Dumbest comment I've seen on the Internet in a while. And that's saying something.

See above. SpectraWatt and Evergreen Solar did NOT receive federal loan guarantees (Evergreen received no federal assistance at all). AES Eastern was a coal subsidiary of AES that went bankrupt, not the project funded by DoE. Beacon is probably the closest you get on that list, and they paid back their loan.

When I get the time, I'll look up the others.

My suggestion would be: perhaps before you get your "blood boiling", you should consider NOT taking what the right wing says about Obama at face value. They have a strong vested interest in generating scandal where there is none.

Well said. It should also be remembered (or learned, for those who don't know) that FCC is considered an "independent agency", meaning that while they're technically in the executive branch, their leadership is not part of the Cabinet. They are more responsive to Congress than to the White House.

Spectra Watt did not receive a loan guarantee (they received a small grant). Evergreen Solar received no federal assistance. Uni-Solar is still in business, and at any rate did NOT receive a loan guarantee. I'd tell you to take your own advice, but given your anonymous sniping, I truly doubt accuracy is among your values.

Actually, I'm talking about the "this is all a way to enact gun control!" crap that eternally comes from the NRA.

I'm sorry, but this simplistic view is laughable. After nearly 200,000 documents and several investigations, no evidence that any political pressure was applied to approve the loan has been found.

None.

So no, it wasn't "team Obama" -- it was career feds, doing what they're supposed to do: review loan applications and decide whether to approve or deny.

Some loan recipients go bust. That's the way it is -- which you'd likely admit, if an honest appraisal of the situation were your main goal.

I'm all for fairness -- I don't know of anyone who thinks F&F, in retrospect, was a bright idea. Some folks who knew about it probably thought it was a bad idea at the time, too. But the idea itself was a screw-up from the get-go (under Bush), and considering a lot of the noise about F&F is coming in the form of conspiracy theories from the NRA, I'm not in total agreement that it somehow makes "Obama much, much worse than the last guy".

F&F began under Bush. And I'm aware only of one solar company that received a grant, yet later failed (not sure what a business failing has to do with anything, that DOES happen in a market economy). Perhaps you can elaborate?

Exactly. Moreover, despite the implications of the report in The Daily Caller (which has right-wing leanings), there doesn't seem to be much "there", there.

...but I have my doubts that a "report" by The Daily Caller had much to do with anything (regardless of its accuracy). Lightsquared's problems seem to run a little deeper than that.

As an obvious right winger, I don't think you have the first clue what "cognitive dissonance" actually is, much less recognize who should suffer from it.

aaaaand that's "exhibit A" for the kind of attitude that leads me to think publishing the blueprint for a viral doomsday machine is not a smart idea.

Thank you for demonstrating a form of fatalism that I'd really NOT like to see in anyone with the plans for this virus.

99% of people and researchers who saw this research would use it for good, or would try to. Unfortunately, the true ratio is irrelevant. Out of the billions of people on earth, all it would take is one competent person who wanted (for whatever reason) to wreak real havoc. If the virus in question maintained the lethality that H5N1 has displayed in bird-to-human transmission, you're literally looking at billions of lives at risk.

This is one of the most relevant comments on this entire story (though Wikipedia puts the current human mortality figure at around 60%).

No, we don't want to censor information. But we DO, in certain cases.

No, in general it's not good for society if scientific information is withheld. But if this baby gets out, would we still HAVE a society? This is truly a nightmare scenario: a virus with mortality rates comparable to ebola, as transmissible as the common flu.

I truly do understand the arguments for putting information out there. But think for a moment about what happens if a suicidal person gets ahold of this, or a religious zealot who thinks it won't affect him or his flock, or some other nut who believes it won't affect him or that society is too sick to go on, etc., etc. All it would take is one.

We're not talking about someone grabbing a high powered rifle and gunning down a few people in a public square (as bad as that can be). We're talking potentially billions dead.