Posts by Simon Grigg

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  • Hard News: Weekend Warriors,

    God god...apart from mouthing the cliches, it seems she doesn't have the faintest idea....

    Just another klong... • Since Nov 2006 • 3284 posts Report

  • Hard News: Conscious Party,

    although it was hardly touched on on the program peter jenner's has a lot of really intelligent things to say on the ISP thing.

    But how long have these things been argued and, like DRM, battled against by the major label recording industry. Like the death of DRM, the RIAA and other associated bodies have fought tooth and nail against these for half a decade, meanwhile alienating customers. I wonder how much it's actually cost them and the acts they represent.

    Peter said in the UK that if 1- 3 pounds per month of an individual's internet connection fee was put toward paying for content then the combined total based on the number of people currently with accounts in the UK would equal the present combined income from music sales. about 600 million pounds if I remember correctly.

    uhhh..yes, I think Jenner's argument advancing this, and he wasn't alone, was published as long ago as 2004 and shot down by the labels who were battling, still are but with less and less vigour, the notion as ridiculous and who refuse to give up the dead model.

    Just another klong... • Since Nov 2006 • 3284 posts Report

  • Hard News: Weekend Warriors,

    You say address 'the point' and not 'the man'. So I read the post you quoted.

    Sage is referring to the FT blog by Clive Crook, not the comment he posted in full, allegedly to wind me up in some bizarre manner (it failed) which I don't think quite says the things he thinks it does. Hence my questioning as to whether he'd taken the time to read it. He has a history of linking but not reading what he's linking to.

    Just another klong... • Since Nov 2006 • 3284 posts Report

  • Hard News: Weekend Warriors,

    So you reiterate that Bush & McCain are firmly establishment. Gee whiz. Nobody has addressed Crooks argument. which seems essentially to be that liberals are incapable of introspection.

    And you failed to address the notion that you'd just posted a link to someone elses' thoughts without any indication that you had either read or understood it

    As an aside, McCain seems to be increasingly clueless as he too says that Russia is next door to Alaska, thus giving that woman FP credentials.

    Just another klong... • Since Nov 2006 • 3284 posts Report

  • Hard News: Weekend Warriors,

    This is my favourite comment. Since we seem to have formed the habit of posting whole.

    Now, as much as I'm loath to post whole articles or large parts, I, and I think others here, only do so to underline points we either have made or are in the process of making..you however are posting another's thoughts and say 'this is my opinion'. You could at least do us the courtesy of arguing these so we actually know where you are coming from rather than some third party's thoughts. I've not forgotten that link you used as a backup a thread or two back that you'd clearly not read before linking.

    I’m being presented with a guy who’s nearly 50, engaging enough, but with no record of any accomplishment anywhere and positions (such that I can identify them on any given day before he rethinks things) that I find unacceptable. He’s been able to spend his life talking his way up. That’s just the blunt truth of who and what Barack Obama is: a guy who’s written two memoirs before doing anything worth writing about. If he has any other record to stand on, it’s long past the time to show it.

    Can this guy spell twaddle because he certainly knows how to spout it....maybe Cynical Observer can tell us exactly what he /she has achieved in his / her life before they start accusing others who have worked their way to the ticket for the biggest job in the word of having accomplished nothing..otherwise he /she is just a a mouthy armchair wanker. Sorry...

    Just another klong... • Since Nov 2006 • 3284 posts Report

  • Hard News: Weekend Warriors,

    I think Angus as a point, insofar as behaving outrageously - by not going to the sunday morning shows or to Larry King, for starters - may not cost Palin much with the low-information voters that the campaign is trying to reach through her. If what we hear about the state of the media in small American towns is true, these people would be more likely to get their news in soundbite form or through a screaming talkback host. Or at church on Sundays.

    Absolutely...the Rovian philosophy centres around an overriding assumption the voter is neither discerning or smart.

    I'm, call me elitist but I'm agreeing with most of what Andrew Sullivan says here:

    For me, this surreal moment - like the entire surrealism of the past ten days - is not really about Sarah Palin or Barack Obama or pigs or fish or lipstick. It's about John McCain. The one thing I always thought I knew about him is that he is a decent and honest person. When he knows, as every sane person must, that Obama did not in any conceivable sense mean that Sarah Palin is a pig, what did he do? Did he come out and say so and end this charade? Or did he acquiesce in and thereby enable the mindless Rovianism that is now the core feature of his campaign?

    So far, he has let us all down. My guess is he will continue to do so. And that decision, for my part, ends whatever respect I once had for him. On core moral issues, where this man knew what the right thing was, and had to pick between good and evil, he chose evil. When he knew that George W. Bush's war in Iraq was a fiasco and catastrophe, and before Donald Rumsfeld quit, McCain endorsed George W. Bush against his fellow Vietnam vet, John Kerry in 2004. By that decision, McCain lost any credibility that he can ever put country first. He put party first and his own career first ahead of what he knew was best for the country.

    And when the Senate and House voted overwhelmingly to condemn and end the torture regime of Bush and Cheney in 2006, McCain again had a clear choice between good and evil, and chose evil.

    He capitulated and enshrined torture as the policy of the United States, by allowing the CIA to use techniques as bad as and worse than the torture inflicted on him in Vietnam. He gave the war criminals in the White House retroactive immunity against the prosecution they so richly deserve. The enormity of this moral betrayal, this betrayal of his country's honor, has yet to sink in. But for my part, it now makes much more sense. He is not the man I thought he was.

    And when he had the chance to engage in a real and substantive debate against the most talented politician of the next generation in a fall campaign where vital issues are at stake, what did McCain do? He began his general campaign with a series of grotesque, trivial and absurd MTV-style attacks on Obama's virtues and implied disgusting things about his opponent's patriotism.

    And then, because he could see he was going to lose, ten days ago, he threw caution to the wind and with no vetting whatsoever, picked a woman who, by her decision to endure her own eight-month pregnancy of a Down Syndrome child in public, that he was going to reignite the culture war as a last stand against Obama. That's all that is happening right now: a massive bump in the enthusiasm of the Christianist base. This is pure Rove.

    Yes, McCain made a decision that revealed many appalling things about him. In the end, his final concern is not national security. No one who cares about national security would pick as vice-president someone who knows nothing about it as his replacement. No one who cares about this country's safety would gamble the security of the world on a total unknown because she polled well with the Christianist base. No person who truly believed that the surge was integral to this country's national security would pick as his veep candidate a woman who, so far as we can tell anything, opposed it at the time.

    McCain has demonstrated in the last two months that he does not have the character to be president of the United States. And that is why it is more important than ever to ensure that Barack Obama is the next president. The alternative is now unthinkable. And McCain - no one else - has proved it.

    Just another klong... • Since Nov 2006 • 3284 posts Report

  • Hard News: Weekend Warriors,

    Definitely serious. She is doing a high profile exclusive for ABC. ABC will hype its publicity, the negative reaction by the other press will hype its publicity. The lead on ABC for the next two days is going to be Sarah Palin laughing at some of the rumours spread and a lot of people will be watching.

    Its a controlled vanity piece. It may rate well..likely will but that doesn't change the fact they are hiding her from any serious questioning.

    No, Simon I guess she isn't doing any of the low profile, barely noted interviews of the type Biden is putting out. Quite how this plays negatively though...

    Once again Angus..seriously..you think that Meet The Press and the rounds of other Sunday shows are 'barely noted'? Really? Larry King? Really? Uhh, ok... I'm speechless

    Just another klong... • Since Nov 2006 • 3284 posts Report

  • Hard News: Weekend Warriors,

    And the stuff keeps on coming:

    An Alaska judge warned Gov. Sarah Palin's family against trying to get her then-brother-in-law fired, according to court records.
    Investigators want to know if Sarah Palin tried to use her position improperly to get her former brother-in-law fired.

    Investigators want to know if Sarah Palin tried to use her position improperly to get her former brother-in-law fired.

    That warning came long before the controversy over her dismissal of the brother-in-law's boss, the state's public safety commissioner, records show.

    Palin, the Republican nominee for vice president, is battling allegations she and her advisers pressured Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan to fire her sister's husband, State Trooper Mike Wooten.

    Palin's sister, Molly McCann, and Wooten were in the process of getting a divorce when the judge hearing the couple's case said McCann's family appeared to be putting Wooten's job at risk at a time when he would be required to pay child support.

    "It appears for the world that Ms. McCann and her family have decided to take after the guy's livelihood, that whatever who did what to whom has overridden good judgment," Superior Court Judge John Suddock said during an October 2005 hearing. "Aesop told us not to slay the goose that lays the golden egg. For whatever reason, people are trying to slay the goose here, and it tends to diminish his earning capacity."

    Are court records watertight enough for you, Angus?

    Just another klong... • Since Nov 2006 • 3284 posts Report

  • Hard News: Weekend Warriors,

    'Nanny' is very déclassé. We prefer au pair.

    In this part of the world, usually Pembantu (literally: helper) or Amah.

    And it's the middle class Indonesian way to have at least one per child..the richer you are, the more you have. And kids treat often them appallingly (as, sadly, so do the fathers too often). That said, the kids often grow up far closer to the pembantu than the parents.

    A friend did an interior revamp for a guy in Jakarta who had two for his dogs..seriously.....make of that what you will but it didn't make me like the elite here any more.

    Just another klong... • Since Nov 2006 • 3284 posts Report

  • Hard News: Weekend Warriors,

    What's most disturbing is that it's still close. Just how many villages does the USA have, and how many idiots does each village need?

    You saw the RNC....the only other places I can recall (putting up my Godwin barrier) that sort of nationalistic country-name chanting fervour was in the fascist states of the 30s, North Korea, BNP meetings in the UK and sports matches.

    These are folks who believe that their almost exclusively white, mostly well off crowd and ticket are the 'mavericks'..

    Just another klong... • Since Nov 2006 • 3284 posts Report

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