Free Republic

As always, I hope you enjoy the new video! Comments of course are appreciated.

HumbleGunner, let me see if I can explain this a bit better than my fellow Freepers have.

Rush knows that if he attends the Tea Parties, it will look like he wants them to be just about him. People will say “Oh, these are Rush’s tea parties, that villain is their source.” That creates a way politicians who don’t like our message can make excuses - if Rush is involved, it’s all about him, not a spontaneous uprising of ordinary people.

If he stays away, they are an independent grassroots movement that is NOT just about him. Ironically enough, without his attendance to be a giant lightning rod, it’s more clear that the movement is from the grassroots, and not the ACORNS either.

He is clearly a big supporter of the movement, but wants to be clear that he is not the movement; ordinary average people are.

He certainly was not staying away as an expression of snobbishness or disdain. He is obviously an admirer of the movement and a lot of his show has helped promote it.

Hope that helps.

D

You are most welcome! I enjoyed taking them!

D

He probably feels he has little to gain by acknowledging them, since they indicate a sizable percentage of the population is upset at his policies. I don’t expect anything from him; he can look presidential and thus above the fray.

The overall anti-politician slant of the tea parties is covered here:

http://voices.kansascity.com/node/4274

I’m not sure if I agree the events are truly non-partisian. The West Palm event had both Republicans and conservative Democrats as speakers, but it was clear the crowd was 99% Republican. “You should have voted Republican” and “I voted for Sarah Palin” were common sentiments. (Interestingly enough, McCain’s name was rarely mentioned).

Pajamas Media says the Tea Parties have bad news for both parties:

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/dc-tea-party-republicans-should-not-be-rejoicing-quite-yet/

But really, since the only realistic opposition to President Obama is through the Republican party, it strikes me that it’s fabulous news for Republicans and terrible news for Democrats. The Republican ideology is certainly highly compatible with what was said at the Tea Parties.

Now all we need is candidates that express that ideology instead of the traditional dealmaking that’s destroyed the credibility of our government, on both sides.

(I forgot to mention that my reporting includes 180 photos of the Tea Party - if you like creative signs and the like, it’s a real feast for the eyes!)

I was there for the entire event, so I have a fuller report that I hope all of you will enjoy!

Enjoy!

D

After an age, I’m back with a new location and new original reporting! If you feel any of the old gang over in LA would enjoy this report, please ping them.

Video will be added sometime tomorrow - I have a new high definition video camera which is very picky about its formats and such.

My article is excerpted so I can point people to the original link, which will contain additional information and links to video in the morning.

If my memory serves, Moore actually condoned piracy of Fahrenheit 9/11 so that his message would get out to more viewers.

This stance didn’t seem to hurt its box office. I don’t know if it will for this, either, because the in-theater watching experience is very different from the on-computer experience. Bringing a date to watch a pirated movie just doesn’t have the same appeal.

On the other hand, would you invite your date to watch a film called Sicko?

So we’ll see, but I don’t think this will hurt him as much as many here and in the ad biz believe.

Incidentally, one producer threatened to sue YouTube after excerpts from a commercial movie were posted there ... not realizing the filmmakers posted it to get publicity. So even if the production company sues it’s possible that it was a deliberate plant by Moore.

Incidentally, anyone reasonably well informed knows Cuba has a multi-tiered health system, and thanks to the publicity potential, I am sure Moore and his friends got the “head of state” version. This makes the premise of this movie entirely false.

On the other hand, if it costs $3,000 a day to keep someone in the hospital and run a few tests, as it did for me recently, there is clearly something horribly wrong with a system that is this absurdly expensive. I have yet to receive a convincing explanation of why health care is this expensive and whether we should research alternatives before we are pauperized in our old age by the present system.

i don’t think single payer is the answer, but I’d like to hear some fresh thinking about this issue.

D

I don’t think the public is going to want to touch down in Ontario or Palmdale if their destination is Santa Monica or Downtown Los Angeles, though.

In many situations, the ground trip to the final destination would take longer than the flight!

D

The OLEDs also have better battery life (by about 25%) and allegedly give more even illumination. (I haven’t seen one yet so I can’t comment directly on that one).

I think Steve would have added them whether Greenpeace wanted him to or not.

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Ants contribute nothing to our economy; they do no work.

Illegals work very hard in exchange for very low wages. There are plenty of small businesses that could not exist without their help.

That seems like a big difference right there.

That’s why this is such a tough issue for many. It seems like an easy issue only when you look at one point of view (worker or employer).

I worked for a business that depended on illegals to run its factory, and supported about 50 people on the sales and administrative side, all of who were legal residents.

By getting rid of illegals, some of our own jobs will be in danger.

D

Sac, the “islamic monsters” are here and there are more of them coming, legally. They don’t need to sneak in across the border and in fact I suspect most don’t have the toughness or competence needed to do so.

As you point out, the only way to defeat terrorism is to put resources into, well, defeating terrorism. Border fences and restricting recreational boating and all that sort of things may or may not be desirable according to some people, but they’re not going to fight terrorism. In fact, I would expect them to divert resources from the kind of unglamourous law enforcement and intelligence work that’s been successful in combatting terrorists.

Most of the people involved in the Fort Dix plot were legal residents. Two of the illegals had been arrested numerous times. This indicates that, instead of building a fence, we should simply change our policy so that we do check the immigration status of people who are arrested and throw them out. That might have foiled this plot then and there. The fence wouldn’t have done a thing.

Unfortunately there are plenty of legal residents of our nation who have decided their Islamic identity is more important than their identity as Americans. Consider John Walker Lindt; he was not an illegal alien but he fought against us in the Afghan war. He surely could have participated in attacks within the US. The border fence does nothing to people like him.

So again, I’m all for more law enforcement resources being placed against terrorism. I’m all for more intelligence resources being placed against terrorism. I am against measures such as the border fence and this attack on recreational boating because I think they nibble at - literally - the periphery of the issue, while we need people to stab straight to the heart of it.

Rides The Miles, it’s interesting that you point this out. As you would know if you read my other posts, I am one of the very few Freepers who thinks illegal aliens are largely benign. I think the overwhelming majority of illegal aliens are harmless and just want to work. As a result, the border fence strikes me as a huge waste of time and resources.

I did think when I was writing my response to this question that my opposition to such measures pretty much followed from it. In this recreational boating proposal, we are talking about huge reductions in freedom for potential gains that are in my view entirely illusory. In the fence proposal, we are talking about spending billions of dollars on a measure that will only reduce terrorism in the most indirect possible way.

I know this response was against what many of you believe, but I hope it made you think, and was of interest because of that.

D

It also requires a level of comfort and technical competence that these folks obviously didn’t have.

You know, nowadays the tape was probably MiniDV and if they’d bought a Mac Mini they could have used FireWire to transfer it and iDVD to burn it without any trouble at all. I think there are even fairly inexpensive PCs that will do the same thing.

But I suppose a Mac Mini ($599) was out of their budget ...

I wonder how much they were charged for the transfer.

D

No question about this.

But anyone could steal your houseboat (if you were not using it at the time) and send it straight into the dam, and I doubt that transponders would do (pun intended) a dam bit of good in stopping someone who wanted to do it.

D

You could cut the wire to the solar panel and throw the whole mess overboard and nobody would be the wiser. Sorry, this one just won’t fly.

The more I think, the sillier this gets - Al Queda buys (or steals) a used Cigarette boat, capable of travelling at 80mph. Leave the transponder in the boat and keep it on. When you get right next to the nuclear power plant, trigger the explosives. Nobody will know to stop you until the last few seconds and then it’s too late, transponder or no.

We’re losing a lot of freedom through proposals like this and yet I don’t think they add to security significantly, if at all. I find it appalling that this kind of thing is even being proposed.

(Also see my #4).

D

Are boats really that different from cars? I don’t remember Mohammed Atta and crew having any trouble with drivers’ licenses, so I don’t think boat licenses are going to be any more help. Boats are already registered through the DMV.

There’s no question that I can drive right up to the Sears Tower or any other major building with my car. I could even get pretty close to a nuclear power plant or other major facility.

I’m going to take a wild guess and say transponders for every boat is unlikely to be a popular proposal and almost certainly wouldn’t get through the boating lobby. And in this case, quite frankly, I’d be on their side.

All a lawbreaker has to do is cut a set of wires or remove a battery, or toss the thing overboard, and there’s nothing that can be done to stop him.

Why not just keep doing what we have been doing, successfully? We have a pretty good record now of detecting and turning in people who are members of these conspiracies. If a boat is involved, it’s no different from a car or plane.

The resources that would go to any boat licensing or transponder programme are going to be a lot better spent looking directly for the real criminals instead of inconveniencing millions for such a dubious payoff.

D

When I lived in Los Angeles, I picked up the local hippy rag, the LA Weekly, whose founders got very rich on ads for phone sex, fancy restaurants and expensive boutiques. I liked it because it was free, and because I thought they genuinely cared about local issues in a place where the population at large is mainly indifferent.

What always amazes me is that publications like the LA Weekly will probe deeply into the nastiness of how the Los Angeles City Council really runs, and then suggest you vote for people who want to expand the Council’s ability to tax and spend.

Surely it should have been obvious that giving money to those folks is like giving a loaded gun to an infant, but somehow their touching faith in what would happen if, say, Antonio Villagrosa became Mayor, continued.

Well, Antonio is now Mayor. He’s certainly vibrant and that’s a nice change. Anyone know how he’s done? I’ve left LA and am now out of touch.

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Anyone know what this paragraph is referring to?

These policies include opening the Iraq economy to lucrative oil refining and private banking opportunities by American and British companies shut out of Iraq for three decades. Hundreds of Iraqi-owned enterprises have been shut down as Iraqis are being forced into the privatized world of the World Trade Organization.

What Iraqi enterprises is he referring to? Those run by Saddam's goons?

D

The national creed, in my view, is that all people deserve a chance, even those from other countries who are suffering under oppressive or incompetent regimes.

It follows that those people should be welcome here, assuming our economy can handle them.

So far the economy is grabbing all the immigrants it can get, so I don’t see a problem. It seems like a win/win.

Certainly it’s possible that our policies regarding medical care might have to change, or we need to find better ways to provide medical care to those who don’t want to pay thousands of dollars a day for simple diagnostics, and tens of thousands for treatment.

I see no justification in the costs associated with our current medical system, so if having illegals around causes us to look for alternatives that are more cost effective, well, that might benefit me too when I get sick.

When I went to the hospital on the insistance of my business partner to check some vague symptoms, and they kept me overnight after running various tests, the bill came to $8,000. Insurance reduced it to $3,000, which they paid. I think that’s just plain absurd.

It should not take $8,000, or even $3,000 to put me in a room less comfortable than a Motel 6, shared with another person who was woken up at 3am for his medicine. It should not take that kind of money to do about an hour’s worth of diagnostic tests on fancy machines. And yet the machines aren’t THAT expensive, I spent very little time with a doctor (maybe 1-2 hours max) and I receieved no treatment other than a patch which i think cost about $20.

So when hospitals say that illegals cost them $x thousand, I assume the illegals don’t have the skill in negotiating down bills insurance companies do. This means that the costs we see associated with illegals are inflated, probably at least two or three times, over costs that are already absurd.

After receiving that bill and seeing what happened to it, quite honestly I don’t believe a word hospitals say. They had better become more efficient or bust. And I live in an area where the percentage of illegals is probably 1% or less - we just don’t see them.

Illegals are not to blame for high hospital bills; an incompetent and inefficient system is. We have to fix the system instead of blaming people who have little to nothing to do with the situation.

I don’t love illegals but I don’t hate them, either. I know that I liked life a lot more living in Los Angeles, a dynamic place with lots of growth, including illegals, than I do living in Pittsburgh, where the population is shrinking and there are hardly any illegals at all.

If illegals give us growth, and dynamism, and an expanding economy instead of a contracting one, I don’t see why people concentrate so much on the negatives and ignore the positives of having them around.

If we kick ‘em out we get stagnation instead of growth. As you said, fewer schools, fewer hospitals, less of everything. I’m just confused as to why you would find that desirable.

Aren’t we supposed to be the party of economic growth and hope?

We’re acting like the party of shrinkage, stagnation and depression, of decaying buildings and depressed economies.

Is this really what we want? There had better be some really powerful gains from it, and I don’t see a single one.

D

I think of America as a set of ideas more than a firm border.

Some of the ideas include that of hospitality to those outside of its borders, a long-standing tradition here.

I happen to find that tradition very appealing and find it very sad that many people speak so negatively of it.

I also appreciate another American tradition, one of defiance of rules many consider unjust, and using that defiance to change the rules.

Let me flip this over for a minute. I think you understand now why I like the idea of open borders - it is hospitality, and fair dealing with people who genuinely want to work. They want to help us out, doing jobs most of us don’t want to do, and in return all they ask is to be left alone.

I just don’t see anything bad about this.

So tell me, what’s so great about closed borders? Why is inhospitality, turning your back to people, so appealing to you? Why do you want to separate willing workers from employers which need employees?

Why not let people work who want to work?

I like to see a nation that grows, and a society that is open minded and receptive to all who do not threaten or oppose its core values. Many Muslims do oppose our core values, and I’m right with you in wanting to throw them out. But the hispanic immigrants who are 99% of this situation are Catholic, support our core values and just want the opportunity to work hard and succeed like Americans do.

Tell me why this is so bad.

D

(Please ignore the impact on the health and educational system. I’d like to hear what is wrong with having them here, not how their kids are educated or their health is treated. I want to understand about the principle of borders itself and why you consider it important. Frankly, I think if there was no impact at all on our educational or medical systems, you would still want to get rid of illegals, and I want to know why this is.)

Tragically, I have not drunk his “Margarita mix” but if it involved that girl, I would like to very much. Pity I can’t stand alcohol but I might make an exception for that girl :-).

More than anything, I think illegals are being enterprising, trying to improve life for themselves and their families, and I think that’s something worth admiring. I think there’s a huge difference between defying our borders and committing a crime of significance.

I think of illegals defying the borders as being comparable to Americans disobeying speed limits. On the highway I travel to work, the speed limit is 50 and if I obeyed the limit I would be honked at by angry drivers who all want to go 70. So I go 70 like everyone else.

Should I go 50 and obey the law, because it’s the right thing to do?

Shouldn’t it be the right thing to do what the people on the ground want, and not what distant highway authorities and legislators want?

I believe that for things like speed limits, the consensus of people on the ground is the real law and it should control. I think speed limits should be adjusted to fit that consensus.

But I know I have about as much likelihood of changing that law as I do of going to the moon.

There is a delicate political balance here because there are people who like low speed limits and yet the overwhelming majority of the population doesn’t want to see them enforced. Why do I know this? Because less than one in ten drivers obey. They vote with their accelerators.

Likewise, I think most people benefit from having illegals and yet there is a small number of people feeling bitter hatred towards them. Politics is about the tension between the two groups.

Some people have mentioned that they will consider issues surrounding poorly run health care, lousy schools, etc when the borders are sealed.

I don’t think sealing the borders is possible or cost-effective. Why not spend that money that could be spent on the fence on better law enforcement, which would help against all bad people, instead of concentrating on a group of people who are mostly not guilty?

Our schools and hospitals were poorly run and shoddy long before illegals came and so blaming their problems on illegals seems to be putting blame in the wrong place.

Moose4, I thank you for your thoughtful comment. Why not just beef up law enforcement, throw out the bad ones and let the honest ones stay? What’s the point in making them go back to their native country only to return? That sounds like a big waste to me. If they’re welcome here, they should be welcome.

Has it occured to you that maybe one reason they don’t assimilate is that people like you and those in this thread are not friendly to them? Of course they wind up in their enclaves because that’s how they can find friends and not be exposed to people hostile to them.

There was an older, hospitable America, that really believed in welcoming people from other countries if they worked hard and did well. I liked that world a lot better than the “Deport them all!” world we have now. It seems so negative.

Ronald Reagan believed in being positive, in looking at the bright side, and I think when we think of illegals so negatively we lose what Reagan taught us. Why not consider the upside?

A bigger population means more opportunities, more jobs being done, growth and dynamism. These are values we should support, and that’s my point. I’d like to see someone address that section of my argument instead of narrow mindedly saying that they’ve defied our laws, since with speed limits most of us do that every single day of the year.

I am saddened by the fact that we can’t discuss this issue without getting personal. A lot of people here have told me I’m the worst thing since moldy bread because I don’t support the Free Republic consensus on this subject. I hope you will notice that I don’t stoop to personal attacks in my responses, because I think the issue is important, interesting and deserves to be debated fairly on its own terms.

D

Illegals have no way to fix the legal immigration process, and it does not seem to be a priority in Congress or anywhere else.

The difference between illegals coming here and someone breaking into my house is that I’m harmed by people breaking into my house.

There is plenty of economic activity in this country that could not exist without the contributions of illegals. I believe that overall the nation benefits from this.

If our social services are strained by the presence of illegals, then we should change the way our social services are run and what benefits are provided.

I would like to see hospitals that can treat people cost-effectively, schools that can actually educate people comptently at reasonable costs, and so on.

It’s funny that people who criticse our welfare and educational systems are the first to defend them when illegals come up.

What’s with that?

D

Mark Steyn commented that the legal immigration system is ossified and incompetent and incapable of processing the people that it does, let alone additional immigrants.

I applaud the illegals for defying sluggish and incompetent bureaucracy and taking things in their own hands.

Don’t we, as Americans, have a proud history of doing exactly that in our own country?

I think it’s something many of us would admire in circumstances when they applied to us or other Americans. We are a nation of bureaucracy defiers, not sheeple ... right?

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Ronald Reagan said that we should always look at the positive side of things, and that this was the right way to be a conservative. He had a tremendous belief in freedom, and I think the dark clouds of pessimism that many conservatives seem to embrace would be as alien to him as the Soviet tyranny he fought so well.

I find it very sad that many of my fellow conservatives are so profoundly negative about immigration, when it built our country from nothing. I think we are letting prejudice against other cultures blind us to the dynamism new immigrants and their fresh ideas represent - and yes, I mean illegal immigrants too, who risk their lives to come here.

This makes me feel profoundly sad and so I thought it was appropriate to post these quotes of our greatest leader, the one that inspired more conservatives than anyone before or since.

I don't expect people to agree - we are too overwhelmed by pessimism. But I'd like people to think about where we are going, from the warm acceptance of the Statue of Liberty to the "throw 'em out" mean spiritedness of today.

Of course during his one year suspension he probably raked in more than his salary in speakers’ fees, so you can’t even say he was financially damaged by his fraud being uncovered.

Quite the contrary, in fact.

I read the report by the committee that investigated Churchill. They really bent over backwards to be fair to him, to search for some scrap of evidence that he might be something other than a fraud.

But they didn’t find it.

It was quite impressive, and a very interesting read that makes you feel Churchill would be lucky to find a job as an assistant professor in Poudunk, much less keep his job.

D

I don’t know much about Rachel, but Bill Whittle is an extremely talented writer who is brilliant at exposing the fallancies of the left.

Here’s a nice sample of his thinking, exposing the popular “No blood for oil” fallancy:

Likewise with a “war for oil.” What would a real “war for oil” look like? Well, US troops would have sped to the oilfields with everything we had. Everything we had. Then, secure convoy routes would have been established to the nearest port - probably Basra - and the US Navy would essentially line the entire gulf with wall-to-wall warships in order to ensure the safe passage of US-flagged tankers into and out of the region.

—

I love that thought - tell ‘em what a REAL War for Oil is like, and then you prove that’s not what we’re fighting today.

It’s worth mentioning that I have no idea whether his essay will appear on Monday. I hope it will, but he is a meticulous writer. I must quote Douglas Adams, another meticulous writer, albiet of an entirely different genre: “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.”

If he sounds interesting, I recommend starting here and then reading the rest of his stuff:

http://www.ejectejecteject.com/archives/000136.html

D

You know, by November 2008, we’ll have nearly two years of Nancy Pelosi and friends.

Their record is, well, not particularly promising so far.

This whole story is something of a red herring. Try this thought experiment. Pretend Hillary is a conservative candidate and she’s running for the Republican nomination. Pretend she’s sworn off health care reform, supports the war, etc.

Would you vote for her?

I think not, because you know she lacks integrity. In John Kerry’s classic phrase, she supported the war before she was against it. She still doesn’t feel quite comfortable with that anti-war position, which is why you see articles like this branding her a closet conservative of sorts.

But it really doesn’t matter, because I don’t think any of us believe we know the real Hillary or her real beliefs or what she’d really do.

That’s an excellent reason to vote against Hillary, and I don’t see how she could possibly counteract it.

D

Interesting story, but I question its authenticity since as far as I know Mercedes doesn’t offer fingerprint door locks.

I have a 2000 S-Class and all it has is an electronic key, like many other cars do today.

I have no doubt there are many people willing to do what you said, but I don’t think that technology is widely used.

D

Sorry, I forgot one thing.

It’s also worth remembering that, with the exception of a few overcrowded rail lines, most travel is done by diesel powered “Jeepneys”, small busses that resemble a stretched Jeep.

So increasing fuel prices hit nearly every citizen, whether they drive private cars or are driven in public transport vehicles. You can’t avoid using fuel of some sort for travel if you’re in the Philippines - unless you walk everywhere.

Unlike in the US, Jeepney fares are cheap (about $ 0.15 per passenger) so they are very popular. Their privatized public transport system, incidentally, is hundreds of times more efficient than our own union-ruled, government run systems.

D

This is an especially interesting argument in the Philippines, which is a country where all too many people rely on subsistance agriculture for survival.

The urban pollution problem, however, is ghastly. I’m no environmentalist but I could smell the air while I was there, even in smaller cities. In Manila, the grossly overpopulated capital city, people wear surgical masks while driving their scooters(*) to cut down on the fumes.

If this particular product was previously exported, I don’t think there’s any harm in turning it into fuel, since it was not substituted for domestic food production. Using it domestically instead of importing fuel is probably good, no matter what social class you are in, especially considering the severe volatility of oil prices today.

Anyone know how much 1% coconut blend diesel saves? Is it 99% coconot, or 99% diesel fuel? If the latter, it doesn’t seem all that helpful ...

D

(*) In the Philippines, scooters are commonly used by people who can’t afford cars. Also, there is a whole class of very strange vehicles, which look like they were hand-machined in primitive conditions by people who had no mandate other than cutting costs.

He’s been right on Iraq when many of our fellow conservatives have lost their nerve. That makes a lot of us like him. He’s still a bit of a marxist, but since he’s not writing primarily on that most of the time, I don’t really care.

Being on our side, when we have so few friends nowadays, covers up for a multitude of sins.

Then again, I’m not religious myself, but for some reason his book rubbed me a bit the wrong way. Maybe I just don’t particularly like reading attacks on people when they haven’t fought against me first.

More likely I think it’s because I expected to hear more about Islam. The first 100 odd pages of the book don’t mention these nice people that want to kill us all, and yet if you argue against religion that seems like the best start.

D

What seems really stupid is to threaten to punish a key swing state in the general election! Could you imagine only having Republican candidates campaigning in Florida?

Howard Dean really is a moron.

At the rate states are moving, we’ll start having primary elections in November ... of this year!

But since the dam has burst I don’t think there’s anything that can be done about it.

D

Sorry - I should have pinged you to #34 as well, so please give it a look.

Glad you enjoyed the article!

D

I certainly could not speak for Bill Whittle in rebutting (or not rebutting) any specific conspiracy. I would have to personally look at all the evidence to come up with any kind of conclusion.

I would think that the bald facts of the case, no matter how interpreted, would look pretty grim for the Clintons.

Victor, you might want to read Part I which in my opinion is even better. It discusses typical leftist tropes like “No blood for oil” and “Bush is a dummy” in amazingly straightforward ways I have never seen before.

Read about what a war for oil would really look like, among other topics, here:
http://www.ejectejecteject.com/archives/000136.html

Finally, I should add that I went through the whole NTSB report for Flight 800 and found it convincing. I’m not saying all government is this way, but I do think the investigators did a first-rate professional job. As Bill Whittle said, about Rosie O’Donnell:

“To her, and to her audience, it is taken as granted that the government is capable of such things. As if “the government” was operated by cyborgs grown in Haliburton vats, rather than by well-meaning and patriotic people that love this country.”

I think the conspiracy theorists about Flight 800 are making the same mistakes in trying to smear the NTSB. I have read a lot of NTSB reports - they often make fascinating reading - and I believe them to be a group of the well-meaning and patriotic people Bill Whittle refers to above.

D

This is quite an interesting take on conspiracy theories that I think is well worth a read.

http://www.ejectejecteject.com/archives/000140.html

D

You might also spin it positively by wondering how he managed to survive so long, with his boozing and similar bad habits.

A full life and a satisfying one. Not to mention serving his country very well during a key juncture of history.

We shed a tear, and move on.

D

I’m sorry to hear about the reduced range. However, it looks like it’s for good reasons, and it’s not by much.

I really love reading the Tesla motors blog - it has a lot of fascinating information. Here’s what Martin, the Chairman, has to say about the range question:

http://www.teslamotors.com/blog2/

D

Intersting that even though I’m not a gun guy, that’s the first thing I thought of - it would probably not be difficult to shoot down, perhaps before it was able to see you.

I wonder how good the cameras are on that thing. At 49’ long it’s pretty big.

D

Apple really is a pretty good option if your school supports Macs.

Unfortunately I know that doesn’t make a $1,100 price tag for the entry-level model any more palatable when you can buy an Acer capable of running Vista Premium for $500 at Best Buy. Remember that you need an anti virus/spyware suite, about another $100, to give that computer even a passing chance at being safe. Some universities offer those free as part of their computing services; it’s worth asking about that.

I don’t think Vista is bad enough to avoid; I think it’s not good enough to seek out.

If the people you’re buying this for are not computer experts, you would save a lot of pain by buying them Macs because otherwise invasions of virii and spyware are almost inevitable even if anti-virus/spyware software is purchased.

But I do sympathise with your pain about cost. I believe you can sometimes get refurbished Apple systems from companies like Small Dog Electronics. You can also get a student discount from your local Apple store which I think brings down the MacBook price to $999.

Hope that helps.

D

I think of a DirectX compatible video card as “fancy” simply because very few computers made before Vista was introduced have one. I believe the actual price is about $60-100, which is pretty expensive considering the price of an entry level PC. I stand by my statement that once you’ve upgraded your video card ($100), your memory ($100) and your operating system ($159+), you’ve spent almost the cost of a new PC.

If you bought a new computer for Vista, then it probably runs faster than XP because it’s a much faster computer than your old machine.

I believe my statement about UAC is accurate. I even admit that some people, such as yourself, are not that annoyed by it. Others are horribly annoyed by it. It just depends on how security-focused you are.

Microsoft has really worked hard to send people towards Ultimate, which is much more expensive than any previous Windows version, especially if you don’t buy the OEM edition.

D

If all the hoopla has made you curious, I suggest you go to a Best Buy store or similar place and give it a look.

But I’m sure you’d like an executive summary, and I can give you that.

* Vista has system requirements that are just crazy. 512MB RAM, for example, is adequate for “running the operating system”. 1gb is good enough to run an application or two but real power users should stick with 2gb. Or more.

* Vista is faster than XP if your computer has 3gb of RAM or more. Otherwise, it’s slower.

* You need a fancy video card for the various effects. It’s a pain to install. Buy a new computer for Vista; you’ll go through more hassles and you might not even spend all that much more money.

* Vista uses transparency effects on some of the windows. For about five minutes they look slick. Then you realize your eyes are having a tough time reading the window title because the title bar is translucent. Oddly enough, Apple’s first version of MacOS X was filled with cool transparency effects but now they are very subtle. Apple listened to its users; Microsoft really should have listened in on those conversations and acted accordingly.

* Vista has security features designed to ask you whenever anything goes on that’s even vaguely connected to security. There is an Apple ad which I’m sure you’ve seen, with this guard in sunglasses standing arrogantly over PC and saying “Cancel or allow?”. About half the people who talk about Vista complain and say the ad’s shockingly true to life. The other half don’t notice it, don’t care or turned it off before their patience got too strained.

* There is a well implemented system-wide search facility, just like Apple’s spotlight. It’s run out of the start menu (ahem, Windows menu - Start is gone) and seems to work quite well. This is one of the few Vista features I liked.

The truth is that Vista is just not that appealing, especially for the price charged. I would probably get it on a new PC just thanks to a desire for a more modern operating system, but then again I’ve always been an early adapter type.

Personally, I’d be looking at Apple, unless you’re wedded to Windows-only software. Steve’s an arrogant guy, hard to like in many respects, but he does deliver the goods.

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A lot of perfectly formal dresses show cleavage and as far as I know nobody thinks anything of it.

The dresses shown at the top of the thread, look pretty conservative to me. Certainly not at all ghetto or slutty.

The prom is a time to show off in a discreet way, no? I think the dresses do exactly that.

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Here’s QuagmireWorld, but it’s in Egypt:

http://www.themeparkreview.com/fantazyland/fantazyland.htm

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I think you can get the MacBook up to something like $1,800 with the right options, so there’s not that huge a gap.

I agreed with you when the old iBook had nothing better than a mediocre 1024x768 display, but since the new MacBook changed to a lovely glossy display with pretty decent resolution, I think the gap’s now reasonable, especially since a lot of people want the small computer that requires a smaller screen.

Irv, it’s sad but a lot of people would rather grumble and complain than change. Being entrenched in the business world is a huge consideration as well. And of course many people will go for the cheapest product even if it’s lousy.

That being said, I think most companies would rather have happy customers than unhappy ones. We’re definitely seeing increasing interest in the Mac and that’s because of the high levels of customer satisfaction Mac users enjoy.

Even if the actual market share change is only a few percentage points, you can guarantee this is giving Steve Ballmer heartburn, no matter what he says in public.

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I had a friend who flew a Mooney prop plane with a maximum speed of about 200 knots, and he bragged that it was faster to fly the plane than to sit and wait for the big jets at the airport.

That was before 9/11, so it’s probably doubly true today that a prop plane can actually beat a big commercial jet for convenience.

It sure was nice to determine our flight time by when we wanted to leave, and he could load an amazing amount of stuff on the plane for trade shows and the like.

I always looked wistfully at the private jets, though - there’s something very glamorous about them that his Mooney seemed to lack.

I’m afraid I was better at using the navigation gadgets and flipping the frequency on the radios than I was at flying the plane, though!

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What do you think of the new generation of business jets that sell for about $1.5 million and are designed for air taxi services? Shouldn’t that have a significant impact on first class domestic flights? I would think that with horrible delays, humiliating security and other problems with flying today, business executives would be scrambling for a jet at that price point.

(I know those planes are probably not well suited for long haul international flights).

I noticed an interesting oddity with pricing. EVA Air was offering Evergreen Deluxe service from LAX to MNL for about $800 with restrictions, $1,200 unrestricted. The restriction was that I would have to pay $100 to change my ticket. Why would someone buy an unrestricted ticket for $1,200 if for $900 they would have effectively the same thing?

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I’m sure the CPA did make serious mistakes. From what I can see, Iraq is a country whose conflicts are rooted in the ages and are extremely difficult for anyone to understand. Parachute anyone into Iraq and I’m sure they would have very similar problems.

At the same time, it seems like interesting timing that this book is now out at a time when Iraqis are increasingly fed up with the guerillas and are taking our side. So it seems like the Iraqi people people are, in fact, dealing with us, and in a positive manner.

So perhaps its conclusions deserve a little re-working.

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As a follow-up question on this ... why is it that First Class fares provide about double (or maybe even 1.5x) the seating space for about 5-7 times the cost?

Why can’t First Class be sold at less outrageous prices?

I’d love to have a more comfortable flight if the cost could be brought a bit further down to earth.

I guess the short answer is that there is a large enough population that would pay just about anything to avoid the cattle car. But I’d be curious to know more details on how the fares are determined.

(It is interesting to note that First Class fares are approximately the same as the cost of one seat on a filled-up Gulfstream V, and that may be no coincidence.)

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Scheduling problems as you describe are probably why the A380 has had such dismal sales.

All passengers have some importance for an airline, or we’d see all first class airlines. I think we actually have but as I recall they haven’t done too well, which actually is a bit surprising to me.

I really appreciated EVA Air’s Evergreen Deluxe class, which is about $200 more than tourist class and gives you business class seats but only slightly over tourist class amenities. It made my flight to the Philippines via Taipei, Taiwan a great deal more pleasant, even though only the long LAX to Taipei flight is formally Deluxe Class(*).

I wish more airlines would do something like that. If the A380 was designed with that type of service in mind, I’d probably cheer it on — but from what I’ve seen it looks like EVA Air with its Boeing 747s is more innovative than Airbus in this regard.

You would think EVA would love the A380 since they run two flights with 747s from LAX to Taipei that leave within about an hour or two of each other, but I haven’t seen them in reference to the A380 at all.

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(*) As an interesting sidebar, the Taipei, Taiwan airport is one of the most inhospitable airports I have ever visited despite being sleek, ultra-modern and conspicuously expensive in design and construction. A gleaming, shiny, conspicuously efficient looking bottled water vending machine that appeared to accept no known currency, even currency it claimed to like, was just one of the ugly surprises.

if you remember, they actually selected flights knowing the plane would be nearly empty, so that it would be easier to deal with the passengers.

In these post-911 days I don’t think it would be feasible to hijack any filled aircraft and live to tell the tale, let alone an A380.

Karl, I think these airlines are trying to figure out ways to fill these planes, and they are obviously worried that they won’t be able to, thus the tactic of not pushing the plane to its highest capacity. I think they’d rather have passengers more comfortable than fly with empty seats, particularly since comfort might be a competitive advantage.

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