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Deficits only matter when a Democrat is in charge.

A tornado knocked down an Amazon warehouse wall on November 2, killing two contractors. There was no tornado warning from the weather service.

Two weeks later, the Washington Post reported on Amazon Prime delays in the region. Limited Prime Now service resumed about a week before Christmas.

A tornado knocked down an Amazon warehouse wall on November 2, killing two contractors. There was no tornado warning from the weather service.

Two weeks later, the Washington Post reported on Amazon Prime delays in the region. Limited Prime Now service resumed about a week before Christmas.

Years of watching Jurassic Park and I still love Silicon Graphics (it's a Crimson they have there - I have a Tezro and 3 other SGIs), the Mac Quadra 700 (I have two of them), and Thinking Machines supercomputers (hehe, I don't own one of these!). I love that freakin' movie.

I don't think there's a conspiracy, but I *do* believe that, a few years ago, everyone sort of tacitly agreed that it would be good to have Russia as an enemy.

First (a couple of years ago) we heard about unspecified attacks on "critical infrastructure" by "Russian state-sponsored actors".

Then after the election it was "Russians meddled in the election", followed by "Russians hacked the election"

(It's on Wikipedia, so it must be true!) .

Then 17 intelligence agencies confirmed that the Russians hacked the election. Including, and I'm not making this up, Coast Guard Intelligence.

Thenn there is the infamous pee pee document

Of course the Mueller investigation is onto something, because... if there's nothing there why is Mueller still investigating?

Trump meeting with Putin is treason and...

Trump's treason was confirmed.

The thing is, the timing of the Steele dossier is inconsistent with the Russian narrative. If Hillary had known about the dossier during the campaign, she would have moved heaven and Earth to get it in the public eye before the election. The fact that she *didn't* implies that she was certain of winning the election, and the dossier was prepared for a different purpose.

There's no really good evidence that the Russian government is involved with any of the hacking, except to say "That's something they would do". It's the fallacy of the reversed conditional,

I think what we're seeing is a long-term narrative to (eventually) justify a conflict with Russia.

...and Trump stuck a pin in that by meeting with Putin and starting a normal political relationship.

(Probably every response to this post will call me out as a Russian puppet, use foul insults, or predict Trump going to federal prison. Ignore those posts - the ones to read are ones that have a reasoned argument, citing facts, hopefully with links backing up facts, and painting a believable picture of an alternate explanation.)

Something which is easy to do in anger, or accidentally, or just out of annoyance....not to get at the people who are determined to kill you no matter what. It's to get at the people who don't, but who with a gun might kill you anyway.

Gun laws don't stop those kinds of crimes because those people obtain guns legally.

FYI: Take Baltimore city, for example. Most of the gun crime in the country is committed by individuals who:
* Went out of their way to get a gun illegally ahead of time
* Were already criminals
* Had a plan in mind before they even obtained the gun
* Were committing gang violence

Especially Ellicott City this weekend.

And the CO river is not drying up. It's being sucked up.

Typically gun bullet marks are registered, so police can identify the gun. It doesn't work perfectly, but it helps a lot.

Yeah works great!

http://www.baltimoresun.com/ne...

https://gunowners.org/fs0203.h...

Privacy for all, or privacy for none.

Allowing specific exceptions for anyone opens holes that can not be closed.

You seem to be under the mistaken impression that police don't lie to get warrants, but they do:

• http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nypd-cops-accused-lying-search-warrant-grand-jury-article-1.2974872
• http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-ci-officer-perjury-20131120-story.html

And you also seem to believe that police are trustworthy, unfortunately, they're not: https://www.denverpost.com/2016/09/28/across-us-police-officers-abuse-confidential-databases/

Since I'm not a smart man, it seems something similar is already done in Virginia. Granted, the road is not "privately owned", but it is privately run and they have a form of the compromise that I outlined above in place - with the addition of free passage for HOV.

Judge James A. Wynn Jr. was nominated by Clinton and renominated by Obama. He has been the democrat's 4th Circuit court go-to for political activism since 2011 and he personally has been accused of playing politics in law since 2001.

Please take into consideration that I am a politically independent academic researcher. If anything I should be pro democrat, but critical thinking comes first.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/....
http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2...
http://www.baltimoresun.com/ne...
https://www.nccivitas.org/2016...
http://www.charlotteobserver.c...
http://www.nationalreview.com/...
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05...
http://womblencappellate.blogs...
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
https://www.lawfareblog.com/ju...

When the democratic party wants something political done by the judicial branch. His name and opinions come up. He puts aside the law in favor of party. Lawyers and jurisprudence experts have been talking about it for a long time. This is merely the most recent and high-profile. Either he feels emboldened to ignore his duty (Why did he not go after the equally Gerrymandered democratic states while citing the equal protections clause?) or feels that he is at risk of being replaced.

Yeah, that's why there's no legal challenges to Maryland's gerrymandering at all. Oh, wait...

Supreme Court agrees to hear Maryland redistricting case

advanced healthcare, the emergence of new forms of industries, a chance for every child to get an education, managed use of energy,

All those things listed... not one of them has low hanging fruit that is addressed by "faster internet". Healthcare is a big, expensive mess - and that is not because hospitals and doctors' offices can't get fast internet. Education is an absolute shitshow in all but a few states, and that has nothing to do with the internet. Energy use monitoring consists of low-bandwidth wireless meters that benefit not at all from fiber. I'm sure that industries will pop up to take advantage of subsidized internet, just as industries pop up when there is subsidized water, electricity, etc. Even subsidized shit.

would resolve most cases of police brutality almost instantly.

Unfortunately it is usually resolved in favor of the police. When evidence goes missing, it is treated as missing, no matter how questionable the circumstances. Take this case for example, when a Baltimore police officer allegedly raped a woman, the condom vanished from the evidence locker, and the prosecutors moved to continue the case without the DNA evidence. This stuff is scary!

What did the Russians do?

It is a bit early to tell but considering yesterdays FBI raids and "random internet comments" from people tangentially involved in the industry it appears as if Russians were doing money laundering through Republican campaign consultants. FBI raids office of Republican campaign consultant in Annapolis

We also know that US banks refuse to deal with Trump so he gets his money from Russian "investors". Eric Trump Reportedly Bragged About Access to $100 Million in Russian Money

Given that Russia started to kill off "people involved in the US election hack" soon after Trump was elected it isn't very far fetched that Trump, through Flynn, handed over information about US agents.

I don't think you're being honest. I can't think of a state that requires anything definitive.

You must be dishonest, so dishonest, you don't think anybody has heard of Voter ID.

Somehow that's racist. Black people they tell us can't either get an ID or they can't be trusted to have it on election day. I'd think they're the racist ones saying black people are so stupid and irresponsible, however somehow it's not.

Nothing racist about saying that IDs are deliberately made hard to get for many people, due to mysteriously shutting down locations, only opening them at certain hours, and other effects.

Maybe it's just the black people that are also Democrats, which seems consistent.

Yep, that's what happened in North Carolina.

I have a voter reg card, I've never been asked for it nor any other identification in the 30+ years I've been voting. Not once. I've lived in three different counties. Same thing.

Counties are not states. See

Here are the dead voting - http://watchdog.org/57643/md-d...

Then you read the article, and it says:

"At least two dead voters showed up to vote at least once in a Maryland general election between 2004 and 2008, according to a voter registration watchdog group that has reviewed thousands of voter records this year, 1 percent of the rolls in the largest counties."

According to them. But...

"The group – Election Integrity Maryland – filed a complaint with the State Board of Elections Aug. 30. The group said it found several potential dead voters, voters who registered after they had died and a living Maryland resident who has been voting twice in elections for years."

But potential is the key word.

Here's another article:

Which says other things.

http://articles.baltimoresun.c... - in this case they were able to prove in court a lot of dead people voted. The Democratic judge didn't care. He didn't invalidate the results even though it's clear the ballot box was stuffed and Sourbrey lost by less than 6000 votes.

No, they weren't able to make that proof.

Again, from your own article:

"But others, including city elections administrator Barbara Jackson, said incorrect registrations are common in Baltimore and not necessarily evidence of fraud. Many people fail to notify the election board when they move and continue to vote from their old address, she said."

"The Sun did locate one voter identified by the Sauerbrey campaign, Ora L. Lewis, who listed 913 Whitelock St., a building that was razed several months ago, as her home address on her voter registratio

I don't think you're being honest. I can't think of a state that requires anything definitive. Somehow that's racist. Black people they tell us can't either get an ID or they can't be trusted to have it on election day. I'd think they're the racist ones saying black people are so stupid and irresponsible, however somehow it's not. Maybe it's just the black people that are also Democrats, which seems consistent. I have a voter reg card, I've never been asked for it nor any other identification in the 30+ years I've been voting. Not once. I've lived in three different counties. Same thing.
I found an illegal working at a construction site. He said Maryland hooked him right up to vote when they gave him a license. He even said he's not here legally, they didn't care. Motor voter at work. Another guy from Virginia also said he was hooked right up to vote. I talked to a construction foreman from Arizona, he said it was very common there.

Here are the dead voting - http://watchdog.org/57643/md-d...

http://articles.baltimoresun.c... - in this case they were able to prove in court a lot of dead people voted. The Democratic judge didn't care. He didn't invalidate the results even though it's clear the ballot box was stuffed and Sourbrey lost by less than 6000 votes.

Amazing thing, when you die, you always vote for Democrats. Funny how that is. I don't recall ever seeing anyone accusing a dead person voting for Republicans.

Here you go you stupid shit.
http://articles.baltimoresun.c...

I used his search above, "Clinton don't talk to military", and added "-trump" when the first page of results were all about Hillary Clinton instead of Bill Clinton.

That link was the third link after that very simple search. You stupid shit.

Short of deploying the MD National Guard, there is no policing that will have any effect some of these war-torn neighborhoods in Baltimore. Make no mistake -- this is just as bad as South Side Chicago. The gangs absolutely control not only the streets, but the jails too. Witnesses are ruthlessly threatened, and any cooperation with police results in violent reprisal. The stop snitching culture rules all. Most kids have no fathers present and the idea of education itself is ridiculed. The gang banger MO now is to walk up to someone in broad daylight and unload the high capacity magazine of your large-caliber handgun into your victim's head (yeah, despite some of the most rigorous gun laws in the nation including a ban on such magazines). After a hot weekend in the summer, you often end up with a body count inline with Falluja or Aleppo, Because no one cooperates, often camera footage is the only evidence available to help catch these thugs. Unless forces from outside the city decide to stop this cycle of violence by a) ending the "war on drugs" and b) truly deciding that "Black Lives Matter," therefore gangs destroying black neighborhoods are incompatible with civilization itself, then absolutely nothing will change, ever. Though the surveillance program should have been disclosed, I cannot fault the city for thinking outside of the box and trying to gain some sort of assistance in combating this horrific violence. Please take a look at this article from the Baltimore Sun published this AM to get some perspective on *why* stuff like this is even considered.

Who stores passwords in clear these days ?

You've apparently never worked on a project for a government agency.

They're typically a combination of right-up-to-date (on things which you can just spend money on and it shows up, like a brand new laptop and monitor every year) and 20-30+ years behind (on things which require actual policy/best practices/technology knowledge).

It doesn't shock me at all that the FBI help desk is as described. I'm a little more familiar with the IRS. In 1991 they were spending $8 Billion to modernize from their 1950s/60s system. By 1997 the IRS was already on their second or third failed "modernization" project, that one failed to the tune of $4 Billion. As recently as 2013 they were still failing to migrate from "1960s" technology to a relational database system.

Multiply that by all the other government agencies

Quote:

Of 3,555 federal IT projects that cost at least $10 million, only 6 percent were a success, according to a study by the Standish Group. In addition, 52 percent of large projects were deemed "challenged," meaning they didn't meet user expectations, went over budget, or ran late. All of the remaining projects - 42 percent - were outright failures.

And that's just quick news stories/studies from 5 minutes of Google search reading.

Consider that AFAIK, (this being 9/11 today, its pertinent) since we reported it to them 15+ years ago, none of the Air Traffic Control radar installations have any physical security and they're still running an OS from 20+ years ago that anyone can walk up to and make modifications to. At one point, the Dept. of Agriculture turned off all their firewalls to rely on IDS only because it was too inconvenient to have to keep punching holes for more ports through them.... the stories go on and on!

Who stores passwords in clear these days ?

You've apparently never worked on a project for a government agency.

They're typically a combination of right-up-to-date (on things which you can just spend money on and it shows up, like a brand new laptop and monitor every year) and 20-30+ years behind (on things which require actual policy/best practices/technology knowledge).

It doesn't shock me at all that the FBI help desk is as described. I'm a little more familiar with the IRS. In 1991 they were spending $8 Billion to modernize from their 1950s/60s system. By 1997 the IRS was already on their second or third failed "modernization" project, that one failed to the tune of $4 Billion. As recently as 2013 they were still failing to migrate from "1960s" technology to a relational database system.

Multiply that by all the other government agencies

Quote:

Of 3,555 federal IT projects that cost at least $10 million, only 6 percent were a success, according to a study by the Standish Group. In addition, 52 percent of large projects were deemed "challenged," meaning they didn't meet user expectations, went over budget, or ran late. All of the remaining projects - 42 percent - were outright failures.

And that's just quick news stories/studies from 5 minutes of Google search reading.

Consider that AFAIK, (this being 9/11 today, its pertinent) since we reported it to them 15+ years ago, none of the Air Traffic Control radar installations have any physical security and they're still running an OS from 20+ years ago that anyone can walk up to and make modifications to. At one point, the Dept. of Agriculture turned off all their firewalls to rely on IDS only because it was too inconvenient to have to keep punching holes for more ports through them.... the stories go on and on!

About the quote - Damnit. I know better too.

About the bees - If you read any of this, you know it's not just me. It's not just this area. It's not even just this country. A lot of people are really concerned.

Another post I mention that my association saw around 75% loss this year in Southern Maryland. Of course it's a wag. Nobody counted numbers that I'm aware of. It's been going on for a while. Check out

http://www.baltimoresun.com/fe...

Get into it yourself. It's not hard. Just google for package bees and they'll set you right up.

Also, I am not sure what AC is talking about.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/ne...

Just because the Army canceled this program does not mean they have given up on balloon lifted radar installations.

Amen. On the exact opposite end of the spectrum, look at Baltimore -- another one of the poorly run cities you mention. It's been destroyed by decades of policies which caused the erosion of the tax base, massive spikes in violent crime, corruption of local officials who enrich themselves and their lobbyist and developer friends at the expense of the citizens, horrible schools with incompetent administrators, etc. -- ALL paid for by state and Federal subsidies, which means it's funded by people who have no say the continuation of the poor decisions which made the city terrible in the first place and who have zero chance to fix it. Oh, and speak out against this arrangement and you're immediately labeled a brown people-hating racist. Baltimore is such a shitty place to live that the city is now exporting their poor to the surrounding suburbs by buying houses there (which erodes the county tax base because no one pays any property taxes on those houses). It's insanity and has to stop. Cities need to be stand or fall on their own merits and budget -- let them fail if they are unsustainable, but don't force the rest of the country to fund this nonsense against their will.

I plan on starting a service called "nothing at all like a lawyer" where for a fee I will show up and defend you in court. Only I'll not know anything about the law, not be covered under any regulations, and bear no professional responsibility, so when your ass gets sent off to prison that's your damned problem.

and the judge sends you to jail for contempt of court with maybe a mistrial as well.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/ne...

You think DNA evidence alone is enough to convict for rape? Let me introduce you to Nelson Bernard Clifford, who managed to convince three juries in three years that three near-identical sets of allegations, with DNA evidence, were actually consensual sex. Fifth time turned out to be the charm for that guy. I suspect they won that one because he ran out of money for decent defense attorneys, not because their case was actually stronger.

The databases you mentioned are filled with files from shitty lawyers, generally over-worked public defenders who don't have the time to deal with evidentiary hearings and can't pay 23andme $10k to send their witness over to explain why the test doesn't work the way the prosecution says. Hell, most of the time a public defender won't have the budget to schedule a phone call with the guy at 23andme who would know which person you'd need to talk to to effectively rebuke a prosecution case.

You think DNA evidence alone is enough to convict for rape? Let me introduce you to Nelson Bernard Clifford, who managed to convince three juries in three years that three near-identical sets of allegations, with DNA evidence, were actually consensual sex. Fifth time turned out to be the charm for that guy. I suspect they won that one because he ran out of money for decent defense attorneys, not because their case was actually stronger.

The databases you mentioned are filled with files from shitty lawyers, generally over-worked public defenders who don't have the time to deal with evidentiary hearings and can't pay 23andme $10k to send their witness over to explain why the test doesn't work the way the prosecution says. Hell, most of the time a public defender won't have the budget to schedule a phone call with the guy at 23andme who would know which person you'd need to talk to to effectively rebuke a prosecution case.

There is a huge body of evidence that shows a hell of a lot of police abuse their powers and violate peoples constitutional and legal rights all the time

link?

Here's one link for you: in 2006 -- almost a decade before the Baltimore Uprising this spring -- a grand jury in Baltimore found 21,721 meritless arrests of African-Americans over a one year period.

Source from CDC (as of 2011).

Source from IIHS (as of 2013).

This will save lives. Even with excellent drivers behind the wheel.

Maryland just abolished the parallel parking requirement, because of the growing moron population. Automated safety systems can come none too soon.

>> What "rapid increase of murder"??

How's life in the country? Here's some 2015/2014 stats...it's becoming a major political issue for those of us in and around cities.

Chicago: 26 percent increase - http://www.chicagotribune.com/...
Milwaukee: hit 2014's total in July! - http://www.jsonline.com/news/c...
Baltimore: deadliest month in 40 years - http://www.baltimoresun.com/ne...
New York: Mayor under fire for murder jump - http://www.politifact.com/pund...

You're Australian. You people find specifically invent vaguely insulting ethnic terms and then use then to refers to yourselves (are you a Pom, a Wop, or other, Mr Harlequin80?). You also don't have a large West Indian minority, so the Jamaican accent angle not occur to you.

OTOH, in the states:
http://www.slate.com/articles/...
http://articles.baltimoresun.c...
http://www.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/Mov...

You'll note that even over here it was not uncontroversial to call Jar-Jar racist, but if you were paying attention to pop culture in the US in '99 you would have had a position on this.

I have never heard of anyone who thought Jar Jar Binks reminded them of black characterisations. Nor has that ever occurred to me.

The racist nature of the Jar Jar character was a big story back in 1999, when the movie came out. Here's an opinion piece from the late Baltimore Sun columnist Gregory Kane, that was published back then: Seeing racism in Jar Jar is seeing phantom menace, June 5, 1999

My number above is wrong, it is over 100, not 1000.

http://data.baltimoresun.com/b...

I am posting to correct myself, the figure is more like 100 shootings.

http://data.baltimoresun.com/b...

It was also apparently 9 people in SC, I got the number wrong there too.

1) The FBI found just cause to suspect a crime; what the subject was doing appeared to be money laundering, which - as it should - triggers an investigation.

Absolutely not. He is not accused of money laundering, there is no evidence at all that he is laundering money .

He is accused of structuring, which is making many small transactions instead of one big transaction to avoid filling out the paperwork that goes along with one big transaction.

Structuring is one of the bogus laws often used to prosecute innocent people. For example, a store might have a clause in their insurance policy that says they won't store more than $10k in cash on the premises (or if they do, it's not covered for theft). So to avoid that the store owner makes regular bank deposits when the cash on hand grows to $5k.

Are they structuring? Well, there have been cases exactly like that. The govt seizes the funds and you are SOL: http://articles.baltimoresun.c...

A longer explanation:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

3) They found no crime, and thus did not prosecute for it. However, in the process, the subject deliberately interfered with the investigation and made false statements to the police, which is a crime.

Which is why you should never talk to the police. Ever.

Martha Stewart did the same thing - she was investigated for insider trading, and there was no evidence to support that. Stewart was convicted of lying to investigators while being investigated for insider trading.

You can't charge someone with having killed "someone" unless you name that someone.

Eh, I'm pretty sure you can. Here's one such case

You can't even charge them if you have a name of the murdered, unless you have a time and place named.

Again, that seems pretty unlikely.

Do you mean like these poor, poor underfunded schools?

http://articles.baltimoresun.c...

Stop making excuses. Shit people are shit and no amount of money thrown at them will change that.

I remember this case from MD where an off duty cop pulled a gun on a speeding motorcyclist. They arrested the motorcycle operatorr for "wiretapping" because his helmet cam was filming the encounter. The judge ruled that cops have no expectation of privacy during a traffic stop.

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.co...

Yet we're told that its necessary to equip police like they're fighting a war, suspend civil liberties and arrest hundreds/thousands all because of the massive amounts of footage of the same 2-5 burning cars and 5-15 damaged businesses probably caused by no more than a few dozen miscreants.

You might want to get your figures correct;

Baltimore Police said 235 arrests were made overnight -- 201 adults and 34 juveniles. Twenty officers were injured in Monday night's violence.
The mayor's office said the city's fire department dealt with fires in 144 vehicles and 15 buildings. Baltimore police said one person is in critical condition after one of those fires.

That is just fires. Then there is the looting that did not generate fires.

So you have greatly exaggerated arrests and greatly under reported vehicle fires.

Unfortunately, the poor are forced into substandard schools........

The per pupil funding in Baltimore is one of the highest in the United States.

http://articles.baltimoresun.c...

I don't mind politicians trying something new, but this really does bring down the class and dignity of the presidency. Going on the late night comedy shows was awkward enough (at best), but this is downright distasteful. With this administration, though, this is just par for the course.

You haven't seen it yet, so why be so quick to judge? Also, pundits were saying that Bill Clinton's appearance playing sax on The Arsenio Hall Show was a mistake, but look what happened:.

Clinton's saxophone-playing appearance on "The Arsenio Hall Show" in June, though, was widely mocked at the time by many members of the we-know-everything gang covering national politics.

It wasn't dignified. It demeaned presidential politics. It "coarsened" the discourse of democracy, to use the language that syndicated columnist George Will seems to use to describe anything that isn't white, male and borrowed from ancient Rome or Greece. Clinton was dubbed the "Elvis candidate," in part because he was playing (or rather gamely trying to play) Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel."

Man, if Maryland public education is that bad, how bad must the other 49 states be?

If the USSR production facilities couldn't keep up with the demand to feed its workforce and generate more efficient equipment... how could their economy seriously keep up with us revving up our military industrial complex to new heights?

oops. I goofed up copy/paste and can't seem to fix it quickly. Baltimore Sun article at: http://www.baltimoresun.com/ne...

I have no idea what the real story is,

There is a less hysterical piece at NewsOne, also this from the Washington Times. There is also an opposing opinion in the Baltimore Sun.

Does that help?

"We've had one Republican governor since the 1960s," said John Fiastro Jr., chair of the Baltimore County Republican Central Committee and a leader in the open primary camp. "Some would say that allowing independents to vote would be the death knell in our party. I would say with the kind of record we have, we should study every available option."

The idea has inflamed opposition in the party's more conservative ranks, whose members predict partisan shenanigans by Democrats and a dilution of Republican values if independent voters could participate in primaries.

"If you let non-Republicans in, then you're handing over the party," said Larry Helminiak, second vice president of the Maryland GOP. "Why turn the election over to them?"

Internal bickering accompanied the Maryland Republicans' decision to open the 2000 primary election to independents, a move the party did not widely advertise at the time and has not seriously revisited until now.

You may think it doesn't happen but ask the women in your group how many times people have treated them like children, dismissed them, or behaved in a really creepy way even after being asked to stop **. Ask any reasonably well-known geek girl to show you her "death & rape threat" tweet or email folder and you'll see hundreds or thousands of them.

Absolutely. It's significantly telling that the woman who started the #yesallwomen hashtag trend on Twitter shut down her account after countless numbers of rape threats.

And yeah, the backlash to that, the point behind the #notallmen tag, and the strident denials in the comments here are all correct: not all men make those threats, or treat women poorly or dismissively...

But we've all seen it and failed to speak up. Like you said:

** I've personally seen it many times; once I even witnessed a guy ask a female geek how many guys she had slept with, then get righteously offended and angry when she said that was an inappropriate question. (To my own younger self's shame I did not step in and call him out at the time - something I regret).

And like Chu said:

I’ve known situations where I knew something was going on but didn’t say anything—because I didn’t want to stick my neck out, because some vile part of me thought that this kind of thing was “normal,” because, in other words, I was a coward and I had the privilege of ignoring the problem.

I've failed to speak up, too, and so has every man. And as you note, that's the real problem. Sociopaths make up a tiny percentage of the population - they're the few men that the #notallmen tag refers to - but they're really good at blending in, particularly when we don't speak up about this stuff, or worse, dismiss it, deny it, or laugh about it.

As an analogy, consider how many Slashdotters are anti-cop... We readily acknowledge that not all cops are corrupt assholes who falsify evidence and beat suspects, but we rightly criticize the so-called "good" cops who don't do that, but also don't speak up and maintain the thin blue line. The cop who doesn't take part in the beating but merely watches, or who doesn't say anything when another cop deletes a cop-incriminating recording from a dash camera or cell phone isn't the bad apple in the barrel, but they've sure been spoiled by that association.

Well, that's us when we don't speak up when we see someone treating women badly. Maybe we can protest that we aren't doing it, but we're spoiled by the association. Our thin blue line is the "brocode" or membership as "one of the guys", and it can be really difficult to face the peer pressure against speaking up, and it's so much easier to say silent, or laugh nervously, or do anything other than say "that's not right". But if we're not saying it, then we're no better those those "good" cops who cover for the bad ones.

It couldn't have anything to do with this (CIA using polio vaccinations as cover) could it?

http://articles.baltimoresun.c...

The state refuses to stop spending more money each year than the last and is addicted to revenue like it's crack. According to Gallup, 67% percent of Marylanders think their state taxes are too high and 47% of them literally want to leave the state.

We have a Toyota RAV4 with the keyless technology, and it's worked pretty well, but there was one night when I tried to start it while a train was passing about 200 feet away. There must have been some pretty good RFI from the train, because the car would not start until the train was gone. So, I'm wondering if we could find ourselves in a situation in which solar flares or some new use of radio by the military might suddenly render all the motor vehicles inoperable. (It's not like this kind of thing hasn't happened before.) Then, too, there's the problem that these keys seem to be notoriously easy to hack.