Comments on: Urgency

By: The Agitator » Blog Archive » Lunch Links

The Agitator » Blog Archive » Lunch Links — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:10:50 +0000

[...] call for restraint, or who suggested that perhaps Congress and the public should be given more than 11 hours to review the bill in its final version before it was voted on were cast off as petty obstructionists? [...]

By: Robin

Robin — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 22:40:22 +0000

Shygetz–You’re right. I did a little wikipedia search of my own, and learned a lot regarding government involvement in the development of precursor technologies that led to the internet. Of course, military, NASA, etc, technologies are in all kinds of things, everywhere. And of course the internet wasn’t, at one point, just “invented”; there isn’t a prototype stashed in someone’s garage. By YEC, do you mean Young Earth Creationist? Do you think that there’s less idolatry or fanaticism among other political affiliations?

By: Dave Krueger

Dave Krueger — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 19:15:37 +0000

If complaining about the government ineptitude over the internet makes one a hypocrite, then I consider myself to be among extraordinary company.

By: Shygetz

Shygetz — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 14:24:24 +0000

Oh, I forgot Mosaic, the first graphical web browser. Wholly funded by the High Performance Computing and Communication Act of 1991. You know, the Gore Bill.

By: Shygetz

Shygetz — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 14:21:26 +0000

ARPANET was formed at government insistence with government funds. Project RAND was set up by the US Army Air Forces and did all of it’s early work on the Internet under government auspices with government funds. X.25, the first publically available internet, was formed by an intergovernmental agency. Vinton Cerf’s pioneering work in TCP/IP was prompted by and funded by DARPA. The NSF, NASA, and the DOE brought TCP/IP into usage in the successors to ARPANET. But of course the government played no important role in the invention of the internet.

I swear, some libertarians remind me of YECs to an eerie extent.

Commercial industry did play an important innovating role in the Internet–in transferring the government-made technology into the hands of the masses. But to pretend that the Internet was not a product of government demand, government funding, and (to a large extent) the expertise of government employees is just blatant revisionism.

By: Robin

Robin — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 23:30:56 +0000

“(the internet) is purely a government invention.”

#23 bobzbob, It’s just unacceptable that you not only believe this, but seem to have taken it for granted, that of course the government invented the internet. I mean, I’m genuinely distressed right now.

By: Z

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 22:07:30 +0000

All this talk about porkulus etc is very touching and if the GOP had a shred of credibility left as fiscally conservative small government advocates I would even pay attention to them.

By: Rick Caldwell

Rick Caldwell — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:31:43 +0000

Lastly, the hypertext protocol that makes the internet usable by people other than geeks like me was created first (sort of) by IBM, then by Project Xanadu. Tim Berners-Lee created HTML, and formed the World Wide Web Consortium. Though they do standardize WWW protocols and languages, they are entirely private. Not a government creation, by any stretch of the imagination.

By: Rick Caldwell

Rick Caldwell — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:19:02 +0000

To add to my last comment, the TCP/IP internet protocol suite that facilitates the interconnectivity between networks was created at Stanford University. This is what we use and think of as the internet today. Still not a government creation.

By: Boyd Durkin

Boyd Durkin — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:17:17 +0000

Bob, is anything you write actually correct?

By: Rick Caldwell

Rick Caldwell — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:11:49 +0000

@bobzob #23

Not true. The internet was first created in the 1950′s by Project RAND, to facilitate collaboration between researchers in Pittsburgh and Sullivan, Illinois. You’re thinking of ARPAnet, which, though used by the Department of Defense, was created by MIT and UC Berkley, and ran on protocols created by the RAND project.

By: bobzbob

bobzbob — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 15:48:59 +0000

“Gubmint’s much better at breakin’ stuff. Almost ever’thin they touch, in fact.”

If you are going to complain about the government breaking things you should at least have the deceny not to be a hypocrit and complain about it over the internet- which is purely a government invention.

By: David

David — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 15:20:57 +0000

Christ, and you people said we were deranged for not liking Bush.

Just a point of clarification. “We” never said anything of the kind. That was a Republican criticism of anyone who dared disagree with their fearless leader’s brilliant policy. As in, “the only reason someone would oppose X is Bush derangement syndrome”, certainly not because they’ve disagree about the policy itself. It was untrue then, and it’s untrue now.

By: Christopher Monnier

Christopher Monnier — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 14:52:10 +0000

I see Radley’s point, but I agree with Remfin. Obama does seem to be waiting five-ish days before signing the legislation. And however unlikely it is, maybe Obama is actually reading the whole thing?

By: dsmallwood

dsmallwood — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 13:57:35 +0000

is the bill available online? perhaps this ‘delay’ is his effort to make the bill visible to the public?

if its not, then this is the worst political move he’s made

By: Dave Krueger

Dave Krueger — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 13:33:58 +0000

#7 Big Chief

There are things government really can’t fix.

Yep. Most things in fact.

Gubmint’s much better at breakin’ stuff. Almost ever’thin they touch, in fact.

By: Boyd Durkin

Boyd Durkin — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 13:30:29 +0000

Uhm…we got to $10 trillion by doing nothing?

By: Dave Krueger

Dave Krueger — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 13:29:39 +0000

Passing it gets it out of the spotlight. The longer the delay in passing it, the longer it would be the top story of the day in the media (and the longer public attention would be focused on all the embarrassing frivolous spending).

A politician’s promise is only good if there is a steep monetary price to be paid for breaking it. It’s not like we’re going to see hundred of special interests suddenly stop bidding on Presidential favors just because he broke a promise to the folks who matter least in the formulation of government policy.

By: Satori

Satori — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 13:18:35 +0000

In all fairness, after a bill comes out of conference, it usually takes a day or two for the Enrollment Clerk to make sure all the changes are properly reflected in the text of the final bill, especially if there are a lot of amendments (which there were). The 10 days don’t start ticking until the White House receives the bill. If Congress informed the White House that the bill won’t be ready to sign until Tuesday, there’s really nothing Obama can do about that.

By: thomasblair

thomasblair — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 13:17:41 +0000

He already broke his 5 day review period with his signing the SCHIP bill. I assume he’ll defend this by saying that it is emergency legislation.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/promise/234/allow-five-days-of-public-comment-before-signing-b/