He also called for re-opening the House Un-American Activities Committee. Combine these two proposals and you'll see political foes of whoever is in charge of the new committee being suddenly "discovered" as ISIS sympathizers. Oh, sure, they'll protest but there will be highly convincing proof - classified, but we'll be assured that it's highly convincing. People will know that it's a farce but won't speak up for fear of being targeted next.
This is why the religious right is so pro-Israel. They don't love the Jewish people. In fact, they're perpetually puzzled as to why we won't mass-convert over to Christianity. (They keep telling us to worship Jesus or burn in hell and yet we STILL don't fall in line. What's wrong with us?) However, if the Jewish people have a state and, specifically, control Jerusalem, then Revelations is one step closer to coming into being.
It's also why they don't actually want peace in the Middle East. Imagine if tomorrow some master statesman arose who convinced everyone in the Middle East to stop fighting and just get along. (We'll ignore exactly how the guy's supposed to do this and just assume for the moment that he can do this.) What does this mean for Revelations? Suddenly, Israel doesn't have a whole log of enemies surrounding them. No enemies means no armies marching on Jerusalem which means no Second Coming.
They don't want Israel to be destroyed but neither do they want it to exist in peace. As long as Israel remains in existence and surrounded by enemies, their end-of-the-world story has a chance of coming true. (An extremely tiny chance, but it's good enough for them.)
4. All businesses which require encryption moving out of the UK. 5. Hackers take advantage of the lack of strong encryption to decrypt data that needed to remain secure. (e.g. credit card information) 6. Criminals and terrorists use freely available strong encryption from non-UK sources.
If you were to get me to drive a car and told me "don't worry, two out of every three people who drive this car don't die in horrible random explosions", I'd back away from the car as quickly as possible, not suddenly gain confidence in how safe the car was.
I'd agree and add: Not when you're operating something that could result in the injury/death of others due to the effects of your drug of choice.
So drink all you want and smoke as many joints as you want, but don't get behind the wheel and drive. When you do that, you're forcing other people to deal with the effects of your drug of choice. It's a pretty clear cut example of "the right to swing your fist ends at my face." Just have a designated driver and then enjoy your evening.
My son was learning about drugs in school. Some of the usual scare-tactic stuff about marijuana. Now I've never smoked (marijuana or tobacco) and rarely drink, but I told him that if I had to choose one of the three (alcohol, tobacco, or marijuana) to become addicted to, I'd choose marijuana. (With alcohol a second-place choice.) Yes, it's still a drug and has negative effects. Yes, I prefer not being addicted to anything (well, except chocolate). But marijuana isn't nearly as bad as tobacco and alcohol can be.
(Of course, I wouldn't want people getting high and driving or smoking joints in restaurants and blowing smoke my way.)
I remember the days before bans on smoking in restaurants.
Waiter: "Smoking or non-smoking?" Me: "Non-smoking please." Waiter leads me and my party past tons of smokers to the non-smoking section which is literally two tables away from the smoking section - as if smoke knows there's a mystical boundary and won't pass it. We spend our meal coughing as some guy puffs away two tables over and there's nothing we can do short of leave as quickly as possible and never eat out again. The guy is in the smoking section so he was fine and ALL restaurants did that so we couldn't just go to another one.
The smoke was bad for me (besides the cancer-causing stuff, I hate the smell), but my mother-in-law has breathing issues and someone blowing smoke at her all evening could result in serious breathing problems that could send her to the hospital. Now, we can eat without having to endure someone blowing toxic smoke at us. If you can't make it through a meal without lighting up, maybe it's time to admit you have a problem.
In the history of the Vice Presidency (since 1789), there have been 244 tie breaking votes made. This is an average of just over 1 a year, so a VP will vote about 4 times per term. If we count only the last 10 VPs (about a 50 year span), it's a 2 vote-per-term average. (Al Gore cast a tie breaker 4 times, Dick Cheney 8 times, and Joe Biden didn't cast any tie breakers as all.) Meanwhile, only 9 Vice Presidents (out of 47) have become President during their term as VP.
What the VP choice really does is give some insight into how the candidate would pick people. Are they going for a political play (gain the favor of a specific voting bloc), trying to "shore up" a weak spot (e.g. picking someone who knows a lot about foreign policy when the candidate doesn't know much), or picking someone who is an up-and-comer to give them the national spotlight?
The problem is that everything today is now highly politicized so that you're never allowed to agree in principal with someone not of the same political party.
You're also not allowed to compromise. So you get the left calling for strict gun control laws (maybe not the "seize everyone's guns" kind of laws but, at times, "create a national registry of all gun owners" sort of laws) and the right calling for "no gun control - in fact, give everyone guns!" Each side just yells at each other and anyone who walks to the center to find a compromise is seen as a traitor for daring to venture away from The One True Position.
The end result is that the Republicans work to shut down everything when the Democrats are in charge and the Democrats whine about how the Republicans aren't working with them... and then the positions reverse and each group does what the opposite group was doing. It's the Red Queen's Race. We're constantly running to and fro but never get anywhere. Which is just where the major political parties want us because if we're outraged about Policy X, we'll turn out to vote for Party Y and then they can blame any failures on the opposite party which makes us more outraged and cements us as Party Y voters. Compromise would spoil their GOTV plans. (Where GOTV doesn't mean "Get Out The Vote" as much as it means "Generate Outrage in The Voters.")
I'm wondering how much of Trump's ego plays into this also. It looks like his three major choices were Pence, Gingrich, and Christie. Gingrich is a personality unto himself and Trump might not have wanted another "name" on the ticket. His ego demands that he be the focus of all of the attention. Christie would have been an attack dog doing just what Trump does and Trump might not have liked the idea of having a Trump Duplicate on stage with him. So we get Generic Pence who won't overshadow Donald.
I used to use this way back before I switched to FireFox (and before Chrome was even released). Back then, it was one of the best IE wrappers to give you tabs and other functionality that more modern (at the time) browsers were adopting. I ditched it after I switched to FireFox (and, later, Chrome). I didn't even realize they were still around since IE itself now has tabs.
Even if we go old-school with the "third party hands = no warrant" interpretation we run into trouble. You write a letter, seal it in an envelope, put a stamp on it, and put it in the mailbox. Does the government have a right to open all letters and examine them to make sure you're not a terrorist? The government currently doesn't read all mail, but terrorists could conceivably use the US Mail system to communicate so (by the logic of those who use fear to whittle down our rights and gain power for themselves) we need to monitor all mail and packages delivered.
Except that most people would agree that having a government agency reading and "approving" the mail you send would be crossing a line. So why is it ok if the letter is a bunch of bits and the "US Mail system" is some e-mail provider?
though some of them will likely claim to have said experiences, and think that anyone who doesn't keep their child on a dog leash is a horrible parent...
And then there are the "parenting experts" (who have never had kids, mind you) who will proclaim that putting a child on a leash is horrible parenting. So the parent is supposed to always be watching the child - oh, wait. That's helicopter parenting and that's bad. So let your child roam free - but if your child gets hurt it's your fault for not paying close enough attention to them. No matter what parents do, there will always be some self-proclaimed expert who demands that the parents are to blame.
Full disclosure: Before I had kids, I thought those kid-leashes were a horrible idea. After my little guy ran off from us (I followed him to see how far he'd go and finally picked him up halfway across the store), we got him a child-leash. It let him wander independently but within reason. We got the occasional dirty look, but more people commenting on how cute he was with his "monkey backpack" on. And it helped keep him safe. I wouldn't demand that all parents use one but they can be useful for some.
As a parent (albeit one whose kids are older), little kids are surprisingly fast. One moment of distraction and your child can vanish. After two incidents with my youngest the same day - once when he decided to play hide & seek in a store (the laughing coat rack gave him away) and once when he walked off as we put his older brother's coat on (I followed him to see how far he'd go and finally just picked him up when he got halfway through the store without even looking back) - we decided to do something I thought was stupid pre-kids. We got one of those backpacks with a "leash" on it. (It was a monkey and the parent holds the long tail.) This let my son wander out of hand-holding range but still let us be sure that he was close by us.
And while I'm on the subject of "special powers" little kids have, they can also reach things that you swear are completely out of their reach. My oldest proved this when he was able to get to the "completely out of the kids' reach" scissors and give himself a haircut as we bathed his brother.
It's also about "corporate content" versus "user created content." If users are able to create good enough content by themselves, that might reduce demand for corporate produced content. So if you can find some very minor copyright concern in the user uploaded content (there's 5 seconds of music playing from someone walking by in the background), you can knock these "competitors" offline and push more of your corporate produced content.
We'll have the best stupid leaders! The Best! You'll never believe how stupid our leaders will be. You'll ask if we can get leaders any stupider and I'll say No because we'll have the stupidest leaders ever!
So what's the rue for Philando Castile - the man who was shot when he reached for his wallet during a traffic stop? He had a legal concealed carry permit and wasn't a criminal. How could he have prevented being shot? "Don't get stopped by the police if you're black? Don't be armed if you're not white?"
Resisting arrest can come about if the officers say to put your hands behind your head and you don't do it as fast as they want you to.
Also, we have to take into account that the officers likely didn't know Sterling's record right then and there. They were dealing in the moment and made decisions (good or bad) based on what they saw at the moment. So it's disingenuous to say "well, the guy had these past offenses and so the officers were justified in doing this."
We've been told by the NRA and others that "the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." This goes along with a push from some people to arm more people and let them conceal carry their weapons. If we have more people carrying guns with them, would this result in more of these "pinned down by the police" turning into "shot by the police" because the person reached for what the officer assumed was a weapon?
We have the Alton Sterling shooting and, a day later, the Philando Castile shooting. In the latter case, Philando informed the officer of his legal concealed carry weapon and was shot as he reached for his wallet. Since the police have no way of knowing on the spot who is a "good guy with a gun" and who is a "bad guy with a gun", would more armed people with concealed carry permits mean more police shootings? (Or will this only be the case if the concealed carry permits are held by people with the "wrong" skin color?)
Access to every communication with no judicial oversight? The question isn't "will this be abused" but "how quickly will this be abused?" Also: "Will we ever know that it has been abused or will the Russian government cover it up?"
Bonus question: Will the Russian equivalent of Snowden flee his country with files detailing the abuses this law allows, publish the information drawing the ire of the Russian government, and flee to the US for sanctuary? Also, would the US grant him asylum or use him in a trade for Snowden?
Unless we resist it, government will always be seeking more power, as will the half of the political spectrum that is always seeking ever-more government.
Both halves of the political spectrum (i.e. Republicans and Democrats) push for ever-more government. They might differ in some instances as to where this bigger government should be intruding, but they both support it. The days of the Republicans being proponents of small government are gone. (If that ever was the case, in the first place. At the very least, the GOP has been a steady supporter of increasing the military's size no matter what.)
Europa is a very good candidate for extraterrestrial life. It's got oceans of liquid water kept warm by the gravitational tug of Jupiter. If we send future space probes to Europa and find microbial life, it will quite possibly be the biggest discovery of the modern era. However, if Galileo crashed on Jupiter, there would have been a slight chance that microbes on the space probe could have contaminated the moon. We do everything we can to sterilize the probes, but microbes are very good at getting everywhere and hiding out. Some can even survive space's vacuum and intense radiation. If we do find life on Europa, we want to be 100% certain that it is Europa-originated life and not Earth life brought there by something we sent to the moon earlier.
All of Star Wars is shown through the "good guys' eyes." Every action from the Empire is unspeakably evil. Every motive stopping just short of mustache twirling villainy. It's probably be done, but I'd love to read a story about Palpatine and Vader that depicts them as they likely saw themselves - as good guys trying to improve the lives of everyone in the galaxy. We saw a bit of this in the prequels (Anakin's not wanting to simply follow "the Jedi way"), but of course Lucas was too ham-fisted with them (and too distracted by shiny CGI technology) to give us any decent depiction.
The best villains are the ones who think they're the good guys. You could say that Palpatine saw the Jedi as enforcing a rigid, but broken system that was keeping He was trying to reform it, but knew that the Jedi would never willingly give up power. You could show reforms he attempted to make in the Senate that were shut down by pro-Jedi Senators. You could relay his frustration over the years as he exhausted all options and finally was forced to come up with a way to overthrow the Jedi. You might have to veer away from the prequels' story a bit but that might not be a bad thing - and you could write off the differing accounts as being due to point of view. ("Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly upon our own point of view.")
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He also called for re-opening the House Un-American Activities Committee. Combine these two proposals and you'll see political foes of whoever is in charge of the new committee being suddenly "discovered" as ISIS sympathizers. Oh, sure, they'll protest but there will be highly convincing proof - classified, but we'll be assured that it's highly convincing. People will know that it's a farce but won't speak up for fear of being targeted next.
This is why the religious right is so pro-Israel. They don't love the Jewish people. In fact, they're perpetually puzzled as to why we won't mass-convert over to Christianity. (They keep telling us to worship Jesus or burn in hell and yet we STILL don't fall in line. What's wrong with us?) However, if the Jewish people have a state and, specifically, control Jerusalem, then Revelations is one step closer to coming into being.
It's also why they don't actually want peace in the Middle East. Imagine if tomorrow some master statesman arose who convinced everyone in the Middle East to stop fighting and just get along. (We'll ignore exactly how the guy's supposed to do this and just assume for the moment that he can do this.) What does this mean for Revelations? Suddenly, Israel doesn't have a whole log of enemies surrounding them. No enemies means no armies marching on Jerusalem which means no Second Coming.
They don't want Israel to be destroyed but neither do they want it to exist in peace. As long as Israel remains in existence and surrounded by enemies, their end-of-the-world story has a chance of coming true. (An extremely tiny chance, but it's good enough for them.)
Which leads to:
4. All businesses which require encryption moving out of the UK.
5. Hackers take advantage of the lack of strong encryption to decrypt data that needed to remain secure. (e.g. credit card information)
6. Criminals and terrorists use freely available strong encryption from non-UK sources.
First person to make an encryption protocol that disguises the data as a funny cat video wins 50 Internet Points.
If you were to get me to drive a car and told me "don't worry, two out of every three people who drive this car don't die in horrible random explosions", I'd back away from the car as quickly as possible, not suddenly gain confidence in how safe the car was.
I'd agree and add: Not when you're operating something that could result in the injury/death of others due to the effects of your drug of choice.
So drink all you want and smoke as many joints as you want, but don't get behind the wheel and drive. When you do that, you're forcing other people to deal with the effects of your drug of choice. It's a pretty clear cut example of "the right to swing your fist ends at my face." Just have a designated driver and then enjoy your evening.
My son was learning about drugs in school. Some of the usual scare-tactic stuff about marijuana. Now I've never smoked (marijuana or tobacco) and rarely drink, but I told him that if I had to choose one of the three (alcohol, tobacco, or marijuana) to become addicted to, I'd choose marijuana. (With alcohol a second-place choice.) Yes, it's still a drug and has negative effects. Yes, I prefer not being addicted to anything (well, except chocolate). But marijuana isn't nearly as bad as tobacco and alcohol can be.
(Of course, I wouldn't want people getting high and driving or smoking joints in restaurants and blowing smoke my way.)
I remember the days before bans on smoking in restaurants.
Waiter: "Smoking or non-smoking?"
Me: "Non-smoking please."
Waiter leads me and my party past tons of smokers to the non-smoking section which is literally two tables away from the smoking section - as if smoke knows there's a mystical boundary and won't pass it. We spend our meal coughing as some guy puffs away two tables over and there's nothing we can do short of leave as quickly as possible and never eat out again. The guy is in the smoking section so he was fine and ALL restaurants did that so we couldn't just go to another one.
The smoke was bad for me (besides the cancer-causing stuff, I hate the smell), but my mother-in-law has breathing issues and someone blowing smoke at her all evening could result in serious breathing problems that could send her to the hospital. Now, we can eat without having to endure someone blowing toxic smoke at us. If you can't make it through a meal without lighting up, maybe it's time to admit you have a problem.
Just to give some exact numbers:
In the history of the Vice Presidency (since 1789), there have been 244 tie breaking votes made. This is an average of just over 1 a year, so a VP will vote about 4 times per term. If we count only the last 10 VPs (about a 50 year span), it's a 2 vote-per-term average. (Al Gore cast a tie breaker 4 times, Dick Cheney 8 times, and Joe Biden didn't cast any tie breakers as all.) Meanwhile, only 9 Vice Presidents (out of 47) have become President during their term as VP.
What the VP choice really does is give some insight into how the candidate would pick people. Are they going for a political play (gain the favor of a specific voting bloc), trying to "shore up" a weak spot (e.g. picking someone who knows a lot about foreign policy when the candidate doesn't know much), or picking someone who is an up-and-comer to give them the national spotlight?
You're also not allowed to compromise. So you get the left calling for strict gun control laws (maybe not the "seize everyone's guns" kind of laws but, at times, "create a national registry of all gun owners" sort of laws) and the right calling for "no gun control - in fact, give everyone guns!" Each side just yells at each other and anyone who walks to the center to find a compromise is seen as a traitor for daring to venture away from The One True Position.
The end result is that the Republicans work to shut down everything when the Democrats are in charge and the Democrats whine about how the Republicans aren't working with them... and then the positions reverse and each group does what the opposite group was doing. It's the Red Queen's Race. We're constantly running to and fro but never get anywhere. Which is just where the major political parties want us because if we're outraged about Policy X, we'll turn out to vote for Party Y and then they can blame any failures on the opposite party which makes us more outraged and cements us as Party Y voters. Compromise would spoil their GOTV plans. (Where GOTV doesn't mean "Get Out The Vote" as much as it means "Generate Outrage in The Voters.")
I'm wondering how much of Trump's ego plays into this also. It looks like his three major choices were Pence, Gingrich, and Christie. Gingrich is a personality unto himself and Trump might not have wanted another "name" on the ticket. His ego demands that he be the focus of all of the attention. Christie would have been an attack dog doing just what Trump does and Trump might not have liked the idea of having a Trump Duplicate on stage with him. So we get Generic Pence who won't overshadow Donald.
I used to use this way back before I switched to FireFox (and before Chrome was even released). Back then, it was one of the best IE wrappers to give you tabs and other functionality that more modern (at the time) browsers were adopting. I ditched it after I switched to FireFox (and, later, Chrome). I didn't even realize they were still around since IE itself now has tabs.
Even if we go old-school with the "third party hands = no warrant" interpretation we run into trouble. You write a letter, seal it in an envelope, put a stamp on it, and put it in the mailbox. Does the government have a right to open all letters and examine them to make sure you're not a terrorist? The government currently doesn't read all mail, but terrorists could conceivably use the US Mail system to communicate so (by the logic of those who use fear to whittle down our rights and gain power for themselves) we need to monitor all mail and packages delivered.
Except that most people would agree that having a government agency reading and "approving" the mail you send would be crossing a line. So why is it ok if the letter is a bunch of bits and the "US Mail system" is some e-mail provider?
And then there are the "parenting experts" (who have never had kids, mind you) who will proclaim that putting a child on a leash is horrible parenting. So the parent is supposed to always be watching the child - oh, wait. That's helicopter parenting and that's bad. So let your child roam free - but if your child gets hurt it's your fault for not paying close enough attention to them. No matter what parents do, there will always be some self-proclaimed expert who demands that the parents are to blame.
Full disclosure: Before I had kids, I thought those kid-leashes were a horrible idea. After my little guy ran off from us (I followed him to see how far he'd go and finally picked him up halfway across the store), we got him a child-leash. It let him wander independently but within reason. We got the occasional dirty look, but more people commenting on how cute he was with his "monkey backpack" on. And it helped keep him safe. I wouldn't demand that all parents use one but they can be useful for some.
As a parent (albeit one whose kids are older), little kids are surprisingly fast. One moment of distraction and your child can vanish. After two incidents with my youngest the same day - once when he decided to play hide & seek in a store (the laughing coat rack gave him away) and once when he walked off as we put his older brother's coat on (I followed him to see how far he'd go and finally just picked him up when he got halfway through the store without even looking back) - we decided to do something I thought was stupid pre-kids. We got one of those backpacks with a "leash" on it. (It was a monkey and the parent holds the long tail.) This let my son wander out of hand-holding range but still let us be sure that he was close by us.
And while I'm on the subject of "special powers" little kids have, they can also reach things that you swear are completely out of their reach. My oldest proved this when he was able to get to the "completely out of the kids' reach" scissors and give himself a haircut as we bathed his brother.
It's also about "corporate content" versus "user created content." If users are able to create good enough content by themselves, that might reduce demand for corporate produced content. So if you can find some very minor copyright concern in the user uploaded content (there's 5 seconds of music playing from someone walking by in the background), you can knock these "competitors" offline and push more of your corporate produced content.
We'll have the best stupid leaders! The Best! You'll never believe how stupid our leaders will be. You'll ask if we can get leaders any stupider and I'll say No because we'll have the stupidest leaders ever!
I'll save Pution some time and post the encryption key to the Internet right here. Ready?
1...
2...
3...
4...
5...
So the encryption key to the Internet is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to change the combination on my luggage for completely unrelated reasons.
So what's the rue for Philando Castile - the man who was shot when he reached for his wallet during a traffic stop? He had a legal concealed carry permit and wasn't a criminal. How could he have prevented being shot? "Don't get stopped by the police if you're black? Don't be armed if you're not white?"
Resisting arrest can come about if the officers say to put your hands behind your head and you don't do it as fast as they want you to.
Also, we have to take into account that the officers likely didn't know Sterling's record right then and there. They were dealing in the moment and made decisions (good or bad) based on what they saw at the moment. So it's disingenuous to say "well, the guy had these past offenses and so the officers were justified in doing this."
We've been told by the NRA and others that "the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." This goes along with a push from some people to arm more people and let them conceal carry their weapons. If we have more people carrying guns with them, would this result in more of these "pinned down by the police" turning into "shot by the police" because the person reached for what the officer assumed was a weapon?
We have the Alton Sterling shooting and, a day later, the Philando Castile shooting. In the latter case, Philando informed the officer of his legal concealed carry weapon and was shot as he reached for his wallet. Since the police have no way of knowing on the spot who is a "good guy with a gun" and who is a "bad guy with a gun", would more armed people with concealed carry permits mean more police shootings? (Or will this only be the case if the concealed carry permits are held by people with the "wrong" skin color?)
Access to every communication with no judicial oversight? The question isn't "will this be abused" but "how quickly will this be abused?" Also: "Will we ever know that it has been abused or will the Russian government cover it up?"
Bonus question: Will the Russian equivalent of Snowden flee his country with files detailing the abuses this law allows, publish the information drawing the ire of the Russian government, and flee to the US for sanctuary? Also, would the US grant him asylum or use him in a trade for Snowden?
Both halves of the political spectrum (i.e. Republicans and Democrats) push for ever-more government. They might differ in some instances as to where this bigger government should be intruding, but they both support it. The days of the Republicans being proponents of small government are gone. (If that ever was the case, in the first place. At the very least, the GOP has been a steady supporter of increasing the military's size no matter what.)
Europa is a very good candidate for extraterrestrial life. It's got oceans of liquid water kept warm by the gravitational tug of Jupiter. If we send future space probes to Europa and find microbial life, it will quite possibly be the biggest discovery of the modern era. However, if Galileo crashed on Jupiter, there would have been a slight chance that microbes on the space probe could have contaminated the moon. We do everything we can to sterilize the probes, but microbes are very good at getting everywhere and hiding out. Some can even survive space's vacuum and intense radiation. If we do find life on Europa, we want to be 100% certain that it is Europa-originated life and not Earth life brought there by something we sent to the moon earlier.
All of Star Wars is shown through the "good guys' eyes." Every action from the Empire is unspeakably evil. Every motive stopping just short of mustache twirling villainy. It's probably be done, but I'd love to read a story about Palpatine and Vader that depicts them as they likely saw themselves - as good guys trying to improve the lives of everyone in the galaxy. We saw a bit of this in the prequels (Anakin's not wanting to simply follow "the Jedi way"), but of course Lucas was too ham-fisted with them (and too distracted by shiny CGI technology) to give us any decent depiction.
The best villains are the ones who think they're the good guys. You could say that Palpatine saw the Jedi as enforcing a rigid, but broken system that was keeping He was trying to reform it, but knew that the Jedi would never willingly give up power. You could show reforms he attempted to make in the Senate that were shut down by pro-Jedi Senators. You could relay his frustration over the years as he exhausted all options and finally was forced to come up with a way to overthrow the Jedi. You might have to veer away from the prequels' story a bit but that might not be a bad thing - and you could write off the differing accounts as being due to point of view. ("Many of the truths we cling to depend greatly upon our own point of view.")