or any other materials judged offensive by the Administrators and Moderators. Thank you. If you want to talk about the government's role in the development of the internet, I'm fine with that.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Aug 23, 2012 -> 10:34 AM) I'm not arguing the government created the initial concept...nor is anyone else. The post you initially replied too said the government created it, it was handed off to academia, and then the private industry...and that's exactly what happened. Jenks said that the government had nothing to do with 99% of it, which is plainly wrong. And academia is mostly government or government-funded anyway.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Aug 23, 2012 -> 10:31 AM) Watch the f***ing video. He says it right there. Was it what he actually meant? No. But he DID, in fact, say it that way. It's right there in the video I posted. He says he took the initiave in creating the internet...and he had nothing to do with the initial "creation" of DARPANET...NONE...ZERO. DARPANET is not the internet as we know it or as people knew it in 1999, and he didn't claim to have invented the internet. He claimed to have taken the initiative in creating The Internet, which his policy and legislative record (and pioneers of the field) supports.

Michael Hiltzik: Who Invented The Internet? There's a bunch more where that came from if you want me to dig them up. There was a deluge after that terrible WSJ editorial referenced in the article.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Aug 23, 2012 -> 10:28 AM) The world wide web is not the Internet. And I know where it was invented. You've cherry picked one thing from a huge sentence you had written now. I picked that because I knew that off the top of my head without having to go link-finding.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Aug 23, 2012 -> 10:21 AM) Actually, yes, he did. Actually, no, he didn't, and the pioneers of the field think that attack was ridiculous. Al Gore was promoting the value of the internet before anyone else in Congress and was crucial in securing funding for the expansion and commercialization. He correctly took credit for that foresight, but he didn't claim to have invented the internet.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Aug 23, 2012 -> 10:22 AM) You have no idea what you're talking about. Where and how? The WWW and web browsers were developed at CERN and UIUC, both government entities.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 23, 2012 -> 10:14 AM) Also to add onto what Alpha Dog brought up a few pages ago, with my kid that I recently had, "we" (my insurance company and I) paid out the ass for her doctor. Every visit was a $450 charge - $150 for the doctor, $300 for the ultrasound machine. Multiply that by about 12 visits prior to delivery and i'd say she spent a TOTAL of an hour meeting with my wife (generous). An hour of talk and a quick scan for $5,400 bucks. That's insane. What really cracks me up though is that people don't understand that we already have a universal healthcare system. It's just done indirectly. That money i pay to the doctor goes straight to the hospital (in this case Rush), who then turns around and uses their cut to fund their public clinics and programs. That happens at the majority of hospitals. Millions of people do not have reliable access to healthcare for anything but acute illnesses. We do not have UHC under any reasonable definition of the word. Free clinics are not widely and regularly available and cannot treat all illnesses, especially long-term or chronic illness that requires regular medication and/or therapy.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 23, 2012 -> 10:09 AM) The problem with his statement was that he ignored 99% of what creates a business and praised the 1% society provides (teachers/roads/etc) all while ignoring that the business owner still pays for that 1%, so it's not like some free service he/she got. But the business owner can only operate his successful business because of the roads and infrastructure and research and education that are in place. It's a symbiotic relationship. At the bare minimum, government (fed, state, local) provides ~40% GDP. That is simply direct budget spending and doesn't take into account the benefits of things like functional roadways and airports, reliable judicial systems, police and an educated populace. http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/total_spending_2010USrn http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_gdp_history This is a false history of the development of the internet. I hope you're not relying on that really inaccurate, widely refuted (including by the people he cited) WSJ editorial from a month or so ago. The government's development of the initial concepts stretches throughout the entire history of the internet up through the commercialization in the early 90's. The government has heavy involvement in why the internet is what it is instead of a a bunch of little Compuserve-esque domains and why there's a "World Wide Web."

It means nothing except the deep philosophical difference between yours and his worldview, got it.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 23, 2012 -> 09:59 AM) The only meaning behind his statement was a self-serving load of garbage that literally ignores what the individual citizens have done to improve their stations in their lives in order to take credit for it. It doesn't mean anything. You're free to disagree, but it means something. Your statement did not. Al Gore never claimed he invented the internet, that's something conservatives invented and the media uncritically repeated. and actually, the internet is a great example of government-funded R&D that leads to massive economic expansion. So it only makes Obama's point, which is that government plays a critical role in the economy. Always has, always will.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Aug 23, 2012 -> 09:53 AM) As is "You didn't build this". "there is no government without citizens" is a tautological statement. It doesn't tell me anything. "You didn't build [the infrastructure necessary for the success of your business]" is not tautological and, in the context of the rest of the paragraph, makes a point on the necessity of social organization and cooperation as opposed to the Lone Individual mythos prevalent in this country. You may not agree with the point of his speech, but your statement still have no meaning while his did.