...A psychiatric patient was the 'terrorist' and he blew himself up in a restaurant toilet (no one else was harmed), after being convinced to do so by others.
That's sad.
You don't see Bin Laden sacrificing his life for his cause, you just see him telling other people to do so.
Evidence that one needs to be a complete moron to follow bin Laden.
The point you're missing is that the Obama administraiton is more worried about potential "domestic terrorists", i.e., people whose political ideology varies most widely with their own, than they are about international terrorists.
Funny, I thought the "domestic terrorists" were currently members of Congress and the White House...
That wasn't my point. My point is that they aren't going to pin their hopes on American made high tech gadgets for anything critical. It's not like they don't get trained.
True enough, but my point was that as smart as they may be, they're not "all there" because they believe that committing suicide to further their cause is a "good idea".
The Union government (in general not the current admin) wants to squash Patriots trying to protect the Constitution from "domestic enemies" i.e. the leaders. It's really no different than how a Communist government acts.
Wow. Someone gets it!
I wonder if the central government is required to obtain a warrant first, or if they can simply demand "unencrypt that google email" without any kind of oversight by the judges. The police have that power now, in regards to searching homes, thanks to the unconstitutional Patriot Act.
Make enough noise, and you'll find out when they cart you off for being subversive.
As much as I'd love to pin all this on the current administration or the current Congress, I know that this sort of stuff has been in the works for a couple decades. What they're doing is much like boiling a frog: put the frog in cold water over low heat. By the time the water gets near boiling and the frog realizes what's happening, it's too late.
How's that insane racist, homophobic, anti-Islam hatemongering Teabagger faction screwing the GOP six ways from Sunday working out for you?
You're not supposed to crawl out from under your rock before Tuesday. What an amateur you are.
I care about the GOP only slightly more than I care about the DNC.
Of course, your commentary tells me that you are an extremely shallow lemming, buying into what the MSM tells people about a group of people that care about the basis of the United States of America. Your choice of words shows me that you care about it about as much as those loser muslim extremists that flew airliners into the twin towers and the Pentagon.
However, at least I don't have the RCMP knocking on my door, trying to file criminal charges against me for speaking my mind. That would be a violation against the First Amendment, which you (as a Canadian, based on your next comment) simply don't enjoy. Sucks to be you.
(Yes, it's off topic. Yes, it needed saying....
Yes it was, no it didn't. You could have kept your pie-hole shut until Tuesday, when the other trolls come out.
... Don't like it? Move to Canada and file criminal charges.)
You're not worth the time it would take to do all that. Don't think so highly of yourself.
Defamation (there's no such thing as libel in Canada, just "defamatory libel" - not the same thing) is different from the US. The truth is not an absolute defense. However, they screwed up, because the police, being public figures, are more subject to open criticism than the average citizen. This is intimidation, pure and simple.
It's a poor day to do it, too-- too often, we see people trying to speak out against a corrupt authority (or against specific corrupt members of said authority), and said authority tries to squash the person speaking out. In decades past it might have worked, but these days it is more difficult to pull off without exposing problems.
The web site is in New York, so it's outside the Canadian courts' jurisdiction, pure and simple. The US 5th Amendment takes precedence on US soil.
Heh. Imagine that. If the Liberals in Washington have their way, that won't be a true statement for very long. They want the United Nations to trump any nation's sovereignty.
So we have the problem of venue. If the defamatory statements were published in the US, and if Canada doesn't have a long-arm statute (we don't, except for child abuse and terrorism), the RCMP are SOL. Sorry boys, you don't get your man this time.
Give them time, they'll find a way. What is it they say about the Mounties? "They always get their man"? Sounds more to me like someone desperate for a date on a Friday night.
Do the RCMP sometimes lie? That's been proven in court. Instead of trying to suppress publication in another country with a SLAPP criminal proceeding, maybe they should address the issues, and realize that when you're a cop, what you do is public, same as a politician.
They aren't supposed to violate the very law they are called to enforce. They are probably more afraid that admission to being victims of the Human Condition would open themselves up to a whole new can of worms... Of course, if they have nothing to hide....
I'm thinking of buying 30 el-cheapo four-function calculators out of my pocket, but I'm afraid that less-adaptable students will be unable to handle the switch from the calculator they know to an unfamiliar (but simpler) one.
If the student is in college and cannot "adjust" to using something like a simple four-function calculator, maybe the choice of calculator is the least of their problems. I'd be more inclined to think that maybe college itself is a burden they may not be qualified to carry...
When I was a kid, I wasn't allowed to touch a calculator unless I could demonstrate that I was able to understand and perform the work without one. The calculator was a tool to facilitate getting the job done, not one to do the work for me.
People these days think that everything must be handed to them on a platter. Tough cookies for them. If they can't do the work, they will fail the class. It's that simple, and it's really not your problem-- it's theirs.
I was on a mobile device at the time and download times are a mess on it, that's why I didn't. Had I been on a PC, I would have chased the link.;)
The presence of OCGA gives support to the idea that this guy just copy and pasted it.
It also lends credence to the hypothesis that the person/people that sent the message from Commodore USA are complete and utter dolts. If they aren't going to read (and re-read) documents they are sending out that might carry any legal weight, then they certainly shouldn't be trusted with anything that is going to be court-bound. One simple oversight could make or break a case before the judge.
What does that have to do with anything? Is Commodore USA based in Georgia? Why would the "official code of Georgia" apply? (I'm not criticizing you, just wondering stuff without going to read TFA or do any background checking on Commodore USA....)
the summary text is, verbatim, the first part of the article.
It is my personal observation that this seems to be the best way to get anything on the front page: using the article text as the "summary". Isn't it nice to see that Slashdot submitters are so original in their writing skill?:D
Support a community well and it will pay you back. Alienate a community and you are suddenly competing against better entrenched products.
If you'll pardon the dated reference, this isn't the first time something like this has happened. One case that comes to mind is Apple's ending the life of the Apple II line. Sure, it would have been a virtual nightmare to keep backward compatibility as they moved forward with the series, but because of the way they went about it, many of their big fans jumped ship to the PC-compatible camp, rather than shifting to the Mac. Apple could have had a larger following with their Mac line, had they tried to make the change a little more gently, but they didn't, and they are only recently beginning to recover from it.
If Oracle is careful, they won't make any waves in doing what they think is the best action to take, but somehow I get the feeling that they're past caring what anyone else thinks.
And it's web developers' responsibility to make sure that their shit works for its target audience, even if that means holding back because the clueless masses that comprise said audience insist on using Microsoft's cripple-ware.
It's really pretty simple: The W3C should be defining the standard, and if a browser developer doesn't keep up, then they'll just lose out.
If we waited for a Mozilla and Microsoft to adhere to standards 100%, then we'd still be dealing with 1.0 or 1.1 specs. Instead, we're looking at HTML5.
Let W3C write the standard. Allowing multiple source tags for video elements is brilliant, and will make it easy enough for web developers to work around the problem of archaic browsers.
Of course, how or why anyone would not support "open source / royalty free" codecs is beyond me. It's not like they'll be paying a fortune for license fees...
Teaching about religion as a historical matter and its social influences is fine. What's important is the avoidance of preaching religion.
Agreed...
Evangelizing in the public schools cannot be allowed.
The trick is that there are a lot of perspectives that are "evangelized" in public schools. "Global warming" (or is it global cooling now?), "Obama is The One", "United Nations above all else", "White Man (especially Christopher Columbus) is Teh Evil"... There are a lot of things taught as "fact" without sufficient cause, but they are the politically-correct way of thinking today.
Remember... Evangelism is defined as "militant or crusading zeal" (second definition). Most of the points I listed in the last paragraph are approached that way. Lessons in school need to be more objective.
Both, if California politicians are not protecting the schools from political agendas either... Educators, not politicians should decide what is in our school books.
I agree with you here.
Neither party politics or theological opinion have any place in primary education, not when you're supposed to be learning history, science, math, or language (not that the occasional lively debate shouldn't freely break out during any of them)... Especially without the counterweight of critical thinking. Otherwise it becomes indoctrination.
When the religious belief(s) of the historical figure(s) plays a part of understanding why things happened the way they did, shouldn't that be mentioned in the lesson?
For example, there are some who try to leave the "religion factor" out of the story of the Pilgrims coming to the New World, but most of the passengers on the Mayflower were coming to the New World to practice their faith without persecution, and it was a driving force in their decision to make the journey. Remove that facet of their lives, and one is left wondering why they would have undertaken such a perilous journey for no discernible reason.
I believe this is for the high schools, so making a mountain out of that molehill could be just another regularly scheduled distraction..
You may have something here, but I'm not sure what side I would be on without a lot more information than was provided by the original article.
There's nothing wrong with teaching religion as a whole in public school, as long as it is an elective (not required) and that one is not taught favorably to the expense of others. From a historical perspective, it is useful to know something about a particular belief system in order to better understand the culture of a particular area. For example, Catholicism greatly affected much of Europe through the Middle Ages, Islam has affected the Middle East for more than a thousand years, and so on. The fact that schools are apparently afraid of teaching religion (Christianity in particular, it seems) leaves ample opportunity to skew understanding of why people in most parts of the world did what they did through the ages.
Whenever Microsoft comes up with something snazzy, something that would dominate the market, they kill the project.
Whenever the competition comes up with something truly productive, Microsoft promises something better, then doesn't follow through.
Mark my words: Microsoft will eventually come out with a product to compete with the iPad, but it will not be anywhere as useful, and Microsoft will push it as "innovative".
If you want the country to be run entirely by public referenda, you're free to advocate for a direct democracy, but it isn't what we have currently. Personally, I think our voting systems would have to be made a good deal more convenient and efficient before even considering it, and even then there are problems with the idea (see: California).
You're right about the indirect democracy, though it IS technically a constitutional republic. Doubters should take note in the fact that once a representative gets into office, they often follow the money, regardless what their constituents think.
Not the people I've spoken to... Most of the people I know don't like the bill because it supports abortion, restricts care for children with "pre-existing conditions", and a laundry list of issues that do not help children with special needs.
What's that? *Gasp, shock* The people you know and talk to tend to agree with you? Why, that's... utterly irrelevant. I don't give a shit about your anecdotal evidence.
Oh. The opinions of people I know is irrelevant because I know them and have actually spoken to them? How perfectly arrogant of you, to dismiss them out-of-hand.
Polls can be designed to come up with any result you should desire. It's as simple as phrasing the question a certain way and providing certain "answers" from which to choose. Generally, the mainstream media will disclose the results of a poll, but they never tell you what question was asked, what options were available for the respondents to choose from, nor are you told the method used to conduct the poll, which can bias the results significantly.
Because of all the variables involved, I rarely take the polls at face value, if ever.
Take a set of people that have special needs children, let them read the bill, and see what they think. I'm telling you that based on what I know from first hand knowledge, this "health care bill" is a complete and utter disgrace.
There are over 300 million people in this country, and I doubt your self-selected group of friends and acquaintances is a good representative sample, or large enough to be statistically meaningful.
Statistics mean nothing in Real Life. A law that forces citizens into buying into a contract or face jail (or fines, or both) is a BAD law. A law that makes taxpayers pay for a procedure that (most of the time) is NOT a "medical necessity" but one of convenience is a BAD law. A law that takes the "quality of life" decision out of the hands of the individual or the individual's family is a BAD law.
The most recent polls are somewhat evenly split as to whether the majority of the public supports or dislikes the health care bill (there may have been differences in how the questions were asked),
You haven't been paying attention to the news lately, then. Massachusetts elected their first Republican Senator in 40 years over this health care plan that was forced through Congress, because they were against the whole idea. Look at the election results (the only poll that matters), and you will see that it was hardly "somewhat evenly split".
but my point is it doesn't really matter, policy changes are up to the elected officials until the next round of elections, and by then most people will probably be aware that the Communist Death PanelsOMG!!1!! doom-and-gloom was nonsense.
Sigh. You've never heard of the Law of Unexpected Consequences, have you? If language exists that would allow such a thing, intended or no, then someone will take advantage of it. The Founding Fathers realized this, which is why they put the Tenth Amendment on the Constitution. Simply electing a representative to Congress that has a certain agenda is NOT "delegating" that agenda to Congress.
90% of the known universe was hidden in plain sight, maybe.
Given the nature of the universe, I seriously doubt we'll see it all. Even then, it's hardly "discovered" by looking at it all from this little speck of dust.
A significant percentage of those polled didn't like the bill because it didn't go far enough to change health insurance.
Not the people I've spoken to... Most of the people I know don't like the bill because it supports abortion, restricts care for children with "pre-existing conditions", and a laundry list of issues that do not help children with special needs.
On top of all this, Congress has no business mandating health care. That's a task for the individual states.
Within MA, there's about a dozen different varieties of "charity plates" where people pay a surcharge that is donated to the choice charity of the owners of a logo, such as a sports team or other group.
...and there's the (grandfathered) green-lettered plate and the current "default issue" red-letter plate.
It is my observation that most of the people in MA that don't display an ability to drive according to the law happen to have a green plate. (Considering there seem to be a lot of these in the area in which I live, this is not something I would classify as a statistical probability. As I said, it's an observation.)
Because I believe in the right to life. And stealing a few hundred dollars worth of stuff isn't sufficient provocation to be worth taking theirs. They're assholes and deserve to go to jail, but they don't deserve to die.
This is where the "shotgun" solution is best: The resident takes aim for the knees and seriously wounds the assailant, hopefully until the police arrive and take the stupid fool away.
The problem is that the accused could turn the tables and sue the homeowner for attempted murder. Depending on the jury, there's a possibility that the slimeball intruder could win.
Of course, if the homeowner were a really bad shot and, oh, I dunno, hit the chest (or above) "by accident", then the problem would be solved right there.
Slashdot Mirror
...A psychiatric patient was the 'terrorist' and he blew himself up in a restaurant toilet (no one else was harmed), after being convinced to do so by others.
That's sad.
You don't see Bin Laden sacrificing his life for his cause, you just see him telling other people to do so.
Evidence that one needs to be a complete moron to follow bin Laden.
The point you're missing is that the Obama administraiton is more worried about potential "domestic terrorists", i.e., people whose political ideology varies most widely with their own, than they are about international terrorists.
Funny, I thought the "domestic terrorists" were currently members of Congress and the White House...
I'm all for condemning terrorism but calling stupid everyone who's ever sacrificed his life for his ideals is pretty shortsighted.
"Willing to fight for what you believe in" and "Willing to commit suicide to force others to your ideal" are opposite sides to the same razor.
That wasn't my point. My point is that they aren't going to pin their hopes on American made high tech gadgets for anything critical. It's not like they don't get trained.
True enough, but my point was that as smart as they may be, they're not "all there" because they believe that committing suicide to further their cause is a "good idea".
The Union government (in general not the current admin) wants to squash Patriots trying to protect the Constitution from "domestic enemies" i.e. the leaders. It's really no different than how a Communist government acts.
Wow. Someone gets it!
I wonder if the central government is required to obtain a warrant first, or if they can simply demand "unencrypt that google email" without any kind of oversight by the judges. The police have that power now, in regards to searching homes, thanks to the unconstitutional Patriot Act.
Make enough noise, and you'll find out when they cart you off for being subversive.
As much as I'd love to pin all this on the current administration or the current Congress, I know that this sort of stuff has been in the works for a couple decades. What they're doing is much like boiling a frog: put the frog in cold water over low heat. By the time the water gets near boiling and the frog realizes what's happening, it's too late.
If the terrorists really are this stupid, and they aren't...
You're talking about a group of people that intentionally blow themselves up to make their point.
After they're dead, what do they care about what the world really thinks?
How's that insane racist, homophobic, anti-Islam hatemongering Teabagger faction screwing the GOP six ways from Sunday working out for you?
You're not supposed to crawl out from under your rock before Tuesday. What an amateur you are.
I care about the GOP only slightly more than I care about the DNC.
Of course, your commentary tells me that you are an extremely shallow lemming, buying into what the MSM tells people about a group of people that care about the basis of the United States of America. Your choice of words shows me that you care about it about as much as those loser muslim extremists that flew airliners into the twin towers and the Pentagon.
However, at least I don't have the RCMP knocking on my door, trying to file criminal charges against me for speaking my mind. That would be a violation against the First Amendment, which you (as a Canadian, based on your next comment) simply don't enjoy. Sucks to be you.
(Yes, it's off topic. Yes, it needed saying. ...
Yes it was, no it didn't. You could have kept your pie-hole shut until Tuesday, when the other trolls come out.
... Don't like it? Move to Canada and file criminal charges.)
You're not worth the time it would take to do all that. Don't think so highly of yourself.
Defamation (there's no such thing as libel in Canada, just "defamatory libel" - not the same thing) is different from the US. The truth is not an absolute defense. However, they screwed up, because the police, being public figures, are more subject to open criticism than the average citizen. This is intimidation, pure and simple.
It's a poor day to do it, too-- too often, we see people trying to speak out against a corrupt authority (or against specific corrupt members of said authority), and said authority tries to squash the person speaking out. In decades past it might have worked, but these days it is more difficult to pull off without exposing problems.
The web site is in New York, so it's outside the Canadian courts' jurisdiction, pure and simple. The US 5th Amendment takes precedence on US soil.
Heh. Imagine that. If the Liberals in Washington have their way, that won't be a true statement for very long. They want the United Nations to trump any nation's sovereignty.
So we have the problem of venue. If the defamatory statements were published in the US, and if Canada doesn't have a long-arm statute (we don't, except for child abuse and terrorism), the RCMP are SOL. Sorry boys, you don't get your man this time.
Give them time, they'll find a way. What is it they say about the Mounties? "They always get their man"? Sounds more to me like someone desperate for a date on a Friday night.
Do the RCMP sometimes lie? That's been proven in court. Instead of trying to suppress publication in another country with a SLAPP criminal proceeding, maybe they should address the issues, and realize that when you're a cop, what you do is public, same as a politician.
They aren't supposed to violate the very law they are called to enforce. They are probably more afraid that admission to being victims of the Human Condition would open themselves up to a whole new can of worms... Of course, if they have nothing to hide....
I'm thinking of buying 30 el-cheapo four-function calculators out of my pocket, but I'm afraid that less-adaptable students will be unable to handle the switch from the calculator they know to an unfamiliar (but simpler) one.
If the student is in college and cannot "adjust" to using something like a simple four-function calculator, maybe the choice of calculator is the least of their problems. I'd be more inclined to think that maybe college itself is a burden they may not be qualified to carry...
When I was a kid, I wasn't allowed to touch a calculator unless I could demonstrate that I was able to understand and perform the work without one. The calculator was a tool to facilitate getting the job done, not one to do the work for me.
People these days think that everything must be handed to them on a platter. Tough cookies for them. If they can't do the work, they will fail the class. It's that simple, and it's really not your problem-- it's theirs.
Well then RTFA, it doesn't.
I was on a mobile device at the time and download times are a mess on it, that's why I didn't. Had I been on a PC, I would have chased the link. ;)
The presence of OCGA gives support to the idea that this guy just copy and pasted it.
It also lends credence to the hypothesis that the person/people that sent the message from Commodore USA are complete and utter dolts. If they aren't going to read (and re-read) documents they are sending out that might carry any legal weight, then they certainly shouldn't be trusted with anything that is going to be court-bound. One simple oversight could make or break a case before the judge.
What does that have to do with anything? Is Commodore USA based in Georgia? Why would the "official code of Georgia" apply? (I'm not criticizing you, just wondering stuff without going to read TFA or do any background checking on Commodore USA....)
the summary text is, verbatim, the first part of the article.
It is my personal observation that this seems to be the best way to get anything on the front page: using the article text as the "summary". Isn't it nice to see that Slashdot submitters are so original in their writing skill? :D
Support a community well and it will pay you back. Alienate a community and you are suddenly competing against better entrenched products.
If you'll pardon the dated reference, this isn't the first time something like this has happened. One case that comes to mind is Apple's ending the life of the Apple II line. Sure, it would have been a virtual nightmare to keep backward compatibility as they moved forward with the series, but because of the way they went about it, many of their big fans jumped ship to the PC-compatible camp, rather than shifting to the Mac. Apple could have had a larger following with their Mac line, had they tried to make the change a little more gently, but they didn't, and they are only recently beginning to recover from it.
If Oracle is careful, they won't make any waves in doing what they think is the best action to take, but somehow I get the feeling that they're past caring what anyone else thinks.
And it's web developers' responsibility to make sure that their shit works for its target audience, even if that means holding back because the clueless masses that comprise said audience insist on using Microsoft's cripple-ware.
It's really pretty simple: The W3C should be defining the standard, and if a browser developer doesn't keep up, then they'll just lose out.
If we waited for a Mozilla and Microsoft to adhere to standards 100%, then we'd still be dealing with 1.0 or 1.1 specs. Instead, we're looking at HTML5.
Let W3C write the standard. Allowing multiple source tags for video elements is brilliant, and will make it easy enough for web developers to work around the problem of archaic browsers.
Of course, how or why anyone would not support "open source / royalty free" codecs is beyond me. It's not like they'll be paying a fortune for license fees...
I lol'd. And clapped excitedly.
So did I. That's rich!
Teaching about religion as a historical matter and its social influences is fine. What's important is the avoidance of preaching religion.
Agreed...
Evangelizing in the public schools cannot be allowed.
The trick is that there are a lot of perspectives that are "evangelized" in public schools. "Global warming" (or is it global cooling now?), "Obama is The One", "United Nations above all else", "White Man (especially Christopher Columbus) is Teh Evil"... There are a lot of things taught as "fact" without sufficient cause, but they are the politically-correct way of thinking today.
Remember... Evangelism is defined as "militant or crusading zeal" (second definition). Most of the points I listed in the last paragraph are approached that way. Lessons in school need to be more objective.
Both, if California politicians are not protecting the schools from political agendas either... Educators, not politicians should decide what is in our school books.
I agree with you here.
Neither party politics or theological opinion have any place in primary education, not when you're supposed to be learning history, science, math, or language (not that the occasional lively debate shouldn't freely break out during any of them)... Especially without the counterweight of critical thinking. Otherwise it becomes indoctrination.
When the religious belief(s) of the historical figure(s) plays a part of understanding why things happened the way they did, shouldn't that be mentioned in the lesson?
For example, there are some who try to leave the "religion factor" out of the story of the Pilgrims coming to the New World, but most of the passengers on the Mayflower were coming to the New World to practice their faith without persecution, and it was a driving force in their decision to make the journey. Remove that facet of their lives, and one is left wondering why they would have undertaken such a perilous journey for no discernible reason.
I believe this is for the high schools, so making a mountain out of that molehill could be just another regularly scheduled distraction..
You may have something here, but I'm not sure what side I would be on without a lot more information than was provided by the original article.
There's nothing wrong with teaching religion as a whole in public school, as long as it is an elective (not required) and that one is not taught favorably to the expense of others. From a historical perspective, it is useful to know something about a particular belief system in order to better understand the culture of a particular area. For example, Catholicism greatly affected much of Europe through the Middle Ages, Islam has affected the Middle East for more than a thousand years, and so on. The fact that schools are apparently afraid of teaching religion (Christianity in particular, it seems) leaves ample opportunity to skew understanding of why people in most parts of the world did what they did through the ages.
Texas, California, or both?
"I reject your reality and substitute my own." -- Adam Savage
Whenever Microsoft comes up with something snazzy, something that would dominate the market, they kill the project.
Whenever the competition comes up with something truly productive, Microsoft promises something better, then doesn't follow through.
Mark my words: Microsoft will eventually come out with a product to compete with the iPad, but it will not be anywhere as useful, and Microsoft will push it as "innovative".
If you want the country to be run entirely by public referenda, you're free to advocate for a direct democracy, but it isn't what we have currently. Personally, I think our voting systems would have to be made a good deal more convenient and efficient before even considering it, and even then there are problems with the idea (see: California).
You're right about the indirect democracy, though it IS technically a constitutional republic. Doubters should take note in the fact that once a representative gets into office, they often follow the money, regardless what their constituents think.
Not the people I've spoken to... Most of the people I know don't like the bill because it supports abortion, restricts care for children with "pre-existing conditions", and a laundry list of issues that do not help children with special needs.
What's that? *Gasp, shock* The people you know and talk to tend to agree with you? Why, that's... utterly irrelevant. I don't give a shit about your anecdotal evidence.
Oh. The opinions of people I know is irrelevant because I know them and have actually spoken to them? How perfectly arrogant of you, to dismiss them out-of-hand.
Polls can be designed to come up with any result you should desire. It's as simple as phrasing the question a certain way and providing certain "answers" from which to choose. Generally, the mainstream media will disclose the results of a poll, but they never tell you what question was asked, what options were available for the respondents to choose from, nor are you told the method used to conduct the poll, which can bias the results significantly.
Because of all the variables involved, I rarely take the polls at face value, if ever.
Take a set of people that have special needs children, let them read the bill, and see what they think. I'm telling you that based on what I know from first hand knowledge, this "health care bill" is a complete and utter disgrace.
There are over 300 million people in this country, and I doubt your self-selected group of friends and acquaintances is a good representative sample, or large enough to be statistically meaningful.
Statistics mean nothing in Real Life. A law that forces citizens into buying into a contract or face jail (or fines, or both) is a BAD law. A law that makes taxpayers pay for a procedure that (most of the time) is NOT a "medical necessity" but one of convenience is a BAD law. A law that takes the "quality of life" decision out of the hands of the individual or the individual's family is a BAD law.
The most recent polls are somewhat evenly split as to whether the majority of the public supports or dislikes the health care bill (there may have been differences in how the questions were asked),
You haven't been paying attention to the news lately, then. Massachusetts elected their first Republican Senator in 40 years over this health care plan that was forced through Congress, because they were against the whole idea. Look at the election results (the only poll that matters), and you will see that it was hardly "somewhat evenly split".
but my point is it doesn't really matter, policy changes are up to the elected officials until the next round of elections, and by then most people will probably be aware that the Communist Death PanelsOMG!!1!! doom-and-gloom was nonsense.
Sigh. You've never heard of the Law of Unexpected Consequences, have you? If language exists that would allow such a thing, intended or no, then someone will take advantage of it. The Founding Fathers realized this, which is why they put the Tenth Amendment on the Constitution. Simply electing a representative to Congress that has a certain agenda is NOT "delegating" that agenda to Congress.
(I would say the abortion one w
...or they phrased it the wrong way.
90% of the known universe was hidden in plain sight, maybe.
Given the nature of the universe, I seriously doubt we'll see it all. Even then, it's hardly "discovered" by looking at it all from this little speck of dust.
we have a representative democracy, not direct
No. We have a republic, not a democracy.
A significant percentage of those polled didn't like the bill because it didn't go far enough to change health insurance.
Not the people I've spoken to... Most of the people I know don't like the bill because it supports abortion, restricts care for children with "pre-existing conditions", and a laundry list of issues that do not help children with special needs.
On top of all this, Congress has no business mandating health care. That's a task for the individual states.
Within MA, there's about a dozen different varieties of "charity plates" where people pay a surcharge that is donated to the choice charity of the owners of a logo, such as a sports team or other group.
...and there's the (grandfathered) green-lettered plate and the current "default issue" red-letter plate.
It is my observation that most of the people in MA that don't display an ability to drive according to the law happen to have a green plate. (Considering there seem to be a lot of these in the area in which I live, this is not something I would classify as a statistical probability. As I said, it's an observation.)
Because I believe in the right to life. And stealing a few hundred dollars worth of stuff isn't sufficient provocation to be worth taking theirs. They're assholes and deserve to go to jail, but they don't deserve to die.
This is where the "shotgun" solution is best: The resident takes aim for the knees and seriously wounds the assailant, hopefully until the police arrive and take the stupid fool away.
The problem is that the accused could turn the tables and sue the homeowner for attempted murder. Depending on the jury, there's a possibility that the slimeball intruder could win.
Of course, if the homeowner were a really bad shot and, oh, I dunno, hit the chest (or above) "by accident", then the problem would be solved right there.