In my area there are many banks that are actually open when I am not working. However, I used to say that banks are in the customer service business, that's why they are never open when their customers can come in to get service because it is only recently that there are banks in my area that are open when the vast majority of people are not working.
I agree that only a limited number of the needy are lazy. However, a majority of them have either never learned, or never mastered, the types of behavior that are necessary to survive on limited means. For the vast majority of the needy, this is not a matter of personal failing but actual lack of knowledge. Many of them do not realize that if they were to suffer in the short term by denying themselves something that provides comfort, they would be much better off in the long run. Those assistance programs which do not also provide education on the value of delayed gratification (including some kind of punishment/reward system) are not gong to ever improve the lot of those in need.
There is something to what you say. However, I have yet to meet someone who was struggling to make ends meet who did not have cable TV, an air conditioner and a game system. I am sure there are some, but most Americans could reduce their expenses to some degree if they were willing to sacrifice some of their entertainment choices.
My guess is that they already know there isn't a lot of useful data there. However, they may figure that by saying there is it will cause of flurry of activity among the places they are watching and the nature of what that activity is will give them an idea of which ones are important and which ones are blind alleys.
Thank you for that link to your other post. I have not been following this case at all (I was unaware of it until this story hit slashdot). As I said in another post, the significance of this comes down to this: if the jury was otherwise convinced beyond doubt that he was guilty aside from the phone call, the prosecutions argument moves the phone call from providing reasonable doubt to unimportant. On the other hand, if the jury has significant doubts that otherwise do not rise to the level of reasonable doubt, the phone call combined with the inability of the prosecution to produce the router could quite likely elevate those other doubts to reasonable.
No, that is not "all they have". His defense is, "I can't have killed her. I wasn't there when she died. See, I got a phone call from her after the time they say that I killed her. She was dead before I got home again."
The only reason that the router is relevant to the case is that he claims that his wife called his cellphone while he was driving somewhere and after the time at which the prosecution claims that he killed her. The prosecution is arguing: A.) the router in question is capable of creating the call to his cellphone. B.) he was the last person to be in possession of the router before it went missing from his company. To me this looks like a case where if the rest of the prosecution's case is solid, it is a guilty verdict. On the other hand, if the jurors have some doubts that otherwise do not quite rise to the level of reasonable doubt, the fact that the router is missing might mean that they should accept his defense of receiving a call from his home telephone on his cellphone after prosecution says that his wife died.
The prosecution argument and the missing router mean that the cellphone call by itself does not raise doubt to the legal threshold of reasonable doubt.
First off, who told you that Orlando was a city, it is just an amusement park. Second, everybody knows that Tampa Bay and Miami are in Florida, they have football teams.
The thing is, his whole defense is based on the record on his cell phone of him receiving a phone call from his home number after the time when the prosecution says that he killed his wife. The prosecution is arguing that the fact that he was in possession of a router from his employer at the time of the crime that is now unaccounted for provides him with the means to fake that phone call, reducing the value of his alibi (the phone call record).
Yes, they thought it was valid, but they did not actually examine whether or not it was. They did not rule on whether or not it was valid, nor did they consider the issue of whether or not it was valid. Most judges make a clear distinction between what they think and what they have made a legal finding on.
Having reviewed the actual ruling that they cite, I discovered that the court did not rule on the validity of the COLB that was released at that time. They ruled against the argument being made in that case, which was that even though Obama was born in the U,S,, he was not eligible since his father was a foreign national. They ruled that since the plaintiffs were conceding that Obama was born in the U,S,, it was appropriate for the lower court to dismiss the case. While the wording of the ruling indicates that the judges beleived that Obama was born in the U.S., they did not actually rule on that one way or the other because it was not part of the case they were considering.
It was not "tested in court". The judges ruled in all of the cases that those bringing suit did not have legal standing to challenge Obama's eligibility to be President.
Actually, it did not stand up to any court challenges. All of the court challenges were dismissed on the basis of "lack of standing". That is the judge ruled that the person who brought the challenge did not have a legal right to challenge Obama's eligibility. It is unclear to me from those rulings who the judges would accept as having legal standing to challenge a Presidential candidates eligibility to be President.
So, if a court had accepted the challenges to Obama's eligibility and ruled on the basis of the document that Obama released, that would have been acceptable. However, no court ruled on his eligibilty, they all ruled that those bringing suit did not have legal standing to bring such a suit.
Obama most certainly did not immediately release his certificate of live birth. A leaked copy of his certificate of live birh turned up on Daliy Kos after the Democratic Party Convention. It was only when questions began to be raised about the copy from Daily Kos (which was a very bad copy) that his campaign released a copy of it. His campaign only officially released a copy of his short form Certificate of Live Birth after questions had been raised as to whether, at the time of his birth, you actually needed to be born in Hawaii for the government of Hawaii to issue a short form Certificate of Live Birth.
If he had released the short form COLB when questions were first asked, it would probably have put the issue to rest. By waiting several months, he allowed the issue to gain traction. When issues were raised about John McCain's eligibility, he released his Birth Certificate within 2 weeks.
No, you need to read it more carefully, "No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution..." So, that means the only exceptions to the natural born citizen provision all died a long time ago.
If the Democratic Party had checked his credentials, why was this evidence not presented sooner? If the Democratic Party did "due diligence" in confirming that Obama was eligible to be President, where are the statements that they actually did so? Your argument boils down to, "Well, somebody must check these things out." The answer is, no, nobody checks these things out.
There were people in 2008 who argued that John McCain was not a "natural born" citizen because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone. John McCain released his long form birht certificate and a reference to the law that indicated that he was eligible to be President. As to why someone might have gotten birth announcements placed in the paper when he was born elsewhere, it would not have been for a future run for President. It would have been to make sure that he actually received U.S. citizenship. Considering his mother's age at the time of his birth and the fact that his father was a foreign national there might have been questions raised (there was a law that stated that a child of a U.S. citizen mother born outside the U,S, was only a U.S. citizen if the mother had lived a certain number of years as an adult inside U.S. territory, Obama's mother had not yet been an adult for that many years). Additionally, Obama's grandparents were associated with some very fringe people who tended to go in for conspiracy theories about the U.S. government.
But there isn't. There was never any question that Obama was a U.S. citizen. The question was, was he a "natural born" citizen? If he was not a "natural born" citizen, he was still eligible to hold those other offices. The only office that requires that one be a "natural born" citizen is President. So, the first time the question of whether he was a "natural born" citizen was relevant was when he ran for the office of President. There is no one on the Federal Election Commission, or anywhere else, whose job it is to confirm that a candidate for President is eligible to be President.
The only other times this has come up was about Chester A. Arthur (whose father was Canadian and who may have actually been born in Canada) and about John McCain (who was born in the Panama Canal Zone of two U.S. citizens), but in both of those cases the individual in question was raised their entire life in the U.S. or its territories.
When McCain was questioned about his eligibility to be President, he immediately addressed the issue by releasing the relevant documents. When Obama was questioned about his eligibility to be President he responded by doing nothing for over two years. Some of his people leaked a badly copied version of his Certificate of Live Birth that did not contain a lot of information that would have been on the original document. When this issue first came up, I dismissed it, but as time went by without being directly addressed by Obama, I began to wonder: why wasn't Obama putting this question of his legitimacy as President to rest? What did he have to gain from allowing this divisive issue to remain alive? Why did he not present the evidence that would show the people who questioned his legitimacy to be fringe?
Now he has presented that evidence. Why did he wait so long? If he had done this in 2008, a significant number of the people who are questioning the current document would have moved on. Some people are questioning the current document because of the questions I asked above. Primarily, if this document is legitimate, why did he wait so long to release it?
I beleive this document is legitimate, but the question remains, why did Obama not release it sooner?
No, if two cultures have complete disagreement about what is moral, one, or both of them are wrong. This does not mean that morals are subjective, just that humans are fallible. There is actually less disagreement about morals than you seem to think. I am not willing to try and demonstrate that in this format. However, C.S. Lewis does a good job of demonstrating this in "The Abolition of Man".
So, what you believe is that there is no such thing as morality. Just because two cultures disagree about what is moral does not mean that either both are right or that both are wrong. If you believe that there exist morals that conflict with yours, you are amoral (you don't have morals, you have preferences). If morality is not absolute, it is nothing more than personal preference.
The biggest problem with your post is that the overwhelming majority of recruits for Al Qaeda were not "impoverished and uneducated" young men. They are most frequently middle to upper class, well-educated young men (doctors and engineers).
I love your example of Libya, considering that the evidence suggests that when all is said and done, Ghadaffi will still be in power until he dies of natural causes, while Saddam Hussein lost power and then his life. Personally, the answer to the rhetoric that says "the crusaders occupy holy Mecca and Medina" is to announce that after the next terrorist attack on U.S. interests, Mecca will become a glass factory. The powerful rhetoric that Osama Bin Laden used to recruit was that the U.S. was a paper tiger that did not respond to attacks, that was incapable of responding to attacks (Marine base bombed in Beirut, Somalia, the U.S.S. Cole, and several other incidents).
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In my area there are many banks that are actually open when I am not working. However, I used to say that banks are in the customer service business, that's why they are never open when their customers can come in to get service because it is only recently that there are banks in my area that are open when the vast majority of people are not working.
I agree that only a limited number of the needy are lazy. However, a majority of them have either never learned, or never mastered, the types of behavior that are necessary to survive on limited means. For the vast majority of the needy, this is not a matter of personal failing but actual lack of knowledge. Many of them do not realize that if they were to suffer in the short term by denying themselves something that provides comfort, they would be much better off in the long run. Those assistance programs which do not also provide education on the value of delayed gratification (including some kind of punishment/reward system) are not gong to ever improve the lot of those in need.
There is something to what you say. However, I have yet to meet someone who was struggling to make ends meet who did not have cable TV, an air conditioner and a game system. I am sure there are some, but most Americans could reduce their expenses to some degree if they were willing to sacrifice some of their entertainment choices.
My guess is that they already know there isn't a lot of useful data there. However, they may figure that by saying there is it will cause of flurry of activity among the places they are watching and the nature of what that activity is will give them an idea of which ones are important and which ones are blind alleys.
Thank you for that link to your other post. I have not been following this case at all (I was unaware of it until this story hit slashdot). As I said in another post, the significance of this comes down to this: if the jury was otherwise convinced beyond doubt that he was guilty aside from the phone call, the prosecutions argument moves the phone call from providing reasonable doubt to unimportant. On the other hand, if the jury has significant doubts that otherwise do not rise to the level of reasonable doubt, the phone call combined with the inability of the prosecution to produce the router could quite likely elevate those other doubts to reasonable.
No, that is not "all they have". His defense is, "I can't have killed her. I wasn't there when she died. See, I got a phone call from her after the time they say that I killed her. She was dead before I got home again."
The only reason that the router is relevant to the case is that he claims that his wife called his cellphone while he was driving somewhere and after the time at which the prosecution claims that he killed her. The prosecution is arguing: A.) the router in question is capable of creating the call to his cellphone. B.) he was the last person to be in possession of the router before it went missing from his company. To me this looks like a case where if the rest of the prosecution's case is solid, it is a guilty verdict. On the other hand, if the jurors have some doubts that otherwise do not quite rise to the level of reasonable doubt, the fact that the router is missing might mean that they should accept his defense of receiving a call from his home telephone on his cellphone after prosecution says that his wife died.
The prosecution argument and the missing router mean that the cellphone call by itself does not raise doubt to the legal threshold of reasonable doubt.
First off, who told you that Orlando was a city, it is just an amusement park. Second, everybody knows that Tampa Bay and Miami are in Florida, they have football teams.
There are cities in NC?
The thing is, his whole defense is based on the record on his cell phone of him receiving a phone call from his home number after the time when the prosecution says that he killed his wife. The prosecution is arguing that the fact that he was in possession of a router from his employer at the time of the crime that is now unaccounted for provides him with the means to fake that phone call, reducing the value of his alibi (the phone call record).
Yes, they thought it was valid, but they did not actually examine whether or not it was. They did not rule on whether or not it was valid, nor did they consider the issue of whether or not it was valid. Most judges make a clear distinction between what they think and what they have made a legal finding on.
Having reviewed the actual ruling that they cite, I discovered that the court did not rule on the validity of the COLB that was released at that time. They ruled against the argument being made in that case, which was that even though Obama was born in the U,S,, he was not eligible since his father was a foreign national. They ruled that since the plaintiffs were conceding that Obama was born in the U,S,, it was appropriate for the lower court to dismiss the case. While the wording of the ruling indicates that the judges beleived that Obama was born in the U.S., they did not actually rule on that one way or the other because it was not part of the case they were considering.
Hey, that would be useful, a service that translates slashdot summaries into English.
It was not "tested in court". The judges ruled in all of the cases that those bringing suit did not have legal standing to challenge Obama's eligibility to be President.
Actually, it did not stand up to any court challenges. All of the court challenges were dismissed on the basis of "lack of standing". That is the judge ruled that the person who brought the challenge did not have a legal right to challenge Obama's eligibility. It is unclear to me from those rulings who the judges would accept as having legal standing to challenge a Presidential candidates eligibility to be President.
So, if a court had accepted the challenges to Obama's eligibility and ruled on the basis of the document that Obama released, that would have been acceptable. However, no court ruled on his eligibilty, they all ruled that those bringing suit did not have legal standing to bring such a suit.
Obama most certainly did not immediately release his certificate of live birth. A leaked copy of his certificate of live birh turned up on Daliy Kos after the Democratic Party Convention. It was only when questions began to be raised about the copy from Daily Kos (which was a very bad copy) that his campaign released a copy of it. His campaign only officially released a copy of his short form Certificate of Live Birth after questions had been raised as to whether, at the time of his birth, you actually needed to be born in Hawaii for the government of Hawaii to issue a short form Certificate of Live Birth.
If he had released the short form COLB when questions were first asked, it would probably have put the issue to rest. By waiting several months, he allowed the issue to gain traction. When issues were raised about John McCain's eligibility, he released his Birth Certificate within 2 weeks.
No, you need to read it more carefully, "No person except a natural born citizen, or a citizen of the United States, at the time of the adoption of this Constitution..." So, that means the only exceptions to the natural born citizen provision all died a long time ago.
Actually, it is illegal for a candidate for federal office to accept donations from foreign nationals.
If the Democratic Party had checked his credentials, why was this evidence not presented sooner? If the Democratic Party did "due diligence" in confirming that Obama was eligible to be President, where are the statements that they actually did so? Your argument boils down to, "Well, somebody must check these things out." The answer is, no, nobody checks these things out.
There were people in 2008 who argued that John McCain was not a "natural born" citizen because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone. John McCain released his long form birht certificate and a reference to the law that indicated that he was eligible to be President. As to why someone might have gotten birth announcements placed in the paper when he was born elsewhere, it would not have been for a future run for President. It would have been to make sure that he actually received U.S. citizenship. Considering his mother's age at the time of his birth and the fact that his father was a foreign national there might have been questions raised (there was a law that stated that a child of a U.S. citizen mother born outside the U,S, was only a U.S. citizen if the mother had lived a certain number of years as an adult inside U.S. territory, Obama's mother had not yet been an adult for that many years). Additionally, Obama's grandparents were associated with some very fringe people who tended to go in for conspiracy theories about the U.S. government.
But there isn't. There was never any question that Obama was a U.S. citizen. The question was, was he a "natural born" citizen? If he was not a "natural born" citizen, he was still eligible to hold those other offices. The only office that requires that one be a "natural born" citizen is President. So, the first time the question of whether he was a "natural born" citizen was relevant was when he ran for the office of President. There is no one on the Federal Election Commission, or anywhere else, whose job it is to confirm that a candidate for President is eligible to be President.
The only other times this has come up was about Chester A. Arthur (whose father was Canadian and who may have actually been born in Canada) and about John McCain (who was born in the Panama Canal Zone of two U.S. citizens), but in both of those cases the individual in question was raised their entire life in the U.S. or its territories.
When McCain was questioned about his eligibility to be President, he immediately addressed the issue by releasing the relevant documents. When Obama was questioned about his eligibility to be President he responded by doing nothing for over two years. Some of his people leaked a badly copied version of his Certificate of Live Birth that did not contain a lot of information that would have been on the original document. When this issue first came up, I dismissed it, but as time went by without being directly addressed by Obama, I began to wonder: why wasn't Obama putting this question of his legitimacy as President to rest? What did he have to gain from allowing this divisive issue to remain alive? Why did he not present the evidence that would show the people who questioned his legitimacy to be fringe?
Now he has presented that evidence. Why did he wait so long? If he had done this in 2008, a significant number of the people who are questioning the current document would have moved on. Some people are questioning the current document because of the questions I asked above. Primarily, if this document is legitimate, why did he wait so long to release it?
I beleive this document is legitimate, but the question remains, why did Obama not release it sooner?
No, if two cultures have complete disagreement about what is moral, one, or both of them are wrong. This does not mean that morals are subjective, just that humans are fallible. There is actually less disagreement about morals than you seem to think. I am not willing to try and demonstrate that in this format. However, C.S. Lewis does a good job of demonstrating this in "The Abolition of Man".
So, what you believe is that there is no such thing as morality. Just because two cultures disagree about what is moral does not mean that either both are right or that both are wrong. If you believe that there exist morals that conflict with yours, you are amoral (you don't have morals, you have preferences). If morality is not absolute, it is nothing more than personal preference.
The biggest problem with your post is that the overwhelming majority of recruits for Al Qaeda were not "impoverished and uneducated" young men. They are most frequently middle to upper class, well-educated young men (doctors and engineers).
I love your example of Libya, considering that the evidence suggests that when all is said and done, Ghadaffi will still be in power until he dies of natural causes, while Saddam Hussein lost power and then his life. Personally, the answer to the rhetoric that says "the crusaders occupy holy Mecca and Medina" is to announce that after the next terrorist attack on U.S. interests, Mecca will become a glass factory. The powerful rhetoric that Osama Bin Laden used to recruit was that the U.S. was a paper tiger that did not respond to attacks, that was incapable of responding to attacks (Marine base bombed in Beirut, Somalia, the U.S.S. Cole, and several other incidents).