China has about the same emissions as the US. And guess why China has so much emissions? Because of the outsourced productions (electronics, clothing, toys). The US could easily implement requirements that their outsourced products have to adhere to emission limits!
Yeah, China has a pretty solid track record of honesty when it comes to well... everything.
Oh, and I just thought of this: Harry Reid (the US Senate Majority Leader) just explained that the open enrollement period for the Affordable Care Act will be extended thru mid-April, and explicitely stated that a part of the reason for this was for those people less familiiar with this new fangled internet thing who just dont have the skills to hop on and sign up for Obamacare. So apparently there are potentially millions of suspicious characters out there. They are probably dangerous because of their level of anger on not having health insurance?
Neither that article nor the.pdf download from DHS/DOJ mentions a single website, let alone any social media site, the words social or media, or anything to do with web addresses at all. As close as either gets is to suggest it could be suspicious if a traveler makes efforts to avoid hotel wifi in favor of going to a more anonymous internet café.
If you're referring to the items "leaked" a few weeks ago, that was not something produced by any government agency. It was something that the founders of Google mentioned in their book, which they were doing a press tour for recently. They say that in the future, everything will be so wired into the global networks that a person "off the grid" will be suspicious. That's a pretty huge leap to suggesting that DHS thinks anyone not on facebook is suspicious.
According to Static Brain (http://www.statisticbrain.com/facebook-statistics/) there were only about 100 million users on facebook as of March 2013. That's not even 1/3 of the US population, and they also state that 75% of those users are outside of the US. So according to you the vast majority of the US falls into your "terrorist" watchlist.
For instance, federal employees are allowed to use blogs and social networks to express support for candidates for office when they are not at work, but they can't engage in online activity supporting a candidate while on duty or at a federal workplace.
Also in the article is a link to the policy as released in 2010.
The bigger problem here though is that the student actually thought that what she posted on facebook was somehow actually private.
Wrong. The real issue here is why the state thinks they have a right to silence a personal opinion.
Once you release something on the internet you no longer have control of it - particularly when you give that something to a for-profit company.
Also wrong. Setting aside copyright law that contradicts your statement, it's still irrelevent. Unless you'd like to suggest that if you have a newspaper article published (that doesnt call for violence or breaking the law and isnt a lie), it's ok for the state to demand that the article be retracted. Are you suggesting that the First Ammendment is a farse? Here's the text of it, in case you're unfamiliar:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.[1]
If she wanted it to be private she should not have posted it online, anywhere.
Again, this really doesnt have anything to do with it being private. It has to do with whether the state has a right to determine what a private citizen can or cannot say, and where they can say it. And THEN going so far as using those statements, private or public, as cause to dig into inherently private email conversations; email being a private communication upheld by local, state and federal courts across the country as something that requires a warrant to open (unless you're the NSA). And threatening a minor child in order to coherce access without the parents consent is flatly illegal.
Actually the big picture here is why any mandatory state-run program thinks they have the right to silence dissent. The anti-constitutional means are only evidence of the Orwellian ends.
This entire scenario is no less frightening than if you were told by a sherrif that you must provide your Facebook password so that they could investigate the fact that you used the site to bitch about the DMV. Or posted that you disliked the voting record of your Congressmen. Or that you thought that the Presidential foreign policy was a joke.
The USA Federal Government has stated that not having a Facebook account is one way to identify a terrorist.
Bullshit.
The Federal Governmnet actually has rules that state that IF you use Facebook you have to be very concious and careful about in what tone you post to it.
Evil, disturbed, misunderstood, misguided, uneducated, uncultured,... Call it whatever word you like. The point is there are people out there who are not only willing to harm you or me, they revel in the possibility of it. Like I said, I'll give them every benefit of the doubt and suggest that maybe they are just mentally unbalanced, or have a real psychological disorder. But whatever the diagnosis they are no less a danger.
And for the same reason it would be highly irresponsible to suggest that a young woman walk down dark unfamiliar urban streets in the middle of the night without mace as the minimum of defense, it would also be highly irresponsible to stand down all military force and ask the psychopath with the nuclear weapons to pretty please stay inside his national borders.
Look, I applaud your faith in humans as a whole. But you're an idiot if you think every human is or can be a selfless, loving sweetheart. Millions of years of evolution dictates that there must be some level of survival instinct. I have very few limits when that is applied to my family, for instance. Anyone tries to harm them, and I will do whatever is in my power to prevent it. And I don't think there's anything in the world wrong with that.
So you actually believe that given the right words, even the most evil person can be taught to be good.
That is where you and I are fundamentally different. I believe there are some people who are, thru genes or culture or mental capacity, or perhaps even necessity, truly evil and would only present a good persona if they thought it would further their agenda. You believe that the world can be fixed and everything made just fine and dandy with kind words and hugs. But 10's of 1000's of years of human history says otherwise. And if you think somehow that we've evolved beyond a more or less animal instinct in the last couple of hundred years because we have technology then you're the delusional one.
There are bad, or perhaps just sick, people. Some of those people have power. And they aren't going to see your logic and just give up their power. Particularly when their internal evil or sickness is interwoven with religious zealotry or political ideological fervor, or both.
Poignant. But it doesn't answer the fucking question, does it?
If you think the guy taunting with food is the evil one, what makes you think you can explain that fact to him in such a way that he'll apologize and channel Ghandi for the rest of his life? If he's a big enough dick to taunt someone starving with food, do you think maybe he's a big enough dick not to give a shit what you or anyone else think?
Do you think that you can sit down with every Republican leader and just explain why they really need to embrace every far left policy, and turn then all into Progressive Democrats? No, you dont believe that. You understand that they have a position, they firmly believe that position, and no matter how much you think they are wrong, they arent likely to change.
So what makes you think any amount of talking will make Kim Jung Un suddently smack imself on the forehead and say, "Oh my goodness! I've been so wrong! Quick, shut down the nuclear weapons program, release all the political prisoners, open dialogue with South Korea and the Western nations, and set up democratic elections to dipose me!"
If you cant sway Republican politicians that you see as morons at best, or corrupt unscrupulous villains at worst, what makes you think you're going to sway entire regimes of mass murdering communist dictators? My "disturbed mind" simply sees the reality of the situation; the world has bad people, and not all bad people can be saved. There's no dilusion there. It's simply reality. And you can wish all your want for that not to be true, but if you're honest with yourself you know it is.
The reality of what will happen is only partly relevent in this discussion. What is more so is what Russia believes to be true. And our President and this administration continue exude weakness, and to draw derision from those cultures that value strength and power.
We just announced a reduction of troops to the lowest number since before entering World War II and more reductions in defense spending. Russia just annexed Crimea and some analysts believe it is positioning to potentially do the same to Estonia. They laughed at our sanctions, and their state news reports Russia is capable of turning the US into a smoldering pile of ash. They didnt just poke the US and NATO in the eye. They put a flaming bag of shit on our porch, rang the doorbell, and kicked the dog on the way out of the yard.
Are these unrelated? If you believe so then I've got a unicorn to sell you.
There are actually countries that aren't greedy and don't think the only way to survive is to grab as much as possible.
There only has to be one that disagrees to make the world a really fucked up place.
You can continue wishing for a different reality, but there are are still a half-dozen nations I can think of off of the top of my head that value centralized, concentrated power and wealth. Those nations respect strength of arms, and see weakness as an invitation to aggression. And that's not likely to change for the better, no matter how big a hug you give them.
If the energy surge is traveling through space to hit power transformers, what makes you think its not traveling through space to hit every electronic device on the planet? It's not like things are damaged because that energy is traveling through our electric grid....
Better include a bunch of fuel tanks at your home that use a hand pump. Because you're not filling your car from the gas stations (which have a chip-based control system).
Yeah, you could be there with your parents in the moment you realize no one is shipping more food to your area because all the trucks, planes and ships are inoperable.
You do realize that even if the government were to shield every power line and transformer in the country, they'd be sending power to billions of doorstops. Pretty much every device you want the government to protect power for has a chip that would completely blown out by a CME of this magnitude. You could maybe plug in something simple like a drill. But your phone, your refrigerator, your tv, your CAR.... They would all be irreperable pieces of shit. And I say irreperable, because if the chips in the devices were blow, so would all the replacement chips in the world, AND all the equipment used to make more.
The ramification would be that most devices with microchips would cease to function. And in today's world that's everything from cellphones, to cars, to refrigerators and the kitchen sink (literally, if it has a motion sensor to start the flow of water). The intense energy would essentially melt the circuitry in the chips, and maybe wiring in the device as well, if it were thin enough wires.
It might short out and cause a fire or something. But you wont give a shit about a burn on your ass from the phone that blew up in your back pocket in a few days when you realize that every truck (and every other means of moving goods) that brings food to your local supermarkets stopped functioning, and theres no means to produce new ones because all the factories (and food producers for that matter) all shorted out too.
With the media today, it's ALL about the soundbite, because they refuse to actually spend 5 min explaining what the real positions are.
You make it sound like they spent 5 minutes finding out what the position of the person is, rather than scanning for the R or D of policitcal affiliation in the bio and regurgitating their owned canned stereotypes provided them by their news organization.
You're not actually expecting the the people that elected Obama to come back and admit that Romney was right, are you? I'm pretty sure they spontaneously combust if they admit they are wrong. Ever.
He took an oath to protect and defend the Consitituion. He's not only failed to do so, but he's actively campaigned against the laws and procedures in regard to it. He's ignored it by circumventing or coopting the co-equal branches. If that's not ipeachable actions I dont know what is.
Slashdot Mirror
China has about the same emissions as the US. And guess why China has so much emissions? Because of the outsourced productions (electronics, clothing, toys). The US could easily implement requirements that their outsourced products have to adhere to emission limits!
Yeah, China has a pretty solid track record of honesty when it comes to well... everything.
/sarcasm
Oh, and I just thought of this: Harry Reid (the US Senate Majority Leader) just explained that the open enrollement period for the Affordable Care Act will be extended thru mid-April, and explicitely stated that a part of the reason for this was for those people less familiiar with this new fangled internet thing who just dont have the skills to hop on and sign up for Obamacare. So apparently there are potentially millions of suspicious characters out there. They are probably dangerous because of their level of anger on not having health insurance?
Yes, bullshit.
.pdf download from DHS/DOJ mentions a single website, let alone any social media site, the words social or media, or anything to do with web addresses at all. As close as either gets is to suggest it could be suspicious if a traveler makes efforts to avoid hotel wifi in favor of going to a more anonymous internet café.
Neither that article nor the
If you're referring to the items "leaked" a few weeks ago, that was not something produced by any government agency. It was something that the founders of Google mentioned in their book, which they were doing a press tour for recently. They say that in the future, everything will be so wired into the global networks that a person "off the grid" will be suspicious. That's a pretty huge leap to suggesting that DHS thinks anyone not on facebook is suspicious.
According to Static Brain (http://www.statisticbrain.com/facebook-statistics/) there were only about 100 million users on facebook as of March 2013. That's not even 1/3 of the US population, and they also state that 75% of those users are outside of the US. So according to you the vast majority of the US falls into your "terrorist" watchlist.
For instance, federal employees are allowed to use blogs and social networks to express support for candidates for office when they are not at work, but they can't engage in online activity supporting a candidate while on duty or at a federal workplace.
Also in the article is a link to the policy as released in 2010.
Questions?
I'd do it, but I can't find the energy to try to convince someone they're not being persecuted.
Do you work for the IRS?
It's amazing what a steady diet of propaganda can do to a man.
It's kept Obama in office.
The bigger problem here though is that the student actually thought that what she posted on facebook was somehow actually private.
Wrong. The real issue here is why the state thinks they have a right to silence a personal opinion.
Once you release something on the internet you no longer have control of it - particularly when you give that something to a for-profit company.
Also wrong. Setting aside copyright law that contradicts your statement, it's still irrelevent. Unless you'd like to suggest that if you have a newspaper article published (that doesnt call for violence or breaking the law and isnt a lie), it's ok for the state to demand that the article be retracted. Are you suggesting that the First Ammendment is a farse? Here's the text of it, in case you're unfamiliar:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.[1]
If she wanted it to be private she should not have posted it online, anywhere.
Again, this really doesnt have anything to do with it being private. It has to do with whether the state has a right to determine what a private citizen can or cannot say, and where they can say it. And THEN going so far as using those statements, private or public, as cause to dig into inherently private email conversations; email being a private communication upheld by local, state and federal courts across the country as something that requires a warrant to open (unless you're the NSA). And threatening a minor child in order to coherce access without the parents consent is flatly illegal.
Actually the big picture here is why any mandatory state-run program thinks they have the right to silence dissent. The anti-constitutional means are only evidence of the Orwellian ends.
This entire scenario is no less frightening than if you were told by a sherrif that you must provide your Facebook password so that they could investigate the fact that you used the site to bitch about the DMV. Or posted that you disliked the voting record of your Congressmen. Or that you thought that the Presidential foreign policy was a joke.
The USA Federal Government has stated that not having a Facebook account is one way to identify a terrorist.
Bullshit.
The Federal Governmnet actually has rules that state that IF you use Facebook you have to be very concious and careful about in what tone you post to it.
Evil, disturbed, misunderstood, misguided, uneducated, uncultured, ... Call it whatever word you like. The point is there are people out there who are not only willing to harm you or me, they revel in the possibility of it. Like I said, I'll give them every benefit of the doubt and suggest that maybe they are just mentally unbalanced, or have a real psychological disorder. But whatever the diagnosis they are no less a danger.
And for the same reason it would be highly irresponsible to suggest that a young woman walk down dark unfamiliar urban streets in the middle of the night without mace as the minimum of defense, it would also be highly irresponsible to stand down all military force and ask the psychopath with the nuclear weapons to pretty please stay inside his national borders.
Look, I applaud your faith in humans as a whole. But you're an idiot if you think every human is or can be a selfless, loving sweetheart. Millions of years of evolution dictates that there must be some level of survival instinct. I have very few limits when that is applied to my family, for instance. Anyone tries to harm them, and I will do whatever is in my power to prevent it. And I don't think there's anything in the world wrong with that.
So you actually believe that given the right words, even the most evil person can be taught to be good.
That is where you and I are fundamentally different. I believe there are some people who are, thru genes or culture or mental capacity, or perhaps even necessity, truly evil and would only present a good persona if they thought it would further their agenda. You believe that the world can be fixed and everything made just fine and dandy with kind words and hugs. But 10's of 1000's of years of human history says otherwise. And if you think somehow that we've evolved beyond a more or less animal instinct in the last couple of hundred years because we have technology then you're the delusional one.
There are bad, or perhaps just sick, people. Some of those people have power. And they aren't going to see your logic and just give up their power. Particularly when their internal evil or sickness is interwoven with religious zealotry or political ideological fervor, or both.
Poignant. But it doesn't answer the fucking question, does it?
If you think the guy taunting with food is the evil one, what makes you think you can explain that fact to him in such a way that he'll apologize and channel Ghandi for the rest of his life? If he's a big enough dick to taunt someone starving with food, do you think maybe he's a big enough dick not to give a shit what you or anyone else think?
This has been Russian behavior for a long time, whenever they thought they could get away with it.
And this^ is precisely the point. They are sure that with this President, and this NATO council, they can.
Do you think that you can sit down with every Republican leader and just explain why they really need to embrace every far left policy, and turn then all into Progressive Democrats? No, you dont believe that. You understand that they have a position, they firmly believe that position, and no matter how much you think they are wrong, they arent likely to change.
So what makes you think any amount of talking will make Kim Jung Un suddently smack imself on the forehead and say, "Oh my goodness! I've been so wrong! Quick, shut down the nuclear weapons program, release all the political prisoners, open dialogue with South Korea and the Western nations, and set up democratic elections to dipose me!"
If you cant sway Republican politicians that you see as morons at best, or corrupt unscrupulous villains at worst, what makes you think you're going to sway entire regimes of mass murdering communist dictators? My "disturbed mind" simply sees the reality of the situation; the world has bad people, and not all bad people can be saved. There's no dilusion there. It's simply reality. And you can wish all your want for that not to be true, but if you're honest with yourself you know it is.
The reality of what will happen is only partly relevent in this discussion. What is more so is what Russia believes to be true. And our President and this administration continue exude weakness, and to draw derision from those cultures that value strength and power.
We just announced a reduction of troops to the lowest number since before entering World War II and more reductions in defense spending. Russia just annexed Crimea and some analysts believe it is positioning to potentially do the same to Estonia. They laughed at our sanctions, and their state news reports Russia is capable of turning the US into a smoldering pile of ash. They didnt just poke the US and NATO in the eye. They put a flaming bag of shit on our porch, rang the doorbell, and kicked the dog on the way out of the yard.
Are these unrelated? If you believe so then I've got a unicorn to sell you.
There are actually countries that aren't greedy and don't think the only way to survive is to grab as much as possible.
There only has to be one that disagrees to make the world a really fucked up place.
You can continue wishing for a different reality, but there are are still a half-dozen nations I can think of off of the top of my head that value centralized, concentrated power and wealth. Those nations respect strength of arms, and see weakness as an invitation to aggression. And that's not likely to change for the better, no matter how big a hug you give them.
If the energy surge is traveling through space to hit power transformers, what makes you think its not traveling through space to hit every electronic device on the planet? It's not like things are damaged because that energy is traveling through our electric grid....
Better include a bunch of fuel tanks at your home that use a hand pump. Because you're not filling your car from the gas stations (which have a chip-based control system).
Yeah, you could be there with your parents in the moment you realize no one is shipping more food to your area because all the trucks, planes and ships are inoperable.
You do realize that even if the government were to shield every power line and transformer in the country, they'd be sending power to billions of doorstops. Pretty much every device you want the government to protect power for has a chip that would completely blown out by a CME of this magnitude. You could maybe plug in something simple like a drill. But your phone, your refrigerator, your tv, your CAR.... They would all be irreperable pieces of shit. And I say irreperable, because if the chips in the devices were blow, so would all the replacement chips in the world, AND all the equipment used to make more.
The ramification would be that most devices with microchips would cease to function. And in today's world that's everything from cellphones, to cars, to refrigerators and the kitchen sink (literally, if it has a motion sensor to start the flow of water). The intense energy would essentially melt the circuitry in the chips, and maybe wiring in the device as well, if it were thin enough wires. It might short out and cause a fire or something. But you wont give a shit about a burn on your ass from the phone that blew up in your back pocket in a few days when you realize that every truck (and every other means of moving goods) that brings food to your local supermarkets stopped functioning, and theres no means to produce new ones because all the factories (and food producers for that matter) all shorted out too.
With the media today, it's ALL about the soundbite, because they refuse to actually spend 5 min explaining what the real positions are.
You make it sound like they spent 5 minutes finding out what the position of the person is, rather than scanning for the R or D of policitcal affiliation in the bio and regurgitating their owned canned stereotypes provided them by their news organization.
True journalists are an endangered species.
You're not actually expecting the the people that elected Obama to come back and admit that Romney was right, are you? I'm pretty sure they spontaneously combust if they admit they are wrong. Ever.
He took an oath to protect and defend the Consitituion. He's not only failed to do so, but he's actively campaigned against the laws and procedures in regard to it. He's ignored it by circumventing or coopting the co-equal branches. If that's not ipeachable actions I dont know what is.