This is a leaked official RIAA training video produced with the National District Attorneys Association telling U.S. prosecutors why they should bust music pirates: Because it'll lead them to "everything from handguns to large quantities of cocaine [and] marijuana," not to mention terrorists and murderers!
The whole video is over 60 minutes longthese are just two of the more outrageous minutes with Jim Dedman, from the NDAA, interviewing Deborah Robinson and Frank Walters from the RIAA about the benefits of going SWAT on music pirates. At one point, Walters says the piracy/drug connection can be so bad that you get asked "When you buy a CD, would you like it with or withoutthe with is enclosing a piece of crack or whatever the case may be."
#4
A boat carrying executives from the RIAA is sinking. Another boat carrying members of Hezbollah is also sinking. You can only save one group. Do you:
A) Go get a beer.
B) Play a video game
C) Go fishing
D) Make popcorn
What can I say, its Derb
Some weeks before that I had told attendees at a private lecture the same thing. The organizers of that event had asked me to give a talk on the 2008 field of candidates, which was at that point very large. At the end of my talk, they said, I should offer my opinion as to who would actually be the next president. Preparing my talk, I mulled over the matter carefully. At the very end of the lecture, after 40 minutes of surveying the entire field, both parties, I said Ladies and gentlemen, the next President of the United States, pressed the key (it was a PowerPoint presentation), and up on the screen came Al Gore. There was a chorus of boos and jeers it was a conservative crowd. Derb: Look, this is not my guy. Im anti-Gore, and have a paper trail to prove it (see here, here, and here). But as an analyst, its my job dispassioantely to weigh the probabilities. I weighed them. This is what they told me.
#1
Uh, what scenario would produce Al? Blacks would bolt the party in record numbers. Hillary's toast and Al's a non-starter -- it's Obama.
Posted by: Jonathan ||
02/21/2008 9:09 Comments ||
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#2
Derbyshire is an idiot.
Posted by: Mike ||
02/21/2008 9:49 Comments ||
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#3
Well....
Even if Obama wins most of the remaining states popuular vote, Hillary can still deny him the delegate wins. All she has to do is manage to grab a couple big states, and keep it fairly close in the rest. Remember the Dems have few, if any, winner take all. They use proportional representation for the most part, but also award delegates on a per-congressional-district basis. Obama's voters tend to be very concentrated into urban areas - therefore he may win 90-10 there but lose 52-48 elsewhere. Maeaning Hillary gets a large number of the Cong District awards, while Obama gets a far smaller number, but makes up for it in the over-all state-wide awards.
That means neither will have enough to win at the convention until the Super-delegates come into play. All that needs to happen is that a few dozen of them vote freely for someone other than Hillary or Obama on the first ballot (like some of the Kucinich nutters might do), denying both Hillary and Obama the first ballot win. At that point I believe it becomes an open convention, and that's where Goreacle comes in on the white horse, as a compromise/unity candidate with Obambi as his VP.
#5
Big Al certainly could be the savior. His outstanding work on Global Warming, since he left(kicked out) politics, including his shining Nobel Medal, ought to be enough to put him on a parapet for all the looney tunes in the Dummocrat party.
#6
It's certainly possible that Gore could be the nominee in a deadlock. However, I've yet to see any indication that either (1) Al Gore wants the job, or (2) any significant number of Dem insiders want Al Gore as their second choice. If no one wants it to happen, it will not happen. I think Derbyshire is absolutely looney when he suggests that the voting public would fall all over itself to elect Gore even if he is the nominee. I don't know that anyone has any polling or other data to support that speculation.
Posted by: Mike ||
02/21/2008 11:27 Comments ||
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#7
Oh I think he lusts after the job. It was his, His, HIS PRECIOUS!!!!
And that tricksy Bush stole it from him. Stole his precious birthright birthday present, he did, didn't he. PRECIOUS!!!
#9
lotp: I'm sure in his heart of hearts he still thinks he won in 2000. The question is, does he want to put himself and his family through another campaign? Give up a comfy gig as global warming guru? Revisit the "inventor of the Internet" and other flubs, just to risk losing the big one twice in one lifetime?
Gore passed on running this cycle back last year when Hillary! and Obama! and all them were getting their organizations lit up. I think that's a leading indicator that he doesn't want to run again.
Posted by: Mike ||
02/21/2008 12:50 Comments ||
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#10
But I'm not so sure he's discourage a Draft Al movement. You know, acolytes begging him to come down from on high and Save Us, donors seeking favors by burning incense and making large deposits, that sort of thing.
#13
Derbyshire must have been hanging out with Hollyweird types. A script worthy of Hollywood except it ain't going to happen. Gore couldn't even carry his home state of Tennessee the last time. Obama most likely will be the donk candidate unless Hillary finds some way to pull her chestnuts out of the fire at the 11th hour.
#14
J: Uh, what scenario would produce Al? Blacks would bolt the party in record numbers. Hillary's toast and Al's a non-starter -- it's Obama.
That's just not going to happen. Only one party supports freebies and discrimination against non-blacks. That would be the Democratic party. Blacks have no choice but to vote for the Democrats if they want their goodies.
#16
M: If no one wants it to happen, it will not happen. I think Derbyshire is absolutely looney when he suggests that the voting public would fall all over itself to elect Gore even if he is the nominee.
Al Gore was derailed by Ralph Nader. Just as Bush I and Dole were derailed by Perot. PC prevents conservatives from saying it, but an Obama candidacy is going to result in a GOP landslide.
I remember when Lyndon Johnson began the War on Poverty in 64. For a time I was a foot soldier on the front lines first in Model Cities than in the Welfare System. Back then as now the cries were for solving the pressing problems of hunger and deprivation and helping the poor through new affordable housing, education, job training, community deve-lopment and medical care. We are in a quagmire.
The amount of blood and treasure committed to this unconditional war is impossible to tally. Our major cities have become war zones with gangs running unchecked. Philadelphia alone, the City of Brotherly Love, had 406 recorded homicides in 06 and 391 in 07. That is not counting the rapes, robberies, molestations and assaults. This is the result of governing with feelings and not thinking about the consequences political correctness gone amok. We are still reeling from the backlash created by the attention the War on Poverty gave to Black America.
Forty-four years later and in spite of everything done we hear candidates like Hillary, Barack Obama and John Edwards, railing about the plight of the poor and homeless. The lack of money spent on the children and our crumbling schools discounting that we have one of the highest rates of per pupil spending in the world is always worked into the diatribes. Anti-war Democrats are still complaining that spending on the War (then it was Vietnam) is choking off the funds needed to help our people at home.
It is curious that Sen. Obamas Global Poverty Act (S.2433 got some help from Sen. Biden in his attempted to rush it through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on Feb. 14. This bill if passed would impose a Global Tax on the US and take $845 BILLION over 13 years away from the needy
children in the US and place the money under the dictates of the UN.
Oprah, one of Sen. Obamas chief supporters, has also discovered that it is not worth helping educate the poor in the US. It was better to take her millions overseas and set up an exclusive palatial girls school in Africa. Unfortunately, she was unable to protect the students from abuse at the hands of her
employees.
In the last 4+ decades TRILLIONS have been confiscated from American workers creating a cycle of dependency in the guise of wiping out poverty in the US. Every election cycle we hear the empty platitudes and the inflaming class warfare language of the politicians promising everything on someone elses dime. Now we are threatened with initiatives to funnel our tax dollars to a corrupt UN.
I think it is past time to end this made up, never ending War on Poverty with its PC mentality and instead resurrect the American Spirit before we no longer recognize the place that the Greatest generation fought to preserve.
Lee Jenkins is a staff writer for the Tinytown Gazette
Posted by: no mo uro ||
02/21/2008 00:00 ||
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#1
LBJ was a school teacher and self made man who came from a poor family in the Hill Country. He was of the mind that if he made it out of poverty, anyone else could too if they had the grit. He could have given a damn about poor, inner-city people. LBJ's War on Poverty was a democratic vote getting scheme aimed at minorities, not unlike what you hear from candidates yet today.
#2
Poverty you hear about is 'statistical' poverty which would place most of the people so classified into middle class just about anyplace else on the planet. We do have traditional or classical poverty, but at numbers so low that most Americans wouldn't pay attention so the socialist hucksters keep playing a three card monty game of showing you the image of the few and use the number of the many. The fundamental problem of classical poverty in America is human free will. For there are those in every category of color, race and creed who make decision that either get them out or keep them in the condition. The four major contributors to classical poverty in America are substance abuse, creating families before establishing skills to provide for them, blowing off one's education and keeping to the old ways. Each and everyone of those occur in an exercise of human free will. No socialist agenda has yet successfully addressed solving that particular problem short of making the parties thralls to someone in authority. That is why in a free country, there will always be some form of poverty. To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac - you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. It was true three hundred years ago, it's true today. Human behavior doesn't' change.
#3
The 100 Years War was shorter than any War on Poverty (or Drugs) will ever be.
Here's how it works, more or less. Define poverty as the bottom 10% (in income, assets, whatever). Give them enough stuff to get over the threshhold that defined their status. No more poverty, right? Wrong. There's still a bottom 10%, just with a new threshhold. Repeat ad infinitum. (The saddest thing - it will be the same 10% over and over again, no matter how much you give them.)
#7
The bulk of the poor as defined by the government are young adults. College students and recent grads just starting out. People that move out of poverty as they age. Unless we account for this any arguement about the poor is dishonest.
#9
Yep, one of my pet rocks as well......seeing people who are fat as hell telling me they're poor, need affordable health insurance, while smoking a cigarette, watching their 42" t.v. and bitching about their old junk car....in countries I've been to, truly poor people don't have the luxury to bitch about any of these things...
I love my country but sometimes realy dislike many of its inhabitants.
BELOW the ice carpet in the Kashmir Valley, the first stirrings of the political life that will blossom this summer have begun. Last week, Sheikh Mohammad Hassan, chief of the Jammu and Kashmir Jamaat-e-Islami, the political formation that gave birth to the Hizb ul-Mujahideen, announced that his organisation would not participate in secessionist campaigns calling for a boycott of the Assembly elections scheduled for later this year.
Hassans language was startling. Elections, he said, do not have any impact on the status of the Kashmir issue. If people cast their votes in the elections, it does not mean that they have given up their freedom struggle or accepted Indias domination of Jammu and Kashmir. I am at variance with leaders and organisations who over-emphasise the election boycott campaign. Among these leaders is the Islamist patriarch Syed Ali Shah Geelani, of whose hard line Tehrik-e-Hurriyat secessionist coalition the Jamaat is a part.
Coming just days after the Pakistan-based United Jihad Council announced that it would not kill election participants 69 activists were shot dead in 1996, and 99 in 2002 the Jamaat declaration has been little reported, and even less understood. It could, however, prove critical to political life in the State.
Continued on Page 49
This article starring:
G.M. BHAT
Jamaat-e-Islami
NAIIM KHAN
Kashmir Front
SAADUDIN TARABALI
Jamaat-e-Islami Kashmir
SHAKIL BAKSHI
Islamic Students League
SHEIKH MOHAMAD HASAN
Jamaat-e-Islami
SHEIKH TAJAMUL HUSEIN
Islami Jamaat-e-Tulba
SYED ALI SHAH GILANI
Tehrik-e-Hurriyat
SYED NASIR AHMED KASHANI
Islamic Students League
Hizb ul-Mujahideen
Jamaat-e-Islami
Tehrik-e-Hurriyat
United Jihad Council
Posted by: Fred ||
02/21/2008 00:00 ||
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The U.S. Navy successfully fired a ship-based SM-3 missile at a decaying satellite that was falling to Earth. The missile's make, the general location of the launch vehicle and the target are all known -- because the U.S. government has publicly stated these facts. Still, the Chinese and Russian governments are raising a fuss.
Contrast this operation with what happened a year ago January, when Beijing surprised the world by shooting down one of its weather satellites in a test of its antisatellite capabilities. Not only was the test unannounced, but it took China days to concede that it had happened. Because the satellite was destroyed at an altitude of approximately 850 kilometers, it left countless hazardous particles drifting in orbit that could harm future space flights. . . .
The decision to shoot down the satellite went all the way up to President Bush. China's decision-making process is such that it's unclear whether President Hu Jintao even knew about the antisatellite test before it took place or whether it was planned and executed only by the military. The contrast between the two episodes is that China's made the world more uncertain and dangerous, while the U.S. success will make it safer.
Posted by: Mike ||
02/21/2008 12:51 ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Contrast this operation with what happened a year ago January, when Beijing surprised the world by shooting down one of its weather satellites in a test of its antisatellite capabilities. Not only was the test unannounced, but it took China days to concede that it had happened. Because the satellite was destroyed at an altitude of approximately 850 kilometers, it left countless hazardous particles drifting in orbit that could harm future space flights. . . .
