>>>So for the 75% of the timeframe in which the debt we're talking about was accumulated, the GOP controlled the purse strings.
You make it sound like the GOP created that debt by themselves. But when the Democrats lost control in 94 there was already 2 trillion in debt, AND they had controlled the Congress for nearly 40 years prior, so they certainly deserve a huge portion of the blame.
>>>oops.
Oops yourself. Any attempt to blame just one party will ultimately fail because they are BOTH lovers of borrowing money and debt-spending.
>>>The Supreme Court is now a private entity, since it's not a part of the government.
Stating falsehoods don't help your case. The Federal Reserve is no more "part of the government" than the Federal Express shipping company. Don't allow yourself to be duped by the name.
We're not discussing practical thinking. We're discussing the law.;-) The Supreme Law of the land says that Mom's ISP of California is regulated by California, not Congress.
If you disagree with that, amend the Constitution to give Congress power to control the internet like they control the "postal roads".
No you can't. The European Union treaties, just like the United States Constitution, according to wikipedia allows "no provision outlining the ability of a state to voluntarily withdraw from EU."
Not legally anyway - it would require force - just the same as Virginia was split by force when the western part seceded. Strangely, the Supreme Court said that WV's secession from VA was legal, even though no such provision exists in Virginia's constitution. (The Supreme Court contradicts itself a lot.)
Virginia did it (split itself into two states), Why can't other states follow the same procedure?
Personally I'd like to see California divide in half (north and south). It's ridiculous that California controls almost one-fourth of the votes needed to elect a man as president. This leads to the administrations signing bills into law that favor California while ignoring the rest of us (especially those in the middle states).
Another example is West Virginia. I can not lay my hand on any part of the Virginia Constitution that granted them the power to split-off a third of the state from Virgina (i.e. secede from Virginia), and yet the Supreme Court ruled that secession to be constitutional.
Hmmm.
The Supreme Court contradicts itself - saying one thing in one case (secession bad), and another thing in another case (secession of WV was legal). The judges remind me of politicians the way they double-speak.
>>>Nothing in the Constitution implies that they may leave.
It doesn't matter. The constitution is a contract, and just like any contract if one party violates the terms of the contract, then the second party is no longer bound by it.
Also:
I'm sure there was nothing in UK Law that said "the colonies of America or India may leave the British Empire," but we did it anyway.
Texas seceded from Mexico (by force). Mexico's court declared the secession illegal, but Texas chose not to listen.:-) They were an independent republic for a number of years just like the original 13 States and the Vermont Republic, and then they joined the United States.
Next they seceded from the United States (by force), but that attempt ultimately failed.
The October Bialout Bill ignored the requirement for passing revenue bills in the House first. It failed to pass either house due to Republicans refusing to vote "aye", so they rewrote it and using some "alternate process" they introduced it in the Senate first and the House second.
I cannot figure-out how that was considered constitutional, but then the Democrats were in charge and they've never concerned themselves with that piece of paper.
Judge Napolitano says, "The camcorder is the new gun," because many patriots are using the camera to capture State abuses, and reveal those abuses to the population at large.
No wonder cops immediately demand that you turn-off your camera. They know their actions are illegal and don't want them to be caught on video or audio.
Since you're link is broken I'm not sure what you were trying to say, but Thomas Jefferson said the Alien and Sedition Acts were unconstitutional. Quoting wikipedia:
While Jefferson did denounce the Sedition Act as invalid and a violation of the First Amendment of the United States Bill of Rights, which protected the right of free speech, his main argument on the unconstitutionality of the act was that it violated the Tenth Amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."...To address the constitutionality of the measures, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison sought to unseat the Federalists, appealing to the people to remedy the constitutional violation, and drafted the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, which called on the states to nullify the federal legislation. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions reflect the Compact Theory, which holds that the United States is made up of a voluntary union of states that agree to cede some of their authority in order to join the union, but that the states do not, ultimately, surrender their sovereign rights. Therefore, under the Compact Theory, states can determine if the federal government has violated its agreements, including the Constitution, and nullify such violations...The Sedition Act was set to expire in 1801, coinciding with the end of the Adams administration. While this prevented its constitutionality from being directly decided by the Supreme Court, subsequent mentions of the Sedition Act in Supreme Court opinions have assumed that it would be ruled unconstitutional if ever tested in court. For example, in the seminal free speech case of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, the Court declared, "Although the Sedition Act was never tested in this Court, the attack upon its validity has carried the day in the court of history." 376 U.S. 254, 276 (1964).
Notice how Jefferson did not hesitate to cite Amendment 10. Jefferson was a Democrat, and founded the party, but if he saw how today's Democrats violate the 10th Amendment in numerous and sundries ways, he'd denounce them as not being true democrats and call them "federalists" as way of insult.
More -
Twenty-five people, primarily prominent newspaper editors such as Benjamin Franklin's grandson Benjamin Franklin Bache but also Congressman Matthew Lyon, were arrested. Of them, eleven were tried, Bache died awaiting trial, and ten were convicted of sedition, often in trials before openly partisan Federalist judges. Federalists at all levels, however, were turned out of power, and, over the following years, Congress repeatedly apologized for, or voted recompense to victims of, the enforcement of the Alien and Sedition Acts. Thomas Jefferson, who won the 1800 election, pardoned all of those that were convicted for crimes under the Alien Enemies Act and the Sedition Act.
>>>Many EU countries have this requirement [to carry a national ID card with you even just to walk down the sidewalk.]
Yes I know.
This is why I will not be moving to the European Union any time soon. I prefer a society that's based upon the idea that power comes from the bottom up (from the People upward), rather than one where power is believed to flow from the top down (from the Queen or PM downward). You SHOULD be able to walk down the street without needing an ID, and the fact that most Europeans don't object concerns me greatly.
It makes me wonder what the EU will look like 50 years from now, if they can grab power without protest from the people. Something akin to the German Empire or Napoleon's France - democracy in name only?
>>>"Sorry, sir, but the size of any donations you'd be capable of making is insufficient to offset the effort required to look the other way while you act like a thin-skinned dickhead." >>>
Yeah you're right. I should have just handed=over my ID even though the cop was acting unconstitutionally (per numberous Supreme Court decisions) when she made that demand. I apologize. I also should accept the yellow star when they hand it to me, get the number tattooed on my arm without protest, and walk peacefully into Auschwitz rather than revolt.
Sorry. That is to say, you shouldn't blame the victim if somebody hijacks their computer, anymore than you'd blame the victim if a murderer stole a car and used it to run-down pedestrians, or a woman who was raped because she wore a bikini. Blame and punish the small minority of criminals, not everyone else.
>>>It college. We're talking about ADULTS here. They can fend for themselves.
Well I can understand if I had been wandering around and peeking into dorm windows, but I wasn't. I was in the public area. Also 9 p.m. is hardly "late at night". That's just the evening in college.
Furthermore it isn't necessary for a security guard to detain somebody. For what cause? Was an arrest warrant issued? No. According to the law if a bar, store, or other public facility allows entrance without an ID, they can not suddenly change their minds and demand ID, or else arrest you. All they can do is ask you to leave - that's it. Which I told the officer I'd be happy to do, but SHE decided to escalate it to an unlawful detainment.
The cops need to learn they are not allowed to abuse their privilege. They are bound by law same as ordinary people.
This is not correct, since sometimes State law trumps federal law (per the Constitution). For example just a few years ago the Supreme Court invalidated a federal law that required schools to be drug-free zones. The Constitution gives that power to regulate schools to the State, not the U.S. (amendment 10), so the federal law was voided.
Really? How often do you travel outside the European Union? It's the same thing as your typical American who's never been anywhere except the United States, Canada, or Mexico. Why travel elsewhere when everything you need is right here inside the North American (or European) continent?
>>>at least now we have the explanation for your painfully parochial world view.
This is most amusing. I just now finished watching EuroNews (in English), Deutsche Welle (in German), and NHK (in Japanese). What were you saying about me being parochial? Damn fucking Euro-bastard. I'm really sick and tired of being insulted as a "dumb American" just because I happen to have been born here. Yes I know your idiotic views are just that of a minor-but-vocal group (like our KKK bastards), but still - enough is enough.
Americans are not parochial. Americans are not idiots. So stop acting like a 2nd grade Euro kiddie, and lay off the insults.
Other idiots include the silk-suited people in Congress who think Fuel Cell Cars "run on water" and therefore all we need to do is buy a bunch of them, and all our problems will be solved! (rolls eyes) No Mr. and Mrs. Congress, fuel cells do not run on water. They run on hydrogen. Please show me where we can drill a well and find a bunch of hydrogen?
What's that? You don't know? Well neither do I. Your FC Car won't go anywhere without H fuel. Yes I know it's true that we can make hydrogen from oil or natural gas, but why??? We can burn oil/ng in the cars we already have, so what's the point of switching to new tech that still requires fossil fuels to run? Hmmmm.
Looks like FC cars are not the "miracle" you were looking for after all Congress, just like computerized voting did not magically fix the balloting problems.
That's because flashlights and calculators use use around 1 watt of power, whereas the typical home A/C or heat pump uses ~10,000 watts. Good like scaling your little solar panel upto that level. Do you have a small farm nearby, because you'll need to pave it over with panels in order to run your A/C off sunlight.
(sigh)
Reading this thread you can really tell who are the engineers (they know their science and what's impossible), and the environments (they believe with all their hearts anything is possible, even if it violates the laws of the universe). I recall having a similar argument with my dad. He said "if they took an electric car and attached a generator to the tire, the generator would keep the battery full, and you'd never need to plug it in." I tried to explain to him that's impossible since perpetual motion is not possible, and energy is wasted as "heat" due to air friction as the car drives down the road, so eventually his EV car would empty its battery and stop.
He insisted I was an idiot and of course it would work. I got angry and walked out. I probably shouldn't have done that but then, science-illiterate people shouldn't be calling people with two college degrees "idiots" either.
Learn science FIRST before you propose stupid ideas.
The first thing I do after I boot XP or Vista is to open the task manager, and kill any running programs or processes that I don't need. Why all this crap is running in the background when I don't want it makes no sense to me, but killing them does free-up a lot of RAM and speed-up the computer (no hard drive thrashing).
>>>assuming most end-users would get this 'WinMin' OS instead of WinXP/Vista
I'd simply run Win95 or NT 4. Have you ever seen how fast these OSes operate on a modern PC - zoom-zoom! I've never understood why somebody somewhere doesn't take these ancient OSes, add a few extra drivers like USB, and run them. Win NT 4 can run on just 8 megabytes! Imagine how cheaply computers could be made if they only used ~1/500th as much RAM.
Today's modern OSes really and truly are top-heavy monstrosities.
That's about right. I remember working for the FAA, and as my year-long contract wound down I asked the boss why he hired four engineers who sat-around and did almost no work.
"The management had a spare $1 million laying-around with an expiration date at the end of 2007, so rather than waste it, I hired you guys to review documents. If I had not spent it, it would have gone back to Congress and we can't allow that to happen."
My car falls into that "category" - a cheap car that cost me $13,900. Actually $11,000 after I subtracted Maryland's and the USA's hybrid tax credit. It gets over 80 MPG for me, which is great, but what I've sacrificed to get that goal takes some getting used to. Like narrow motorcycle-like tires which follow all the grooves in the road. Tight suspension that makes you feel every bump in the road. Wipers that move so slow you wonder why you even bothered to turn them on. And a radio system that sounds anemic due to speakers that are too small.
BTW the car I'm discussing is a 2001 Honda Insight, which was discontinued to to lack of interest by Americans who back then wanted gas-guzzling SUVs. I like it because it's "good enough" for my daily commute but many Americans (and even some Europeans) would probably say it isn't good enough.
Oh and since this is a computer-oriented site:
My desktop PC is only 1/2 gig of RAM, and my laptop only 800 megahertz speed. Again that's "good enough" for me. I don't think I need anything faster for just getting online and watching videos or chatting.
Slashdot Mirror
>>>So for the 75% of the timeframe in which the debt we're talking about was accumulated, the GOP controlled the purse strings.
You make it sound like the GOP created that debt by themselves.
But when the Democrats lost control in 94 there was already 2 trillion in debt,
AND they had controlled the Congress for nearly 40 years prior,
so they certainly deserve a huge portion of the blame.
>>>oops.
Oops yourself. Any attempt to blame just one party will ultimately fail because they are BOTH lovers of borrowing money and debt-spending.
>>>The Supreme Court is now a private entity, since it's not a part of the government.
Stating falsehoods don't help your case. The Federal Reserve is no more "part of the government" than the Federal Express shipping company. Don't allow yourself to be duped by the name.
We're not discussing practical thinking. We're discussing the law. ;-) The Supreme Law of the land says that Mom's ISP of California is regulated by California, not Congress.
If you disagree with that, amend the Constitution to give Congress power to control the internet like they control the "postal roads".
No you can't. The European Union treaties, just like the United States Constitution, according to wikipedia allows "no provision outlining the ability of a state to voluntarily withdraw from EU."
Not legally anyway - it would require force - just the same as Virginia was split by force when the western part seceded. Strangely, the Supreme Court said that WV's secession from VA was legal, even though no such provision exists in Virginia's constitution. (The Supreme Court contradicts itself a lot.)
Virginia did it (split itself into two states), Why can't other states follow the same procedure?
Personally I'd like to see California divide in half (north and south). It's ridiculous that California controls almost one-fourth of the votes needed to elect a man as president. This leads to the administrations signing bills into law that favor California while ignoring the rest of us (especially those in the middle states).
P.S.
Another example is West Virginia. I can not lay my hand on any part of the Virginia Constitution that granted them the power to split-off a third of the state from Virgina (i.e. secede from Virginia), and yet the Supreme Court ruled that secession to be constitutional.
Hmmm.
The Supreme Court contradicts itself - saying one thing in one case (secession bad), and another thing in another case (secession of WV was legal). The judges remind me of politicians the way they double-speak.
>>>Nothing in the Constitution implies that they may leave.
It doesn't matter. The constitution is a contract, and just like any contract if one party violates the terms of the contract, then the second party is no longer bound by it.
Also:
I'm sure there was nothing in UK Law that said "the colonies of America or India may leave the British Empire," but we did it anyway.
Texas seceded from Mexico (by force). Mexico's court declared the secession illegal, but Texas chose not to listen. :-) They were an independent republic for a number of years just like the original 13 States and the Vermont Republic, and then they joined the United States.
Next they seceded from the United States (by force), but that attempt ultimately failed.
The October Bialout Bill ignored the requirement for passing revenue bills in the House first. It failed to pass either house due to Republicans refusing to vote "aye", so they rewrote it and using some "alternate process" they introduced it in the Senate first and the House second.
I cannot figure-out how that was considered constitutional, but then the Democrats were in charge and they've never concerned themselves with that piece of paper.
Judge Napolitano says, "The camcorder is the new gun," because many patriots are using the camera to capture State abuses, and reveal those abuses to the population at large.
No wonder cops immediately demand that you turn-off your camera. They know their actions are illegal and don't want them to be caught on video or audio.
Since you're link is broken I'm not sure what you were trying to say, but Thomas Jefferson said the Alien and Sedition Acts were unconstitutional. Quoting wikipedia:
While Jefferson did denounce the Sedition Act as invalid and a violation of the First Amendment of the United States Bill of Rights, which protected the right of free speech, his main argument on the unconstitutionality of the act was that it violated the Tenth Amendment: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." ...To address the constitutionality of the measures, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison sought to unseat the Federalists, appealing to the people to remedy the constitutional violation, and drafted the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, which called on the states to nullify the federal legislation. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions reflect the Compact Theory, which holds that the United States is made up of a voluntary union of states that agree to cede some of their authority in order to join the union, but that the states do not, ultimately, surrender their sovereign rights. Therefore, under the Compact Theory, states can determine if the federal government has violated its agreements, including the Constitution, and nullify such violations ...The Sedition Act was set to expire in 1801, coinciding with the end of the Adams administration. While this prevented its constitutionality from being directly decided by the Supreme Court, subsequent mentions of the Sedition Act in Supreme Court opinions have assumed that it would be ruled unconstitutional if ever tested in court. For example, in the seminal free speech case of New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, the Court declared, "Although the Sedition Act was never tested in this Court, the attack upon its validity has carried the day in the court of history." 376 U.S. 254, 276 (1964).
Notice how Jefferson did not hesitate to cite Amendment 10. Jefferson was a Democrat, and founded the party, but if he saw how today's Democrats violate the 10th Amendment in numerous and sundries ways, he'd denounce them as not being true democrats and call them "federalists" as way of insult.
More -
Twenty-five people, primarily prominent newspaper editors such as Benjamin Franklin's grandson Benjamin Franklin Bache but also Congressman Matthew Lyon, were arrested. Of them, eleven were tried, Bache died awaiting trial, and ten were convicted of sedition, often in trials before openly partisan Federalist judges. Federalists at all levels, however, were turned out of power, and, over the following years, Congress repeatedly apologized for, or voted recompense to victims of, the enforcement of the Alien and Sedition Acts. Thomas Jefferson, who won the 1800 election, pardoned all of those that were convicted for crimes under the Alien Enemies Act and the Sedition Act.
>>>Many EU countries have this requirement [to carry a national ID card with you even just to walk down the sidewalk.]
Yes I know.
This is why I will not be moving to the European Union any time soon. I prefer a society that's based upon the idea that power comes from the bottom up (from the People upward), rather than one where power is believed to flow from the top down (from the Queen or PM downward). You SHOULD be able to walk down the street without needing an ID, and the fact that most Europeans don't object concerns me greatly.
It makes me wonder what the EU will look like 50 years from now, if they can grab power without protest from the people. Something akin to the German Empire or Napoleon's France - democracy in name only?
>>>"Sorry, sir, but the size of any donations you'd be capable of making is insufficient to offset the effort required to look the other way while you act like a thin-skinned dickhead."
>>>
Yeah you're right. I should have just handed=over my ID even though the cop was acting unconstitutionally (per numberous Supreme Court decisions) when she made that demand. I apologize. I also should accept the yellow star when they hand it to me, get the number tattooed on my arm without protest, and walk peacefully into Auschwitz rather than revolt.
signed,
your serf
National Socialist!
(ahem)
Sorry. That is to say, you shouldn't blame the victim if somebody hijacks their computer, anymore than you'd blame the victim if a murderer stole a car and used it to run-down pedestrians, or a woman who was raped because she wore a bikini. Blame and punish the small minority of criminals, not everyone else.
>>>(it seem likely it was a dorm rec room)
cafeteria / bookstore. Nowhere near the dorms.
>>>It college. We're talking about ADULTS here. They can fend for themselves.
Well I can understand if I had been wandering around and peeking into dorm windows, but I wasn't. I was in the public area. Also 9 p.m. is hardly "late at night". That's just the evening in college.
Furthermore it isn't necessary for a security guard to detain somebody. For what cause? Was an arrest warrant issued? No. According to the law if a bar, store, or other public facility allows entrance without an ID, they can not suddenly change their minds and demand ID, or else arrest you. All they can do is ask you to leave - that's it. Which I told the officer I'd be happy to do, but SHE decided to escalate it to an unlawful detainment.
The cops need to learn they are not allowed to abuse their privilege. They are bound by law same as ordinary people.
>>>Fed. law (which trumps State law)
This is not correct, since sometimes State law trumps federal law (per the Constitution). For example just a few years ago the Supreme Court invalidated a federal law that required schools to be drug-free zones. The Constitution gives that power to regulate schools to the State, not the U.S. (amendment 10), so the federal law was voided.
Really? How often do you travel outside the European Union? It's the same thing as your typical American who's never been anywhere except the United States, Canada, or Mexico. Why travel elsewhere when everything you need is right here inside the North American (or European) continent?
>>>at least now we have the explanation for your painfully parochial world view.
This is most amusing. I just now finished watching EuroNews (in English), Deutsche Welle (in German), and NHK (in Japanese). What were you saying about me being parochial? Damn fucking Euro-bastard. I'm really sick and tired of being insulted as a "dumb American" just because I happen to have been born here. Yes I know your idiotic views are just that of a minor-but-vocal group (like our KKK bastards), but still - enough is enough.
Americans are not parochial.
Americans are not idiots.
So stop acting like a 2nd grade Euro kiddie, and lay off the insults.
P.S.
Other idiots include the silk-suited people in Congress who think Fuel Cell Cars "run on water" and therefore all we need to do is buy a bunch of them, and all our problems will be solved! (rolls eyes) No Mr. and Mrs. Congress, fuel cells do not run on water. They run on hydrogen. Please show me where we can drill a well and find a bunch of hydrogen?
What's that? You don't know? Well neither do I. Your FC Car won't go anywhere without H fuel. Yes I know it's true that we can make hydrogen from oil or natural gas, but why??? We can burn oil/ng in the cars we already have, so what's the point of switching to new tech that still requires fossil fuels to run? Hmmmm.
Looks like FC cars are not the "miracle" you were looking for after all Congress,
just like computerized voting did not magically fix the balloting problems.
That's because flashlights and calculators use use around 1 watt of power, whereas the typical home A/C or heat pump uses ~10,000 watts. Good like scaling your little solar panel upto that level. Do you have a small farm nearby, because you'll need to pave it over with panels in order to run your A/C off sunlight.
(sigh)
Reading this thread you can really tell who are the engineers (they know their science and what's impossible), and the environments (they believe with all their hearts anything is possible, even if it violates the laws of the universe). I recall having a similar argument with my dad. He said "if they took an electric car and attached a generator to the tire, the generator would keep the battery full, and you'd never need to plug it in." I tried to explain to him that's impossible since perpetual motion is not possible, and energy is wasted as "heat" due to air friction as the car drives down the road, so eventually his EV car would empty its battery and stop.
He insisted I was an idiot and of course it would work. I got angry and walked out. I probably shouldn't have done that but then, science-illiterate people shouldn't be calling people with two college degrees "idiots" either.
Learn science FIRST before you propose stupid ideas.
P.S.
The first thing I do after I boot XP or Vista is to open the task manager, and kill any running programs or processes that I don't need. Why all this crap is running in the background when I don't want it makes no sense to me, but killing them does free-up a lot of RAM and speed-up the computer (no hard drive thrashing).
>>>assuming most end-users would get this 'WinMin' OS instead of WinXP/Vista
I'd simply run Win95 or NT 4. Have you ever seen how fast these OSes operate on a modern PC - zoom-zoom! I've never understood why somebody somewhere doesn't take these ancient OSes, add a few extra drivers like USB, and run them. Win NT 4 can run on just 8 megabytes! Imagine how cheaply computers could be made if they only used ~1/500th as much RAM.
Today's modern OSes really and truly are top-heavy monstrosities.
That's about right. I remember working for the FAA, and as my year-long contract wound down I asked the boss why he hired four engineers who sat-around and did almost no work.
"The management had a spare $1 million laying-around with an expiration date at the end of 2007, so rather than waste it, I hired you guys to review documents. If I had not spent it, it would have gone back to Congress and we can't allow that to happen."
I didn't say anything because I was too stunned.
My car falls into that "category" - a cheap car that cost me $13,900. Actually $11,000 after I subtracted Maryland's and the USA's hybrid tax credit. It gets over 80 MPG for me, which is great, but what I've sacrificed to get that goal takes some getting used to. Like narrow motorcycle-like tires which follow all the grooves in the road. Tight suspension that makes you feel every bump in the road. Wipers that move so slow you wonder why you even bothered to turn them on. And a radio system that sounds anemic due to speakers that are too small.
BTW the car I'm discussing is a 2001 Honda Insight, which was discontinued to to lack of interest by Americans who back then wanted gas-guzzling SUVs. I like it because it's "good enough" for my daily commute but many Americans (and even some Europeans) would probably say it isn't good enough.
Oh and since this is a computer-oriented site:
My desktop PC is only 1/2 gig of RAM, and my laptop only 800 megahertz speed. Again that's "good enough" for me. I don't think I need anything faster for just getting online and watching videos or chatting.
I will because I don't have a passport, and therefore (almost) never leave the country. I'm allowed to travel freely within my own country.