The difference is that Apple isn't squandering MY money on hookers or whatever because I have an Android phone. If Samsung's phone quality/hooker ratio dipped too low I could get a phone from Motorola or LG. Or if ALL the Android and Windows Phone manufacturers had unacceptably low hooker/quality ratios, I could get an Apple phone.
With governments, there's just the government. It doesn't matter how much quality they deliver, you still have to pay for their hookers.
But the idea that somehow if the USG takes money from Apple that there will be more social good is laughable on its face.
I hate Apple, but this is an incredibly good point. Part of the reason that TAXES should be lower is how much the government squanders the money we already pay.
It is in that light that we should view their comments about "Tax being just political bs.". It's their job to say that; it's in their interest to say that; they're paid to say that.
Cook didn't say that TAXES are political BS. He said that the QUESTION is political BS. It's a real example of begging the question. The question assumes that Apple owes $50.2B in taxes on overseas profit. They don't owe that money, so it's a BS questions.
I hate Apple and all their works and all their empty promises, but Tim Cook is 100% right about this.
Printing $50.2 billion dollars without taking other dollars out of circulation will make the value of every dollar in circulation less. Apple won't pay the money to the government (because they don't really owe it) but instead, they will spend that money the other things they need (salaries, raw materials for products, buying other companies, etc.) The government wobt ever get Apple's money to destroy it.
Can you imagine how Hilary's poll numbers would plummet if leaks suddenly appeared showing that her husband had been involved in infidelity???
I don't think they'd move an inch. On the Republican side, the assumption is that everyone knows Bill Clinton is an adulterer at best, and that knowledge is "baked into the cake" for Hillary's approval and poll numbers.
I think the idea is that the DNC is allowed to use both lists to support other candidates (for Congress, the Senate, etc.) and that once somebody wins the Democrat primary, they get access to the other lists.
The "registration" part is a tax on the couple for the privilege of getting married. Everyone has to pay it, whether your officiant is a real clergyman, a government official, or an Elvis impersonator.
Clergy already don't have legal "privilege" in terms of officiating wedding ceremonies because you can have arbitrary friends do officiate your wedding already.
These guys wanted to get THEIR fake clergy associated with THEIR protest movement registered. But if they had a specific officiant in mind, they could have gotten them to officiate under the old system.
What is undoubtedly being protested is the undeserved status that clergy have in officiating weddings. They are not trying to prevent clergy from [officiating] weddings. I am sure they are merely trying to ensure clergy have equal rights to everyone else...
I think you are confusing the way in which the this couple is fighting for the rights of people to hold ceremonies in whatever way they choose with how they actually decided to held their own ceremony.
If the point is that they are in favor of the option of "wedding by arbitrary friend," why isn't that what they're advocating for?
It's because wedding by arbitrary friend isn't what they're looking for. (Also, that option is already available to them.) They're looking for publicity for their shitty protest movement.
Plus think about it. You can design a religious wedding ceremony in a way that's respectful of guests who are a different religion than the couple. You can also design an atheist wedding ceremony to be respectful of non-athiest guests. Do you really think that the couple who went out of their way to get FSM declared a religion for marriage license purposes is going to be respectful of guests who are religious? Because that would be out of character for FSM types.
If you throw a party, and you're not respectful of your guests, then you're an asshole. That's the only point.
How is having more freedom to have whoever you want be your wedding officiant being shitty to other people?
I'm 100% against the state regulating who is allowed to officiate a marriage. If the state isn't officiating a wedding (like a Justice of the Peace or whatever) they don't have a valid interest in making sure a wedding ceremony takes place. The details of that ceremony should be decided by the couple and their clergyman, dear loved one, or Elvis impersonator.
But that's not what NZ did.
Some dickhead Pastafanarian got the New Zealand government to let Pastafanarian "clergy" officiate weddings. Those guys aren't a religion, they're a protest movement. (Here's how you can tell: They don't actually believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster.)
Since they could have had an atheist wedding before, it looks like the thing they're protesting for is to prevent clergy from officiating weddings at all. Which makes no sense at all.
Also of note: In the US, there are pretend religions whose core beliefs are "Couples should be able to pick arbitrary friends to officiate their wedding." To that end, if you give them $10 or whatever, they will make arbitrary friends ministers in the pretend religion... And then they can officiate whatever kind of ceremony they and the couple decide to do. Does this not exist in New Zealand?
OF COURSE New Zealand had to grant the licenses. That's not the point. The point is that only a douchebag would set up a ceremony based on a set of deeply held beliefs that they only hold as a joke.
You're missing the point there, bub. The point of a marriage ceremony is that it's a celebration of two people who love each other. If you're using it to act shitty to people who aren't doing anything bad to you, you're doing it wrong. And no, religious people aren't harassing athiests on their wedding day.
I'm pretty sure there was a way for atheists to get married without involvement from a religion in NZ before this, though. I don't think the FSM guys were needed there either.
I can't find it anymore for some reason, but this was covered on Slashdot. The Apple bug was exposed later than the Zune one. I know I yelled at someone with "Mac" in their username for saying "The Apple bug is no big deal" and posted examples of them shitting on Microsoft for the Zune bug. (Slashdot had three stories on the Zune bug, by the way, but one on the Apple bug.)
Lets just say someone went back in time and killed Hitler as a small child so that he never became Chancellor.
The principle behind Goodwin's Law (people resorting to demagoguery against their political opponents, especially online) would presumably still be valid. Do you think there would still be a Goodwin's Law, and if so, who would the comparison be to?
The same question without the "killing baby Hitler" piece: Other than Hitler, do you think there are other demagoguery comparisons that are sufficiently overused to merit mention in Goodwin's Law?
How does one individual find a morally acceptable level he or she may pollute without reference to the best thing our society has to indicate consensus, namely, legislation?
At the Federal level, and also true in most states, acceptable pollution levels are NOT set as a matter of legislation. They are set through regulations promulgated by bodies other than the legislature. (In the case of pollution, it's the EPA at the Federal level.) If they make the wrong tradeoffs, people don't have a way to fix it.
If Finestein gets her encryption ban (she won't, but let's pretend), people can get rid of her in the next elections and replace her with somebody whose ideas aren't so fundamentally flawed. With regulatory bodies, it doesn't work like that.
I'm sure this is really cool if you're a New England fan, but what about the other 31 teams? Google and Visa should get with Belichick ASAP so they can digitize video of the other teams' practices.
That's... protection from the government demanding that Native Hawaiians change their culture. The government of Hawaii shouldn't be demanding that ANYONE change their culture. (In fact, the US Constitution does extend that protection to everyone. The Hawaiian one probably does too, in parts of it that aren't quoted.)
The point of a Constitution is that it's a set of rules that restrict the government from taking action against the citizenry. It makes me uneasy when someone advocates for loosening those restrictions.
Do you think vaccines cause autism? Because apparently all liberal Democrats do.
You seem willfully ignorant of liberal Democrats...
No shit? That's the entire point of the thread.
OF COURSE it's unfair to accuse all liberal Democrats of being 9/11 Truthers or thinking that vaccines cause autism. There's only a couple people in the dickhead left that believe those things, and that set includes NOBODY with any power. You're doing the converse, by claiming that a few people on the dickhead right represent all conservatives. And you're doing this because at this point, you're obviously a fundamentally dishonest person.
Since you're arguing the "point" about vaccines instead of the point about "You can't point at the Dickhead wing of $party and claim it represents all of $party," it's clear that you're not reading what I'm writing. I'm done with this conversation. Don't even bother typing a response.
Slashdot Mirror
Because "tax purgatory" isn't a thing that exists, for one thing.
Not so fast there ... the last I read about this is that Apple is suspected of tax-avoidance.
Exactly. Tax avoidance. Which by definition is legal. (Illegal "tax avoidance" is called tax fraud.)
From a letter-of-the-law find-the-legal-loophole-accountancy perspective this may even be legal (and it probably is...
Ok, so we're in agreement that what Apple is doing is legal. Apple is paying the taxes that the law says they owe because not paying would be illegal.
It's a political question, only the "BS" component is lacking.
The BS part is the part where you're (and CBS is) pretending that tax avoidance is against the law.
With governments, there's just the government. It doesn't matter how much quality they deliver, you still have to pay for their hookers.
But the idea that somehow if the USG takes money from Apple that there will be more social good is laughable on its face.
I hate Apple, but this is an incredibly good point. Part of the reason that TAXES should be lower is how much the government squanders the money we already pay.
It is in that light that we should view their comments about "Tax being just political bs.". It's their job to say that; it's in their interest to say that; they're paid to say that.
Cook didn't say that TAXES are political BS. He said that the QUESTION is political BS. It's a real example of begging the question. The question assumes that Apple owes $50.2B in taxes on overseas profit. They don't owe that money, so it's a BS questions.
I hate Apple and all their works and all their empty promises, but Tim Cook is 100% right about this.
Printing $50.2 billion dollars without taking other dollars out of circulation will make the value of every dollar in circulation less. Apple won't pay the money to the government (because they don't really owe it) but instead, they will spend that money the other things they need (salaries, raw materials for products, buying other companies, etc.) The government wobt ever get Apple's money to destroy it.
I'm also posting to undo an awful mod.
Can you imagine how Hilary's poll numbers would plummet if leaks suddenly appeared showing that her husband had been involved in infidelity???
I don't think they'd move an inch. On the Republican side, the assumption is that everyone knows Bill Clinton is an adulterer at best, and that knowledge is "baked into the cake" for Hillary's approval and poll numbers.
I think the idea is that the DNC is allowed to use both lists to support other candidates (for Congress, the Senate, etc.) and that once somebody wins the Democrat primary, they get access to the other lists.
Clergy already don't have legal "privilege" in terms of officiating wedding ceremonies because you can have arbitrary friends do officiate your wedding already.
These guys wanted to get THEIR fake clergy associated with THEIR protest movement registered. But if they had a specific officiant in mind, they could have gotten them to officiate under the old system.
What is undoubtedly being protested is the undeserved status that clergy have in officiating weddings. They are not trying to prevent clergy from [officiating] weddings. I am sure they are merely trying to ensure clergy have equal rights to everyone else...
I think you are confusing the way in which the this couple is fighting for the rights of people to hold ceremonies in whatever way they choose with how they actually decided to held their own ceremony.
If the point is that they are in favor of the option of "wedding by arbitrary friend," why isn't that what they're advocating for?
It's because wedding by arbitrary friend isn't what they're looking for. (Also, that option is already available to them.) They're looking for publicity for their shitty protest movement.
Plus think about it. You can design a religious wedding ceremony in a way that's respectful of guests who are a different religion than the couple. You can also design an atheist wedding ceremony to be respectful of non-athiest guests. Do you really think that the couple who went out of their way to get FSM declared a religion for marriage license purposes is going to be respectful of guests who are religious? Because that would be out of character for FSM types.
If you throw a party, and you're not respectful of your guests, then you're an asshole. That's the only point.
How is having more freedom to have whoever you want be your wedding officiant being shitty to other people?
I'm 100% against the state regulating who is allowed to officiate a marriage. If the state isn't officiating a wedding (like a Justice of the Peace or whatever) they don't have a valid interest in making sure a wedding ceremony takes place. The details of that ceremony should be decided by the couple and their clergyman, dear loved one, or Elvis impersonator.
But that's not what NZ did.
Some dickhead Pastafanarian got the New Zealand government to let Pastafanarian "clergy" officiate weddings. Those guys aren't a religion, they're a protest movement. (Here's how you can tell: They don't actually believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster.)
Since they could have had an atheist wedding before, it looks like the thing they're protesting for is to prevent clergy from officiating weddings at all. Which makes no sense at all.
Also of note: In the US, there are pretend religions whose core beliefs are "Couples should be able to pick arbitrary friends to officiate their wedding." To that end, if you give them $10 or whatever, they will make arbitrary friends ministers in the pretend religion... And then they can officiate whatever kind of ceremony they and the couple decide to do. Does this not exist in New Zealand?
OF COURSE New Zealand had to grant the licenses. That's not the point. The point is that only a douchebag would set up a ceremony based on a set of deeply held beliefs that they only hold as a joke.
You're missing the point there, bub. The point of a marriage ceremony is that it's a celebration of two people who love each other. If you're using it to act shitty to people who aren't doing anything bad to you, you're doing it wrong. And no, religious people aren't harassing athiests on their wedding day.
I'm pretty sure there was a way for atheists to get married without involvement from a religion in NZ before this, though. I don't think the FSM guys were needed there either.
I agree 100%. NZ MUST have had some way for atheists/non-religious people to get married before. This is just being dickheads.
Among the set of living beings, death is probably the single event most likely to occur.
Not taxes? I need to pay income tax twice a year. (State and Federal) I plan on dying maybe once or twice at most.
I can't find it anymore for some reason, but this was covered on Slashdot. The Apple bug was exposed later than the Zune one. I know I yelled at someone with "Mac" in their username for saying "The Apple bug is no big deal" and posted examples of them shitting on Microsoft for the Zune bug. (Slashdot had three stories on the Zune bug, by the way, but one on the Apple bug.)
iPods from the same era as the first generation Zune had an identical bug, but Apple turned out OK.
The principle behind Goodwin's Law (people resorting to demagoguery against their political opponents, especially online) would presumably still be valid. Do you think there would still be a Goodwin's Law, and if so, who would the comparison be to?
The same question without the "killing baby Hitler" piece: Other than Hitler, do you think there are other demagoguery comparisons that are sufficiently overused to merit mention in Goodwin's Law?
How does one individual find a morally acceptable level he or she may pollute without reference to the best thing our society has to indicate consensus, namely, legislation?
At the Federal level, and also true in most states, acceptable pollution levels are NOT set as a matter of legislation. They are set through regulations promulgated by bodies other than the legislature. (In the case of pollution, it's the EPA at the Federal level.) If they make the wrong tradeoffs, people don't have a way to fix it.
If Finestein gets her encryption ban (she won't, but let's pretend), people can get rid of her in the next elections and replace her with somebody whose ideas aren't so fundamentally flawed. With regulatory bodies, it doesn't work like that.
I'm sure this is really cool if you're a New England fan, but what about the other 31 teams? Google and Visa should get with Belichick ASAP so they can digitize video of the other teams' practices.
The point of a Constitution is that it's a set of rules that restrict the government from taking action against the citizenry. It makes me uneasy when someone advocates for loosening those restrictions.
STILL MADE MONEY (as required by state law here which prohibits 'loss leaders'.. a minimum of 3%-6% markup required)
Maybe the solution to your problem is to move to a state that isn't so tyrannical.
Do you think vaccines cause autism? Because apparently all liberal Democrats do.
You seem willfully ignorant of liberal Democrats...
No shit? That's the entire point of the thread.
OF COURSE it's unfair to accuse all liberal Democrats of being 9/11 Truthers or thinking that vaccines cause autism. There's only a couple people in the dickhead left that believe those things, and that set includes NOBODY with any power. You're doing the converse, by claiming that a few people on the dickhead right represent all conservatives. And you're doing this because at this point, you're obviously a fundamentally dishonest person.
Since you're arguing the "point" about vaccines instead of the point about "You can't point at the Dickhead wing of $party and claim it represents all of $party," it's clear that you're not reading what I'm writing. I'm done with this conversation. Don't even bother typing a response.
Do you think vaccines cause autism? Because apparently all liberal Democrats do.