The problem with three strikes laws isn't the theory. It just makes sense for someone who's commited a crime for a third time to get more punishment than for someone who just committed his first one. He actually knew damn well what he was getting into.
The problem is that all crimes are treated the same, and this has resulted in nonsensical results like someone getting more time for breaking into a gas station and making off with a couple of bags of chips three times than someone who kills two people. (There actually is someone who's third strike was breaking into a gas station and making off with some chips. Apparently he was drunk. His other two crimes were (real) robbery, sometimes in the previous decade. He got a rather long sentence.)
What I'd like to see is punishments tacked on to you next sentence, and I'd like expirations on them. For example, someone steals a car, they would get X years, and they would get Y years that will be added if they get arrested for a felony, which slowly expire off, say a year every year. (Erm, starting after they get out.)
And I think something like 1/4 is the right amount for the start. You get arrested for something, get 4 years, and you get 1 year on your next felony arrest. It ups to 1/2 on your next arrest, and maybe 3/4 after that.
Under current three strike laws, there are dozens of examples of people who haven't commited a crime in a decade and get picked up on some stupid charge, and have the book thrown at them, because of two other things they did a decade and a half ago. And because of judges seeing that was silliness and letting them out of that the three strike laws (But, of course,they still have to pay for the actual crime.), the legislative system in many states responded by...making the laws not be optional anymore.
When the legislature starts telling judges 'stop letting people out of this law we wrote', and actually has to rewrite the law to forbid it, you know something's seriously wrong somewhere. They had to do the same thing with drug laws, because too many judges started seeing 'drug dealers' as 'young people who purchased extra drugs and resold them to support their habit' instead of 'evil scum who tried to addict our children to cocaine and shot each other in the street'.
Okay, there are basically three kinds of murders/murderers.
There's the basic one when a person turns violent and kills someone out of rage, like barfights, or finding X in bed with Y. This is almost always second degree murder, although sometimes the anger turns into some sort of seething hatred and a murder is actually planned. Basically, you want to hurt the person, and hurt them to death.
Then there the other motives for murder...they're blackmailing you, you're in their will, whatever. Basically, you will be a better position with them dead. This is almost always first degree murder.
Then there are the loons, the serial killers. People who murder people for no apparent reason.
Almost all school violence is the first one. Pure anger towards a tormentor. (And, as people have pointed out, possibly it would be useful to look into cause of such anger, instead of just going 'Bad kids! Don't kill people!', which seems rather unlikely to work.) The Manhunt case seems to be about drugs, which probably means the second case.
The whole 'video games cause violence' is based on the concept there are a large amount of the third category, which just isn't true.
See, the thing is, sociopathic kids, the loons, almost never kill anyone. They're either posing as a normal bully, (Normal bullies hurt others to benefit themselves, they would be hurting other kids to hurt kids.) or they're sitting in the woods nailing squirrels to trees.
If we could actually locate sociopaths by giving them violent video games and having them kill someone, I'm all for it. It would stop them from growning up and becoming the famous 'Shoelace Killer' who's brought to justice after he strangles 11 women. Catch them while they're still kids and stupid.
But there simply aren't that many of category three.
I think you misunderstood me. I didn't say 'is it likely he'll win', I said can he win. The Libertarian and green parties certainly can.
There are third party candidates that cannot win the election. (No, they can't win via write-in ballots...to win the presidental election via write-in, you have to declare electors in advance of the election in each state.)
That's what I've always thought. Let's not have any of this crap about 5%. If you can physical win the election, then you should be allowed to debate, at least at the moment.
If that ever comes to 20 candidates, yeah, we'd have to do something to limit the size, maybe have tiered debates. (You guys have a somewhat similiar platform, so you get to debate each other, etc.) Or make it so you have to be able to be physically able to win 3/4 of the votes instead of 50.1%. But the way the system is set up, the odds of that happening are low.
There are plenty of third parties running for local government. Especially Libertarians.
However, if no one's ever heard of the party, who's going to vote for them? These 'presidental candidates' are as much PR for the viable local candidates as it is a way of pointing out flaws in the duopoly.
Well, the first step is to stop calling it identity theft, like there was some harm done to the victim by the original criminal.
There was absolutely no harm done by 'the thief'. All the harm done to the 'victim' was by the companies that were defrauded.
It's rather akin to saying I 'indirectly assaulted' you, when 'I hit some third party, saying I was you, and they run out and punch you.'. Yes, I am a bad person for hitting that person, but so are they, for hitting you. Saying I assaulted you is completely ignoring the other wrong thing that happened.
What we need to do is have some lawyers realize this.
'Identity theft' is doublespeak. If someone pretends to be a police officer, they aren't committing 'police officer theft'. They're impersonating a police officer. If someone sells counterfeit Levis, they aren't commiting Levi-label theft.
Identity theft is really 'Some company was too stupid and trusting and now you have to clean up the mess.'. The 'thief' didn't steal a damn thing from the 'victim', the thief stole something from the company, and they turned around and victimized someone else.
Yes, and regulations about who can use the resource when would be appropriate.
In a public park, for example, the government has the right to say 'Hey, those kids are playing soccer here, go stand somewhere else. You're messing up the game.' or even 'Those kids are playing soccer, you guys can play soccer in 45 minutes.'. We all understand that our cellphones shouldn't transmit on the police band, and our TVs should be able to tune all TV stations, no matter where in the country we are. No one has any issues with the government dictating that kind of stuff unless they're the tin-foil hat crowd. There are issues with, for example, microtransmitters for radio and whatnot, but they aren't huge concerns.
However, saying 'You can't say 'fuck', this is a public park' is not appropriate for the government to be doing. That's nothing to do with making sure the park is used fairly.
The FCC stopped just being about 'Don't transmit on top of each other' a long time ago, and got into some nonsensical position where you can only use the public resources for whatever they decide is the public good. This is so obviously unconstitional it's not funny.
Um, do we really need more Florida dumbasses this election? What kind of moron forgets to check the box saying he's a US Citizen on a voter registration form? That's rather the whole point of the form, to assert you are a citizen, and inform the government what districts you are in.
No, I suspect what's actually happening there is those people are not citizens, and just didn't pay attention to the oath.
The Big Bang is a scientific model of the start of the universe. I could point out that it's a scientific theory that was created to explain observable facts, whereas God creating the universe doesn't explain anything. And if you start asking what created Big Bang, I'm afraid you're a bit behind the times there. The current conception just has space, and the space 'tilts' sideways and turns into time. (I don't pretend to understand how things can 'tilt' in no time, but the math works.)
However, that's not really the point at all, you're trying to trick people, even if you don't realize it. It doesn't matter if the Big Bang is wrong...in fact, even since the Big Bang was proposed, serious professional scientists have claimed that theory is inaccurate and/or meaningless.
It's not some end-all and be-all of science, it's nowhere near the level of General Relativity as a 'theory'. (Strictly speaking, there's not one theory there anyway, there are several.) Pretending it's some sort of religion for scientists is ignoring the fact a lot of them don't believe it, they just don't have anything better at the moment.
But that's still not the point. The point is that the people claiming the Big Bang theory is correct are doing so because that's what the evidence looks like. They say 'It looks like the entire universe used to be in the same place...what the heck could that have looked liked, and what happened to it to make it go everywhere?' Whereas the people saying 'God did it' are just being lazy.
I was just making the point that if it was the job of anyone to 'micromanage', it is not, in fact, the managers, but the directors. (Microdirection?)
Just like the director doesn't do anything 95% of the time, he just accepts whatever he's given, the board of directors shouldn't, either. If they feel like changing things, fine, but the company really should be able to function without them if they have a script. But just like a play with no director will have no...erm...wholeness, a company with no director will get left behind by companies with purpose.
However, what's going on in some companies is that management is making policy decisions, like 'We're going to use this software platform'. That's either the programmer's job or the director's, we've just randomly decided that this 'manager' should decide things like that. That would be as absurd as a stage manager that a scene was not lit enough and adjusting the lights by themselves, over the objection of the lighting designer.
Managers are supposed to fix problems and keep everyone on task, not change things or set policy.
So you've cruising down the freeway, and your throttle sticks, and for some reason you don't turn the key to accessory to cut the engine.
So you brace yourself and put it into park.
Okay, now that you've shifted into park, slamming into the steering column, skidding all over the road, why the hell are you going turn your key any more? You're in park.
What, you think the car is telepathically moving you forward because the engine is going? Does it normally move forward when you're sitting in park revving the engine?
And this is granting the absurdity of doing anything after you shift a car suddenly into park. Either you just stopped, bam, and what you do doens't matter, or you're completely screwed because you're sliding down the road on your tires at 100 miles an hour. You're not going to be screwing around with your ignition at that point, you're going to be screaming and trying to keep the car from turning sideways and rolling down the road.
I mean, yes, if people did shift to park, remove their key, and lock their engine, it would just lock their steering wheel and they'd probably crash. OTOH, if they climbed out on top of their car's hood and tried to break with their feet, they'd probably get themselves killed, too. Let's not worry about such stupid people.;)
I've never heard of a car where you could turn the key to 'lock' while in gear, even with pushing a button. That would just be stupid...how often do you need to physically remove the key while the car is in motion? (What, you're in such a hurry you need to unlock your front door while your car slams to a halt, plastering you against the steering wheel and ripping out your transmission?) All you want to do is stop the engine from running.
Now, I've heard of cars where you can't turn the key to accessory when the car's not in neutral or park, but never actually seen them, and I'm not actually sure they exist...I think it's just people making assumptions about their car. If anyone actually has a car that will not do that, please respond to me. (I'm talking physically, here, not weird-ass drive-by-wire cars that you turn off electronically, like in this article.)
My automatic Pontiac Sunbird would not only let you do that, it would also let you 'push start' it. Of course, you had to be going like 30 mph or so, so you couldn't actually push start it unless you had a damn big hill, but if it stalled while driving down the highway, you could just flip the key to accessory and then back while in gear.
While building a show, you have a director who basically controls everything and everyone. He says 'stand here, put that there, turn that light down'. (He hopefully delegates some of that.) This is how some bosses seem to act...but they're managers, not directors.
When the show is ready to open, he's built everything exactly how he wants it, and he then turns it over to the stage manager, who then proceeds to, hopefully, do nothing except call out 'Okay, do the next thing on my mark. Mark.' repeatedly.
Of course, as we're talking about something that, no matter what anyone does, seems to repeatedly involve actors, said stage manager will spend a good deal of time locating them. Or something equally silly, like lighting system tripping a breaker, the curtain failing to operate, or a fly that won't fly.
So, by analogy, the board of directors of a company should 'build the show', and then hire managers to make sure things keep running.
You know, you can tell what 'managers' and 'supervisors' are supposed to do by looking at the word.
Supervisors are supposed to watch. And presumably do something if they notice something wrong, like employees hanging out in the break room for six hours straight.
Managers are supposed to manage people and things. Manage doesn't mean 'control', it means 'watch and direct'. They're supposed to watch paper clips and direct them towards a purpose, they're supposed to watch employees and direct them towards some purpose.
There's a reason we don't have 'controllers' or 'directors'. (Well, unless you're a spy or in a theatre, in which case those actually do means 'someone who controls you'.)
Interestingly enough, I can't figure out where 'boss' come form, only that it also means 'knob or protuberance', hence 'emboss'.
Both those places could easily have some sort of government redirection in operation, even assuming the law wasn't written in such a way to specifically exclude them.
In fact, I'm a little confused. Wouldn't it be better to just have a secure phone number that can't be traced in the first place? That way you could call people in the witness protection system, or at battered women's shelter.
You should have said, 'Oh, wow, you mean I can return this magazine? How long do I have, a month?' and then duly walked back in a few weeks later and tried to return the magazine.
This is exactly what I've been saying about Bush not knowing a damn thing about foreign policy. It's not that we went to war illegally, it's that we threw around some obvious lies to do so. We have no respect at all.
Going to war illegally would have been fine if we'd admitted it. Of course, if we'd admitted it, no American would have supported the war in the first place.
I think it's very disturbing how partisen politics has gotten, and people are still supporting Bush. It doesn't matter if it was a fucking war of libertation. It wasn't presented as such, and all the reasons presented for it were lies.
It's also disturbing the media is still trying to be 'balanced'. Balanced doesn't mean 'Pretend each side is equally right', or, if it does, it's not a good thing for the media to be. The media should be fair, it needs to have evidence and standards and be unbias.
Pretending each side is equally correct is just as biased as pretending a certain side is always wrong. Sometimes the critics are right. When the government lies, pound them on it.
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Well, okay. I suppose I should I should have said no sane motive. ;)
The problem is that all crimes are treated the same, and this has resulted in nonsensical results like someone getting more time for breaking into a gas station and making off with a couple of bags of chips three times than someone who kills two people. (There actually is someone who's third strike was breaking into a gas station and making off with some chips. Apparently he was drunk. His other two crimes were (real) robbery, sometimes in the previous decade. He got a rather long sentence.)
What I'd like to see is punishments tacked on to you next sentence, and I'd like expirations on them. For example, someone steals a car, they would get X years, and they would get Y years that will be added if they get arrested for a felony, which slowly expire off, say a year every year. (Erm, starting after they get out.)
And I think something like 1/4 is the right amount for the start. You get arrested for something, get 4 years, and you get 1 year on your next felony arrest. It ups to 1/2 on your next arrest, and maybe 3/4 after that.
Under current three strike laws, there are dozens of examples of people who haven't commited a crime in a decade and get picked up on some stupid charge, and have the book thrown at them, because of two other things they did a decade and a half ago. And because of judges seeing that was silliness and letting them out of that the three strike laws (But, of course,they still have to pay for the actual crime.), the legislative system in many states responded by...making the laws not be optional anymore.
When the legislature starts telling judges 'stop letting people out of this law we wrote', and actually has to rewrite the law to forbid it, you know something's seriously wrong somewhere. They had to do the same thing with drug laws, because too many judges started seeing 'drug dealers' as 'young people who purchased extra drugs and resold them to support their habit' instead of 'evil scum who tried to addict our children to cocaine and shot each other in the street'.
Okay, there are basically three kinds of murders/murderers.
There's the basic one when a person turns violent and kills someone out of rage, like barfights, or finding X in bed with Y. This is almost always second degree murder, although sometimes the anger turns into some sort of seething hatred and a murder is actually planned. Basically, you want to hurt the person, and hurt them to death.
Then there the other motives for murder...they're blackmailing you, you're in their will, whatever. Basically, you will be a better position with them dead. This is almost always first degree murder.
Then there are the loons, the serial killers. People who murder people for no apparent reason.
Almost all school violence is the first one. Pure anger towards a tormentor. (And, as people have pointed out, possibly it would be useful to look into cause of such anger, instead of just going 'Bad kids! Don't kill people!', which seems rather unlikely to work.) The Manhunt case seems to be about drugs, which probably means the second case.
The whole 'video games cause violence' is based on the concept there are a large amount of the third category, which just isn't true.
See, the thing is, sociopathic kids, the loons, almost never kill anyone. They're either posing as a normal bully, (Normal bullies hurt others to benefit themselves, they would be hurting other kids to hurt kids.) or they're sitting in the woods nailing squirrels to trees.
If we could actually locate sociopaths by giving them violent video games and having them kill someone, I'm all for it. It would stop them from growning up and becoming the famous 'Shoelace Killer' who's brought to justice after he strangles 11 women. Catch them while they're still kids and stupid.
But there simply aren't that many of category three.
And a specific audio format. Interesting.
There are third party candidates that cannot win the election. (No, they can't win via write-in ballots...to win the presidental election via write-in, you have to declare electors in advance of the election in each state.)
Well, there's an obvious linee to be drawn: Can you win the election?
The Constitutional Party is flamebait.
If that ever comes to 20 candidates, yeah, we'd have to do something to limit the size, maybe have tiered debates. (You guys have a somewhat similiar platform, so you get to debate each other, etc.) Or make it so you have to be able to be physically able to win 3/4 of the votes instead of 50.1%. But the way the system is set up, the odds of that happening are low.
However, if no one's ever heard of the party, who's going to vote for them? These 'presidental candidates' are as much PR for the viable local candidates as it is a way of pointing out flaws in the duopoly.
There was absolutely no harm done by 'the thief'. All the harm done to the 'victim' was by the companies that were defrauded.
It's rather akin to saying I 'indirectly assaulted' you, when 'I hit some third party, saying I was you, and they run out and punch you.'. Yes, I am a bad person for hitting that person, but so are they, for hitting you. Saying I assaulted you is completely ignoring the other wrong thing that happened.
What we need to do is have some lawyers realize this.
Who do you think gains out when a company has several million dollars that aren't stolen?
'Identity theft' is doublespeak. If someone pretends to be a police officer, they aren't committing 'police officer theft'. They're impersonating a police officer. If someone sells counterfeit Levis, they aren't commiting Levi-label theft.
Identity theft is really 'Some company was too stupid and trusting and now you have to clean up the mess.'. The 'thief' didn't steal a damn thing from the 'victim', the thief stole something from the company, and they turned around and victimized someone else.
In a public park, for example, the government has the right to say 'Hey, those kids are playing soccer here, go stand somewhere else. You're messing up the game.' or even 'Those kids are playing soccer, you guys can play soccer in 45 minutes.'. We all understand that our cellphones shouldn't transmit on the police band, and our TVs should be able to tune all TV stations, no matter where in the country we are. No one has any issues with the government dictating that kind of stuff unless they're the tin-foil hat crowd. There are issues with, for example, microtransmitters for radio and whatnot, but they aren't huge concerns.
However, saying 'You can't say 'fuck', this is a public park' is not appropriate for the government to be doing. That's nothing to do with making sure the park is used fairly.
The FCC stopped just being about 'Don't transmit on top of each other' a long time ago, and got into some nonsensical position where you can only use the public resources for whatever they decide is the public good. This is so obviously unconstitional it's not funny.
No, I suspect what's actually happening there is those people are not citizens, and just didn't pay attention to the oath.
The Big Bang is a scientific model of the start of the universe. I could point out that it's a scientific theory that was created to explain observable facts, whereas God creating the universe doesn't explain anything. And if you start asking what created Big Bang, I'm afraid you're a bit behind the times there. The current conception just has space, and the space 'tilts' sideways and turns into time. (I don't pretend to understand how things can 'tilt' in no time, but the math works.)
However, that's not really the point at all, you're trying to trick people, even if you don't realize it. It doesn't matter if the Big Bang is wrong...in fact, even since the Big Bang was proposed, serious professional scientists have claimed that theory is inaccurate and/or meaningless.
It's not some end-all and be-all of science, it's nowhere near the level of General Relativity as a 'theory'. (Strictly speaking, there's not one theory there anyway, there are several.) Pretending it's some sort of religion for scientists is ignoring the fact a lot of them don't believe it, they just don't have anything better at the moment.
But that's still not the point. The point is that the people claiming the Big Bang theory is correct are doing so because that's what the evidence looks like. They say 'It looks like the entire universe used to be in the same place...what the heck could that have looked liked, and what happened to it to make it go everywhere?' Whereas the people saying 'God did it' are just being lazy.
Just like the director doesn't do anything 95% of the time, he just accepts whatever he's given, the board of directors shouldn't, either. If they feel like changing things, fine, but the company really should be able to function without them if they have a script. But just like a play with no director will have no...erm...wholeness, a company with no director will get left behind by companies with purpose.
However, what's going on in some companies is that management is making policy decisions, like 'We're going to use this software platform'. That's either the programmer's job or the director's, we've just randomly decided that this 'manager' should decide things like that. That would be as absurd as a stage manager that a scene was not lit enough and adjusting the lights by themselves, over the objection of the lighting designer.
Managers are supposed to fix problems and keep everyone on task, not change things or set policy.
So you've cruising down the freeway, and your throttle sticks, and for some reason you don't turn the key to accessory to cut the engine.
So you brace yourself and put it into park.
Okay, now that you've shifted into park, slamming into the steering column, skidding all over the road, why the hell are you going turn your key any more? You're in park.
What, you think the car is telepathically moving you forward because the engine is going? Does it normally move forward when you're sitting in park revving the engine?
And this is granting the absurdity of doing anything after you shift a car suddenly into park. Either you just stopped, bam, and what you do doens't matter, or you're completely screwed because you're sliding down the road on your tires at 100 miles an hour. You're not going to be screwing around with your ignition at that point, you're going to be screaming and trying to keep the car from turning sideways and rolling down the road.
I mean, yes, if people did shift to park, remove their key, and lock their engine, it would just lock their steering wheel and they'd probably crash. OTOH, if they climbed out on top of their car's hood and tried to break with their feet, they'd probably get themselves killed, too. Let's not worry about such stupid people. ;)
Because he knew that if he did that, there was a chance he'd burn off all this brakes, and then be stuck going 120 with no brakes?
Now, I've heard of cars where you can't turn the key to accessory when the car's not in neutral or park, but never actually seen them, and I'm not actually sure they exist...I think it's just people making assumptions about their car. If anyone actually has a car that will not do that, please respond to me. (I'm talking physically, here, not weird-ass drive-by-wire cars that you turn off electronically, like in this article.)
My automatic Pontiac Sunbird would not only let you do that, it would also let you 'push start' it. Of course, you had to be going like 30 mph or so, so you couldn't actually push start it unless you had a damn big hill, but if it stalled while driving down the highway, you could just flip the key to accessory and then back while in gear.
While building a show, you have a director who basically controls everything and everyone. He says 'stand here, put that there, turn that light down'. (He hopefully delegates some of that.) This is how some bosses seem to act...but they're managers, not directors.
When the show is ready to open, he's built everything exactly how he wants it, and he then turns it over to the stage manager, who then proceeds to, hopefully, do nothing except call out 'Okay, do the next thing on my mark. Mark.' repeatedly.
Of course, as we're talking about something that, no matter what anyone does, seems to repeatedly involve actors, said stage manager will spend a good deal of time locating them. Or something equally silly, like lighting system tripping a breaker, the curtain failing to operate, or a fly that won't fly.
So, by analogy, the board of directors of a company should 'build the show', and then hire managers to make sure things keep running.
Supervisors are supposed to watch. And presumably do something if they notice something wrong, like employees hanging out in the break room for six hours straight.
Managers are supposed to manage people and things. Manage doesn't mean 'control', it means 'watch and direct'. They're supposed to watch paper clips and direct them towards a purpose, they're supposed to watch employees and direct them towards some purpose.
There's a reason we don't have 'controllers' or 'directors'. (Well, unless you're a spy or in a theatre, in which case those actually do means 'someone who controls you'.)
Interestingly enough, I can't figure out where 'boss' come form, only that it also means 'knob or protuberance', hence 'emboss'.
In fact, I'm a little confused. Wouldn't it be better to just have a secure phone number that can't be traced in the first place? That way you could call people in the witness protection system, or at battered women's shelter.
It only works about half the time, of course, because often the gun is in the dresser on the other side, but them's the breaks.
You should have said, 'Oh, wow, you mean I can return this magazine? How long do I have, a month?' and then duly walked back in a few weeks later and tried to return the magazine.
This is exactly what I've been saying about Bush not knowing a damn thing about foreign policy. It's not that we went to war illegally, it's that we threw around some obvious lies to do so. We have no respect at all.
Going to war illegally would have been fine if we'd admitted it. Of course, if we'd admitted it, no American would have supported the war in the first place.
I think it's very disturbing how partisen politics has gotten, and people are still supporting Bush. It doesn't matter if it was a fucking war of libertation. It wasn't presented as such, and all the reasons presented for it were lies.
It's also disturbing the media is still trying to be 'balanced'. Balanced doesn't mean 'Pretend each side is equally right', or, if it does, it's not a good thing for the media to be. The media should be fair, it needs to have evidence and standards and be unbias.
Pretending each side is equally correct is just as biased as pretending a certain side is always wrong. Sometimes the critics are right. When the government lies, pound them on it.