Slashdot Mirror

"as far as I am aware even the old testament doesnt tell Christians to torture unbelievers or to treat women like cattle.

As I pointed out, this was a totally ignorant comment to make, since there were no christians at that time.

then you say Christians are bad because what the old testament says.

Paul (new testament writer, see 1 Cor.21-24) continued to condone slavery. His words were used to justify slavery for centuries. You can't ignore the last 2,000 years either.

And I notice you have no response to my remark about Christian leaders persecution of gays and lesbians, which called for the death penalty in places as diverse as Uganda and the United States. Ted Cruz doesn't mind it, and neither do Huckabee or Jindal.

Also, when you write "As to bringing up support for repealing gay sex or whatever, thats an obvious emotional strawman that is completely irrelevant to the actual argument.", you seem to have missed that Paul also attacked gays (Romans 1:26-27). Certainly it's relevant when showing that Christians aren't all sweetness and light, and never have been since the earliest days of Christianity. Also, you have no reply

They passed the test.

No, you don't understand. They did not pass the test. The rules of the test prohibit defeat devices. You don't make a touchdown if you run out of bounds first, and you don't pass the test if you use a defeat device to appear to be able to meet the numbers.

On the other hand, the idea that you can actually count deaths due to VW's actions is a sad joke. You can't. 46 deaths due to air pollution are well below the level of noise. Over 50k people allegedly die in the US yearly due to air pollution. Take that number at face value; you can't accurately account for 46 more.

There is a certain irony to this.

A bunch of Jews are being greedy, about a diary written about persecution of Jews, for being greedy.

Is your thinking that nobody but Jews would fight about inheritances? Really?

(it may have been more scapegoat-ism than anything else, but stereotypes don't come out of thin air)

If that is true, than I guess we know you have a little dick, can't jump, have a drinking problem, and are out-performed in school by Asians.

Please don't contribute to the problem.

Rising Anti-Semitism in Europe: History Repeating Once Again

It's a bit like how some people argue there is no wage gap because different lifestyles/jobs etc, ignoring the fact that those things are often the product of biases against women.

I take it then that you've known a lot of men that were pregnant, or left the workforce because they wanted to spend time with their children while they were young?

How many women players are on your favorite professional football team? What is the league average? Why do you think those numbers are the way they are? Is it simple bias?

We are often told by feminist advocates that women bring different perspectives to a workplace. If that is true, do you think that different perspective might lead to different priorities and behaviors, and ultimately choices?

Wage Gap Myth Exposed -- By Feminists

The Biggest Myth About the Gender Wage Gap
The real gap isn't between men and women doing the same job. It's between the different jobs that men and women take.

After the failure of the publishing industry to ban international books for domestic resale, they have hit upon another venture. Access codes, which can only be used once. This makes used books obsolete when professors "require" that a student use the publisher's online garbage.

Thus, access to the videos, at rate not restrictive enough to prevent its distribution, is a requirement fair play cannot do without.

If a viewing tax restricts the footage from being released, then cameras are worthless except to protect the innocent law enforcement officers.

There is no such thing as race anyways. Going by your definition that racism has to be about race, racism doesn't exist.

So you are denying the whole thing. No racism exists. That is really what you are saying?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

Apart from the points in this article, think about the most basic truth of racism: Racism is first and foremost about the racist, not about the target. If a racist has power over someone they are racist against at some point in time, the target may suffer. But that is a different aspect of racism. The racist has racist thoughts, a racist agenda, etc. etc. Not the Muslim or the black guys. They only experience racism when in contact with a racist. But the origin of racism is the person that is racist. Thus racism itself (not the effects) is not about the race, but about the racist.

No, California classifies any light with an Edison socket as low-efficiency, not matter what bulb you put in. They're banned in kitchens completely, and only allowable if you put in a dimmer switch that will damage some high-efficiency lights that would otherwise work in an Edison socket.

You keep saying this, but I cannot find anything to support that idea. This mentions only efficiency requirements, not socket type:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

As does this: http://www.ledsmagazine.com/ar...

If in fact you can provide me with a reference to this supposed ban on kitchen edison sockets I would be interested to see it.

Oh I spoke too soon - I found some. This is a reference that seems to support your statement: http://www.title24express.com/...

"According to the Title 24 energy standards a high efficacy luminaire contains only high efficacy lamps or high efficacy LED lighting, and must not contain a socket which allows any low efficacy lighting system to be used. For example, any luminaire containing a medium screw base socket is classified as low efficacy, regardless of the type of lamp installed into that socket. Typically, high efficacy luminaires contain pin-based sockets, like compact fluorescent or linear fluorescent lamp sockets, though other socket types such as screw sockets specifically rated only for high intensity discharge lamps (like metal halide lamps) light emitting diode (LED) luminaires (dedicated LED lighting fixtures that cannot use incandescent or any other type of lighting technology) may also qualify as high efficacy."

It does seem like a bit of almost pointless legislation since low efficiency bulbs can be found for various pin-based socket systems.

I don't think there are enough prostitutes in the country for that... Oh wait you meant firearms training?

In fact, it's legal to do so. Your Employer Can't Stop You From Recording Conversations At Work

Having a service where you are cheating customers by not revealing a major part of how a service works is a serious problem. Countries where people are more trusting of other people, corporations and their governments do better economically, and are better by a variety of other metrics (such as Gini coefficient). While there are serious correlation v. causation issues here, it is likely that a big part of this is that people are more willing to engage in transactions with people or institutions they aren't directly familiar with. See e.g. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/20/trust-wealth_n_851519.html, http://www.pewglobal.org/2008/04/15/where-trust-is-high-crime-and-corruption-are-low/, https://agenda.weforum.org/2015/10/how-trusting-are-european-nations/, and http://www.oecd.org/forum/the-cost-of-mistrust.htm. This means that large corporations bilking customers is damaging to all of us at a large scale.

He has no chance of being elected, and he knows that.

Reality disagrees... but please, keep saying stuff about Trump. It only helps.

I am aware that polls this early are largely meaningless, but let's look at some numbers outside of context.

He's got about 40% of the Republican vote at the moment. Let's assume that figure holds across the party so that, for example, if Cruz bows out 40% of those supporters move to Trump. That gives him 40% + (40% x 60%) = 64% of the Republican vote, using back-of-the-envelope estimates.

No one bothered to check with Democratic voters until recently, but Trump has stronger support from Democrats than he does from Republicans!

Astonishing!

If *those* numbers are accurate, he could get elected right now.

And all of this is ignoring any context. For example:

a) The investigation into Hillary could conclude, bringing charges against her
b) Hillary could have a medical issue (campaigning is stressful, she's had medical problems, Trump hasn't)
c) US could have another domestic terrorist attack
d) Trump has not made campaign ads - he's spent about a million, compared to Jeb's 32 million.

And finally, Trump will get elected simply because no one opposes his position in any rational way - it's all namecalling and derision.

Don't believe me? Find a rational argument as to why a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country isn't a common-sense response to an immediate threat.

You can't do it. The only response, so far as I can find, is to cast aspersions on the person asking that question. Terms like bigot, predjudiced, racist, and extremist are used. Also outright lies such as "it's unconstitutional" (no, it's not), "it's impossible to tell who's a Muslim" (no, it's not), "that's not what America is about" (we've done it before), and so on.

Then tell me why enforcing immigration law is a bad move (instead of amnesty, which is what the administration was quietly floating), why simplifying the tax code is a bad move, why having strong treaty negotiation is a bad move, and why replacing Obamacare with something better would be a bad move.

As near as I can tell, early November was the tipping point where you could have stopped Donald Trump. Someone could have stepped up and addressed his policies, and in that act presented as a strong leader. By now it's probably too late.

Oh, and let's not forget that the lead Democratic candidate has accomplished nothing in her career, and the democratic runner-up is a Socialist. A SOCIALIST!

Please.

Donald may not win the election, but saying he has no chance is entirely without merit.

Trump is running the most successful false-flag operation in the history of American politics.

He's also running one of the most successful campaigns this season.

I just read an article where the polls show that Bernie would have a better chance of beating Trump than Hillary.

The Republicans don't want Trump as their candidate, and the Democrats don't want Bernie.

We could very easily have an election where no one wants *either* candidate!

This is turning out to be a most hilarious election season.

It might apply to employee reviews, but only in the context if your recording them getting evidence of unfair labor practices. This ruling is all about labor relations, unionization, etc. From page 3 of the actual decision: " Such protected conduct may include, for example, recording images of protected picketing, documenting unsafe workplace equipment or hazardous working conditions, documenting and publicizing discussions about terms and conditions of employment, documenting inconsistent application of employer rules, or recording evidence to preserve it for later use in administrative or judicial forums in employment-related actions"

Indeed, the actual decision itself references "protected Section 7 activities" and "unprotected activities". They make a very distinct difference between what is protected and what still isn't protected.

Also...

http://www.rollingstone.com/tv......
http://www.forbes.com/sites/in......
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/......
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bro......

In any case, glad this abusive, corrupting program was shut down.

A time article on John Oliver's influence including noting his show on civil forfeiture. Here's an article where you could read that he had an effect on CF...

http://time.com/3674807/john-o......

Quote:
After the increased exposure given to the issue by the (Washington) Post and Oliver, Attorney General Eric Holder announced last week that he would enact major limitations on the law.

The tough on crime crowd, also known as the board of directors of for-profit prisons

Actually the people who put the biggest lobbying pressure on being "tough on crime" are the prison guard unions, and indeed, there's a lot of scandal and coverup involved in it too.

http://mic.com/articles/41531/...
http://www.nationalreview.com/...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

In fact, in a lot of states they're the biggest one pushing against legalization of Marijuana. Why? Because it gives them LOTS of job security, perhaps more so than any other crime. But, don't let the pro union types hear this, or else you'll get an earful about how unions are in it to protect the working man...

We have school lunches in the US.

They don't look especially good compared to the rest of the world, but we do have them.

We should use the facility that has been built, instead of letting one lone-wolf senator prevent that from happening. Yes, a national repository would be much, much safer than the status quo.

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 was passed to create a national program to dispose of nuclear fuel safely. The bill arranged for utility companies to pay for the development of such a site, which technically was a fee payed for by customers, not taxpayers (though that's really not much of a difference). Congress in 1987 decided that Yucca Mountain was the site to use, and all that money was collected and spent to build the site.

I don't understand why Yucca Mountain even needs to be a permanent storage solution. At least storing our nuclear fuel in one location is magnitudes safer than storing it at hundreds of nuclear power facilities throughout the country. Because we all know how safe coastal power plants are, and there's no worry about rivers ever flooding them either. The only reason why we aren't in a panic about Yucca Mountain being shut down is because we haven't had an accident yet. But just getting lucky should be no basis of national policy.

We should use the facility that has been built, instead of letting one lone-wolf senator prevent that from happening. Yes, a national repository would be much, much safer than the status quo.

The Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 was passed to create a national program to dispose of nuclear fuel safely. The bill arranged for utility companies to pay for the development of such a site, which technically was a fee payed for by customers, not taxpayers (though that's really not much of a difference). Congress in 1987 decided that Yucca Mountain was the site to use, and all that money was collected and spent to build the site.

I don't understand why Yucca Mountain even needs to be a permanent storage solution. At least storing our nuclear fuel in one location is magnitudes safer than storing it at hundreds of nuclear power facilities throughout the country. Because we all know how safe coastal power plants are, and there's no worry about rivers ever flooding them either. The only reason why we aren't in a panic about Yucca Mountain being shut down is because we haven't had an accident yet. But just getting lucky should be no basis of national policy.

To be fair it was never said that "sucking up the energy" is WHY it got rejected. It's just said that they had to literally explain to someone complaining that this was not the case and this new article does not contradict that. They never told us WHY it got rejected. The original article was just on the stupid complaints that people brought up to try to reject it.

Here is the arstechnica headline linked to from slashdot: "North Carolina citizenry defeat pernicious Big Solar plan to suck up the Sun" http://arstechnica.com/science...

Fromt the more popular press, here's the Huffington post (yeah, I know), article http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... Solar Farm Rejected Amid Fears It Will 'Suck Up The Sun's Energy' Residents were concerned it would stop plants from growing and cause cancer.

There is no other way to interpret the articles than that the town rejected the solar plant due to sun-sucking fears. The authors intentionally miswrote the story to give the reader a laugh at the rubes.

fair point. I was mostly referring to a specific article linked here on SD. But I didn't check the other headlines. That said headlines are intentionally clickbaity. I will go ahead and assume the text agrees with the article but if it doesn't that doesn't invalidate my point. Which was that the original articles never said that was what happened. They HEAVILY implied it through various means like even mentioning an idiot who thinks solar panels steal energy that plants need but they never said that's what happened. If those article however DO say that in the text then sure that's fair.

You left wing loonies are so easily distracted. There's a fucking coal fire that's been shitting in your lungs for over 50 years and you want to go after someone's TDI Jetta. Idiot.

Go fuck yourself, shill.

Ouch, that is so hateful, so sad...

The only "reason" Sanders has for being allegedly-unelectable is that Hillary shills like you repeatedly assert that it's so

No, he is unelectable, because his rhetoric is indistinguishable from that of Hugo Chavez. And, though Americans are often accused of neither knowing nor caring, what is happening outside their country, the sorry fate of Venezuela is infamous enough.

Don't take my word for it — when I asked the good Senator's fans here on Slashdot, all I got was the customary avalanche of hate, but no discernible differences. The most useful response pointed out that, unlike the late El Presidente, Bernie Sanders is not an anti-Semite. But nothing relevant to the economy or foreign policy was identified...

Jail rape hardly ever happens in the white collar prison he'd be going to. Now a federal "Pound-me-in-the-ass" prison, on the other hand... Actually it doesn't happen as much as people think it does there, either.

In a survey of 1,788 male inmates in Midwestern prisons by Prison Journal, about 21% claimed they had been coerced or pressured into sexual activity during their incarceration, and 7% claimed that they had been raped in their current facility.

âoeWe all know that rape and sexual assault are the most underreported crimes in the world, and itâ(TM)s very hard to say that the problem is declining," Christopher Krebs, a sexual violence researcher at nonprofit research institute RTI International, told Slate this week. "The NCVS data could be missing a lot.â

Society is becoming increasingly aware of male rape. However, experts believe that current male rape statistics vastly under-represent the actual number of males age 12 and over who are raped each year. Rape crisis counselors estimate that while only one in 50 raped women report the crime to the police, the rates of under-reporting among men are even higher (Brochman, 1991).

IOW, BULLSHIT

When that happens, the officers will shoot the family dog, then shoot the home owner and then shoot each other for good measure.

Again, you have yet to give a Trump example of this. We have instead an idiot who deliberately provoked violence. And nobody liked him as a result. Now, if you can show that Trump staged the thing to stoke the violent behavior and inclinations of his audience, that would be pretty strong evidence for some degree of fascism.

But since you at least tried, I'll point out the Trayvon Martin shooting by George Zimmerman as a counterexample. It was idiot on idiot violence yet Obama felt the need not only to cast Martin as the son he never had, but also to order a three year investigation of what at best was clearly a state not federal crime.

In other words, Obama completely and uncritically supported as a symbol, someone who assaulted another person with apparent intent to kill, to the point that he harassed for several years the victim of the assault.

You have yet to give a Trump example of that so I don't see the need.

Here you go.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/22/...

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

And for "balance",

http://www.theblaze.com/storie...

To be fair it was never said that "sucking up the energy" is WHY it got rejected. It's just said that they had to literally explain to someone complaining that this was not the case and this new article does not contradict that. They never told us WHY it got rejected. The original article was just on the stupid complaints that people brought up to try to reject it.

Here is the arstechnica headline linked to from slashdot:
"North Carolina citizenry defeat pernicious Big Solar plan to suck up the Sun"
http://arstechnica.com/science...

Fromt the more popular press, here's the Huffington post (yeah, I know), article
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Solar Farm Rejected Amid Fears It Will 'Suck Up The Sun's Energy'
Residents were concerned it would stop plants from growing and cause cancer.

There is no other way to interpret the articles than that the town rejected the solar plant due to sun-sucking fears. The authors intentionally miswrote the story to give the reader a laugh at the rubes.

With inheritance, like anyone else, it helps to have a will.

No doubt about that. But here was the case that really put the final nail in the coffin - so to speak - against gay marriage bans.

United States versus Windsor

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... Its a pretty good read. Yeah, I know - its HuffPo

When hearing challenges to the oddly named Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 2013, they heard the case of Edith Windsor, 83, who had lived with her partner, Thea Spyer for 44 years. They were married in Canada. Speer died in 2009.

In her will, she left everything to Windsor. DOMA made itl law that the Federal Government could not recognize same gender marriage. See where we are going here?

The IRS gave Windsor a $363,000 dollar tax bill. By law. Whereas if I die tomorrow, my wife pays nothing, and gets the entire estate.

I can even now, see the nervous twitches of the more conservative Justices as they pondered one of the most hated conservative railing points, the dreaded death tax, being wielded as a bludgeon against them by them by another of their enemies. Probably looked like the Grinch in the cartoon when he's watching the people in Whoville celebrate Christmas after he stole all the Christmas trimmings and gifts.

But in the end, it was almost impossible to deny that two people living together as wife and wife or whatever, were getting a completely different treatment as demanded by a federal law.

So while the law itself was religion based, the equal protection under the law clause was clearly violated, so it made it easier for them than having to go on the idea that it was a religion based law - likewise unconstitutional, but who wanted to walk into that minefield?

Another tidbit from the story (sorry its Huffpo) "Marital status is relevant in more than 1,100 federal laws that include estate taxes, Social Security survivor benefits and health benefits for federal employees."

Yikes! I knew there were a lot, but 1100+. And all the state laws as well.

Anyhow there's the case that either made a great breakthrough, or set us on the road to perfidy, depending on your outlook.

Unregistered bad guy with drone can be stopped by registered good guy with drone.

According to the FBI, that doesn't even work with guns. As described in A Study of Active Shooter Incidents in the United States Between 2000 and 2013, reported at New FBI Report Casts Doubt on NRA's 'Good Guy Stops Bad Guy' Nonsense and other places including The Daily Show, Jordan Klepper: Good Guy with a Gun Pt. 2 ...

Of active shooting incidents just released by the FBI which analyzed 160 "active shootings" resulting in injuries to 1,043 victims, including 486 deaths, between 2000 and 2013. Here's how these incidents ended.

More than half (56 percent) were terminated by the shooter who either took his or her own life, simply stopped shooting or fled the scene.

Another 26 percent ended in the traditional Hollywood-like fashion with the shooter and law enforcement personnel exchanging gunfire and in nearly all of those situations the shooter ended up either wounded or dead.

In 13 percent of the shooting situations, the shooter was successfully disarmed and restrained by unarmed civilians, and

In 3 percent of the incidents the shooter was confronted by armed civilians, of whom four were on-duty security guards and one person was just your average "good guy" who happened to be carrying a gun.

We'll need to add a whole LOT of "good guys with guns" to bump that 3% / 1 person statistic to anything mildly practically useful.

Searching to see if there are more terrorists engaged in a coordinated attack? Seems like a reasonable and responsible thing to do.

Sure, why spend $8 an hour on a rent-a-cop security guard on guarding the residence of the suspects when we could be spending millions of dollars on a spy plane and violating the privacy of hundreds of thousands of US citizens instead.

We have a process to stop Trump, it's called "Voting".

That's cute, but the real scary thing is not that you have a process as simple as voting to stop trump, it is that there may actually be a small chance that this process could fail. I mean the only thing scarier than some of the things Trump is saying is the current polling results showing that a percentage of Americans agree with him.

At least when one of Australia's bat-shit-crazy-business-men decided to enter politics we only gave him one seat, and I think that happened as the result of excess consumption of alcohol and democracy sausages on election day.

Anonymous declares war on city of Orlando (28/Jun/2011)
Anonymous vs. Zetas: Hackers Taking On The Drug Cartel (02/Nov/2011)
Anonymous wages war on Westboro Baptist Church (17/Dez/2012)
Anonymous Declares War on Singapore (06/Nov/2013)

Given the fallback on the last weeks hoax declaration of war on ISIS by Mexican cartel leader 'El Chapo' the media is showing that the powers of "the fourth state" given to them is not being used to inform the public but to entertain them, distracting from more important issues (and of course, to sell advertisement).

I don't think the issue is quite so simple here. Certainly all lives matter and only the most egregious racists would argue otherwise. The reason that we have a black lives matter movement right now is because of a perception (real or imagined, but I certainly see the validity) that black lives aren't being given the same value in our society as other lives. The hope is to draw attention to that disparity.

The issue with that is that there is the appearance that not even blacks care about black lives. Where were all the protests and outcry when this happened? Or this? There is a saying that goes "practice what you preach". Why should people care about your lives when you don't even give the appearance of caring about your own life? How can "black lives matter" if Tyshawn Lee's father would rather stick to his gang culture than give the police information that might help them catch the people that executed his son? How can they matter when black kids are killing each other everyday and not only is it condoned but often celebrated by their own community? Just as people won't respect you until you respect yourself, people won't put value on your life until you do.

Schmidt has always been an idiot in these kinds of matters. He either doesn't understand why some people would be freaked out by his solution or not trust it, or he realizes that but doesn't care.

This will work until governments start using it to censor speech that most people feel should be heard. Then the service will collapse and be replaced by something that is more free.

People need to understand that if you don't like what someone is saying, the way to stop them isn't to censor them or limit their speech, it's to use your own free speech to tell everyone why they're wrong. Suppressing speech does nothing to changes the hearts and minds of those who might agree with it and only serves to make that person appear a victim of your oppression, no matter how pure your motives may be. If you want to shut down terrorist groups like ISIS on social media, the best way to do so is to ridicule them. Who wants to join a group that's a complete laughingstock?

So, a mass shooting that has now been labeled as terrorism happens in the state with the strictest gun control laws available in the US,

I stopped reading here, since California does not, in fact, have the strictest gun control laws in the US.

In any case, (1): they used a loophole in the rule against high-capacity assault rifles. So, one conclusion would be "they should close the loophole" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
and (2) they used neighbors to buy more of their guns. http://abcnews.go.com/US/neigh...

If all judges were this sensible, then those who want to imprison people for "climate change denial" will be thwarted.

All zero people.

Well probably not quite zero, there's enough people in the world that there's probably one nutjob who says something like that. I'll bet you can't find a remotely significant number of people with such views.

Crawl out from under that rock, because you're WRONG:

Read a US Senator (Democrat, natch) call for bringing RICO charges against climate deniers.

More here: Arrest Climate-Change Deniers

And here: Is misinformation about the climate criminally negligent?

More: Al Gore Blasts GOP Climate Deniers, Thom Hartmann Says Throw Them in Jail

Let’s give up on academic freedom in favor of justice

Death Penalty for Global Warming Deniers?

WTF? DEATH PENALTY?!?!?!

Yes indeed - death penalty. And he's not alone:

Climate “Deniers” Must Be Jailed or Killed

What States' Attorneys General Can Do About Climate Deniers (Hard to believe the Kennedy clan has fallen that far - JFK tried to depose a Communist dictator instead of sucking up to him...)

Atheists don't go to meetings and have bake sales or go to temple (or the club house, or whatever.)

Actually. yes, they do. Or at least some do.

You've cracked the conspiracy! In the atheist world domination conspiracy, atheists:

get together in a building every week in (nowhere) on the atheist sabbath day (none) as prescribed in the book of (nothing) to pray to (no one) in order to (not) save their (non) eternal souls.

You need to get out more.

Probably not going to complain about "the descendants of the same ones that crucified Christ" dominating the world as Chavez did.

Probably. And he may even be nicer to Israel than Chavez was and than his own core constituency are. But that's not something, that has much bearing on economic and other internal policies... And it is those policies — not the anti-Semitism and not the anti-Israel denunciations — that stalled Venezuela's economy (even while oil was still expensive), destroyed its infrastructure, and quintupled the murder rate and other violent crime.

Probably not going to complain about "the descendants of the same ones that crucified Christ" dominating the world as Chavez did.

Probably. And he may even be nicer to Israel than Chavez was and than his own core constituency are. But that's not something, that has much bearing on economic and other internal policies... And it is those policies — not the anti-Semitism and not the anti-Israel denunciations — that stalled Venezuela's economy (even while oil was still expensive), destroyed its infrastructure, and quintupled the murder rate and other violent crime.

"Free" always means that you're somehow getting someone else to pay the bill. The difference is simply that you think others should be forced to pay for the things you think they should value, whereas I think it's better to look for ways to persuade people to pay voluntarily by offering something they actually do value in exchange.

Your system is not 'free' in that the students themselves (or their families) are to pay the bill. That is not free and can in no way be construed as free.

With regard to who pays the bill in my system, 'others' in this case includes me, as I pay taxes. I consider this to be an investment in the infrastructure of society even if it isn't roads or warships.

I am curious - do you think that no education, secondary and primary included, should be free?

As well, it is not realistic for poor or even middle class families who are already struggling to 'take out a loan to cover the up-front expenses'. Certainly it was impossible for me when I tried. And tried. And tried.

I don't know your specific situation, but certainly my experience with student loans was very different from what you described. My family was well enough off to not qualify for income-based financial aid, but not so well off that we could afford to pay for everything ourselves. I received some merit-based scholarships; to cover the rest I took out student loans. If anything, they were probably too easy to get; that's part of the reason why the base tuition is so high. In the end they even reduced the interest rates down to something like 0.5%—low enough that there was little incentive to repay the loan early, even compared to the low yield available from a typical savings account (at the time; yields are lower now).

My family was on welfare and was not able to contribute. Your family situation was above the line where this system breaks down - good for you (I am not being ironic). There are many where this is not the case.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

Mr. Iger, who actively lobbies for more more H-1B visas was the 2d highest paid executive in the country. http://money.cnn.com/gallery/n...

In the wake of the Disney H-1Beeing, he got a raise: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

Note that Mr. Iger's salary is more than that of the 320 Disney workers who got H-1Bed COMBINED.

And if you total the on-paper savings of replacing those Americans with H-1B workers, it adds up to about what Mr. Iger's RAISE was that year.

She's not currently an elected representative, but Hillary Clinton recently said that an Australia style national gun "buyback" program is something worth considering.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

"Buyback" is a ridiculous way to characterize what happened in Australia because it conjures up images of a voluntary program. In Australia, they first managed to implement firearms registration (bad idea). Then, when they moved on to the confiscation phase, people who owned guns were ordered to either turn them in to the "buyback program" or be considered felons. And thanks to the gun registry, they knew who owned what. That is "gun grabbing".

Surely you must be at +5 Interesting for talking about something that wasn't this.

It doesn't take much google prowess to see all the kids who were arrested for bringing toy guns to class. https://www.google.com/search?... That doesn't include the one(s) suspended for pointing a finger http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

How is a toy bomb any different?

Intelligence agencies foil terrorist plots all the time, but guess what mr insightful: they don't talk about it! Do you know why? Because that would harm existing operations!

Two things. One, 99% of the time they don't have to give specifics and people would still believe them, so it's not like the action of blowing their own horn would endanger existing operations. Two, The NSA's Big Terrorism Claim Doesn't Hold Up, which conveniently happened after Snowden. Ie, even if you don't believe one, then they're perfectly willing to "harm existing operations" for their own political ends.

The terrorists only need to succeed once, whereas the people you are bemoaning as incompetent have to succeed all the time.

Clearly you're wrong. The NSA, CIA, etc have failed repeatedly. They clearly don't "have to" succeed "all the time". It's enough that people, like you, act as if they're succeeding enough and others, maybe you too, pretending that "if only we had more privacy invasion tools" that the numbers would go up. How about we be more honest: terrorism as a tool only works if one is terrorized, which means the NSA, et al calling for more powers to "protect" people is playing right into the terrorists' hands. The correct response, to morn the loss of the people killed and to continue business as usual, is to accept that terrorist will kill people and yet we can live in freedom 99.99% of the time without trying to cripple ourselves in the name of "foil[ling] terrorist plots all the time"--which is less likely but still possible if we simply went back to pre-9/11 standards.

I get that you probably want to sound your horn on important topics to give the impression that there's a lick of intelligence inside you, but the mods upvoting this rubbish? For shame!

Clearly there's plenty of intelligence in the intelligence agencies. They fail, ask for more invading techniques that likely won't help, and will fail again. If we don't even hold them responsible for when they fail, then why are we beginning to grant them their invading techniques? That's the real "for shame" of it.

Oops. Time to update the talking points:

= = = http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
WASHINGTON -- Professional entertainer and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump refused to rule out creating some kind of database for tracking Muslims in the United States.

George Stephanopoulos asked Trump on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday whether he would unequivocally rule out a database for "all Muslims" since Trump's position on the question has been a little unclear.

"No, not at all," Trump said. "I want a database for the refugees that -- if they come into the country. We have no idea who these people are. When the Syrian refugees are going to start pouring into this country, we don’t know if they’re ISIS, we don’t know if it’s a Trojan horse. And I definitely want a database and other checks and balances. We want to go with watch lists. We want to go with databases."

To recap: Trump said he would not rule out a database "for all Muslims," but then talked about a database specifically for Syrian refugees. Refugees are already subject to a lengthy vetting process that can last years, but the government doesn't necessarily track them after they arrive.

Trump also said he supported torturing terrorism suspects via waterboarding and that he doesn't want to close mosques, just to spy on them.

And Stephanopoulos asked Trump about his questionable claim that he saw thousands of people cheering when the World Trade Center fell on Sept. 11.

"It was on television. I saw it," Trump said. "There were people that were cheering on the other side of New Jersey, where you have large Arab populations."

Stephanopoulos repeatedly pointed out that police said it didn't happen. = = =

I'm sure Trump didn't really say that either.

sPh

FWIW "In April [2005], the Washington-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a religious watchdog group, claimed that there have been numerous incidents of religious bias and official promotion of fundamentalist Christianity at the Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs, Col." http://www.monitor.net/monitor... "A 2010 survey found 41 percent of non-Christian cadets faced unwanted proselytizing, even as the religious majority felt that their freedom of speech was being infringed upon." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... "I am on staff at USAFA and will talk about Jesus Christ my Lord and savior to everyone that I work with.” http://www.jta.org/2013/11/21/...

No. Not everything is attributable to global warming. However, the mere presence of snow in one place at one time doesn't disprove global warming. If it did, then I could prove that nobody is starving in the world because I'm feeling full right now.