We do have a class of people telling us what is right and what is wrong. Working to make the rich richer is right, anything else is wrong. You do not get to decide on the course our country takes, on where we focus our efforts, on what projects we decide are important. You are not owning class, so you do not get to decide. You can work for the rich, or develop new markets for them by starting your own business which they will bankrupt after you develop demand for them. That is all.
Hahaha, good one. No, the poor are being scammed out of years worth of mortgage payments by the bank owning rich. Please look at current statistics. Look at the stock market, look at Wall Street Bonuses. The rich did not have to tighten their belts at all. The top one percent control more of the country's wealth today than they did when Bush took office. The crash, and the government response to it, were all decided upon ahead of time by the few wealthy banking families that control our monetary policy. It was a deliberate effort to bankrupt the government by stealing our tax dollars.
But you aren't rich. You are middle class. I highly doubt that any real rich person posts on Slashdot. Remember, $250,000 a year is only upper middle class, it does not put you in the owning class. If you make less than a million a year, you are what a rich person would call a peasant.
Ah, no. I am suggesting that, out of dozens of states which held a revolution to overthrow tyranny, most have ended up with more tyranny. We got lucky.
As for the rest, you are preaching to the choir. I'm a social anarchist, though most would just call me a socialist, and I am educated in the real history of our nation.
Of course I believe that a poor person can become rich with hard work, determination, and a large amount of luck. Our society is not organized in such a way that there are high paying jobs for everyone who works hard. Plenty of people work very hard all their lives and can not rise out of poverty. The problem is institutional, not one of human laziness. It is intellectually lazy and dishonest to blame the poor for their plight. The poor are poor because the rich profit more when people have fewer options. A poor, desperate, hungry man will do things a secure man would never do, and he will do it for less money.
Hard work and determination mean very little in our system of crony capitalism. If you do not have rich friends and a wealthy background, the chances of you, or your children, or even your grandchildren rising out of poverty are fairly slim.
You put the cart before the horse. Government is just a tool, like a gun. It can be used for good or for evil. Tools do not have motivations of their own. They do what their owners make them do. We own our own government, but we have let it slip out of our control.
Monopolies exist outside of government creation and control. Natural monopoly is only one case where the free market fails. When it does, we need another mechanism. The free market will not stay free on its own. The rich will use their wealth to control and dominate the market, with r without government. In fact, it is easier for them to dominate the market without government regulations.
Our government is a democratic republic. It is hard for the wealthy to maintain control over it. They would rather it simply not exist, or failing that, that it do nothing to protect you, the cattle, from them, the owners. Government is not the problem, the rich controlling the government is the problem.
To set up a state that protects the interests of the common man, he would need to rebel violently, because the current owning class will not give up their privilege easily. Violent rebellions almost always lead to tyranny, as the most ruthless are best able to take advantage of the chaos of violent rebellion. For example, see every single violent revolution except ours.
They do not care about net profitability. They care about power and control, which comes from wealth inequality. They want the poor to be very, desperately poor and thus easier to control. Overall, their tactics might make our society poorer, but they only care about relative wealth, not absolute wealth. If there were a way to make everyone on the planet 1,000 times richer than the richest man alive today, say the invention of true nano-asemblers, the wealthy sociopaths would fight it tooth and nail. They do not want everyone to be fabulously wealthy. They want to be wealthy, while everyone else is poor.
No it isn't mindless hero worship, and there is no need to denigrate those you disagree with as "mindless." There is an organized campaign to discredit Assange. This reporter may not be part of that campaign, but he is doing their work for them by painting Assange as weird and different. It is entirely valid to question the motives of anyone criticizing Assange, because of the very real, very powerful campaign to discredit him. Criticizing their motives does not imply hero worship of Assange.
Did you also notice how it's wrong with relation to D&D?
The Dungeon Master doesn't tell players what to do, he's asks them what they are going to do, and the DM just tells them the consequences.
"You are standing in a steamy prison shower, about 15x24' with twelve shower heads lining the walls. Five of them are being used by what appear to be orcish gang members. Make a dexterity check, at minus two due to its slipperiness, to maintain your grip on your soap."
More importantly, the owners of the media are angry someone is uncovering the truth about their robber-baron lifestyle. The government is just a tool, and it is really our tool, we do not have to let the rich use it against us.
The NYT is not the liberal equivalent of the NY Post or the Washington Times, they are a propaganda arm of the US government and a mouthpiece for the rich.
Personally, I'm full up on all the black and white thinking.
Guess what? There is a middle ground where Assange is not a hero, he is a human being, who does good and bad things. We can decry the rush to smear Assange without assuming he is a hero. Nothing in the post you respond to indicates hero worship, and so it really appears as though you are trying to smear all of Assange's defenders as mere unthinking "hero worshipers." Is that your intention?
To anyone thinking it through, it implies that Assange is in fact a weirdo who does not bathe, and a dishonest manipulator who will clean himself up to make himself look better before the court. They are saying "He is not one of us. He is different, in a bad way. If he is different in this bad way, just imagine all the other bad ways he is different from us. For instance, RAPE!"
You aren't saying? I'll say it flat out: this has nothing to do with battered woman's syndrome, which involves a woman in a relationship with an abuser. You do not get battered woman's syndrome from a casual sexual fling or a single instance of rape. For there to be battered woman's syndrome, there also must be battering, and NOTHING in any of the reports indicates violence on Assange's part.
I will give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume you were playing devil's advocate or trying to inform, rather than attempting a nasty slander of Assange.
I've heard this "threesome" rumor before, but as far as I know, there was no threesome. There were two women, and Assange, but the two women did not know about each other. There was no threesome. This is just a rumor meant to paint the women as slutty opportunists. I don't know whether they are telling the truth, but I know you aren't.
During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.
Clumsy and self serving wording, yes. Claims to have invented the Internet? No, not at all. He was just saying that his policies helped create the Internet as we know it today, which is somewhat true. What he REALLY did was cosponsor the Information Infrastructure and Technology Act of 1992 which opened the Internet to commercial traffic.
So, we can really thank Gore for pop-up ads and spam, not the whole Internet.
Oh, I get you. I thought you were saying America is a tyranny, a surprisingly popular opinion amongst the less intelligent these days. Sorry. Yes, corporations are tyrannies and I'm guessing everyone who is anyone in management has read The Prince.
1.) Everything that affects interstate commerce falls under the commerce clause. Let me illustrate with a situation where I personally found its use abhorent. I used to do computer security for a medical marijuana non-profit in San Francisco. We bought entirely from within the state, legally under state laws, and did not engage in interstate commerce. Yet the federal government said, "Any pot grown anywhere affects the national market for pot, even if it is entirely within state borders. Therefore, the commerce clause lets federal drug laws trump state laws." You can argue for changing the way the commerce clause gets used, and I might even agree with you, but that is still a change, and right now, the commerce clause makes Obamacare constitutional, like it or not.
2.) I cited the congressional budget office. Are they not authoritative enough for you? What would you accept? I'm not going to keep citing things only to have you say they don't count.
3.) Obamacare has the insurance reps on board, as it helps the insurance industry and kills the idea of a public option. They may hoot and holler for more concessions, but even without more, they support the bill.
4.) Well, thanks.
5.) Boo hoo, poor members of congress, having to, like, read and stuff. That's their fucking JOB.
6.) It gets paid for by reducing waste and fraud in the insurance industry. You remember how that works, right? You remember Clinton, the guy who balanced the budget? He cut the fat without cutting the meat. That's what Oama hopes to do.
Fake disclaimers? Like point 3 which you conceded? Or point five, where you parrot back whiners in congress claiming that they don't want to do their very, very hard job of reading? Or point one, where you demonstrate a complete lack of knowledge of the constitution? Or point two, where you ask for a citation when I cite the CBO?
You are losing badly, you know it, and you are resorting to more and more childish tactics. Good day, sir, this discussion is now finished.
Yes, please cite the constitution, taking into account the commerce clause which states, "[The Congress shall have Power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes;" and also the century and a half of Supreme Court case law precedent which defines its usage, much of which relates specifically to the tenth amendment and how the commerce clause permits the federal government to do things that a naive reading of the constitution might seem to forbid.
You really have not shown how Obamacare is any different from Romneycare, while I have cited sources showing the incredible similarities between the two, from a conservative source, no less. You also have not shown that Obamacare is illegal or unconstitutional. You appear to have made up your mind, and no amount of debate or facts can change it. You are not engaging in debate, you are simply stating an uninformed opinion, and refusing to budge from it. You seem to feel that certain things must be true, and then you attempt to use logic to reason backwards to find support for those things you feel strongly about. You do not appear to start from rational premises and work forwards to draw conclusions. You have unshakable faith in the correctness of your feelings, and refuse to listen to reason. Given that, and the fact that this is now and old story that isn't on the front page anymore, any further discussion here is a waste of my time.
Please do not demean the suffering of those who live under real tyranny by comparing what we've got to what they've got. It makes you appear as though you have no empathy or understanding of the suffering of others. You do not live under a tyranny. The very fact that you can freely post "Because most of us spend our daily lives working in a tyranny, not a republic." without consequences is proof you do not live under a tyranny. I know things are bad, but seriously, get a grip, you aren't helping make your case when you use such over the top hyperbole.
Slashdot Mirror
We do have a class of people telling us what is right and what is wrong. Working to make the rich richer is right, anything else is wrong. You do not get to decide on the course our country takes, on where we focus our efforts, on what projects we decide are important. You are not owning class, so you do not get to decide. You can work for the rich, or develop new markets for them by starting your own business which they will bankrupt after you develop demand for them. That is all.
Hahaha, good one. No, the poor are being scammed out of years worth of mortgage payments by the bank owning rich. Please look at current statistics. Look at the stock market, look at Wall Street Bonuses. The rich did not have to tighten their belts at all. The top one percent control more of the country's wealth today than they did when Bush took office. The crash, and the government response to it, were all decided upon ahead of time by the few wealthy banking families that control our monetary policy. It was a deliberate effort to bankrupt the government by stealing our tax dollars.
But you aren't rich. You are middle class. I highly doubt that any real rich person posts on Slashdot. Remember, $250,000 a year is only upper middle class, it does not put you in the owning class. If you make less than a million a year, you are what a rich person would call a peasant.
Ah, no. I am suggesting that, out of dozens of states which held a revolution to overthrow tyranny, most have ended up with more tyranny. We got lucky.
As for the rest, you are preaching to the choir. I'm a social anarchist, though most would just call me a socialist, and I am educated in the real history of our nation.
Of course I believe that a poor person can become rich with hard work, determination, and a large amount of luck. Our society is not organized in such a way that there are high paying jobs for everyone who works hard. Plenty of people work very hard all their lives and can not rise out of poverty. The problem is institutional, not one of human laziness. It is intellectually lazy and dishonest to blame the poor for their plight. The poor are poor because the rich profit more when people have fewer options. A poor, desperate, hungry man will do things a secure man would never do, and he will do it for less money.
Hard work and determination mean very little in our system of crony capitalism. If you do not have rich friends and a wealthy background, the chances of you, or your children, or even your grandchildren rising out of poverty are fairly slim.
You put the cart before the horse. Government is just a tool, like a gun. It can be used for good or for evil. Tools do not have motivations of their own. They do what their owners make them do. We own our own government, but we have let it slip out of our control.
Monopolies exist outside of government creation and control. Natural monopoly is only one case where the free market fails. When it does, we need another mechanism. The free market will not stay free on its own. The rich will use their wealth to control and dominate the market, with r without government. In fact, it is easier for them to dominate the market without government regulations.
Our government is a democratic republic. It is hard for the wealthy to maintain control over it. They would rather it simply not exist, or failing that, that it do nothing to protect you, the cattle, from them, the owners. Government is not the problem, the rich controlling the government is the problem.
To set up a state that protects the interests of the common man, he would need to rebel violently, because the current owning class will not give up their privilege easily. Violent rebellions almost always lead to tyranny, as the most ruthless are best able to take advantage of the chaos of violent rebellion. For example, see every single violent revolution except ours.
They do not care about net profitability. They care about power and control, which comes from wealth inequality. They want the poor to be very, desperately poor and thus easier to control. Overall, their tactics might make our society poorer, but they only care about relative wealth, not absolute wealth. If there were a way to make everyone on the planet 1,000 times richer than the richest man alive today, say the invention of true nano-asemblers, the wealthy sociopaths would fight it tooth and nail. They do not want everyone to be fabulously wealthy. They want to be wealthy, while everyone else is poor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States
The rich are waging class war against the rest of us, and transferring wealth from the average person to themselves through fraud and coercion.
Half orc, quarter orc, you can't really tell, but they notice you looking at them. Do you want to inquire about their ancestry?
No it isn't mindless hero worship, and there is no need to denigrate those you disagree with as "mindless." There is an organized campaign to discredit Assange. This reporter may not be part of that campaign, but he is doing their work for them by painting Assange as weird and different. It is entirely valid to question the motives of anyone criticizing Assange, because of the very real, very powerful campaign to discredit him. Criticizing their motives does not imply hero worship of Assange.
Sorry, sorry, didn't see your nick at first. This topic just gets me pissed off for some reason.
Did you also notice how it's wrong with relation to D&D?
The Dungeon Master doesn't tell players what to do, he's asks them what they are going to do, and the DM just tells them the consequences.
"You are standing in a steamy prison shower, about 15x24' with twelve shower heads lining the walls. Five of them are being used by what appear to be orcish gang members. Make a dexterity check, at minus two due to its slipperiness, to maintain your grip on your soap."
More importantly, the owners of the media are angry someone is uncovering the truth about their robber-baron lifestyle. The government is just a tool, and it is really our tool, we do not have to let the rich use it against us.
The NYT is not the liberal equivalent of the NY Post or the Washington Times, they are a propaganda arm of the US government and a mouthpiece for the rich.
Personally, I'm full up on all the black and white thinking.
Guess what? There is a middle ground where Assange is not a hero, he is a human being, who does good and bad things. We can decry the rush to smear Assange without assuming he is a hero. Nothing in the post you respond to indicates hero worship, and so it really appears as though you are trying to smear all of Assange's defenders as mere unthinking "hero worshipers." Is that your intention?
To anyone thinking it through, it implies that Assange is in fact a weirdo who does not bathe, and a dishonest manipulator who will clean himself up to make himself look better before the court. They are saying "He is not one of us. He is different, in a bad way. If he is different in this bad way, just imagine all the other bad ways he is different from us. For instance, RAPE!"
You aren't saying? I'll say it flat out: this has nothing to do with battered woman's syndrome, which involves a woman in a relationship with an abuser. You do not get battered woman's syndrome from a casual sexual fling or a single instance of rape. For there to be battered woman's syndrome, there also must be battering, and NOTHING in any of the reports indicates violence on Assange's part.
I will give you the benefit of the doubt, and assume you were playing devil's advocate or trying to inform, rather than attempting a nasty slander of Assange.
I've heard this "threesome" rumor before, but as far as I know, there was no threesome. There were two women, and Assange, but the two women did not know about each other. There was no threesome. This is just a rumor meant to paint the women as slutty opportunists. I don't know whether they are telling the truth, but I know you aren't.
Here is the actual Al Gore quote:
During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.
Clumsy and self serving wording, yes. Claims to have invented the Internet? No, not at all. He was just saying that his policies helped create the Internet as we know it today, which is somewhat true. What he REALLY did was cosponsor the Information Infrastructure and Technology Act of 1992 which opened the Internet to commercial traffic.
So, we can really thank Gore for pop-up ads and spam, not the whole Internet.
Oh, I get you. I thought you were saying America is a tyranny, a surprisingly popular opinion amongst the less intelligent these days. Sorry. Yes, corporations are tyrannies and I'm guessing everyone who is anyone in management has read The Prince.
1.) Everything that affects interstate commerce falls under the commerce clause. Let me illustrate with a situation where I personally found its use abhorent. I used to do computer security for a medical marijuana non-profit in San Francisco. We bought entirely from within the state, legally under state laws, and did not engage in interstate commerce. Yet the federal government said, "Any pot grown anywhere affects the national market for pot, even if it is entirely within state borders. Therefore, the commerce clause lets federal drug laws trump state laws." You can argue for changing the way the commerce clause gets used, and I might even agree with you, but that is still a change, and right now, the commerce clause makes Obamacare constitutional, like it or not.
2.) I cited the congressional budget office. Are they not authoritative enough for you? What would you accept? I'm not going to keep citing things only to have you say they don't count.
3.) Obamacare has the insurance reps on board, as it helps the insurance industry and kills the idea of a public option. They may hoot and holler for more concessions, but even without more, they support the bill.
4.) Well, thanks.
5.) Boo hoo, poor members of congress, having to, like, read and stuff. That's their fucking JOB.
6.) It gets paid for by reducing waste and fraud in the insurance industry. You remember how that works, right? You remember Clinton, the guy who balanced the budget? He cut the fat without cutting the meat. That's what Oama hopes to do.
Fake disclaimers? Like point 3 which you conceded? Or point five, where you parrot back whiners in congress claiming that they don't want to do their very, very hard job of reading? Or point one, where you demonstrate a complete lack of knowledge of the constitution? Or point two, where you ask for a citation when I cite the CBO?
You are losing badly, you know it, and you are resorting to more and more childish tactics. Good day, sir, this discussion is now finished.
Yes, please cite the constitution, taking into account the commerce clause which states, "[The Congress shall have Power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes;" and also the century and a half of Supreme Court case law precedent which defines its usage, much of which relates specifically to the tenth amendment and how the commerce clause permits the federal government to do things that a naive reading of the constitution might seem to forbid.
You really have not shown how Obamacare is any different from Romneycare, while I have cited sources showing the incredible similarities between the two, from a conservative source, no less. You also have not shown that Obamacare is illegal or unconstitutional. You appear to have made up your mind, and no amount of debate or facts can change it. You are not engaging in debate, you are simply stating an uninformed opinion, and refusing to budge from it. You seem to feel that certain things must be true, and then you attempt to use logic to reason backwards to find support for those things you feel strongly about. You do not appear to start from rational premises and work forwards to draw conclusions. You have unshakable faith in the correctness of your feelings, and refuse to listen to reason. Given that, and the fact that this is now and old story that isn't on the front page anymore, any further discussion here is a waste of my time.
Please do not demean the suffering of those who live under real tyranny by comparing what we've got to what they've got. It makes you appear as though you have no empathy or understanding of the suffering of others. You do not live under a tyranny. The very fact that you can freely post "Because most of us spend our daily lives working in a tyranny, not a republic." without consequences is proof you do not live under a tyranny. I know things are bad, but seriously, get a grip, you aren't helping make your case when you use such over the top hyperbole.