Off topic, but no such committee ever existed. You're conflating two separate organizations, the House Unamerican Activities Committee, and the Army-Archer hearings presided over by Sen. McCarthy.
Sen. McCarthy was never a member of HUAC, as that was a House committee, and he was in the Senate.
the most prior 1900 was 300ppm, now we have 350ppm
Seriously? You think 50ppm is enough to doom the planet? Even with that change, CO2 only comprises 0.035% of the atmosphere. Compare this to the atmosphere of Venus, where CO2 comprises 96.5% of the atmosphere. That's a monumental difference between the two planets, and shows just how much CO2 you need to have before things start warming up.
And considering that the vast majority of the biomass of this planet breathes in CO2 and exhales O2, I would think any real increase in CO2 would lead first to more trees and greenery growing up before the temperature going up.
You have to remember, we're talking about people who, for the most part, come from severely impoverished nations, most of which are dictatorships. Locking someone like that up for a few years in Gitmo isn't nearly as traumatic for them as it would be for, say, you or me.
Besides, if their lives are ruined, it doesn't directly affect my own. If the government wastes money and resources on something that is ultimately futile, that does.
From that same source: "Only 5% of our detainees at Guantanamo were 'scooped up' by American troops, on the battlefield or anywhere else."
Hmmm, that seems much lower than what I've been told. But then the sources for what I've read haven't been scholarly studies on the subject, so I'm more inclined to trust this number. If this is even close to accurate, it pisses me off more for the wasted time and money than anything else. It also proves, again, that the US intelligence agencies and military are woefully unable to work within backward nations like Pakistan and Afghanistan, since they consistently think those people are "just like us", and they're not a bunch of ignorant tribesmen.
Though the root of that is that, in a war zone, the level of evidence needed to prove guilt or innocence is much lower in a civil court. So the people being executed in this scenario aren't "innocent", in a legal sense, at least.
Also, for a large number of people in Gitmo, it wasn't the "on-scene commander" who decided that the person was an enemy combatant. It was a local, who was offered a relatively large sum of money in return.
I'll grant that that would be a major problem. We shouldn't be offering bounties on things like that, it only invites abuse. And if we are offering bounties, we should treat them as criminals, not enemy combatants (legal or illegal). That said, most (quite possibly almost all) of the people in Gitmo were captured by Coalition forces while conducting acts of war, not just rounded up on tips from the locals.
So, is your argument that it's OK to lock up an innocent person because it's better than executing them on the spot?
No, my argument is it's OK to execute them on the spot. We're just being nicer than that.
You can improve a patent and then get a different patent for it....
Yes...AFTER you pay the dues to the original patent-holder
That's not how patents work. If you change one thing and patent the new "invention", it's a new patent, completely separate from the original one. You have to reference the original, but there are no fees to be paid.
And, without habeas corpus, how do you prove you're not an enemy combatant (or even challenge the claim)?
Um, you don't. War zones aren't nice places, and when the military is running things, most (all?) civil rights simply don't exist. Why do you think nations that are run by their military are such horrible places to live?
If someone is an illegal enemy combatant, under the laws of war that have been established over the centuries of conflict in Europe and most of Asia, the on-scene commander has the right and duty to execute that person, without benefit of a trial. Would you rather we do that, instead of trying to ascertain who these people are?
I don't think most of the people on the left today understand the situation well enough to appreciate the pains to which the US and UK military go to to protect innocent life.
Torture did happen, and is continuing to happen in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere
Really? Have you been to Gitmo? 'Cause I have family members who were, and they've assured me that torture just doesn't happen there. Ever. Period. Unless you think solitary confinement and playing loud noise is torture, in which case you have an overly broad view of "torture" and no real experience with these things.
Suspending Habeus Corpus has also happened
No, it hasn't, and constantly repeating that mantra won't change the fact that it hasn't. Illegal enemy combatants do not get habeas corpus, any more than POWs do. It's a civil legal principle that has no place in war. Again, if you can't understand that, you don't know what you're talking about. (I'll grant that the handling of Jose Padilla was a travesty of justice, but there have been dozens of other individuals at the state and Federal level over the past several decades who have fared far worse than him thanks to the "War on Drugs". So it's not a new development, and wasn't invented by Bush and Co. Also, that wasn't a "suspension" of habeas corpus, so much as it was pretending it didn't exist for one individual. One major fuck up, no matter how serious, does not a coup d'etat make.)
the AG, so we're not talking some loon with no authority in the issue
If you're talking about Gonzalez, you're only half right: he's not someone without authority on the issue. But the man is a flippin' moron who has no place in a court of law, let alone acting as the AG. Lionel Hutz would make a better AG than Gonzalez, so don't take anything he says about habeas corpus not being in the Constitution too seriously. He just doesn't understand the issue well enough to talk about it.
Sacks of cash in the freezer or thousands dead in an illegal war of aggression?
That's like asking if you and Santa Claus found a dollar bill, who would pick it up? One of those things doesn't exist, so only one can pick up the sacks of cash in the freezer.
Ditto for your other "examples". One happened, the other didn't.
You're thinking too much about the problem: stars don't suddenly accelerate or decelerate in space, and presumably you would know the heading and speed of your target (along with any intervening objects large enough to see before you start the trip). And if the tech is high enough to be able to accelerate mass to that speed in the first place, then it is also high enough to allow for very fine control of the direction of thrust and, hence, your heading and speed. If worst comes to worst, you can always keep a fix on some "fixed" spot behind you (which would become more and more fixed the faster you go, anyway) to help calibrate your heading.
Of course it's the CO2 in the air that has produced acid rain for the north east.
CO2 has nothing to do with acid rain. Acid rain is caused by sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxides in the atmosphere. Reference
CO2 isn't the boogey man you've been led to believe. Besides, if CO2 was the primary emission of our industry, wouldn't the simplest thing to do be simply to plant more trees?
This is all just the U.S. I'm talking about. 30 years ago people were flocking to Arizona because the air was cleaner than LA and older people could breathe easier. That is no longer the case.
Are you blaming Arizona's pollution on LA, or on maybe something local? Like the large increase in population over the last, say, 30 years?
most scientists believe that the data shows that humans are having a significant impact on the rate of global climate change
I can't speak for anyone else, but for me, that sentence fragment is the whole reason I'm doubtful about global warming, or at least mankind's involvement with it. I don't really care what the majority of scientists believe, I only care about what theories most closely line up with the observed data. Once the leading proponents of anthropogenic global warming stop saying "most scientists agree" and start saying "the data clearly indicate" on a regular basis, then I'll start taking them seriously. Until then, it just sounds like they're raising an appeal to (false) authority, in this case the "majority of scientists".
It would also help if the self-proclaimed spokespeople for the environmental/global warming crowd didn't tend to be Hollywood entertainers and idiots. Al Gore is no idiot, but, come on, am I really supposed to trust Leonardo DiCaprio or Sheryl Crowe when it comes to interpreting scientific data?
That's all fine and dandy, but don't be surprised when your customers eventually leave you for someone who will allow them to call up Aunt Jenny to make sure she got home OK from the family outing at the beach.
Something like 50% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage, usually without the woman's knowledge that she was ever pregnant.
Every life ends in death. Does that make murder OK?
There is also substantial disagreement as to when life begins.
That's about the only argument that makes sense: aborting non-living tissue is just a medical procedure. Killing a child is murder. At some point during a pregnancy, a line is crossed. We as a society just have to determine where that line is (and maybe move it one way or the other later, depending on how much more we learn about such things).
Slashdot Mirror
The McCarthy Committee on UnAmerican Activities
Off topic, but no such committee ever existed. You're conflating two separate organizations, the House Unamerican Activities Committee, and the Army-Archer hearings presided over by Sen. McCarthy.
Sen. McCarthy was never a member of HUAC, as that was a House committee, and he was in the Senate.
the most prior 1900 was 300ppm, now we have 350ppm
Seriously? You think 50ppm is enough to doom the planet? Even with that change, CO2 only comprises 0.035% of the atmosphere. Compare this to the atmosphere of Venus, where CO2 comprises 96.5% of the atmosphere. That's a monumental difference between the two planets, and shows just how much CO2 you need to have before things start warming up.
And considering that the vast majority of the biomass of this planet breathes in CO2 and exhales O2, I would think any real increase in CO2 would lead first to more trees and greenery growing up before the temperature going up.
You have to remember, we're talking about people who, for the most part, come from severely impoverished nations, most of which are dictatorships. Locking someone like that up for a few years in Gitmo isn't nearly as traumatic for them as it would be for, say, you or me.
Besides, if their lives are ruined, it doesn't directly affect my own. If the government wastes money and resources on something that is ultimately futile, that does.
From that same source: "Only 5% of our detainees at Guantanamo were 'scooped up' by American troops, on the battlefield or anywhere else."
Hmmm, that seems much lower than what I've been told. But then the sources for what I've read haven't been scholarly studies on the subject, so I'm more inclined to trust this number. If this is even close to accurate, it pisses me off more for the wasted time and money than anything else. It also proves, again, that the US intelligence agencies and military are woefully unable to work within backward nations like Pakistan and Afghanistan, since they consistently think those people are "just like us", and they're not a bunch of ignorant tribesmen.
D'oh! You got me with that one.
Though the root of that is that, in a war zone, the level of evidence needed to prove guilt or innocence is much lower in a civil court. So the people being executed in this scenario aren't "innocent", in a legal sense, at least.
Except if you're looking for FOSS OS laptop, where do you take it?
I haven't tried this place yet, but they look promising: System76.com.
Also, for a large number of people in Gitmo, it wasn't the "on-scene commander" who decided that the person was an enemy combatant. It was a local, who was offered a relatively large sum of money in return.
I'll grant that that would be a major problem. We shouldn't be offering bounties on things like that, it only invites abuse. And if we are offering bounties, we should treat them as criminals, not enemy combatants (legal or illegal). That said, most (quite possibly almost all) of the people in Gitmo were captured by Coalition forces while conducting acts of war, not just rounded up on tips from the locals.
So, is your argument that it's OK to lock up an innocent person because it's better than executing them on the spot?
No, my argument is it's OK to execute them on the spot. We're just being nicer than that.
You can improve a patent and then get a different patent for it. ...
Yes...AFTER you pay the dues to the original patent-holder
That's not how patents work. If you change one thing and patent the new "invention", it's a new patent, completely separate from the original one. You have to reference the original, but there are no fees to be paid.
And, without habeas corpus, how do you prove you're not an enemy combatant (or even challenge the claim)?
Um, you don't. War zones aren't nice places, and when the military is running things, most (all?) civil rights simply don't exist. Why do you think nations that are run by their military are such horrible places to live?
If someone is an illegal enemy combatant, under the laws of war that have been established over the centuries of conflict in Europe and most of Asia, the on-scene commander has the right and duty to execute that person, without benefit of a trial. Would you rather we do that, instead of trying to ascertain who these people are?
I don't think most of the people on the left today understand the situation well enough to appreciate the pains to which the US and UK military go to to protect innocent life.
No, dude, The Prince is the walk through.
Torture did happen, and is continuing to happen in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere
Really? Have you been to Gitmo? 'Cause I have family members who were, and they've assured me that torture just doesn't happen there. Ever. Period. Unless you think solitary confinement and playing loud noise is torture, in which case you have an overly broad view of "torture" and no real experience with these things.
Suspending Habeus Corpus has also happened
No, it hasn't, and constantly repeating that mantra won't change the fact that it hasn't. Illegal enemy combatants do not get habeas corpus, any more than POWs do. It's a civil legal principle that has no place in war. Again, if you can't understand that, you don't know what you're talking about. (I'll grant that the handling of Jose Padilla was a travesty of justice, but there have been dozens of other individuals at the state and Federal level over the past several decades who have fared far worse than him thanks to the "War on Drugs". So it's not a new development, and wasn't invented by Bush and Co. Also, that wasn't a "suspension" of habeas corpus, so much as it was pretending it didn't exist for one individual. One major fuck up, no matter how serious, does not a coup d'etat make.)
the AG, so we're not talking some loon with no authority in the issue
If you're talking about Gonzalez, you're only half right: he's not someone without authority on the issue. But the man is a flippin' moron who has no place in a court of law, let alone acting as the AG. Lionel Hutz would make a better AG than Gonzalez, so don't take anything he says about habeas corpus not being in the Constitution too seriously. He just doesn't understand the issue well enough to talk about it.
Gerrymandering, and indeed, much of politics, is a game.
Sweet! Got a link to the cheat codes?
This has been a coup d'état, with hacked elections and some really dodgy and quite *odd* "terror" attacks
I'll believe this on January 21, 2009, if Bush is still sitting in the White House, and not a minute before.
Sacks of cash in the freezer or thousands dead in an illegal war of aggression?
That's like asking if you and Santa Claus found a dollar bill, who would pick it up? One of those things doesn't exist, so only one can pick up the sacks of cash in the freezer.
Ditto for your other "examples". One happened, the other didn't.
You're thinking too much about the problem: stars don't suddenly accelerate or decelerate in space, and presumably you would know the heading and speed of your target (along with any intervening objects large enough to see before you start the trip). And if the tech is high enough to be able to accelerate mass to that speed in the first place, then it is also high enough to allow for very fine control of the direction of thrust and, hence, your heading and speed. If worst comes to worst, you can always keep a fix on some "fixed" spot behind you (which would become more and more fixed the faster you go, anyway) to help calibrate your heading.
And then there's the matter of navigating when you can't see out.
That part is trivial: dead reckoning.
Of course it's the CO2 in the air that has produced acid rain for the north east.
CO2 has nothing to do with acid rain. Acid rain is caused by sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxides in the atmosphere. Reference
CO2 isn't the boogey man you've been led to believe. Besides, if CO2 was the primary emission of our industry, wouldn't the simplest thing to do be simply to plant more trees?
This is all just the U.S. I'm talking about. 30 years ago people were flocking to Arizona because the air was cleaner than LA and older people could breathe easier. That is no longer the case.
Are you blaming Arizona's pollution on LA, or on maybe something local? Like the large increase in population over the last, say, 30 years?
most scientists believe that the data shows that humans are having a significant impact on the rate of global climate change
I can't speak for anyone else, but for me, that sentence fragment is the whole reason I'm doubtful about global warming, or at least mankind's involvement with it. I don't really care what the majority of scientists believe, I only care about what theories most closely line up with the observed data. Once the leading proponents of anthropogenic global warming stop saying "most scientists agree" and start saying "the data clearly indicate" on a regular basis, then I'll start taking them seriously. Until then, it just sounds like they're raising an appeal to (false) authority, in this case the "majority of scientists".
It would also help if the self-proclaimed spokespeople for the environmental/global warming crowd didn't tend to be Hollywood entertainers and idiots. Al Gore is no idiot, but, come on, am I really supposed to trust Leonardo DiCaprio or Sheryl Crowe when it comes to interpreting scientific data?
Hey, aren't you late for work? Those burgers ain't gonna flip themselves, you know.
That's all fine and dandy, but don't be surprised when your customers eventually leave you for someone who will allow them to call up Aunt Jenny to make sure she got home OK from the family outing at the beach.
Crazy people/conspiracy theorists/tattooed whackos/Green Party folks won't get airtime.
Oh come on, some of those people will be up on the stage!
Something like 50% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage, usually without the woman's knowledge that she was ever pregnant.
Every life ends in death. Does that make murder OK?
There is also substantial disagreement as to when life begins.
That's about the only argument that makes sense: aborting non-living tissue is just a medical procedure. Killing a child is murder. At some point during a pregnancy, a line is crossed. We as a society just have to determine where that line is (and maybe move it one way or the other later, depending on how much more we learn about such things).
This is one reason I like Ron Paul. ... He's authentic, and I think that is why people are gravitating toward him.
Replace "Ron Paul" with "Fred Thompson", and you might be on to something.
Trust me, I once put sugar in a guy's engine and it totally messed it up.