Skype began as a very cool service. I used it and recommended it - a lot.

Skype (originally Sky peer-to-peer) was a peer to peer voice system, which means that there was no central computer controlling everything. It was also encrypted, though the internal details were never revealed.

But, as will a lot of good tech ideas, the developers were persuaded to sell it. In this case, to eBay in 2005. (For $2.5 billion, which is a lot of persuasion!) Then, after doing very little with the tech for several years, eBay sold it to Microsoft for $8.5 billion in 2011.

That's when the serious trouble began. Here are the highlights:

The number of extraordinary gaffes committed by Obambi has been proliferating of late.  Among those just this month are not knowing Afghans don't speak Arabic and that his own state of Illinois doesn't border Kentucky.  Most incredible of all is his telling an audience, "I have now been to 57 states with one left to go," then says that one is "Alaska and Hawaii."

No matter how exhausted from campaigning you are, you don't make a mistake like that under any normal circumstances.  Saying there are 57 states - actually 58, or is it 59? - is such an egregiously stupid error that it is evidence of brain malfunction.

A neuroscientist with years of research into drug abuse and brain chemistry tells To The Point that the behavior exhibited by Obama is consistent with the use of either amphetamines or cocaine. 

In his book, Dreams From My Father, Obambi admitted his drug use when young:  "Pot (marijuana) had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow (cocaine) when you could afford it. Not smack (heroin), though."

Teen-age drug use isn't, of course, evidence for its use in one's 40s.  But when someone who may be elected President of the United States starts behaving suspiciously, then it's justified to ask that those suspicions be allayed.

Thus, To The Point calls for Barack Hussein Obama to be drug tested.

My friend and Marine ‘Nam vet Bill Gregory is just blown away by the User Forum comments regarding Thompson Bummer.  "What an intelligent, insightful group of people you have as subscribers!" he effuses, and I can only agree. 

He was especially impressed with a new commentator with the wonderful forum name of "melliefluous," and those of such regulars as John Nehring (johnwss), Chris Baldi (cephran), Marco, "gary," and "prosenberg,"  among many others.   "Great thought-provoking exchanges," notes Bill.

Our TTP Salon is turning out to be a terrific place to discuss the pros and cons of the 2008 presidential candidates (mostly the Republicans, for what, really, is there to say about the goofy folks the Dems are serving up?). 

I have to say my disappointment with Fred Thompson at his speech last Saturday (5/12) was tempered a bit with his devastating quick put-down of Michael Moore on YouTube.  I would still love to see him declare and participate in the GOP candidate debates.

The debate last Tuesday (5/15) in South Carolina (here is the transcript) was intensely revealing.  Folks saw that Duncan Hunter would be A President to Watch America's Six, and that Ron Paul, like all libertarians, is not.

But what the debate most clearly exposed is John McCain as the Perfect Liberal.

News item:  New York Post, December 27, 2013:  Women Comprise Biggest Opposition to Obamacare

OBAMA: That's impossible. I'm polling below zero?

WHITE HOUSE POLLSTER: I've never seen anything like it, sir. The "negative numbers" poll hypothesis was discarded a generation ago. The only explanation is that even the imaginary voters we regularly survey to boost your ratings are down on you.

OBAMA: Intolerable. I want my blocs back. Women--my women!-- have slip-slided away. HHS?

KATHLEEN SEBELIUS: We're paying for abortions now, Mr. President. Regain women's loyalty by paying them to have abortions, say $500 per protoplasmic blob.  And think of the benefits to humanity of all the fetal stem cells we'd harvest.

OBAMA: Make it so. George?

SOROS: Giff generous bonus for twins und triplets, zir.

OBAMA: Excellent! New fertility and abortion clinics will spring up all over the country to cash in, meaning an uptick in the next year's jobs reports.

JOE BIDEN:

For my summer holidays I have been mostly reading Atlas Shrugged. Ayn Rand has her faults but, boy, was she prescient.  She wrote it back in the 1950s.

One of the things she foresaw was the current nonsensical, dishonest, canting campaign against shale gas. In Atlas, it takes the form of Rearden Metal, the miracle technology which is going to transform the US economy if only the progressives will let it. But of course, Rand's fictional progressives don't want Reardon Metal to succeed any more than their modern, real-life equivalents want shale gas to succeed.

Why not? For the same rag-bag of made-up, disingenuous scare-mongering reasons which progressives have used to justify their war on progress since time immemorial: it's unfair, it uses up scarce resources, it might be dangerous.

As they are attempting to do now in Britain's West Sussex, and have succeeded in doing in New York.

Here's a relevant excerpt from Rand.