It is not. The mission of the NSA is to "Collect (including through clandestine means), process, analyze, produce, and disseminate signals intelligence information..."
It is up to the politicians you and I elect to set the boundaries.
Yes, but how many more people will think twice about making any kind of satire that makes fun of the kingdom when they see how even such a mild video gets you a jail sentence? That's what it's about.
Thank god that in a free society you don't get to decide what each of us needs, according to your priorities. Let's go through your closet and see which of your clothes you really need (since ugly clothes protect from cold just as well as fashionable clothes - and do you really need more than one pair of pants?), and which car you really need (since even the cheapest car will take you from a to b), and how much do you spend on coffee, sugar, snacks (not needed, comrade - there are hungry people in Africa) etc etc.
"America - and that means all of us - opposes apartheid, a malevolent and archaic system totally alien to our ideals. The debate, which culminated in today's vote, was not whether or not to oppose apartheid but, instead, how best to oppose it and how best to bring freedom to that troubled country.... Punitive sanctions, I believe, are not the best course of action; they hurt the very people they are intended to help.... It would be tragic to lose this opportunity to create a truly free society which respects the rights of the majority, the minority, and the individual. There is still time for orderly change and peaceful reform. South Africans of good will, black and white, should seize the moment."
He (correctly IMHO) believed that gradual change was the best course and that suddenly weakening the government would hand the power to ANC which at the time was a strongly anti-capitalism, pro-USSR, extremely violent (look up its practice of "necklacing") movement.
It is to Mandela's credit that he controlled such a vicious organization and managed to bring about peaceful change instead of the race and ideological war that would have taken place with just about anybody else in his place.
If we are to be honest rather than PC, whites were the reason South Africa was the most developed country in Africa (by far) and not a mess of poverty, crime, war, disease, violence and disease like every other African country. I would say he was smart, not generous, when he made a deal with whites instead of trying to force them out like Mugabe did.
Let's see, take an old reliable workhorse like Delta II. It can take about 2,200lb outside Earth orbit, so it would need about 100 launches to lift 100 tonnes of Syrian chemical weapons, at $50 million per launch. The success rate of Delta II (most reliable ever) is about 98%.
So if we are willing to spend $5 billion and live with the likelihood of two launch failures, possibly spreading chemical agents all over the place, we could do it. Or we can just dump it into the sea.
If the Russians can do it safely and cheaply then why not let them do it. Why would we need to spend money to duplicate something Soyuz has been doing for the last 46 years? Ability to put stuff in orbit is of strategic importance, the ability to put humans is orbit is of no major importance.
How does a war between two of our three biggest trading partners, one of which is bound to us by a defense treaty and hosts 35,000 US troops impact us?
And cancellations haven't even started yet. Obama's decision to delay employer mandate by a year has probably saved the law for now (and his own ass) as CBO projects up to 50 million cancellations of employer sponsored plans once the employer mandate kicks in.
I'm commenting on government controlled organizations, and you reply that they would be making money if only government didn't run them in such a stupid way. Can you think about it for a second, but please feel free to stop if your brain starts hurting.
I've been to the Post Office, they do a great job.
A strange way to describe an organization for which a $5 billion/year loss is considered an achievement worth celebrating. A private company goes out of business when it can't at least break even (recent bailouts for a handful of large corporations notwithstanding). A government organization makes taxpayer write a bigger check.
Good news for you is that mental health coverage is mandatory for all plans under Obamacare. Come to think of it, it is good news for anybody crazy enough to enter their confidential personal details into a site apparently designed by a team of chimpanzees on crack.
It's the nature of working for the government. Congressmen vote for bills spending billions of their constituents dollars without even reading them while they wouldn't spend $10 of their own money without triple checking that they are getting a good deal for it. There is no incentive to do a great job, to hire great people, to motivate them, to pay them well, to resist the destructive role of unions etc because it is not their money. It makes all the difference and there is no cure for it. It's human nature.
The real problems are with the law itself and with the lies, not just with the website.
For example:
According to CBO 10 years from now IF Obamcare works perfectly, there will still be over 30 million people without coverage.
According to CBO, 20 million people are expected to lose employer provided coverage when the employer mandate kicks in. Cancellations so far are a drop in the ocean.
5 million people lost insurance (versus 100,000 who got it) and the most common reasons their plans were unacceptable and insurers were forced by law to terminate them were maternity coverage and mental health coverage. Yes, even for single men with no history of mental illness.
Don't get me started on the cost. Obama initially said that ACA is a cost saving Act. Nobody is saying that lie anymore.
Regardless of the website issues (as people can sign up by phone etc) only a 10th of the target has been achieved. Obamacare sets a target of 7 million by March 31 in order to be financially viable and looks like only a small fraction of that number will be achieved, working website or not.
98% of the people who were ABLE to use the website did not go through with signing up. Mostly because the plans on offer are inadequate and expensive.
What about endless repeated lies by the President and other Democrats about pretty much everything above?
The website is a major and embarrassing problem, but there are many bigger problems with Obamacare than the website.
So free market caused "geographical areas being locked into a choice between AT&T and Time Warner"!? I don't think you quite understand what free market means. It is regulation at the local level that gives monopoly to ISP providers over certain geographical areas, not the free market.
As for government getting it's hands off military industrial complex, you got it wrong again. The primary purpose of the government is the national security, that's one thing that can't be privatized. This is not to say that there isn't an enormous amount of waste and corruption in defense procurement, just like in everything else government does.
Slashdot Mirror
It is not. The mission of the NSA is to "Collect (including through clandestine means), process, analyze, produce, and disseminate signals intelligence information..."
It is up to the politicians you and I elect to set the boundaries.
the rich and the big enterprises pay nearly no taxes
That's ridiculous: http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/12/news/economy/rich-taxes/
What rankings are you talking about? This is what I found:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_in_the_World
UAE doesn't compare well with the USA at all.
Yes, but how many more people will think twice about making any kind of satire that makes fun of the kingdom when they see how even such a mild video gets you a jail sentence? That's what it's about.
There are many ways to rate teachers but none will work as long as the teachers union rejects any mention of performance based compensation.
Not possible without sacrificing freedom.
4 sheets of A4? How much is it in a sane unit?
We are talking about 2.75577828e-9 of a fully loaded jumbo jet! Wow, that's light!
If you need area, it's 0.0000152737 of a football field.
That's a song fans sing at the game to annoy the Spurs fans. I think it originated with Chelsea fans.
Thank god that in a free society you don't get to decide what each of us needs, according to your priorities. Let's go through your closet and see which of your clothes you really need (since ugly clothes protect from cold just as well as fashionable clothes - and do you really need more than one pair of pants?), and which car you really need (since even the cheapest car will take you from a to b), and how much do you spend on coffee, sugar, snacks (not needed, comrade - there are hungry people in Africa) etc etc.
Reagan after the Congress vote on SA sanctions:
"America - and that means all of us - opposes apartheid, a malevolent and archaic system totally alien to our ideals. The debate, which culminated in today's vote, was not whether or not to oppose apartheid but, instead, how best to oppose it and how best to bring freedom to that troubled country .... ...
Punitive sanctions, I believe, are not the best course of action; they hurt the very people they are intended to help.
It would be tragic to lose this opportunity to create a truly free society which respects the rights of the majority, the minority, and the individual. There is still time for orderly change and peaceful reform. South Africans of good will, black and white, should seize the moment."
He (correctly IMHO) believed that gradual change was the best course and that suddenly weakening the government would hand the power to ANC which at the time was a strongly anti-capitalism, pro-USSR, extremely violent (look up its practice of "necklacing") movement.
It is to Mandela's credit that he controlled such a vicious organization and managed to bring about peaceful change instead of the race and ideological war that would have taken place with just about anybody else in his place.
If we are to be honest rather than PC, whites were the reason South Africa was the most developed country in Africa (by far) and not a mess of poverty, crime, war, disease, violence and disease like every other African country. I would say he was smart, not generous, when he made a deal with whites instead of trying to force them out like Mugabe did.
Let's see, take an old reliable workhorse like Delta II. It can take about 2,200lb outside Earth orbit, so it would need about 100 launches to lift 100 tonnes of Syrian chemical weapons, at $50 million per launch. The success rate of Delta II (most reliable ever) is about 98%.
So if we are willing to spend $5 billion and live with the likelihood of two launch failures, possibly spreading chemical agents all over the place, we could do it. Or we can just dump it into the sea.
If the Russians can do it safely and cheaply then why not let them do it. Why would we need to spend money to duplicate something Soyuz has been doing for the last 46 years? Ability to put stuff in orbit is of strategic importance, the ability to put humans is orbit is of no major importance.
So the point of the story is that creationists are a small minority on the Texas Board of Education?
How does a war between two of our three biggest trading partners, one of which is bound to us by a defense treaty and hosts 35,000 US troops impact us?
As a developer I hate to see something like this fail because the web portal sucked on roll-out
What news are you reading? Obacamare will not fail because of a bad website. It will fail because it is a bad law and people don't want it.
And cancellations haven't even started yet. Obama's decision to delay employer mandate by a year has probably saved the law for now (and his own ass) as CBO projects up to 50 million cancellations of employer sponsored plans once the employer mandate kicks in.
I'm commenting on government controlled organizations, and you reply that they would be making money if only government didn't run them in such a stupid way. Can you think about it for a second, but please feel free to stop if your brain starts hurting.
I've been to the Post Office, they do a great job.
A strange way to describe an organization for which a $5 billion/year loss is considered an achievement worth celebrating. A private company goes out of business when it can't at least break even (recent bailouts for a handful of large corporations notwithstanding). A government organization makes taxpayer write a bigger check.
Good news for you is that mental health coverage is mandatory for all plans under Obamacare. Come to think of it, it is good news for anybody crazy enough to enter their confidential personal details into a site apparently designed by a team of chimpanzees on crack.
It's the nature of working for the government. Congressmen vote for bills spending billions of their constituents dollars without even reading them while they wouldn't spend $10 of their own money without triple checking that they are getting a good deal for it. There is no incentive to do a great job, to hire great people, to motivate them, to pay them well, to resist the destructive role of unions etc because it is not their money. It makes all the difference and there is no cure for it. It's human nature.
The real problems are with the law itself and with the lies, not just with the website.
For example:
According to CBO 10 years from now IF Obamcare works perfectly, there will still be over 30 million people without coverage.
According to CBO, 20 million people are expected to lose employer provided coverage when the employer mandate kicks in. Cancellations so far are a drop in the ocean.
5 million people lost insurance (versus 100,000 who got it) and the most common reasons their plans were unacceptable and insurers were forced by law to terminate them were maternity coverage and mental health coverage. Yes, even for single men with no history of mental illness.
Don't get me started on the cost. Obama initially said that ACA is a cost saving Act. Nobody is saying that lie anymore.
Regardless of the website issues (as people can sign up by phone etc) only a 10th of the target has been achieved. Obamacare sets a target of 7 million by March 31 in order to be financially viable and looks like only a small fraction of that number will be achieved, working website or not.
98% of the people who were ABLE to use the website did not go through with signing up. Mostly because the plans on offer are inadequate and expensive.
What about endless repeated lies by the President and other Democrats about pretty much everything above?
The website is a major and embarrassing problem, but there are many bigger problems with Obamacare than the website.
So free market caused "geographical areas being locked into a choice between AT&T and Time Warner"!? I don't think you quite understand what free market means. It is regulation at the local level that gives monopoly to ISP providers over certain geographical areas, not the free market.
As for government getting it's hands off military industrial complex, you got it wrong again. The primary purpose of the government is the national security, that's one thing that can't be privatized. This is not to say that there isn't an enormous amount of waste and corruption in defense procurement, just like in everything else government does.
They shouldn't be penalizing anybody. If it makes sense to install solar panels, people will do it. No need for either fines or subsidies.
I think we should call it Obamabattery and have IRS fine anybody who doesn't use it.