I posted this yesterday and thought it was strange. I also said the US press wouldn't pick it up and I have heard or seen anything about it.

http://austriantimes.at/news/General_News/2009-10…

British nuclear expert dies in 40-metre plunge

By Thomas Hochwarter

Police are investigating after a British nuclear energy expert involved in negotiations with Iran over its nuclear programme fell 40 metres to his death from a UN building in Vienna.

The Baucus Bill is finally written and we are starting to see the really nasty stuff in the bill. I saw a list of the nasty stuff in HR3200 a few months ago with direct quotes and page numbers from the bill. I can’t seem to find it now. Does anyone have a link to a site that shows all the nasty stuff in these two bills that includes page numbers and direct quotes from the bills themselves? I have the full text of the bills, but 1200 & 1502 pages is a lot to go through.

p.s.- We should have open threads more often.

You're driving down a sretch of highway and you see Highway Patrol parked behind a sign waiting to catch speeders. A mile farther down the highway you see an oncoming driver who is obvsiously speeding. Do you flash your lights to warn him of the HiPo?

Is Palin's endorsement of a third party candidate in NYC over the Republican candidate a sign that she's going to make a third party run in 2012, or is it just a sign that she's going to support people she finds ideologically pleasing, regardless of party affiliation?

Thanks goodness for an open thread!

Interesting comments by T. Boone Pickens before Congress:

http://in.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idINN2149238…

Really Mr. Pickens, we are entitled to Iraq's oil?

Posted by whats_up

2009-10-23 11:54:42

I don't think we're entitled to Iraqi oil (only because we really are the most fair minded and moral country in war that the world has ever seen), but it does show a serious lack of diplomatic leadership from the Bush and Obama administrations that we didn't get any kind of favored status in the oil lease auctions that were held there recently.

Do you flash your lights to warn him of the HiPo?

Posted by President_Friedman

2009-10-23 11:06:24

It depends on what the posted speed limit is. If its 55, and its a clear, dry day, with not a lot of congestion on the road, i'm probably flashing my lights.

Does anyone think that Mao Tse Dunn is going to get thown under the Obama bus?

I think that bus passes right by 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue at around midnight on Saturday nights.

Posted by TheBaud

2009-10-23 12:39:42

Speaking for myself, I don't log out of Rightwing news. So I am sure that number reflects people logged in and they can stay there for a long time until the system kicks them out. But this is just my speculation and maybe one of the monitirs can give you a better explanation. My counter now says 271.

I have also noticed that some long time regulars are no longer posting here. I miss Stan's input. But people come and go from blogs for their own reasons and if the number of hits here go down, I would hope that John Hawkins would poll us to maybe find out why. I think many are sick of the trolls and the lack of management of them. I like playing with trolls, so I don't see this as a problem. But they can muck up a good conversation, so I do see the otherside of the coin. I would also like to see more posting here since I have dropped out of almost all the other boards that I use to post to.

I use to be a regular at LGF. But the last few times I checked in there, the topics were different than they use to be and I don't like the changes there. When the C&F logo came down, that was probably when I should have left.

Posted by BIG 2009-10-23 12:57:12

Sorry to hear about the regulars that no longer post. Were the trolls the reason they left? And if by trolls, you mean D-Vega, whats_up, and realpolitik, I feel as you do. You discredit them by allowing them to post. Their own words do most of the work for you.

LGF went downhill fast, but I never posted there. I have been known to drop a line at MichelleMalkin, GateWayPundit, and AmericanThinker (though not with this handle) and heard lots about RightWingNews. I expected more posts and more actual discussion. Maybe it can be imporved.

What happened to the Preview button?

Why no more Q&A threads? Even though they are not as long as before, they would still get more comments than most posts here.

Why no comment section in the Linkiest post? At least there would be some sort of open thread consistently.

Why not more sports-related posts, given it's the middle of football season and the baseball playoffs?

What happened to the Preview button?

That appears to have been a feature of the MovableType application through which John was managing this blog. The preview function disappeared when he switched over to WordPress. I miss both the preview function and the fuller set of html commands that were available under MT.

Posted by BIG

2009-10-23 12:12:54

Dunn is leaving at the end of the year. She only signed for an interm basis and said that she would be done after 2009.

Posted by whats_up

2009-10-23 14:05:17

If that is the case, she should leave now. What is the point of having an open Commie in the White House when there are some many closet ones already there?

How can there be 259 people online right now and none of the threads can get more than about two dozen posts per day?

Sockpuppets for cretinous, groundhog and frankie the child molester probably amount to at least 250 of those accounts.

Anybody in the RWN community know how long it should take to run a virus scan on a 40 gig hard drive with about 14 gigs of free space? I've been running a Panda scan on another computer here for over 3 hours now and it says it's only 37% complete! I know this isn't necessarily the place for computer expertise, but it's certainly the place to go for opinion on everything.

We will see at the end of the year wont we Baud.

Posted by whats_up 2009-10-23 16:36:13

At the end of the year, when this loser is still there, both you and Obama will be making excuses for her lie, while you lecture us on some obscure Republican that did this years ago to justify your deliberate lie.

Captain Hadley, you are trespassing on private property.

While I hate to see that Stan got banned, as I often agreed with his assesment of the issues (if not of his fellow posters), I do think he has long been in violation of the rule against excessive flaming, and over the last few months he has hurt the quality of debate here more than he has helped it.

I have no idea why ninerdog would have been banned, he barely even posted around here anymore. Dammit, I was needing to get a recipe from him for how to make green chile stew.

And TR, if that's really you, I'm pretty surprised you would show up here after all the times you pledged, on your honor, that you'd stay gone if ever banned. While I agreed with (what I think are) Hawkin's reasons for banning you, I did believe you to be a man of your word.

I do think he has long been in violation of the rule against excessive flaming…

Posted by President_Friedman 2009-10-23 18:36:37

Again, I need to ask something here President_Friedman. What do you consider excessive flaming? Is it worse than that showed daily here by Liberals? Is it worse that RealPolitik talking about sex with children?

What did this person do that you consider to be excessive. I ask for two reasons: That I am not above loosing my temper and do not want to suffer their fate. And that I want to see what it takes to get banned around here. It seems some people can say little to nothing and get banned, while others enjoy special priviledges and can say whatever that want.

And I am also quite surprised at the amount of indignation throw at the person that returned from being banned (sorry, I forget his name and his post was deleted). A few weeks ago, I was questioning a person that admitted that he had been banned and simple made a new name and returned. Tom_pinko_Delay and others were posting that day and no one seemed to care. This person did the same? So what is the big deal?

While I hate to see that Stan got banned, as I often agreed with his assesment of the issues (if not of his fellow posters), I do think he has long been in violation of the rule against excessive flaming, and over the last few months he has hurt the quality of debate here more than he has helped it.

I completely disagree. I do agree with Stan on a wide variety of issues and I never noticed any incivility on his part. Until now, I didn't realize that he was banned but this excessive banning by John is leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

The problem is the trolls. Like many here, I used to enjoy baiting them and watching them run off into rants but that enjoyment is now gone. I believe RWN has slipped in the quality of the posts purely from the trolls. If this is intentional by John then I think he is being foolish. It's one thing to encourage more postings but eventually, people get tired of these nutjobs and leave.

I also think RWN is taking on too many daily topics.

I've also been busy on other projects and I'll be commenting less often here. I'm also getting my news from other sources.

Stan wasn't banned. He left to go to AT. He was tired of Mratha posts being allowed to stay…

"trolls", whatever they are, don't lead to less comments, they lead to more comments. I should know.

Only in the short term. Over the long term rampant trolling vastly reduces the number of comments as people who would normally contribute to debates choose to do so less and less because they know that soon a troll will show up to screw up the thread. The only ones left are the newcomers (most of whom stay for a short time then move on to other interests) and so-called "drive-by" commenters who drop in to leave a short comment then leave.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a proponent of total troll extermination. Even if such a thing were possible (which, if the entirety of the internet is any suggestion, it isn't) it would make threads a lot less fun. Too much trolling can wreck a good thread, but just enough trolling keeps things from getting boring.

What we really need is to get rid of certain trolls while preserving others. The word "troll" is actually quite appropriate here because it allows for a historical parallel. In old Scandinavian culture there were two types of "trolls". The brutish, unintelligent "Jætte" trolls of Norwegian culture and the more civilized and human-like "Vitterfolk" trolls of Swedish and Danish culture. The same thing is true for internet trolls. There are the more civilized internet trolls who will at the very least attempt to engage in real debate, even if they don't do very well. These are the trolls that need to be kept around. On the other hand you have the "brainless brute" internet trolls, such as Realpolitik, Jack_Schite, Hoggo, and the infamous M@rtha. These trolls don't even try to debate and instead act more like overgrown children. They don't argue, they throw temper tantrums. They don't respond to criticism, they jam their fingers in their ears and scream "LALALAI'MNOTLISTENINGLALALALALA!". These are the ones that kill threads and spark flame wars. People know that debating them isn't worth the trouble because whatever you say to them bounces harmfully off a solid wall of ignorance and stupidity they've constructed around themselves, so instead they just throw insults at the troll in a misguided attempt to make it leave.

Is he a man of his word? It would appear not.

Posted by Tom_pinko_Delay

2009-10-24 11:05:26

I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but…

STFU & DIAF.

"but this excessive banning by John is leaving a bad taste in my mouth."

agreed. I don't think Stan should have been banned, I was just saying that he had, IMO, broken the site rules by constantly and visciously flaming other posters. TR had said that Stan didn't do ANYTHING against the rules, and with that I disagree. But I doubt that is what got Stan banned. More likely it was his public encouragement for TR to come back here and start posting again. Niner's banning is the one that really confuses me. But since John doesn't comment on these things, we probably won't ever know for sure.

We see the true conservative colors coming out, when it is one of their's breaking the rules is okay, thanks for clearing that up jasamc.

Posted by whats_up

2009-10-24 12:43:35

F&CK YOU WU, thanks for painting ALL conservatives with that completely uncalled for attack. You can kindly GFY and the horse you road in on, you whiny little prick.

If what you are saying is true, mighty, then why is it that now we have the least amount of trolls in years, but there are less and less comments?

Because the damage is already done and it's going to last. Rampant trolling doesn't just ruin good threads, it discourages people from commenting at all. And it takes a good long while for that discouragement to wear off.

Besides, I'm not so sure there are less comments. We certainly have a lower number of comments per post than in the old days, but we also have a lot more posts per day than we used to. That, after all, was the whole point of recruiting guest posters, so John could get more content on the site. The result is that the same pool of commenters is being divided by a much larger number of posts, making it appear that the number of comments is dropping.