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Other people have told our Homeland Defenders lots of things but they don't seem to listen. Here is a good write up about the impracticality of binary liquids. Here is a story about stealing food from babies at the airport. Of course, arrest without charges, torture, baby killing, censorship and deploying foreign mercenaries against civilians is all bad, OK? It's not about defense it's about control and you, citizen, are the enemy.

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Saturday that Democratic leaders in the House are blocking key intelligence legislation so trial lawyers can sue phone companies that helped the government eavesdrop on suspected terrorists after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Terrorists are plotting new attacks against America "at this very moment," Bush said in renewing his call for the House to pass legislation needed to renew the intelligence law that expired last weekend.

The Bush administration said yesterday that the government "lost intelligence information" because House Democrats allowed a surveillance law to expire last week, causing some telecommunications companies to refuse to cooperate with terrorism-related wiretapping orders.

But hours later, administration officials told lawmakers that the final holdout among the companies had relented and agreed to fully participate in the surveillance program, according to an official familiar with the issue.

But even if telecoms were refusing to cooperate, the reason for their refusal was not because they don't have retroactive immunity, but rather, it's because there is alleged uncertainty over the legality of current surveillance requests, and uncertainty over the ongoing validity of the prospective immunity provided by the PAA, because the PAA expired. If the PAA had been extended, they would be completely protected with prospective immunity for future surveillance cooperation. And, of course, the PAA would not have expired had Congressional Democrats had their way -- they wanted to extend it until they could agree to a new bill. Thus, any alleged refusal on the part of telecoms to cooperate is exclusively the fault of Bush and House Republicans for forcing expiration of the PAA. That's just true as a matter of basic logic.

But leave all of that aside for a moment. Since Mike Mukasey himself just said in this letter that spying outside of FISA is "illegal," and since it's indisputable that the Bush administration did just that for years, doesn't that compel him as Attorney General to commence a criminal investigation into this "illegal" conduct?

Those awards are nice honors to their deserving recipients. But they don't help any activism except preaching to the choir: people who already tune in to EFF. The mass media (which is EFF's natural enemy most of the time) doesn't even notice these nerd/wonk awards.

What the EFF should do to get itself press, more members, and actually push hard back for freedom would be making some ads to counter the telco propaganda that their award winners are persecuted by. I bet Mark Klein would be a good cameo in an ad, waving his EFF award or not.

The House has already indicated that it wants amnesty rejected, by passing their version of the bill without it, even as amnesty faced very vocal (though ultimately failed) opposition in the Senate. And John Conyers (D-MI), Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to head White House lawyer Fred Fielding insisting that there's no basis for amnesty. The House Intelligence Committee also rejected amnesty in approving the House bill. The Senate counterpart to Conyers' committee, the Senate Judiciary Committee, was the one that produced a Senate bill rejecting amnesty (that failed to pass the Senate); the Senate committee chair Patrick Leahy (D-VT) denounced amnesty as his bill was defeated, in solidarity with the House provisions. House Speaker Pelosi helped rescue the House bill from an October attempt by Republicans to stop it. So I think the House version of this "RESTORE Act" is a serious attempt by the House (its Republican minority notwithstanding) to stop amnesty.

But you're right not to have "faith" in politicians. Faith is a way of knowing something that can't be proven, and no one can know what these liars will do until after the check has cleared. But hope is different. It's a way of wanting something that hasn't been proven, fuel for doing something to get it. Which is why signing the petition to pressure the House to stand by its partial progress against amnesty is worth doing. Because giving up hope means being defeated, and that's how you help the forces against you win. Signing the petition is another small but useful blow against them.

John Edwards' ambulance-chasing was one thing.

Why not go all-out and complain about "jacuzzi cases"?

OTOH, Ron Paul is the #1 candidate for The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's idea of "technology", which is probably the Psychic Friends Network.

If only liberal Democrats cared about whether the government is stealing our own nuke secrets and selling them to threats like Pakistan and the Sauds, I'd certainly hope that (American) Slashdotters turned Slashdot into something like the Daily Kos.

What's "Democratic" about caring that your government is so corrupt that it threatens nuke war?

The precinct in which this occurred had hand counted paper ballots (according to TFA). Actually, the entire state voted with paper ballots. A minority of towns counted the paper ballots with scanners. But, I reapeat: the scanners weren't even used in this precinct. This means that diebold systems aren't at fault for those lost votes and that verification of the results across the entire state is possible with a recount by hand.

1) There is a paper trail in NH, even for those who voted on Diebold machines. You want to count the paper ballots? Count them.

A good article to read: http://dhinmi.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/1/10/02623/2264/85/434176

According the the above mentioned dailykos diary entry,

... voters in every town in New Hampshire cast their vote on a paper ballot, and in more than half of the towns in New Hampshire, the paper ballots are counted by hand.

Fewer than half the towns in New Hampshire tabulate votes with optical scanners. More than half the votes cast are counted by optical scanners, as most of the bigger cities and towns--including Manchester, Nashua, Portsmouth, Concord, Claremont, Hanover, Keene and Plymouth--use the scanners. But more municipalities count by hand. And as someone relatively well-versed in the voting patterns of New Hampshire, let me tell you there appear to be no discrepancies in the Clinton/Obama/Edwards votes between the towns that tabulate votes by scanning and those that count by hand. Obama won many of the larger towns--Keene, Hanover, Concord, Portsmouth, Lebanon, Plymouth, Durham. Clinton won others--Manchester, Nashua, Berlin, Gorham, Claremont.

It might also be worth recalling that Clinton led almost every NH poll for the whole year before Jan 8. And that anecdotally, a number of indepentdents say they were going choose democrat and vote for Obama, but since he had it in the bag they instead chose republican and voted for McCain. And that exit polling says Hillary got a big chunk of women's votes. In other words there are enough other explanations that the instant assumption of a stolen election is rather absurd. Can we mod the whole story down as a troll?

According the the above mentioned dailykos diary entry,

... voters in every town in New Hampshire cast their vote on a paper ballot, and in more than half of the towns in New Hampshire, the paper ballots are counted by hand.

Fewer than half the towns in New Hampshire tabulate votes with optical scanners. More than half the votes cast are counted by optical scanners, as most of the bigger cities and towns--including Manchester, Nashua, Portsmouth, Concord, Claremont, Hanover, Keene and Plymouth--use the scanners. But more municipalities count by hand. And as someone relatively well-versed in the voting patterns of New Hampshire, let me tell you there appear to be no discrepancies in the Clinton/Obama/Edwards votes between the towns that tabulate votes by scanning and those that count by hand. Obama won many of the larger towns--Keene, Hanover, Concord, Portsmouth, Lebanon, Plymouth, Durham. Clinton won others--Manchester, Nashua, Berlin, Gorham, Claremont.

It might also be worth recalling that Clinton led almost every NH poll for the whole year before Jan 8. And that anecdotally, a number of indepentdents say they were going choose democrat and vote for Obama, but since he had it in the bag they instead chose republican and voted for McCain. And that exit polling says Hillary got a big chunk of women's votes. In other words there are enough other explanations that the instant assumption of a stolen election is rather absurd. Can we mod the whole story down as a troll?

Every person in NH casts a paper ballot. Some are counted by electronic tabulating machines, but the paper ballots are still available for a recount. There is a big difference between an electronic voting machine (which typically don't have paper trails) and electronic tabulating machines. See this http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/1/10/02623/2264/85/434176 for a good discussion of why there was probably no fraud in the NH primary. The Ron Paul votes not being initially counted is another matter. Most likely just an incidence of human error.

1) There is a paper trail in NH, even for those who voted on Diebold machines. You want to count the paper ballots? Count them.
2) Vote discrepancies vs. pre-election polls are not prima facie evidence of election fraud.
3) Hillary Clinton was leading Obama in NH for the past year. Obama surged in the past week in NH, that's all. So her win didn't come out of nowhere.
4) Let's assume she DID rig the votes. From my point of view, it's good to have a Democratic candidate who can rig votes as well as the Republicans can, the better to win the election. :-)

A good article to read: http://dhinmi.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/1/10/02623/2264/85/434176

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/1/10/02623/2264/85/434176/

I posted a diary about his on Daily Kos. I argue that it's likely the delegate results understate Obama's support in Iowa.

The Iowa Caucuses are not winner-take-all, but nor are they "instant runoff." Instead, people get to see the results of the first round of voting before making their second choice.

In my precinct, and in many others, Obama supporters saw the strength of his support, and supported a second candidate in the final tally. Had they stood firm after being joined by second choices from other candidates who were not viable--as instant runoff would have required--Obama's win would have been by a much larger margin.

The Iowa results just don't reflect the raw popular support Obama saw on Thursday.

Ron Paul is Nuts...
"The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers."

[...]

Ron Paul is Still Nuts
* Ron Paul wants the US to withdraw from the UN or at least from UNESCO.
* Ron Paul has authored legislation saying that life begins at conception, to prevent federal money from being spent on family planning (that would include contraception), and has tried to amend the Constitution to "guarantee the right to life."
* Ron Paul has tried to repeal the Occupational Health and Safety Act, to abolish the minimum wage, and to eviscerate Social Security.
* Ron Paul wants guns in schools.
* Ron Paul has tried to repeal the Davis-Bacon Act to guarantee employees of federal contractors the prevailing wage and wants to make it easier to decertify a union.
* Ron Paul wants to amend the Constitution to end birthright citizenship.
* Ron Paul wants to dismantle the Federal Reserve and prepare for a return to the Gold Standard, which would destroy the economy.

Ron Paul is Nuts...
"The notion of a rigid separation between church and state has no basis in either the text of the Constitution or the writings of our Founding Fathers."

[...]

Ron Paul is Still Nuts
* Ron Paul wants the US to withdraw from the UN or at least from UNESCO.
* Ron Paul has authored legislation saying that life begins at conception, to prevent federal money from being spent on family planning (that would include contraception), and has tried to amend the Constitution to "guarantee the right to life."
* Ron Paul has tried to repeal the Occupational Health and Safety Act, to abolish the minimum wage, and to eviscerate Social Security.
* Ron Paul wants guns in schools.
* Ron Paul has tried to repeal the Davis-Bacon Act to guarantee employees of federal contractors the prevailing wage and wants to make it easier to decertify a union.
* Ron Paul wants to amend the Constitution to end birthright citizenship.
* Ron Paul wants to dismantle the Federal Reserve and prepare for a return to the Gold Standard, which would destroy the economy.

Thankfully, Chris Dodd (D-Jowls) will be leading a filibuster in the Senate. Let's hope other Senators join and support him (call your congresscritters!).

Here's a good outline of what will be going down.

By 'Environmental types' I meant the self-described environmental activists. The people who push their cause at the expense of all others. In Australia we have people blocking wind farms because it will hurt birds. I am not kidding. See the onshore section of this for a pointer. Here is another article for you. Google is good.

Even in Australia, I know that dailykos is known for it's fair and balanced reporting. You point me there and tell me to read it "before posting your rightwing talkradio gibberish." By right-wing do you mean the Liberals or the Nationals? They're our right-wing parties.

How do answer this quote? "The industry, like others, has suffered from rapidly increasing costs in recent times" (From your linked article) How about "Offshore wind is still more expensive than onshore" Onshore is the one people are complaining about, right.

There, are you happy now, or would you like some more attention?

Actually, the most obvious way to get past petroleum is not dirty, insecure, expensive nukes, but clean, safe, cheap wind turbines. Solar has a lot of promise, geothermal probably the best longterm prospects (though space-based solar is probably the most exciting), and lots of niches for biofuel.

But just keep in mind that US oil wells average about 10.5 barrels of crude per day (down from a peak about 18.5 in the early 1970s) at 3510Mj:bbl, burned at about 40% efficiency for about 171KW per US oil well (from a peak of 300KW). Which is enough to power about 35 US homes.

300KW is the about the smallest wind turbine in use commercially. Already. And the US is a leader in the wind turbine tech and industry, despite doing it without any real leadership, and competing with the vast subsidies to petrofuels and nukes.

But I guess when you're an expert in nukes, even though there's no money or fame left in opposing them, why not just flip sides - especially when there's so much bribe money, and you're so old now that you can hope that the waste won't hit the fan until after you're dead from something else.

Most everyone writing online recommended using S/MIME instead of GPG,

S/MIME is quite a bit worse, simply because an identity can only have one certifier. At least with OpenPGP, you can get multiple certs, thus requiring a conspiracy in order to do a MitM.

Whoever recommended you use S/MIME instead of GPG, probably considered security to be a very, very distant second priority, compared to some other value (probably Mail.app compatibility; I have that program here at work, and I don't see any OpenPGP support in it).

The question I could not answer is how trustworthy is this Thawte-issued "certificate"?

That's indeed a problem. You don't know. You probably don't know the name of a single person in that company, and you don't know their policies for protecting their signing key. Of course, at least you're asking (which is extremely cool and wise), but you're not going to get an answer.

For all you know, they might be vulnerable as Verisign. And with S/MIME, that means there is a single point of failure which can allow MitM.

Hardware manufacturers? How about certificate authorities?

If any of you think this is the least bit specious, the VeriSign website proudly proclaims that they will subcontract to telcos/ISPs that are ordered to eavesdrop in a "legal intercept" capacity. There is no other reason for VeriSign to be in that line of work unless they are using their ability as CA to stage undetectable MITM surveillance attacks.

I always turn to Comedy Central for my news and facts.

Ok, friend, let me explain to to you real slow...

Conservatives often complain about a "liberal bias" in the mainstream media. There is no such thing, of course - media outlets are as conservative as the corporations that own them, journalists tend slightly to the right on economic issues (though, like most educated groups, more liberal on social ones), and their coverage features government and business leaders much more than labor leaders or consumer advocates. Still, the meme is well-known, and is a frequent tactic for neoconservative apologists: "Bush's policies are working great. Things just look bad because of that pesky liberal bias in the media."

Stephen Colbert is a very clever man. He knows about this "liberal bias" idea, and that it's a myth. He has made a running joke of neoconservatives' inability to face facts and admit that their reign has been failure after failure. Perhaps you've heard of Colbert's idea of truthiness?

The high point (so far) of this running joke was when Colbert spoke at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner last yea. He said "Now, I know there are some polls out there saying this man has a 32 percent approval rating. But guys like us, we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in 'reality.' And reality has a well-known liberal bias."

I was not citing him as a source. I was quoting his clever summation of how, on issues from the teaching of evolution to climate change to the invasion of Iraq to supply-side economics, the conservative position has been consistently at odds with the facts. They don't pay attention to the polls or to anything else that disagrees with their preconceptions.

Many of the KOSacks wondered about that, but it was a serious post.

Evidence, please. You expect serious posts from the nym "Yacka Jah Yacka"? Who posts a poll on their page with two answers, both "yes"? Who posts a comment which links to an image from a Monty Python film?

Who writes, "The prayers would be different, but we would recite them just as mindlessly as we do today. The sermons would in all likelihood be exactly the same, and wed continue to snore through them." Heck, that sounds like something Twain might write.

It's good satire. Your inability to recognize it as such would sadden me - except that, darn it, you're just helping prove my point.

I always turn to Comedy Central for my news and facts.

Ok, friend, let me explain to to you real slow...

Conservatives often complain about a "liberal bias" in the mainstream media. There is no such thing, of course - media outlets are as conservative as the corporations that own them, journalists tend slightly to the right on economic issues (though, like most educated groups, more liberal on social ones), and their coverage features government and business leaders much more than labor leaders or consumer advocates. Still, the meme is well-known, and is a frequent tactic for neoconservative apologists: "Bush's policies are working great. Things just look bad because of that pesky liberal bias in the media."

Stephen Colbert is a very clever man. He knows about this "liberal bias" idea, and that it's a myth. He has made a running joke of neoconservatives' inability to face facts and admit that their reign has been failure after failure. Perhaps you've heard of Colbert's idea of truthiness?

The high point (so far) of this running joke was when Colbert spoke at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner last yea. He said "Now, I know there are some polls out there saying this man has a 32 percent approval rating. But guys like us, we don't pay attention to the polls. We know that polls are just a collection of statistics that reflect what people are thinking in 'reality.' And reality has a well-known liberal bias."

I was not citing him as a source. I was quoting his clever summation of how, on issues from the teaching of evolution to climate change to the invasion of Iraq to supply-side economics, the conservative position has been consistently at odds with the facts. They don't pay attention to the polls or to anything else that disagrees with their preconceptions.

Many of the KOSacks wondered about that, but it was a serious post.

Evidence, please. You expect serious posts from the nym "Yacka Jah Yacka"? Who posts a poll on their page with two answers, both "yes"? Who posts a comment which links to an image from a Monty Python film?

Who writes, "The prayers would be different, but we would recite them just as mindlessly as we do today. The sermons would in all likelihood be exactly the same, and wed continue to snore through them." Heck, that sounds like something Twain might write.

It's good satire. Your inability to recognize it as such would sadden me - except that, darn it, you're just helping prove my point.

So much for "progressives" being about the "common man"!..."Progressives" represent the wealthy, the white, and the privileged.

Because reality has a well-known liberal bias, educated and informed people tend to be more liberal - for example, being against the Iraq invasion, understanding the illegitimacy of the Bush administration and its actions, and being in favor of public policy based on sound science.

Take the purported connection between Iraq and 9/11. There wasn't one. Educated people are likely to know this, while ignorant people are more likely to believe there was such a link. Eighty percent of college graduates know there's no link, while only 56% percent of people with a high school education or less understand this.

Yes, and as I said in my post, Conyers has already HAD a copy of that bill in his committee for months, and has already decided "what happens next", he will let the bill die.

The reason Kucinich brought it to the floor was because Conyers and the J.C. were refusing to do anything on the matter.

Here, this article pretty much sums it up: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/11/6/164257/349

"The previous question was ordered, Hoyer moved to refer the bill to committee, and the 80+ Democrats who earlier insisted they didn't want Kucinich's bill to die on the Speaker's table instead voted to let it die on Chairman Conyers' table instead.

So the bill goes to the Judiciary Committee. Where it will sit next to Kucinich's other resolution calling for the impeachment of Cheney, which was offered through regular channels back in April."

He didnt send it to committee He was trying to put it directly on the floor. It got procedurally shuffled to committee. Check out this post on daily kos

Check out this post for another summary of the articles and the events that took place in the House.

Wow, your comment had me convinced until I read the link provided by an AC:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/1/125028/8808

Frankly, if DailyKos said the sky was blue, I'd go outside to check.

Wow, your comment had me convinced until I read the link provided by an AC:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/1/125028/8808

Very good argument that it was poorly done science in search of a pre-ordained conclusion by an interested party. I read through all the opposing comments as well, and they certainly don't seem satisfactory and are mainly just the Courtier's Reply. To be more explicit, The author of the article points out several ways in which the experiment did not have a sufficient control group and the counter-argument was that some of these are accounted for statistically. However it seems that list of things accounted for doesn't include all of the problems, and the counter-arguer just repeats himself more vehemently and seems to have absolute faith that sufficient rigor was taken despite lack of support from the research paper and multiple instances of other scientists and groups of scientists pointint out the exact same problems brought up in the article. Given the available options, we should in fact not trust the one scientist who has probable cause to fake the results and as the article points out, has already been suspiciously injudicious in his methodology. That's not just an ad hominem attack, the study itself has been attacked successfully, with a large variance on trustworthiness, and the circumstantial evidence only serves to point out that prudence urges caution in accepting the results. That some scientists agree with the research paper is not good support, as people (even scientists) who don't know tend to go with whoever's loudest, which creates false consensus.

(BTW, joe, this long reply is just to summarize the linked article and address possible concerns, not because of anything you said. I'm certainly interested in hearing any rebuttal if anyone has one)

Anyone can see HIV/Intactness link is unproven

Explain what you mean by "exploit" please. I see a bunch of ignorant comments on Daily Kos about this. Things like "well, I'm getting my certificate over an untrusted network, so anybody could intercept it, right?". Sure. Except that RSA keys are altogether different than a shared key. Unless you are stupidly and pointlessly sending your private key around with your certificate requests, all Verisign is doing is signing the public half of the key pair. That doesn't give them some kind of magical ability to decrypt your traffic.

So again, please explain what you mean by "exploit". (Not that I'm fond of Verisign, mind you, quite the opposite; but FUD will ultimately just cause people to lose trust in the people spreading it.)

Required reading here.

Look at how gleefully they advertise exploiting their trusted thiry-party (SSL Certificate Authority) status.

I think we need to consider switching all our browsers to a more trustworthy CA.

The Daily Kos link in TFS explains how it works. Bills generally get unanimous consent to be voted upon, even when people intend to vote against them. Dodd isn't giving his consent for this to come to vote. Since there's no unanimous consent to vote on the bill, someone needs to motion for a vote over it if they want to hold the vote.

That motion to hold the vote then has to be debated and voted upon. A senator could filibuster that debate, and it takes 60% of all current Senators (not just 60% of those present to vote) to break the filibuster (referred to as cloture). Then the vote over the motion to vote on the bill can proceed if there's no filibuster or if the filibuster is broken. Only if a majority vote to hold the vote on the bill will the bill actually be voted upon.

Once the bill itself is up for a vote, there's still the chance it could be defeated.

Tim Starks of Congressional Quarterly reports that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) plans to bring the Senate's surveillance bill up for floor debate in mid-November. That's despite the hold that Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) plans to place on the measure....

The US is very different, in theory every book is free, just that libraries that stock the wrong ones get no funding.

• habeas corpus
• torture
• Fourth amendment
• free speech in peaceable assemblies
• freedom of the press
• widespread corruption

i'm afraid his "exaggerated" claims are much closer to reality then most climate models.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/10/11/94854/280

-"Police spokeswoman Tammy Ewin initially said no pepper spray was used on protesters, but Sgt. Clint Winkler, a supervisor on duty, told The Associated Press he tried to use pepper spray on one woman who would not leave, but it hit her glasses. She was then subdued with a Taser, Winkler said."

- "Winkler said campus police tried to quell the march, and at one point protesters grabbed the camera of a freelance media photographer and broke it. City police tried to help and said some protesters fought the effort to break up the march.

- "That's when they were told, due to the violence, that this was no longer a lawful protest," Winkler said. "They were told to disperse, peacefully disperse, and failed to do so we started down the sidewalk _ officers in front, K-9's behind us, and started pushing the crowd down the sidewalk.""

- ""The response was way over the top," Meieran said. "Why in the (expletive) were they using Tasers on these nonviolent protesters in the first place? I heard no dispersal order. What they're saying is total (expletive).""

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0821-01.htm

- "I was taken to the ground by a police officer during that time
      I was pepper sprayed the officer picked up my glasses sprayed my face
      with the pepper spray. Once I got to the ground I was then tasered in
      the thigh for what felt like an eternity. It was the most excruciating
      pain I have ever felt. I felt like I was burning. My hand reached
      down to feel what was on my leg and I felt an electrical shock running
      through my entire body. I could not stop myself from screaming. It was
      horrifying. I could not believe that after I had already been sprayed
      and on the ground they would then proceed to taser me."

http://pittsburgh.indymedia.org/news/2005/08/20117.php

"McNeilly said the officers' use of pepper spray and Tasers
at the protest was justified because protestors had turned
from peaceful conduct to active resistance that became an assault on officers.

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_374322.html

Hmmm, I'm not saying I support the use of a TASER in this case, but it's not exactly a clear cut case of police brutality. A peaceful protest turned violent and she was at the front of the line, wrong place and wrong time?

Hmm, a little more digging gets this:
"And a breakdown of events (from a local man posting on Digg, corroborated by the news):

1. A man, Edris Robinson, strikes a cameraman covering the event (later charged with assault)
2. The cameraman runs to get police
3. Robinson runs to the crowd
4. Police find Robinson, try to apprehend him
5. His girlfriend, Deanna Caliguiri, tries to pull him away (later plead guilty to disorderly conduct and resisting arrest)
6. The cops use pepper spray on Deanna, she continues to resist
7. The cops warn Deanna a few times that they will taser her
8. The cops taser her"

That site also states some of the action happens offscreen on the youtube video
http://ronpaul.meetup.com/342/boards/view/viewthread?thread=3559981

Make your own conclusions I suppose

Oh wait, another oped piece here with a longer youtube video tha pushes "tasers are bad":
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/9/19/14057/0584
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qVdH1G0KQt4 (again whatever happens that makes the cops taser the girl happens offscreen, but the video goes for 10 minutes)

First-world students don't have to kill to get their education.

In most non first-world countries, education is the domain of the wealthy. The most education your child can get in 75% of the world either comes from the School of Hard Knocks, or some form of education mated to religion.

All those commercials you see on TV showing those little kids in schools sponsored by charities usually come with a substantial does of some kind of religious indoctrination, with all the subsequent hang-ups that engenders. Just look at what comes out of many Massadras?

And even if they don't come from some religious group, or don't have an agenda of some sort, most children can only attend school until they're old enough to either work in the fields or in the factory. When was the last time a 5th grader in the US had to make a choice between learning or supporting their family?

So when some Indian/Asian/African/South American kid's parents spend 90 hours a week, killing themselves by scrimping and starving to put their kid through a PRIVATE school, you can bet your sweet bippy that child is going to do everything in their power to get those good grades and excel in every way. Because if they succeed, then they can eventually bring mom & dad to live with them, along with the rest of the family.

My friend from Colombia taught me that. He grew up on the streets of Bogotá, fighting for every peso, beating up other kids so he could take their jobs as a runner for the Cartels. He spent every bit he could spare on school for himself and his sisters. When his sisters became eligible for adoption, he was educated enough to bargain with the agency to not only get his sisters adopted, but himself as well.

They are now living the American Dream that most of America has forgotten.

A local paper has some updates, including notes from the police about how markedly different the student's behavior was when there was or wasn't a camera pointing at him, also that one of the videos circulating on YouTube was shot with the student's own camera.

According to wikipedia the only actions shown in the video that would constitue resisting arrest was attempting to elude police officers.

We'll have to disagree on this. Wikipedia also says "Using or threatening to use force against an officer during an arrest". I'd call struggling to escape the use of force against an officer; the fact that he's not trying to punch an officer doesn't mean he's not forcibly opposing the officer's actions, and in court, I bet the video would be a clear demonstration that, from a legal standpoint, he's guilty of resisting arrest.

However, if this site is to be believed, resisting arrest in Florida is simply:

Whoever shall resist, obstruct, or oppose any officer as defined in s. 943.10

Which Meyer was pretty clearly guilty of.

that hardly backs up your origional point of "the crowd didn't rise up in protest, or even complain from their seats "

I've already acknowledged that my original post contained a lot of hyperbole. However, here's another dissenting view:

I was at the Kerry speech today, sitting 2 rows away from all the action. I'll let you know how it really went down.

The forum was going to be over at 2 pm, and Kerry spoke for so long that the Q and A portion had to be shortened. He only got through about 7 of the 50 people who were waiting to ask questions. While the final question was being read, some douchebag ran down the aisle, grabbed the mic from the other side of the room, interrupted the kid who was talking, and started yelling at Kerry, demanding that his questions be heard. He started ranting about how Kerry talks in circles or something, and everyone was getting annoyed. The cops are all over him in no time and try to escort him out, but he starts yelling and resisting. Kerry insists that they let him stay and even agrees to answer his question.

After the interrupted guy's question was answered, Kerry keeps his promise and lets the angry guy talk. This is the point where people started taking their cameras and phones out. All the videos floating around youtube start around here. You can see in the videos that his questioning gets kind of inappropriate, so somebody cut his mic. Instead of shutting up, he starts yelling and making an even bigger scene. He struggled all the way up the aisle, and started violently trying to free himself. They threatened to taze him and he wouldnt stop fighting, so he got tazed. They only had to arrest him because he was causing a disruption and wouldn't leave peacefully. He wasn't being silenced for asking tough questions, trust me.

Someone else who was present wasn't laughing at a jackass style stunt; they thought he was being disruptive and deserved to be forcibly removed, and when he resisted, was tased (which the author doesn't seem to disapprove of). This anecdote also makes Meyer look more disruptive generally, and long past the point of patient tolerance, given that he'd already seized a mic from someone else.

The tazer was used to inflict pain to obtain compliance on someone already physicaly restrained. That seems a lot like punishment to me.

When I think of punishment, I think of deliberately causing a negative consequence for someone in response to something they've done. In the case of forcing compliance, the subject gets the choice of receiving the negative consequence or complying. Crucial difference, that, I think: All he had to do was stop struggling. And lest this seem bloodyminded, keep in mind that it's less bloody in practice than chokeholds or batons or pepper spray. It looks dramatic, but has far fewer aftereffects. And as the eyewitness above reports, he was still struggling when he got tased, which is what I saw on the

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/9/18/10649/5334

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/9/18/10649/5334

Essentially, this jackass ran up, forced the mic out of someone else's hands, was being escorted out when Kerry said he could stay, (this is about when the cameras started rolling), then he started asking inappropriate questions, so they cut his mic, then he just starts screaming like a jackass and tries to force himself on the stage, so TAZER TAZER TAZER and he gets to go away.

Fun stuff.

On the other hand, I take back the proto-nazis thing, based on an eyewitness account of the event here on Daily Kos: http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/9/18/10649/5334

I still don't think that what he did was an arrestable offense, but I apparently he was being a giant asshole, and it explains why no one was in a rush to defend him.

But that has nothing to do with my point: that the RIAA collects royalties for non-members as well as members.

I did some googling on this to try to find where I'd read about it and found the following two articles:

• http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/4/24/141326/870
• http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/29/0335224

These are specifically about the webcasting royalties and SoundExchange (an RIAA creation), so I may be off-base in assuming that other royalties (for commercial applications such as songs played in restaurants or on the radio) are collected in the same way.

Basically, SoundExchange collects royalties for everyone, members and non-members alike. It pays their members the royalties that they collect on their behalf and holds royalties collected for non-members in escrow (until those non-members pay their membership fees and become members. Extortion? naaahhh...).

I remember a long, long time ago when I was working in a restaurant and the BMG representative showed up to give the owner a bill for the music we'd been playing. The restaurant was a small coffee cafe and the music system was a home stereo with a cd jukebox populated by cds that employees had brought from home. I remember at the time having difficulty understanding why the restaurant owner had to pay a big bill (around $600 for a year?) for music that was already paid for. I also learned at that time that it's illegal (in the state of Washington, anyway) for a public place of business to play the radio. Something about how the license to play the music that the radio station buys does not allow for use of that music in a commercial setting, like a restaurant. It was at that time that the punk rock dishwasher declared that as soon as his band was able to get their cd out (this was a long time ago), they'd only play their music for free and fuck BMG. That idealist sentiment now seems impossible in today's music rights legal environment.

This really takes the cake, kdawson.

Seriously, how long did it take you to come up with this one? Are you even pretending to be impartial or marginally even-handed any more? This is just pathetic... I've been a reading of Slashdot for forever and this kind of crap (your pattern of stories, namely) ranks up there with Jon Katz in terms of sheer, mindboggling tone-deafness.

Do us all a favor and quit. I hear they're looking for aggregators at the Huffington Post. And I'm sure DailyKos would love to have you.

Ethanol is most criticized, and with due cause. Traditional methods of ethanol production (for instance) deserve criticism. Using only corn kernels is horribly inefficient, particularly when corn is a food source.

But the old ways are changing. The State of Georgia will host the nation's first cellulosic ethanol production facility [dailykos.com]. Cellulosic ethanol production is more than 15 times more efficient than traditional production methods. Any green biomass can be used: corn kernels, corn stalks, corn roots, switchgrass, cane sugar, tree chips, industrial green waste, and even pig shit. This is the future of biofuels.

Range Fuels is building the new facility in Georgia. They do not use any biomass also used as a food source for humans or animals. The Georgia plant will use industrial tree waste from the many paper mills in the region.

Stop right here. The basic principle of debate is that you debate what the person actually says, not what you invent.

And you don't get to ignore inconvenient facts. It's no strawman to point out that the vast majority of conservatives who prattle on about "limited government" only want to limit the stuff they don't like (social spending), but baby, bring on that pork and military spending, any more than pointing out how full of crap they are on "family values".

If you can't do that, you can take your ass back to a lefty echo chamber like DailyKos where you belong.

Oh, come on, admit that the real reason you don't like DailyKos is because they bring attention to right wing assholes.