A voting machine is impossible because one of the requirements for voting is transparency.
I cannot verify an electronic voting machine. I have no ability to open one up and check the code, or put the hard drive in my computer and run tests on it.
And while that theoretically can be done (Despite almost no one having the skill for it, and it not being allowed anyway, and it taking months of time to go over each line of code.), I physically don't have the ability to open up the chips on the motherboard and confirm they do what they say they do.
The most basic fundamental requirement of voting is transparency. It's even more important than anonymity, considering that plenty of places vote without that, like legislatures, or anywhere else that votes by a show of hands. The very very minimum of voting is being able to stand there and do the same count as the official counter and come to the same conclusion about the winner. Voting must, must, must, result in the winner and the loser being able to stand there and say who won.
If I cannot see every aspect of the counting, if I cannot verify that the pathway of the vote, be it physical or electronic, is not tampered with, it is not 'voting'. It is a sham. And unless I'm Doctor Manhattan or something, I can't see the layout of electronic pathways, at least not without rupturing the chip and making it unusable. (And thus I can't vote with it.)
Ergo, a voting machine is physically impossible. It is physically impossible to open computer chips up and confirm they do what they are supposed to, so any electronic counter fails the basic requirement of 'voting'. Period. That is not voting.
And, yes, some asshat is going to leap in here about a hypothetical voting machine that just prints paper ballots for people. No one have any problem with machines that help people fill out paper ballots, but those are not 'voting machines' as actually sold to the public. Voting machines are machines that record and tabulate votes. Yes, even the scantron readers, which also can't be confirmed. But a machine that prints a paper ballot that people then count is a goddamn fancy pencil.
I don't quite understand how anyone knew Greene was black, what with him running no ads or anything. I heard something about 'Greene' with an E at the end being a clue, maybe...the only Greens I know are white, and they, indeed, have no E at the end.
I agree with you that fraud makes no sense, from anyone.
Except from Greene, and he seems a little incapable of that. Not only is he not the sharpest spoon in the drawer, he doesn't appear to have any staff at all.
I've often had people find it odd, given that I'm a programmer, that I'm so against purely electronic voting.
It is amazing how often people find that odd. But don't just tell them you're against it...tell them pretty much the entire industry is against them, because computers do exactly what you tell them to do, including lie, and then they can lie about being told to lie.
People need to hear this more from people they regard as knowledgeable about computers. Over and over. Computers lie if told to do so. This is not detectable because they'll just lie about their lying to the people checking them.
It's not a scheme to get anyone elected, it's a scheme to screw with the Democrats by introducing racial divisiveness. Republicans appear to believe that the entire left operates on identity politics. (Vote down a woman for president? We'll collect the female vote by having one as a VP! That's not why people were for Hillary, you asshats.)
In South Carolina, as is pointed out,t he scheme is usually done by throwing a clearly unqualified black guy in the Democratic primary when there's no serious black candidate, so that when some qualified white person wins, hopefully some whispering about racism will show up and some black people, at least, stay home. This doesn't work very well, because Democrats are usually voting the issues, and the Republicans have just mistaken it for race, but surely it works a tiny amount, and all it takes is a filing fee.
However, this time, the guy won, which is utterly surreal.
And, yes, voting fraud doesn't explain it, because if the Republicans can defraud elections, they sure as hell wouldn't have done it here, in such an obvious manner, when they'd have their candidate win no matter what.
And there's absolutely no reason for the Democrats to do it.
Only in the Republican universe did 'Republicans' oppose segregation and 'Democrats' support it.
What actually happened, as anyone with an IQ over 80 knows, is that the South supported segregation, regardless of party, and North supported civil rights, regardless of party.
And this split was so large it ended up breaking both parties in half, and the Republicans all ended up in with the segregationists afterward. You know that 'George Wallace', that you point out was a Democrat? Well, no. After that little stunt, he had to run as a independent for president in 1968 (In which he came in at 13% of the vote, winning the south), and had to disavow his previous segregation stand in 1972 to run as a Democrat.
And that, of course, isn't even why people think the Republican are racist. It didn't end there. The Southern Strategy came next.
You can try arguing that racism has stopped, but the Republicans actively courted and actively supported racism from the mid-1960s to the early 1990s, at least.
Your #1 is a bit misleading...most of those groups aren't openly against hydroelectric, as that's too obvious. They will, however, seize on any excuse like 'fish can't swim up river'. (Yeah, well, how well can fish swim up river after you've blow the tops of mountains into them?)
Also, they're mostly pro-coal, not pro-oil. It's sorta a mix, but coal is certainly in the lead. The oil industry is mainly in there to keep out more efficient cars and whatnot.
Yeah, a nuclear fusion project might go haywire and...um...maybe melt a little?
The fact that 'anti-nuclear' activists think there is any sort of possible runaway situation of a fusion reactor shows just how ill informed they are. It would be pretty damn impressive for a fusion reactor to kill anyone, it would be roughly akin to people being killed by out-of-control electric stove.
I, as an environmentalist, have been fighting those fucking morons for years, as the idiots do not appear to understand that for the last few decades, and for another decade at least, the choice was between nuclear and coal, and that their 'clean energy' options haven't existed until very recently, and still only exist for individuals...we can't operate industry on them.
So thanks for the global warming, asshats, and you keep up the good fight to keep totally harmless things with the word 'nuclear' in them away from the public.
Sometimes I wish they hadn't renamed MRI machines, and left them called nuclear magnetic resonance imaging, to darwin-out the reflexive anti-nuclear people.
Also, coal mines themselves release a lot of radon, a naturally occurring underground radioactive gas. It's not just the burning that's radioactive...the actual mining releases more radioactivity than the equivalent in nuclear power. (And then, as you said, burning releases a lot more.)
Of course, any mine does that, (In fact, any sort of digging can...don't forget to have your basement checked for radon.) but coal mines dwarf all other sorts of mining put together.
Obviously with nuclear the dangerous stuff is kept contained and in solid form.
Whereas with coal even more dangerous stuff, fly ash, ends up in giant containment units, which then spill repeatedly and poisons rivers and groundwater.
The problem is not the behavior of the soldiers in the helicopter. Except the minor incident of shooting people who were clearly attempting to recover wounded, but that's a minor thing all in all.
It is the idea we should fly around in a fucking helicopter and shoot up people who 'look dangerous'. That is the damn problem.
Hell, that's not even sane military behavior.
Militaries have objectives, like 'hold this building' and 'raid the enemy base and blow up the fuel depot' stuff like that. They don't wander around looking for a fight that serves no purpose except for both sides to shoot at each other, and the fact of our overwhelming military superiority results in them winning most fights doesn't make it sane.
Doesn't really matter, what they're doing is illegal also, and they're rather unlikely to turn you in.
However, a much more interesting thing is to simply have them call 'you' back...at the number of the local police station. (I would say give out the FCC's number, but I suspect they already have that in their list as blocked, because I can't be the first person to think of it.)
Heh. As the other guy pointed out, your #3 is dependent on #3 being finished, and unless you have some sort of time machine, that ain't going to work.
I just have a simpler rule: Don't buy shit over the phone.
Seriously, who still does that? That's what the interwebs are for.
Of course, the idea of purchasing from someone who contacted you and you have no evidence they are who they say they are or have any legitimate business at all is rather nonsensical to start with.
Look, when I want to buy shit, I'll go find someone who sells it. You want to be that person, feel free to run ads in legitimate places I might see, and maybe when I need one I'll go 'Hey, I need a new dryer...I think Sears sells dryers, I saw an ad about that, I'll go there.'. Or you can run an ad in the place I look up business information, and I might go for that one. Or maybe you can get me via word-of-mouth. Who knows? The point is, when I want to purchase something, I purchase it by tracking it down, and buying it.
I'm not going to buy a damn dryer from someone who walks up to me on the street and tries to sell me a dryer and wants a check from me, and promises to deliver it next week. 99.999% of the time because I'm not wandering around without ownership of a fucking dryer, and in need of one, you morons. And the other 0.001% of the time because, while I do happen coincidentally to need to buy a dryer at that exact instant, I have no idea who you are.
So when I'm feeling surly I just lie the (landline) phone down when I hear the pause, rather than hanging up. I figure if they're willing to waste my time I might as well waste theirs.
Seriously, I do this too, and everyone should unless expecting a phone call. Do not, unless you absolutely need to, just hang up on a robocall. Let it connect to a person. Even push a button to get to connect. Leave it off the hook until it starts beeping at you.
In fact, I often lay the phone down, and start talking about how I can't hear them, and they need to speak up, just somewhat randomly, not in response to anything. Or I start talking about how I need a new car warranty, which I hope they can pick up just enough to try to keep selling me something I can't hear and they can't hear.
And, of course, sometimes I volunteer my time and actually spend a few minutes stringing them along. Hint: Start talking to them, actually sound interested, and then blurt out there's something wrong, you'll be back in a minute...and then lay the phone down.
Everyone should spend a few minutes a day doing something for the world. Throw away that plastic cup laying on the sidewalk, park slightly farther away if you're not in a hurry, and waste a few minutes of a telemarketer's time. It all adds up, people, so make the world a better place.
Hey, now, as a progressive in favor of massive government regulation, I have to step in and disagree. Places should have the right to make their own gun laws, and if some jurisdiction outlaws shooting telemarketers, I cannot disagree with that. Perhaps they are worried about human beings getting injured by stray bullets.
Crazy libertarians. The free market won't solve everything. Sure, we all agree it should be legal to kill telemarketers, but the government isn't the problem, the government is the solution. What do you think the National Guard is for?
Anyway, the systemic failure was the kids commanding officers creating a situation full of moral ambiguity where the poor kid kid needs a constitutional law scholar or a PHD in philosophy to figure out which of his responsibilities must be violated.
Counter-insurgency work is pretty much defined by 'moral ambiguity', which is why we need to avoid it as much as possible.
Our military works great at conquering. It works great at holding a line against other militaries and armed thugs, like during peacekeeping missions. It works great at enforcing no-mans lands.
Those missions are easy for us, and, because we're so overpowered, not that bad for the other side, too, because they either surrender or just don't test us, and there's no battle at all and everyone wins.
But there...there's counter-insurgency. Stupid, morally confusing, choose either to either-get-killed-sometimes or kill-innocent-people-sometimes counter-insurgency.
It's a bad mission for our military, and we need to stay the hell away from it.
I think torture should always be illegal and if it's very obvious that you need to smack someone around to get at some vital info, you do it because the consequences of being put on trial for torturing someone is outweighed by saving lives.
Indeed, this is exactly the argument that I made at the time about the idiotic 'ticking time bomb'.
There is a concept in law that you can commit crimes to stop greater ones. Self defense is an explicitly codified version of this, but it actually exists in general. If I'm being chased by a serial killer and I break into a closed business to use the telephone and call the police, I will not usually be charged with a crime, and if I am charged I can use the 'committed breaking and entering to try to avoid a murder' (namely mine) as a defense.
In fact, according to TV, police use this logic to break down doors all the time. In real life, not quite so much, but they can.
This a general principle of common law. Ergo, if you could assault someone (aka, torture) to actually prevent a murder, and demonstrate you did do so, you could use that as a defense in court. You could even use it as a defense if your crime could have stopped the bigger crime, but failed, if, for example, they didn't crack. (However, it wouldn't work too well as an excuse for torturing an innocent person, as that crime cannot possibly stop any other crime.)
And that's just in the 'legal' realm. There's also the jury, which can let you off even if you did commit a crime, and there's the governor who can pardon you.
Anyone who thinks there's actually circumstances where people who really did have a 'ticking time bomb' situation and tortured and ended up in jail is a total idiot who has no idea how our justice system works. If you run around doing 'illegal but heroic' things that society approves of, you, somehow, will end up a free man, even if technically guilty.
You can argue our justice system shouldn't operate like that, but that is the reason we have a jury and don't have cases decided entirely by legal experts, and it's worth pointing out that some of our most important freedoms have origins in the courts refusing to convict people of things that were clearly illegal, but public opinion was vastly against.
Of course, we're not going to get the 'freedom to torture', for the simply fact that 'ticking time bomb' is a stupid hypothetical and incredibly unlikely situation and thus we're not going to have a rash of courts affirming the right to torture in those circumstances.
P.S. Exactly how many of Bush's constitution-obliterating policies has Obama rescinded again? I lost count back at ZERO.
I lost count at negative two.
This is why I was saying all along...you can't undo illegal executive power grabs by putting a new guy in there. The best he can do is temporarily stop, and there's no incentive for him to do that.
To actually make sure things like that don't happen again, you have to at least attempt impeachment, or, if that's not doable, investigate some of the lower-downs.
All electing a guy on the other side means is now neither side is willing to investigate.
At least, I like to think that's what I was saying all along. I do admit that, when it became clear there would be no investigations, that I was thinking 'Well, at least Obama will stop it for now, and maybe we can possibly get more laws making it more illegal, or something?'
AK-47s are perfectly legal for Iraqi civilians to own
I wonder how much overlap between people arguing that 'carrying a AK-47 makes you look like an insurgent' and people who defending their 2nd amendment right to walk around armed everywhere in the US.
Hey, idiots, they have a right to carry AK-47s, and they're in a war zone. Perhaps you should apply some of that 'for self defense' logic that you use to argue that you should have the right carry around handguns, and, you know, apply it to a war zone. What would you be carrying in Iraq?
And, for the record, despite being on the left, before anyone assumes otherwise, I'm anti-gun control, or at least only in favor of the weakest sort, aka, no automatic weapons. (Not on constitutional grounds but more on the grounds gun control doesn't work, and concealed carry is pretty good at reducing crime.)
And if I was living in an area where two parties regularly carried out firefights with automatic weapons (Regardless of which side I supported.), I suspect I wouldn't be in favor of even that restriction, and I'd probably own one of them.
I'm not sure why you think you're disagreeing with me. What you said in the first paragraph has nothing to do with what I said. I at no pointed argued that exercise wasn't a good idea in general for people, or that it actually makes people tied.
Although, as I said, while any sort of activity that requires people going out and interacting with people is a good idea to fight mild depression, exercise is essentially the stupidest suggestion there, considering one of the symptoms of depression is a general sense of tiredness. Ergo, it's much much too easy for the depressed person to come up with a reason not to exercise, when that same excuse wouldn't stop, for example, seeing a movie.
To actually fight depression, it's just as useful for them to go out every day, and sit, alone, eating in a fast food restaurant, and it's a hell of a lot easier for depressed people to make themselves actually do. Same level of interaction, a lot more likely to happen.
Depression is not caused by unhealthiness, and 'having your shit together physically' won't do anything about it.
It is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain, and it is a spiral downward that can be fought, for mild cases, by actively focusing on other things. Those other things can be exercise, or, well, anything. Mildly depressed people should figure out something they 'like' to do (Although they're not doing it currently because, duh, depressed.) and 'force' themselves to do it, and it's best if this involves other people. If this is exercise, whatever, but that's a stupid suggestion to someone who's not used to it.
A sedentary lifestyle is not a cause of depression, it is a symptom of depression.
Now, with mild depression, people can sometimes break out of it on their own, using a variety of methods, anything that keeps them from focusing on the fact they are depressed. Although going out with friends or starting a hobby is probably as good as exercise.
And as going to see a movie and going for a run would have the same effect on mild depression, but the latter has the built in excuse of the person being 'tired' so they can come up with an excuse not to do it, it is probably a saner idea to start with a 'getting out and doing things' idea that don't require a lot of work to fight mild depression.
Note my emphasis on 'mild' for all that. A lot of depression is not treatable without, at minimum, therapy, or even drugs.
UNLESS they decided on a little payback for the the first hit. But then the police themselfs have sunk to the level of a street gang.
Yup. That really is the problem.
Everyone knows there might be stuff that happened beforehand.
But video often shows them just attacking a person who's clearly not near them, hence logically couldn't have just been in a fight with the police, and was at best mouthy. And other video, started halfway in, often shows the police clearly having someone already under control, and yet continuing to hurt them, which serves no purpose at all. (No, not even for those mystical people on PHP.)
People aren't stupid. They're not going to start watching a video where the police are trying to put handcuffs on someone who is resisting and be outraged by that.
What they do get outraged about is stuff that is, in fact, outrageous, where people who are offering no physical resistance get slammed around, or people get slammed around after already clearly being under control.
I asked him if I had come to a complete stop, and he admitted then that I had, but it hadn't been for "long enough" (and he accused me of "cutting him off", apparently because I had turned left before he got to the opposing side and stopped himself. my guess is this was the real reason I was stopped).
Ha, I know of someone else who was pulled over, but not ticketed, because they 'hadn't stopped long enough'. (Real reason, they were leaving a bar.) This got me curious enough to look up my state law (Georgia):
Except when directed to proceed by a police officer, every driver of a vehicle approaching a stop sign shall stop at a clearly marked stop line or, if there is no stop line, before entering the crosswalk on the near side of the intersection or, if there is no crosswalk, at the point nearest the intersecting roadway where the driver has a view of approaching traffic on the intersecting roadway before entering it.
So I went and looked up 'stop'.
(62) "Stop" or "stopping":
(A) When required, means complete cessation from movement; or
(B) When prohibited, means any halting, even momentarily, of a vehicle, whether occupied or not, except when necessary to avoid conflict with other traffic or in compliance with the directions of a police officer or traffic-control sign or signal.
That's it. You are required to 'completely cease movement'. There is absolutely nothing requiring it to be any specific amount of time.
If they state the reason for pulling you over as 'not stopping long enough' as the reason for pulling you over, at least in Georgia and probably other states, they have just illegally pulled you over. If they admit you stopped, you did not run the stop sign.
And, to rudely follow up to me, what's even stupider on top of that is that an 'expectation of privacy' is just that....if you expect your actions are private. If you know someone is taping you, you, ipso facto, have no expectation of privacy.
How cops justify removing recording devices is unknown. If they know about the device to get rid of it, they can't possibly have an expectation of privacy.
Not that people actually have a general expectation of privacy walking around near other people, but we're at like four layered levels of stupidity and nonsense. People in public do not have an expectation of privacy of not being seen, and certainly not from people they're talking to, and especially not when those people are standing there filming them! And cops shouldn't have it when doing their official duties anyway.
'Expectation of privacy' could be used to justify charging people who made secret recordings, if such recordings are illegal, but can't be used to justify stopping someone from picking up a camera and starting to record openly.
Incidentally, even in states where you can't make audio recordings without consent of both parties, 'consent' is interesting there. You don't actually need 'consent' consent...all you have to do is inform them you're recording. They kept talking, they gave consent. (Think 'Your call may be monitor for blah blah blah' messages.) They don't want to be recorded, they can cease talking.
So if a person pulls out a camera and says 'I will be video and audio recording this conversation', legally, the police have absolutely no leg to stand on to make them stop, in any state. (And hence them going to get explicit laws about it.)
Slashdot Mirror
s/didn't catch/can't catch/
A voting machine is impossible because one of the requirements for voting is transparency.
I cannot verify an electronic voting machine. I have no ability to open one up and check the code, or put the hard drive in my computer and run tests on it.
And while that theoretically can be done (Despite almost no one having the skill for it, and it not being allowed anyway, and it taking months of time to go over each line of code.), I physically don't have the ability to open up the chips on the motherboard and confirm they do what they say they do.
The most basic fundamental requirement of voting is transparency. It's even more important than anonymity, considering that plenty of places vote without that, like legislatures, or anywhere else that votes by a show of hands. The very very minimum of voting is being able to stand there and do the same count as the official counter and come to the same conclusion about the winner. Voting must, must, must, result in the winner and the loser being able to stand there and say who won.
If I cannot see every aspect of the counting, if I cannot verify that the pathway of the vote, be it physical or electronic, is not tampered with, it is not 'voting'. It is a sham. And unless I'm Doctor Manhattan or something, I can't see the layout of electronic pathways, at least not without rupturing the chip and making it unusable. (And thus I can't vote with it.)
Ergo, a voting machine is physically impossible. It is physically impossible to open computer chips up and confirm they do what they are supposed to, so any electronic counter fails the basic requirement of 'voting'. Period. That is not voting.
And, yes, some asshat is going to leap in here about a hypothetical voting machine that just prints paper ballots for people. No one have any problem with machines that help people fill out paper ballots, but those are not 'voting machines' as actually sold to the public. Voting machines are machines that record and tabulate votes. Yes, even the scantron readers, which also can't be confirmed. But a machine that prints a paper ballot that people then count is a goddamn fancy pencil.
I don't quite understand how anyone knew Greene was black, what with him running no ads or anything. I heard something about 'Greene' with an E at the end being a clue, maybe...the only Greens I know are white, and they, indeed, have no E at the end.
I agree with you that fraud makes no sense, from anyone.
Except from Greene, and he seems a little incapable of that. Not only is he not the sharpest spoon in the drawer, he doesn't appear to have any staff at all.
That's a pretty dumb idea in a primary anyway.
Are people really going to all the trouble to go vote in a primary, and then just randomly picking people?
I've often had people find it odd, given that I'm a programmer, that I'm so against purely electronic voting.
It is amazing how often people find that odd. But don't just tell them you're against it...tell them pretty much the entire industry is against them, because computers do exactly what you tell them to do, including lie, and then they can lie about being told to lie.
People need to hear this more from people they regard as knowledgeable about computers. Over and over. Computers lie if told to do so. This is not detectable because they'll just lie about their lying to the people checking them.
It's not a scheme to get anyone elected, it's a scheme to screw with the Democrats by introducing racial divisiveness. Republicans appear to believe that the entire left operates on identity politics. (Vote down a woman for president? We'll collect the female vote by having one as a VP! That's not why people were for Hillary, you asshats.)
In South Carolina, as is pointed out,t he scheme is usually done by throwing a clearly unqualified black guy in the Democratic primary when there's no serious black candidate, so that when some qualified white person wins, hopefully some whispering about racism will show up and some black people, at least, stay home. This doesn't work very well, because Democrats are usually voting the issues, and the Republicans have just mistaken it for race, but surely it works a tiny amount, and all it takes is a filing fee.
However, this time, the guy won, which is utterly surreal.
And, yes, voting fraud doesn't explain it, because if the Republicans can defraud elections, they sure as hell wouldn't have done it here, in such an obvious manner, when they'd have their candidate win no matter what.
And there's absolutely no reason for the Democrats to do it.
No one can figure this one out.
Lamest troll ever.
Only in the Republican universe did 'Republicans' oppose segregation and 'Democrats' support it.
What actually happened, as anyone with an IQ over 80 knows, is that the South supported segregation, regardless of party, and North supported civil rights, regardless of party.
And this split was so large it ended up breaking both parties in half, and the Republicans all ended up in with the segregationists afterward. You know that 'George Wallace', that you point out was a Democrat? Well, no. After that little stunt, he had to run as a independent for president in 1968 (In which he came in at 13% of the vote, winning the south), and had to disavow his previous segregation stand in 1972 to run as a Democrat.
And that, of course, isn't even why people think the Republican are racist. It didn't end there. The Southern Strategy came next.
You can try arguing that racism has stopped, but the Republicans actively courted and actively supported racism from the mid-1960s to the early 1990s, at least.
Your #1 is a bit misleading...most of those groups aren't openly against hydroelectric, as that's too obvious. They will, however, seize on any excuse like 'fish can't swim up river'. (Yeah, well, how well can fish swim up river after you've blow the tops of mountains into them?)
Also, they're mostly pro-coal, not pro-oil. It's sorta a mix, but coal is certainly in the lead. The oil industry is mainly in there to keep out more efficient cars and whatnot.
Yeah, a nuclear fusion project might go haywire and...um...maybe melt a little?
The fact that 'anti-nuclear' activists think there is any sort of possible runaway situation of a fusion reactor shows just how ill informed they are. It would be pretty damn impressive for a fusion reactor to kill anyone, it would be roughly akin to people being killed by out-of-control electric stove.
I, as an environmentalist, have been fighting those fucking morons for years, as the idiots do not appear to understand that for the last few decades, and for another decade at least, the choice was between nuclear and coal, and that their 'clean energy' options haven't existed until very recently, and still only exist for individuals...we can't operate industry on them.
So thanks for the global warming, asshats, and you keep up the good fight to keep totally harmless things with the word 'nuclear' in them away from the public.
Sometimes I wish they hadn't renamed MRI machines, and left them called nuclear magnetic resonance imaging, to darwin-out the reflexive anti-nuclear people.
Also, coal mines themselves release a lot of radon, a naturally occurring underground radioactive gas. It's not just the burning that's radioactive...the actual mining releases more radioactivity than the equivalent in nuclear power. (And then, as you said, burning releases a lot more.)
Of course, any mine does that, (In fact, any sort of digging can...don't forget to have your basement checked for radon.) but coal mines dwarf all other sorts of mining put together.
Obviously with nuclear the dangerous stuff is kept contained and in solid form.
Whereas with coal even more dangerous stuff, fly ash, ends up in giant containment units, which then spill repeatedly and poisons rivers and groundwater.
Indeed. I hope you get modded all the way up.
The problem is not the behavior of the soldiers in the helicopter. Except the minor incident of shooting people who were clearly attempting to recover wounded, but that's a minor thing all in all.
It is the idea we should fly around in a fucking helicopter and shoot up people who 'look dangerous'. That is the damn problem.
Hell, that's not even sane military behavior.
Militaries have objectives, like 'hold this building' and 'raid the enemy base and blow up the fuel depot' stuff like that. They don't wander around looking for a fight that serves no purpose except for both sides to shoot at each other, and the fact of our overwhelming military superiority results in them winning most fights doesn't make it sane.
Doesn't really matter, what they're doing is illegal also, and they're rather unlikely to turn you in.
However, a much more interesting thing is to simply have them call 'you' back...at the number of the local police station. (I would say give out the FCC's number, but I suspect they already have that in their list as blocked, because I can't be the first person to think of it.)
Heh. As the other guy pointed out, your #3 is dependent on #3 being finished, and unless you have some sort of time machine, that ain't going to work.
I just have a simpler rule: Don't buy shit over the phone.
Seriously, who still does that? That's what the interwebs are for.
Of course, the idea of purchasing from someone who contacted you and you have no evidence they are who they say they are or have any legitimate business at all is rather nonsensical to start with.
Look, when I want to buy shit, I'll go find someone who sells it. You want to be that person, feel free to run ads in legitimate places I might see, and maybe when I need one I'll go 'Hey, I need a new dryer...I think Sears sells dryers, I saw an ad about that, I'll go there.'. Or you can run an ad in the place I look up business information, and I might go for that one. Or maybe you can get me via word-of-mouth. Who knows? The point is, when I want to purchase something, I purchase it by tracking it down, and buying it.
I'm not going to buy a damn dryer from someone who walks up to me on the street and tries to sell me a dryer and wants a check from me, and promises to deliver it next week. 99.999% of the time because I'm not wandering around without ownership of a fucking dryer, and in need of one, you morons. And the other 0.001% of the time because, while I do happen coincidentally to need to buy a dryer at that exact instant, I have no idea who you are.
So when I'm feeling surly I just lie the (landline) phone down when I hear the pause, rather than hanging up. I figure if they're willing to waste my time I might as well waste theirs.
Seriously, I do this too, and everyone should unless expecting a phone call. Do not, unless you absolutely need to, just hang up on a robocall. Let it connect to a person. Even push a button to get to connect. Leave it off the hook until it starts beeping at you.
In fact, I often lay the phone down, and start talking about how I can't hear them, and they need to speak up, just somewhat randomly, not in response to anything. Or I start talking about how I need a new car warranty, which I hope they can pick up just enough to try to keep selling me something I can't hear and they can't hear.
And, of course, sometimes I volunteer my time and actually spend a few minutes stringing them along. Hint: Start talking to them, actually sound interested, and then blurt out there's something wrong, you'll be back in a minute...and then lay the phone down.
Everyone should spend a few minutes a day doing something for the world. Throw away that plastic cup laying on the sidewalk, park slightly farther away if you're not in a hurry, and waste a few minutes of a telemarketer's time. It all adds up, people, so make the world a better place.
Hey, now, as a progressive in favor of massive government regulation, I have to step in and disagree. Places should have the right to make their own gun laws, and if some jurisdiction outlaws shooting telemarketers, I cannot disagree with that. Perhaps they are worried about human beings getting injured by stray bullets.
Crazy libertarians. The free market won't solve everything. Sure, we all agree it should be legal to kill telemarketers, but the government isn't the problem, the government is the solution. What do you think the National Guard is for?
Anyway, the systemic failure was the kids commanding officers creating a situation full of moral ambiguity where the poor kid kid needs a constitutional law scholar or a PHD in philosophy to figure out which of his responsibilities must be violated.
Counter-insurgency work is pretty much defined by 'moral ambiguity', which is why we need to avoid it as much as possible.
Our military works great at conquering. It works great at holding a line against other militaries and armed thugs, like during peacekeeping missions. It works great at enforcing no-mans lands.
Those missions are easy for us, and, because we're so overpowered, not that bad for the other side, too, because they either surrender or just don't test us, and there's no battle at all and everyone wins.
But there...there's counter-insurgency. Stupid, morally confusing, choose either to either-get-killed-sometimes or kill-innocent-people-sometimes counter-insurgency.
It's a bad mission for our military, and we need to stay the hell away from it.
I think torture should always be illegal and if it's very obvious that you need to smack someone around to get at some vital info, you do it because the consequences of being put on trial for torturing someone is outweighed by saving lives.
Indeed, this is exactly the argument that I made at the time about the idiotic 'ticking time bomb'.
There is a concept in law that you can commit crimes to stop greater ones. Self defense is an explicitly codified version of this, but it actually exists in general. If I'm being chased by a serial killer and I break into a closed business to use the telephone and call the police, I will not usually be charged with a crime, and if I am charged I can use the 'committed breaking and entering to try to avoid a murder' (namely mine) as a defense.
In fact, according to TV, police use this logic to break down doors all the time. In real life, not quite so much, but they can.
This a general principle of common law. Ergo, if you could assault someone (aka, torture) to actually prevent a murder, and demonstrate you did do so, you could use that as a defense in court. You could even use it as a defense if your crime could have stopped the bigger crime, but failed, if, for example, they didn't crack. (However, it wouldn't work too well as an excuse for torturing an innocent person, as that crime cannot possibly stop any other crime.)
And that's just in the 'legal' realm. There's also the jury, which can let you off even if you did commit a crime, and there's the governor who can pardon you.
Anyone who thinks there's actually circumstances where people who really did have a 'ticking time bomb' situation and tortured and ended up in jail is a total idiot who has no idea how our justice system works. If you run around doing 'illegal but heroic' things that society approves of, you, somehow, will end up a free man, even if technically guilty.
You can argue our justice system shouldn't operate like that, but that is the reason we have a jury and don't have cases decided entirely by legal experts, and it's worth pointing out that some of our most important freedoms have origins in the courts refusing to convict people of things that were clearly illegal, but public opinion was vastly against.
Of course, we're not going to get the 'freedom to torture', for the simply fact that 'ticking time bomb' is a stupid hypothetical and incredibly unlikely situation and thus we're not going to have a rash of courts affirming the right to torture in those circumstances.
P.S. Exactly how many of Bush's constitution-obliterating policies has Obama rescinded again? I lost count back at ZERO.
I lost count at negative two.
This is why I was saying all along...you can't undo illegal executive power grabs by putting a new guy in there. The best he can do is temporarily stop, and there's no incentive for him to do that.
To actually make sure things like that don't happen again, you have to at least attempt impeachment, or, if that's not doable, investigate some of the lower-downs.
All electing a guy on the other side means is now neither side is willing to investigate.
At least, I like to think that's what I was saying all along. I do admit that, when it became clear there would be no investigations, that I was thinking 'Well, at least Obama will stop it for now, and maybe we can possibly get more laws making it more illegal, or something?'
Stupid me.
AK-47s are perfectly legal for Iraqi civilians to own
I wonder how much overlap between people arguing that 'carrying a AK-47 makes you look like an insurgent' and people who defending their 2nd amendment right to walk around armed everywhere in the US.
Hey, idiots, they have a right to carry AK-47s, and they're in a war zone. Perhaps you should apply some of that 'for self defense' logic that you use to argue that you should have the right carry around handguns, and, you know, apply it to a war zone. What would you be carrying in Iraq?
And, for the record, despite being on the left, before anyone assumes otherwise, I'm anti-gun control, or at least only in favor of the weakest sort, aka, no automatic weapons. (Not on constitutional grounds but more on the grounds gun control doesn't work, and concealed carry is pretty good at reducing crime.)
And if I was living in an area where two parties regularly carried out firefights with automatic weapons (Regardless of which side I supported.), I suspect I wouldn't be in favor of even that restriction, and I'd probably own one of them.
Hey, look, someone on slashdot explained something without a car analogy, or without any analogy at all.
We can sit here and argue whether the Iraq war was a good idea, but it's getting nearly impossible to argue that staying there is a good idea.
What, exactly, do we think will happen if we leave? That isn't already true?
I'm not sure why you think you're disagreeing with me. What you said in the first paragraph has nothing to do with what I said. I at no pointed argued that exercise wasn't a good idea in general for people, or that it actually makes people tied.
Although, as I said, while any sort of activity that requires people going out and interacting with people is a good idea to fight mild depression, exercise is essentially the stupidest suggestion there, considering one of the symptoms of depression is a general sense of tiredness. Ergo, it's much much too easy for the depressed person to come up with a reason not to exercise, when that same excuse wouldn't stop, for example, seeing a movie.
To actually fight depression, it's just as useful for them to go out every day, and sit, alone, eating in a fast food restaurant, and it's a hell of a lot easier for depressed people to make themselves actually do. Same level of interaction, a lot more likely to happen.
Depression is not caused by unhealthiness, and 'having your shit together physically' won't do anything about it.
It is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain, and it is a spiral downward that can be fought, for mild cases, by actively focusing on other things. Those other things can be exercise, or, well, anything. Mildly depressed people should figure out something they 'like' to do (Although they're not doing it currently because, duh, depressed.) and 'force' themselves to do it, and it's best if this involves other people. If this is exercise, whatever, but that's a stupid suggestion to someone who's not used to it.
A sedentary lifestyle is not a cause of depression, it is a symptom of depression.
Now, with mild depression, people can sometimes break out of it on their own, using a variety of methods, anything that keeps them from focusing on the fact they are depressed. Although going out with friends or starting a hobby is probably as good as exercise.
And as going to see a movie and going for a run would have the same effect on mild depression, but the latter has the built in excuse of the person being 'tired' so they can come up with an excuse not to do it, it is probably a saner idea to start with a 'getting out and doing things' idea that don't require a lot of work to fight mild depression.
Note my emphasis on 'mild' for all that. A lot of depression is not treatable without, at minimum, therapy, or even drugs.
UNLESS they decided on a little payback for the the first hit. But then the police themselfs have sunk to the level of a street gang.
Yup. That really is the problem.
Everyone knows there might be stuff that happened beforehand.
But video often shows them just attacking a person who's clearly not near them, hence logically couldn't have just been in a fight with the police, and was at best mouthy. And other video, started halfway in, often shows the police clearly having someone already under control, and yet continuing to hurt them, which serves no purpose at all. (No, not even for those mystical people on PHP.)
People aren't stupid. They're not going to start watching a video where the police are trying to put handcuffs on someone who is resisting and be outraged by that.
What they do get outraged about is stuff that is, in fact, outrageous, where people who are offering no physical resistance get slammed around, or people get slammed around after already clearly being under control.
I asked him if I had come to a complete stop, and he admitted then that I had, but it hadn't been for "long enough" (and he accused me of "cutting him off", apparently because I had turned left before he got to the opposing side and stopped himself. my guess is this was the real reason I was stopped).
Ha, I know of someone else who was pulled over, but not ticketed, because they 'hadn't stopped long enough'. (Real reason, they were leaving a bar.) This got me curious enough to look up my state law (Georgia):
Except when directed to proceed by a police officer, every driver of a vehicle approaching a stop sign shall stop at a clearly marked stop line or, if there is no stop line, before entering the crosswalk on the near side of the intersection or, if there is no crosswalk, at the point nearest the intersecting roadway where the driver has a view of approaching traffic on the intersecting roadway before entering it.
So I went and looked up 'stop'.
(62) "Stop" or "stopping":
(A) When required, means complete cessation from movement; or
(B) When prohibited, means any halting, even momentarily, of a vehicle, whether occupied or not, except when necessary to avoid conflict with other traffic or in compliance with the directions of a police officer or traffic-control sign or signal.
That's it. You are required to 'completely cease movement'. There is absolutely nothing requiring it to be any specific amount of time.
If they state the reason for pulling you over as 'not stopping long enough' as the reason for pulling you over, at least in Georgia and probably other states, they have just illegally pulled you over. If they admit you stopped, you did not run the stop sign.
And, to rudely follow up to me, what's even stupider on top of that is that an 'expectation of privacy' is just that....if you expect your actions are private. If you know someone is taping you, you, ipso facto, have no expectation of privacy.
How cops justify removing recording devices is unknown. If they know about the device to get rid of it, they can't possibly have an expectation of privacy.
Not that people actually have a general expectation of privacy walking around near other people, but we're at like four layered levels of stupidity and nonsense. People in public do not have an expectation of privacy of not being seen, and certainly not from people they're talking to, and especially not when those people are standing there filming them! And cops shouldn't have it when doing their official duties anyway.
'Expectation of privacy' could be used to justify charging people who made secret recordings, if such recordings are illegal, but can't be used to justify stopping someone from picking up a camera and starting to record openly.
Incidentally, even in states where you can't make audio recordings without consent of both parties, 'consent' is interesting there. You don't actually need 'consent' consent...all you have to do is inform them you're recording. They kept talking, they gave consent. (Think 'Your call may be monitor for blah blah blah' messages.) They don't want to be recorded, they can cease talking.
So if a person pulls out a camera and says 'I will be video and audio recording this conversation', legally, the police have absolutely no leg to stand on to make them stop, in any state. (And hence them going to get explicit laws about it.)