Also note: I am not a Libertarian. They are a mishmash of individuals with arbitrarily intersecting interests, aiming at contradictory goals. This is how you get a LP presidential candidate that was at the forefront of the war on drugs.
Where did I mention the Constitution? The Constitution is not a perfect document. People did in fact exist for at least a few centuries before the Constitution was written, and while they existed, they occasionally wrote about the proper functions of a government. With that said, the Constitution is as closed to perfect as has been witnessed to date.
"No, they are not. Actually being the government would leave them with all the bothersome stuff, like the national debt or the responsibility to run a country and provide at least basic services to people."
Except that none of these are the responsibility of a properly-functioning government. There is no right to "basic services". There is only the right to your life and your property, the protection of which is the function of the government. The debt can easily be handled if the government shuts down the services that it does not have the right to run, and sells off the infrastructure and equipment used to maintain and facilitate those services.
A company can persuade all it wants. It is only when an elected official helps pass laws in that company's favor that corruption occurs.
I think you haven't been paying attention. The bad English is likely from the Asian scientist (Dr. Suchong), whose English (as heard from the diary recordings) is pretty bad...
The problem comes when the feds say "Okay!" to the funding, increasing taxes or deficit in turn, so that they can get more campaign money. Companies can beg all they want for money, but corruption only occurs when a congressman is willing to put his reelection interests above his constituents interests.
Of course, the constituents are none the wiser, because the whole scheme has been reprocessed into something more capable of digestion by the public.
"Reducing overall consumption, would allow us to import less from foreign sources, or at least from the most unfriendly foreign sources"
While it's fine to persuade people to reduce their consumption, that is quite different from the intentions implied in Obama's statements. It's one thing to talk people into reducing consumption, and it's another to force them to reduce consumption. The very fact that a political entity is talking about the economy - and what laws should be created (rather than appealed) to fix the economy - should be your first sign of danger.
You assume the status quo in objecting to the status quo. Our reliance on foreign oil is already a product of sacrifice. Sacrificing more is not going to solve anything. I did not create, and I am not maintaining our reliance on foreign oil. As long as foreign oil is the cheapest you can get, there will always be a market for it, no matter how many laws are passed or taxes are levied. Only government restriction stands in the way of removing our reliance on foreign oil.
There is quite a difference between cooperation and sacrifice/obligation. If I offer you a product, and you offer me money, and we agree to the terms and trade, that is cooperation. If you instead demand that I lower my price, on the threat of government force, that is sacrifice and obligation. Do you disagree?
And? Is that it? Your argument is an emotion response? What is the basis for this emotion?
More to the point, how can one justify the rights violations that are a necessary result of requiring that everyone be obligated to serve everyone else, and must sacrifice to "the least of us"?
As for wasted posts, had you not assumed that I agreed with her assumptions (e.g., that I am uninvolved/uninformed), we wouldn't have even gone down this road.
I disagree with her assertion that I am uninvolved or uninformed. The entire second set of quotes are just random sound bites stuck together with no real content relating them back to intended policies. As for the first part, I disagree with every sentence. What is there to agree with, and why?
Get rid of samzenpus
on
Cat Talk
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
PLEASE slashdot, for the sake of your userbase, and for the sake of quality, ditch samzenpus. This place is becoming a shithole.
"But really, the problem with Obama, like anything else, are the myths propagated by others, or the misinformation about him."
Really? That's it? My problem with Obama comes straight from his mouth, from his supporters' mouths, and even from his wife's mouth:
"We have lost the understanding that in a democracy, we have a mutual obligation to one another -- that we cannot measure the greatness of our society by the strongest and richest of us, but we have to measure our greatness by the least of these. That we have to compromise and sacrifice for one another in order to get things done...
"Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your division. That you come out of your isolation. That you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual; uninvolved, uninformed."
Why stop there? Just wait until the 2012 olympics and be the first to discover the true ages of the Chinese gymnasts. Then encode the data in screenshots of the evidence, and be the first to post about it on your blog. Assuming hundreds of people duplicate your image (rather than taking screenshots of their own), there should be enough Streisand to go around to last 25 years. Better yet, you could have a friend draw a representation of the evidence, encode the data into that, and upload the image under a free license to the Wikipedia article about the gymnasts. Enough sites should mirror it to make it available in a quarter century.
"I think Obama's "yea" vote on the bill that contained the wiretapping indemnity was more a problem of our current system of multi-issue bills than a true expression of Obama's ideals."
Stop pretending you can divorce reality from itself. The "current system" can only thrive so long as there are those willing to prop it up. Obama propped it up with his yea vote. So do any other Democrats or Republicans who are wishing to pass their sentence of a bill cointaining thousands of disjointed sentences, whenever they vote yea on such a bill.
Is it just me, or has it seemed lately that everytime I've thought, "damn, slashdot is going down the shitter", I look up at who approved the story, and it's been the name samzenpus, nearly every single time?
Given that knowledge, I think it's obvious what should be done.
Slashdot Mirror
Also note: I am not a Libertarian. They are a mishmash of individuals with arbitrarily intersecting interests, aiming at contradictory goals. This is how you get a LP presidential candidate that was at the forefront of the war on drugs.
Where did I mention the Constitution? The Constitution is not a perfect document. People did in fact exist for at least a few centuries before the Constitution was written, and while they existed, they occasionally wrote about the proper functions of a government. With that said, the Constitution is as closed to perfect as has been witnessed to date.
"No, they are not. Actually being the government would leave them with all the bothersome stuff, like the national debt or the responsibility to run a country and provide at least basic services to people."
Except that none of these are the responsibility of a properly-functioning government. There is no right to "basic services". There is only the right to your life and your property, the protection of which is the function of the government. The debt can easily be handled if the government shuts down the services that it does not have the right to run, and sells off the infrastructure and equipment used to maintain and facilitate those services.
A company can persuade all it wants. It is only when an elected official helps pass laws in that company's favor that corruption occurs.
I think you haven't been paying attention. The bad English is likely from the Asian scientist (Dr. Suchong), whose English (as heard from the diary recordings) is pretty bad...
That's not the style we used when I learned about emphasis in English.
The problem comes when the feds say "Okay!" to the funding, increasing taxes or deficit in turn, so that they can get more campaign money. Companies can beg all they want for money, but corruption only occurs when a congressman is willing to put his reelection interests above his constituents interests. Of course, the constituents are none the wiser, because the whole scheme has been reprocessed into something more capable of digestion by the public.
"Reducing overall consumption, would allow us to import less from foreign sources, or at least from the most unfriendly foreign sources"
While it's fine to persuade people to reduce their consumption, that is quite different from the intentions implied in Obama's statements. It's one thing to talk people into reducing consumption, and it's another to force them to reduce consumption. The very fact that a political entity is talking about the economy - and what laws should be created (rather than appealed) to fix the economy - should be your first sign of danger.
"we don't produce enough domestically"
Understand the reason why this is, and you'll understand exactly what I meant in my last post. Or, just label me "too cool for the room", and move on.
You assume the status quo in objecting to the status quo. Our reliance on foreign oil is already a product of sacrifice. Sacrificing more is not going to solve anything. I did not create, and I am not maintaining our reliance on foreign oil. As long as foreign oil is the cheapest you can get, there will always be a market for it, no matter how many laws are passed or taxes are levied. Only government restriction stands in the way of removing our reliance on foreign oil.
There is quite a difference between cooperation and sacrifice/obligation. If I offer you a product, and you offer me money, and we agree to the terms and trade, that is cooperation. If you instead demand that I lower my price, on the threat of government force, that is sacrifice and obligation. Do you disagree?
And? Is that it? Your argument is an emotion response? What is the basis for this emotion?
More to the point, how can one justify the rights violations that are a necessary result of requiring that everyone be obligated to serve everyone else, and must sacrifice to "the least of us"?
As for wasted posts, had you not assumed that I agreed with her assumptions (e.g., that I am uninvolved/uninformed), we wouldn't have even gone down this road.
I disagree with her assertion that I am uninvolved or uninformed. The entire second set of quotes are just random sound bites stuck together with no real content relating them back to intended policies. As for the first part, I disagree with every sentence. What is there to agree with, and why?
PLEASE slashdot, for the sake of your userbase, and for the sake of quality, ditch samzenpus. This place is becoming a shithole.
Please, slashdot, for the sake of your budget, and the sake of quality, ditch samzenpus. This place is turning into a shithole.
"your proposing to remain uninvolved and uninformed? "
Nope. Who said I was? Or are you assuming that I must disagree with everything phrase she uses in order to find fault with her message?
Yep. What do you find right about it?
"But really, the problem with Obama, like anything else, are the myths propagated by others, or the misinformation about him."
Really? That's it? My problem with Obama comes straight from his mouth, from his supporters' mouths, and even from his wife's mouth:
"We have lost the understanding that in a democracy, we have a mutual obligation to one another -- that we cannot measure the greatness of our society by the strongest and richest of us, but we have to measure our greatness by the least of these. That we have to compromise and sacrifice for one another in order to get things done...
"Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your division. That you come out of your isolation. That you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual; uninvolved, uninformed."
Why stop there? Just wait until the 2012 olympics and be the first to discover the true ages of the Chinese gymnasts. Then encode the data in screenshots of the evidence, and be the first to post about it on your blog. Assuming hundreds of people duplicate your image (rather than taking screenshots of their own), there should be enough Streisand to go around to last 25 years. Better yet, you could have a friend draw a representation of the evidence, encode the data into that, and upload the image under a free license to the Wikipedia article about the gymnasts. Enough sites should mirror it to make it available in a quarter century.
Or you could use the Google cache with Firefox and scroll all the way to the bottom of their page - you'll see all the answers you need.
"I think Obama's "yea" vote on the bill that contained the wiretapping indemnity was more a problem of our current system of multi-issue bills than a true expression of Obama's ideals."
Stop pretending you can divorce reality from itself. The "current system" can only thrive so long as there are those willing to prop it up. Obama propped it up with his yea vote. So do any other Democrats or Republicans who are wishing to pass their sentence of a bill cointaining thousands of disjointed sentences, whenever they vote yea on such a bill.
"Then how come neanderthals invented everything that is the basis of OUR civilization ... animal husbandry ..."
Excuse me, but not everyone is from the South, you insensitive clod!
Exactly!
Is it just me, or has it seemed lately that everytime I've thought, "damn, slashdot is going down the shitter", I look up at who approved the story, and it's been the name samzenpus, nearly every single time?
Given that knowledge, I think it's obvious what should be done.
*sheds tear*
If only the scoring went above 5.