Were urban Californian counties to form their own country they'd no longer subsidize US farmland, and they'd no longer pay the costs of protectionism. US farms would suddenly find themselves forced to compete on a level playing field with the rest of the world for the Californian market. Given that agriculture only amounts to 2% of California's GDP, it seems to me like a win for urban California to *not* take with them that farmland.
I'm not suggesting it's wise for urban California to split from the rest of the country, just that if they did I don't believe those low-output rural counties would necessarily be important to them. Think Singapore...they have very little farmland, they don't produce 100% of their energy needs, and yet per capita they're some of the wealthiest people in the world. Expulsion from Malaysia was the best thing that ever happened to them.
Where is it that anyone these days has 4.5 hours of free time to sit in front of a television?
I hate to say it, but retirees in Florida certainly do...I've witnessed it first hand after moving there to help my parents take care of my grandmother. From the time their feet hit the ground until it's time for bed, they've got Fox News on. Next door neighbors...Fox News. Barber shop...Fox News. The gym, the bars, the blood donation facility...basically anyplace with a TV. It's all the same, it's non-stop, and it's disturbing. And my experience doesn't seem to be unique:
The article of the OP gives a demographic breakdown by age. The 65-and-up crowd watch almost 3x the amount of TV as the 18-24 year olds. A large part of this might be the result of an addiction.
"It shows the state is paying ERAD Group Inc., $5,000 for the software and scanners, then 7.7 percent of all the cash forfeited through the courts to the highway patrol"
The great thing here is that ERAD Group Inc. can then give 7.7 percent of their 7.7 percent to "sympathetic" politicians who won't just keep the ball rolling, but will keep that system expanding. The highway patrol wins, ERAD Group Inc. wins, the politicians win, everybody wins! Great job, Oklahoma...the envy of the Great Plains.
>> I'd rather they stayed home, the whole thing is FUBAR.
That's not an option. Rather all you want.
>> People should be shot when they are behaving in a threatening manner towards other people and do not respond to verbal commands to back off and leave. Example: If you walk into my home, even if the door is wide open, and I say, "excuse me, this is my home, please leave", and you refuse, guess what? You're getting shot.
Except in your example, the one you chose to shoot was breaking the law. In this case, the one you choose to shoot is behaving exactly how overzealous tough-guys have now mandated.
Trans people will continue to use the bathroom of their re-assigned sex no matter what the law says. Know why? Because that's the *least* threatening to the average uptight man or woman on the street. It's what's least likely to get them roughed up or killed.
Since these men were born girls, I take it you'd rather they share the women's room with your wife and daughter? Or should they also be shot? "Man entering restroom" and all that. Please advise...you apparently know everything.
You're saying that because I called Orrin Hatch--president pro tem of the Senate--the *most senior Republican Senator*--an "uber-Republican", that throws my whole argument in doubt? But National Review's hit job on this moderate nominee presumably is fine with you, is that right?
Look...chances are I'm older than you. Probably quite a bit older. There was a time, before the rise of right wing media, that Republicans used to be reasonable people. I used to be a Republican. But now instead of relying on the strength of their arguments to forward their cause, they rely on disingenuous hyperbole and spin to convince the dim witted among us to vote for them. They wrap it all up with flashy graphics and mini skirts.
That National Review article is just the latest example of that hyperbole and spin. No matter who Obama nominated, they were ready with a hit piece to smear the nominee as a liberal "nut" (their word). If that's all they got on this guy...a refusal to legislate from the bench followed by a vote to put a landmark case in front of the whole circuit...then a reasonable person would recognize immediately that they're grabbing at straws. And no reasonable person would think twice if someone were to call that stalwart Senator from Utah an uber-Republican. Mostly because that's exactly what he is
The author of that article, chief legal counsel of the right-wing Judical Crisis Network, is basing her argument against Garland on two cases:
1. NRA v Reno
The Brady Bill directs the feds to run criminal background checks on would-be gun purchasers. To avoid a de-facto national gun registry, though, the checks need to be destroyed after the sale completes. They were originally destroyed immediately after the sale finalized, but Janet Reno changed the rules to retain the checks for 6 months, ostensibly for two reasons: to police the government (so that unauthorized checks against random non gun-purchasers by corrupt officials could be caught) and to guard against gun purchases made under stolen identities.
Garland’s opinion was that if the law required the records destroyed immediately, Congress would have specified a timeframe. Given the ambiguity of the law, had Garland imposed a timeframe on the government he would have been legislating from the bench. So his ruling was the conservative one. After the case, Congress always had the chance to specify a timeframe for destroying the checks but never did. When Ashcroft came in, he canceled the 6 month thing.
2. Heller v DC
This was a challenge to a DC handgun ban. First, a three-judge panel declared the ban illegal due to the 2nd Amendment, upending more than 200 years of jurisprudence. Given the weight of the ruling, Garland, along with three other judges including arch-conservative A. Raymond Randolph and uber-liberal David Tatel, voted for a rehearing with the entire DC circuit weighing in instead of just this 3 judge panel. In a 6-4 vote, a majority of the circuit decided to not rehear the case, and so the panel’s judgement stood. Garland never gave an opinion on the case, he only voted for the entire circuit to rehear it. So did Randolph, but the Judicial Crisis Network lawyer conveniently leaves out this fact. According to the JCN author, one of the three other justices was a liberal, Tatel, and that's all the proof she needs to brand Garland as an anti-gun nut.
So that’s the extent of all this chatter about the 2nd Amendment: how long the government is allowed to hold onto criminal background checks in the absence of clarity from Congress, and Garland's vote that the full circuit and not a 3-judge panel should hear a case with far-flung consequences. All the 2nd Amendment talk is nothing but hyperbole and spin, but what else would you expect from National Review?
BTW, uber-Republican Orrin Hatch advocated for a Garland nomination to the Supreme Court in 2010. Here's what he said just last week:
“The president told me several times he’s going to name a moderate [to fill the court vacancy], but I don’t believe him. [Obama] could easily name Merrick Garland, who is a fine man. He probably won’t do that because this appointment is about the election. So I’m pretty sure he’ll name someone the [liberal Democratic base] wants.”
So even in the words of dyed-in-the-wool Republicans, Garland is a moderate.
Both parties have a number of "unpledged delegates" (superdelegates). These delegates aren't beholden to the outcome of the primaries, at least on the first vote at the convention.
In 2016 the RNC has 210 superdelegates. This is out of 2,445 total delegates, or about 8.6%. The DNC has 713 out of 4,720 total delegates, or about 15.1%.
About half of the Democratic superdelegates have declared their candidate, although they're always free to change their mind before the convention. None of the Republican superdelegates have yet declared a candidate.
The number of RNC superdelegates has come down since a rule change in 2012. In 2004 the number of Republican superdelegates numbered 773 out of 2,509 or 30.8%. (It didn't matter that year, though, as W ran unopposed).
Californians pay the feds $120 billion more in taxes per year than they get back in spending. They're the largest bankroller of the Union. If you want to find an American Greece, look to the Southeast.
He didn't make a math error, and he wasn't being duplicitous. What you're missing is the context. It was a joke. Go watch the comment and see for yourself.
I find it odd that you would bring up pets.com from 14 years ago. Is there no better example of the waning importance of Silicon Valley?
This just underscores my point of how folks have been incorrectly predicting the decline and fall of SV for a long time now. Going out on a limb, IMHO, a lot of this is rooted in a desire to see SV taken down a notch. In other words, I believe such negative assessments are based more on emotion than any real evidence the bay area is slowing down. The failure of pets.com in 2000 might make for a sensational story, but it's unwise to write off the bay area as "a little bubble", "too confident" or "arrogant". To do so in 2000 would have meant missing out on things like the transformation of Apple, the ascension of Google, the success of startups like Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.
I've lived in both Austin as well as SV. Both places are great, but from a tech perspective, IMHO Austin doesn't hold a candle to SV. I just now googled some stats on VC funding in Austin vs SV. In Austin it surged from 81.7 million in Q1 2013 to 213.8 in Q1 2014. Not bad.
But this compares with 2.2 billion invested in Silicon Valley in Q1 2013 and 4.7 billion in Q1 2014 (or about 1/2 of the world-wide venture capital investments).
For good measure, I looked up VC stats for the entire state of Texas. In all of 2013, Texas got 1.3 billion. 50% went to Austin startups. This compares with 12.3 billion for Silicon Valley for 2013.
There's a reason VCs choose to invest their money in bay area startups. They believe in the place...its past, present and future...and are willing to bet substantial amounts of money on it.
Stories like this one about the "next Silicon Valley" have been coming out pretty consistently for the past twenty years. As have predictions like yours of their imminent demise. In the meantime the place keeps right on growing.
Having children, or the desire to have children, is not a prerequisite for marriage. That said, gay folks do raise children. Whether those children come from an adoption agency, a previous marriage, donor sperm, a surrogate or whatever, same-sex couples can and do raise children.
If the issue here really is about children, then it's doubly bewildering why anyone would be against same-sex marriage. Children reared by same-sex couples are just as deserving of the stability and legal protections that come with marriage as any other children. Denying parents the ability to marry damages the entire family...parents and children alike.
If your argument is that same-sex couples should NOT be able to raise children, then that's a whole different issue. The remedy, though, is certainly not to ban same-sex marriage.
I agree Eich got the shaft, but it wasn't the LGBT community that did this. There were no LGBT organizations that demanded his resignation. It was the predominately straight tech community of Silicon Valley who spoke up. These people view opposition to same-sex marriage as immoral, on par with opposition to interracial marriage.
To be clear, I do too. I just don't think focusing so much animus at Eich was at all appropriate. I also don't think demonizing the gay community (again) over this is at all appropriate.
Of course it's ok if some people don't find the idea of two guys humping ok. And those people are free to not engage in guy-on-guy humping. What's not ok is for those people to use the force of government to push those beliefs onto others, as what happened under prop 8.
I'm not defending the hounding of Eich...he got a raw deal in all this. But to whitewash prop 8 as a mere difference of opinion is specious.
... all the states that allow gay marriage have done so because of court rulings...
That statement is false. Only 1/3 of the 18 US jurisdictions where same-sex marriage is legal got that way due to court rulings. 2/3 are either by legislatures or by direct popular vote:
- 3 (17%) by popular vote (ME, MD, WA) - 9 (50%) via legislatures (VT, NH, DC, NY, RI, DE, MN, HI, IL) - 6 (33%) via the courts (MA, CA, CT, IA, NJ, NM)
In addition to these 18, there are 5 more states that currently have stayed rulings on SSM (UT, OK, VA, TX, MI). Assuming all of these soon move into the 1st camp, this still only brings the % via the courts to 48%, leaving 52% due to either elected representatives or directly by the people.
Slashdot Mirror
Were urban Californian counties to form their own country they'd no longer subsidize US farmland, and they'd no longer pay the costs of protectionism. US farms would suddenly find themselves forced to compete on a level playing field with the rest of the world for the Californian market. Given that agriculture only amounts to 2% of California's GDP, it seems to me like a win for urban California to *not* take with them that farmland.
I'm not suggesting it's wise for urban California to split from the rest of the country, just that if they did I don't believe those low-output rural counties would necessarily be important to them. Think Singapore...they have very little farmland, they don't produce 100% of their energy needs, and yet per capita they're some of the wealthiest people in the world. Expulsion from Malaysia was the best thing that ever happened to them.
Where is it that anyone these days has 4.5 hours of free time to sit in front of a television?
I hate to say it, but retirees in Florida certainly do...I've witnessed it first hand after moving there to help my parents take care of my grandmother. From the time their feet hit the ground until it's time for bed, they've got Fox News on. Next door neighbors...Fox News. Barber shop...Fox News. The gym, the bars, the blood donation facility...basically anyplace with a TV. It's all the same, it's non-stop, and it's disturbing. And my experience doesn't seem to be unique:
http://www.salon.com/2014/02/2...
The article of the OP gives a demographic breakdown by age. The 65-and-up crowd watch almost 3x the amount of TV as the 18-24 year olds. A large part of this might be the result of an addiction.
The best part of TFA is the last sentence:
"It shows the state is paying ERAD Group Inc., $5,000 for the software and scanners, then 7.7 percent of all the cash forfeited through the courts to the highway patrol"
The great thing here is that ERAD Group Inc. can then give 7.7 percent of their 7.7 percent to "sympathetic" politicians who won't just keep the ball rolling, but will keep that system expanding. The highway patrol wins, ERAD Group Inc. wins, the politicians win, everybody wins! Great job, Oklahoma...the envy of the Great Plains.
Regarding that military assault, if you haven't seen it yet you might enjoy this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
>> I'd rather they stayed home, the whole thing is FUBAR.
That's not an option. Rather all you want.
>> People should be shot when they are behaving in a threatening manner towards other people and do not respond to verbal commands to back off and leave. Example: If you walk into my home, even if the door is wide open, and I say, "excuse me, this is my home, please leave", and you refuse, guess what? You're getting shot.
Except in your example, the one you chose to shoot was breaking the law. In this case, the one you choose to shoot is behaving exactly how overzealous tough-guys have now mandated.
Trans people will continue to use the bathroom of their re-assigned sex no matter what the law says. Know why? Because that's the *least* threatening to the average uptight man or woman on the street. It's what's least likely to get them roughed up or killed.
Have you ever seen a trans-man? Here are some pictures:
https://www.google.com/search?...
Since these men were born girls, I take it you'd rather they share the women's room with your wife and daughter? Or should they also be shot? "Man entering restroom" and all that. Please advise...you apparently know everything.
And Brenda...congratulations on your transition.
You're saying that because I called Orrin Hatch--president pro tem of the Senate--the *most senior Republican Senator*--an "uber-Republican", that throws my whole argument in doubt? But National Review's hit job on this moderate nominee presumably is fine with you, is that right?
Look...chances are I'm older than you. Probably quite a bit older. There was a time, before the rise of right wing media, that Republicans used to be reasonable people. I used to be a Republican. But now instead of relying on the strength of their arguments to forward their cause, they rely on disingenuous hyperbole and spin to convince the dim witted among us to vote for them. They wrap it all up with flashy graphics and mini skirts.
That National Review article is just the latest example of that hyperbole and spin. No matter who Obama nominated, they were ready with a hit piece to smear the nominee as a liberal "nut" (their word). If that's all they got on this guy...a refusal to legislate from the bench followed by a vote to put a landmark case in front of the whole circuit...then a reasonable person would recognize immediately that they're grabbing at straws. And no reasonable person would think twice if someone were to call that stalwart Senator from Utah an uber-Republican. Mostly because that's exactly what he is
The author of that article, chief legal counsel of the right-wing Judical Crisis Network, is basing her argument against Garland on two cases:
1. NRA v Reno
The Brady Bill directs the feds to run criminal background checks on would-be gun purchasers. To avoid a de-facto national gun registry, though, the checks need to be destroyed after the sale completes. They were originally destroyed immediately after the sale finalized, but Janet Reno changed the rules to retain the checks for 6 months, ostensibly for two reasons: to police the government (so that unauthorized checks against random non gun-purchasers by corrupt officials could be caught) and to guard against gun purchases made under stolen identities.
Garland’s opinion was that if the law required the records destroyed immediately, Congress would have specified a timeframe. Given the ambiguity of the law, had Garland imposed a timeframe on the government he would have been legislating from the bench. So his ruling was the conservative one. After the case, Congress always had the chance to specify a timeframe for destroying the checks but never did. When Ashcroft came in, he canceled the 6 month thing.
2. Heller v DC
This was a challenge to a DC handgun ban. First, a three-judge panel declared the ban illegal due to the 2nd Amendment, upending more than 200 years of jurisprudence. Given the weight of the ruling, Garland, along with three other judges including arch-conservative A. Raymond Randolph and uber-liberal David Tatel, voted for a rehearing with the entire DC circuit weighing in instead of just this 3 judge panel. In a 6-4 vote, a majority of the circuit decided to not rehear the case, and so the panel’s judgement stood. Garland never gave an opinion on the case, he only voted for the entire circuit to rehear it. So did Randolph, but the Judicial Crisis Network lawyer conveniently leaves out this fact. According to the JCN author, one of the three other justices was a liberal, Tatel, and that's all the proof she needs to brand Garland as an anti-gun nut.
So that’s the extent of all this chatter about the 2nd Amendment: how long the government is allowed to hold onto criminal background checks in the absence of clarity from Congress, and Garland's vote that the full circuit and not a 3-judge panel should hear a case with far-flung consequences. All the 2nd Amendment talk is nothing but hyperbole and spin, but what else would you expect from National Review?
BTW, uber-Republican Orrin Hatch advocated for a Garland nomination to the Supreme Court in 2010. Here's what he said just last week:
“The president told me several times he’s going to name a moderate [to fill the court vacancy], but I don’t believe him. [Obama] could easily name Merrick Garland, who is a fine man. He probably won’t do that because this appointment is about the election. So I’m pretty sure he’ll name someone the [liberal Democratic base] wants.”
So even in the words of dyed-in-the-wool Republicans, Garland is a moderate.
That's not exactly true.
Both parties have a number of "unpledged delegates" (superdelegates). These delegates aren't beholden to the outcome of the primaries, at least on the first vote at the convention.
In 2016 the RNC has 210 superdelegates. This is out of 2,445 total delegates, or about 8.6%. The DNC has 713 out of 4,720 total delegates, or about 15.1%.
About half of the Democratic superdelegates have declared their candidate, although they're always free to change their mind before the convention. None of the Republican superdelegates have yet declared a candidate.
The number of RNC superdelegates has come down since a rule change in 2012. In 2004 the number of Republican superdelegates numbered 773 out of 2,509 or 30.8%. (It didn't matter that year, though, as W ran unopposed).
sources:
http://www.thegreenpapers.com/...
http://www.thegreenpapers.com/...
http://www.thegreenpapers.com/...
Californians pay the feds $120 billion more in taxes per year than they get back in spending. They're the largest bankroller of the Union. If you want to find an American Greece, look to the Southeast.
All that money they spend on infrastructure, we spend on "defense"
Americans don't hate France
He didn't make a math error, and he wasn't being duplicitous. What you're missing is the context. It was a joke. Go watch the comment and see for yourself.
"I'd rather be dead in California than alive in Arizona"
-Lucille Bluth
Insurance:
http://www.robotcombat.com/vid...
I find it odd that you would bring up pets.com from 14 years ago. Is there no better example of the waning importance of Silicon Valley?
This just underscores my point of how folks have been incorrectly predicting the decline and fall of SV for a long time now. Going out on a limb, IMHO, a lot of this is rooted in a desire to see SV taken down a notch. In other words, I believe such negative assessments are based more on emotion than any real evidence the bay area is slowing down. The failure of pets.com in 2000 might make for a sensational story, but it's unwise to write off the bay area as "a little bubble", "too confident" or "arrogant". To do so in 2000 would have meant missing out on things like the transformation of Apple, the ascension of Google, the success of startups like Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.
I've lived in both Austin as well as SV. Both places are great, but from a tech perspective, IMHO Austin doesn't hold a candle to SV. I just now googled some stats on VC funding in Austin vs SV. In Austin it surged from 81.7 million in Q1 2013 to 213.8 in Q1 2014. Not bad.
http://www.bizjournals.com/aus...
But this compares with 2.2 billion invested in Silicon Valley in Q1 2013 and 4.7 billion in Q1 2014 (or about 1/2 of the world-wide venture capital investments).
http://www.mercurynews.com/bus...
For good measure, I looked up VC stats for the entire state of Texas. In all of 2013, Texas got 1.3 billion. 50% went to Austin startups. This compares with 12.3 billion for Silicon Valley for 2013.
http://www.businessweek.com/ap...
There's a reason VCs choose to invest their money in bay area startups. They believe in the place...its past, present and future...and are willing to bet substantial amounts of money on it.
Stories like this one about the "next Silicon Valley" have been coming out pretty consistently for the past twenty years. As have predictions like yours of their imminent demise. In the meantime the place keeps right on growing.
Having children, or the desire to have children, is not a prerequisite for marriage. That said, gay folks do raise children. Whether those children come from an adoption agency, a previous marriage, donor sperm, a surrogate or whatever, same-sex couples can and do raise children.
If the issue here really is about children, then it's doubly bewildering why anyone would be against same-sex marriage. Children reared by same-sex couples are just as deserving of the stability and legal protections that come with marriage as any other children. Denying parents the ability to marry damages the entire family...parents and children alike.
If your argument is that same-sex couples should NOT be able to raise children, then that's a whole different issue. The remedy, though, is certainly not to ban same-sex marriage.
They're probably still made of quarks. They just aren't baryons (three quarks) or mesons (quark/anti-quark pair).
I agree Eich got the shaft, but it wasn't the LGBT community that did this. There were no LGBT organizations that demanded his resignation. It was the predominately straight tech community of Silicon Valley who spoke up. These people view opposition to same-sex marriage as immoral, on par with opposition to interracial marriage.
To be clear, I do too. I just don't think focusing so much animus at Eich was at all appropriate. I also don't think demonizing the gay community (again) over this is at all appropriate.
Can you please cite your data? How many are "many people"?
Of course it's ok if some people don't find the idea of two guys humping ok. And those people are free to not engage in guy-on-guy humping. What's not ok is for those people to use the force of government to push those beliefs onto others, as what happened under prop 8.
I'm not defending the hounding of Eich...he got a raw deal in all this. But to whitewash prop 8 as a mere difference of opinion is specious.
... all the states that allow gay marriage have done so because of court rulings ...
That statement is false. Only 1/3 of the 18 US jurisdictions where same-sex marriage is legal got that way due to court rulings. 2/3 are either by legislatures or by direct popular vote:
- 3 (17%) by popular vote (ME, MD, WA)
- 9 (50%) via legislatures (VT, NH, DC, NY, RI, DE, MN, HI, IL)
- 6 (33%) via the courts (MA, CA, CT, IA, NJ, NM)
In addition to these 18, there are 5 more states that currently have stayed rulings on SSM (UT, OK, VA, TX, MI). Assuming all of these soon move into the 1st camp, this still only brings the % via the courts to 48%, leaving 52% due to either elected representatives or directly by the people.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
FWIW, here's a map of recent public opinion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
Just saying...if calling marriage a fundamental right is a slippery slope, we've been sliding down it for 126 years and counting
The US Supreme court has ruled 14 times since 1888 that marriage is indeed a "fundamental right":
https://www.afer.org/blog/14-s...
Not so sure about the atheist/priest thing.