Stolen from a great post above, but see below. As Justice Stevens points out in his dissenting argument, the answer is a resounding "Yes".
But [Justice] Stevens and the dissenters said the majority was ignoring the long-understood rule that the government could limit election money from corporations, unions and others, such as foreign governments. "Under today's decision, multinational corporations controlled by foreign governments" would have the same rights as Americans to spend money to tilt U.S. elections. "Corporations are not human beings. They can't vote and can't run for office," Stevens said, and should be subject to restrictions under the election laws.
Technically, Buddhism is non-theistic. God or gods may or may not exist, but the question is ultimately irrelevant because attachment is the cause of samsara.
Maybe in your snide haze, you missed the fact that those restrictive laws had virtually no effect on gun violence. Chicago's gun laws have been on the books since the early 80's and we just had one of the deadliest summers in a decade due to gun violence. Just like the War on Drugs, let's keep doing the same thing even though it's proven not to work. I agree with one of the other grandchildren posts in this thread: societal causes lead to violence, not guns. Given that over half of households in the country have at least one firearm in the house but deaths due to guns totaled only 16,000 or so, the prevalence of guns is obviously not the problem. Australia is a entirely different society and gun ownership was not ingrained in their history as deeply as ours, so stop comparing apples and oranges. I'm comparing American cities that have vastly different gun laws and vastly different rates of gun violence.
But I love how people how don't own guns immediately blame the tool instead of the perpetrator. Proper respect for guns comes from use. Most people who do not own guns have never held one, to say nothing of actually ever shooting one. They typically react uncomfortably, if not with outright alarm, when in their presence. All they know of firearms they learn from TV and movies. They never acknowledge these prejudices when it comes to discussion about gun laws. To quote a saying I've seen over the years, it's as if the illiterate were dictating what you can and cannot read.
I must be completely out of my head then, because I'm a self-described "liberal" who strongly supports the 2nd Amendment. I own a gun, precisely because Illinois (and Chicago in particular) have much stricter gun laws than the rest of the country. Coincidentally, we have higher murder rates and crimes in which a gun is used than the rest of the country too. The city with the highest murder rate (typically by firearms) is Washington D.C., which has a total ban on any firearms ownership. Seeing a trend?
And btw, martial arts as self-defense against a firearm is only realistic in the movies.
And no, they don't always helpfully attack one or two at a time: watch half a dozen cops taking down a violent drunk some time.
That's only b/c the drunks never have a 6-foot bamboo stick with shattered ends. I saw Drunken Master 2 - as long as you have that stick you can be shit-faced and take out over 30 guys.
Me*: Guess who just changed his vote in November bitch!
*I am one of his Illinois constituents and helped him attain his Senate seat and Illinois Democratic Primary victory. The only two votes I will ever cast for this fraud.
WTF? You want to decriminalize possession and use but don't want to pay the 1 cent of your tax dollars that goes into rehabilitation/treatment or welfare? But after methheads commit a crime, then lock them up! If it's your brother or mother, tough shit huh? So not only are you cold-hearted and cheap, but completely ignorant to the causes of a lot of violent crime.
Allowing people to clean up from drugs keeps them from committing crime when they inevitably bottom out. It must be hard for someone so arrogant to consider that some people may not have your superior foresight and cost/benefits analysis with regards to their own behavior. But many people who succumb to drug addiction would get clean if they had the resources to do so and never go down the path again. Society as a whole benefits from giving these people a helping hand. Rather than being unproductive and potentially criminal offenders, they become productive contributors to society who work a job, pay taxes, and hopefully use their own experiences to prevent others from following a self-destructive path.
Whether it is for rehabilitation programs or new jails, you are going to pay for something. Contrary to DNA collection, drug addiction treatment is an excellent way to actually prevent crimes before they are committed.
Re:It's a serious art form
on
Reading Comics
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· Score: 1
And to those who think the american form is not I submit Exhibit A)Sandman Exhibit B)The Watchmen
I think some people are way too casual about having incompatible worldviews with a significant other, but then again, I'm a person with very firm atheistic beliefs. Maybe if you are agnostic, for example, you can tolerate someone who believes something which, by your view, could potentially be correct.
But if your mate believes something which you see as patently foolish - like the idea that everyone needs to be "saved" by believing a Jewish prophet rose from the dead to wipe away the sin of a woman eating a piece of fruit because a snake told her to do so, despite all evidence to the contrary, and despite a total lack of explanation as to how the cherry-picked oral histories of disparate societies written 2000 to 4000 years ago relates to human events - I think this deep disagreement about how life works will lead to bitterness and problems. It's hard to conceal contempt.
And yes, I'm braced for the blind Christian hypocrisy of Slashdot's low-modded fundamentalist users.
Perhaps everyone should start voting first before we start assuming the government is broken?
Voting is irrelevant. Rule of Law is not upheld by voting, it is upheld by bringing criminals to justice. When criminals control the dispensing of justice you have a broken system. Our forefathers rightly divided the government to institute checks and balances but what happens when all three refuse to maintain balance? You have the "nuclear option", clearly defined in our Declaration of Indepence; the governedmust throw off their leaders.
... Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Our executive branch acts like a dictator, our legislative branch legitimizes the most egregious and illegal activities of the executive, and our judicial branch is stacked with partisan hacks who use the most specious legal reasoning to uphold the values of their administration rather than the rule of law. This government is broken. How much more will Americans suffer before they demand change? Does anyone still think the 2nd Amendment is not important? I'm ready to stop writing letters and start firing weapons.
I've personally never thought - during all this suggestion from various websites - that the Music industry will ever die. In fact, I just think that the current status is a precursor to it revamping itself and embracing the digital era.
I agree with you completely. I don't think the revamping will be limited to the delivery method of music either (CD vs. digital download). The RIAA is not only guilty of failure to innovate technically and economically but also in marketing, promotion, and properly identifying niche audiences. I recently finished reading Ian Christe's Sound of the Beast, an excellent history of heavy metal. He has a telling statistic towards the end that sums up the RIAA's troubles:
Yet the best news for heavy metal comes from the bottom line. While overall music sales during the first half of 2003 declined 8.3 percent, the heavy metal and aggressive rock segment of the market bounded from 10.9 million units one year earlier to 36.2 million - a whopping upswing in sales of 232 percent, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The news comes during a period of rampant file-sharing and CD duplication, while the RIAA subpoenas private citizens for copyright abuses. As music business trendspotters proclaim the death of the industry at the hands of immoral MP3 pirates, metal fans uncover lost and forgotten favorites, revel in more free and paid music than ever before, and breathe new life into old-timers like Band and Thin Lizzy, sending them back on the road for the first time in decades.
Interesting how statistics like these are never mentioned. I doubt many multi-platinum records will be produced by bands like Lamb of God, Children of Bodom, or Opeth. However, these bands have rabid, enthusiastic, and EXTREMELY loyal fans who will continue to buy CDs to support the music they love. The RIAA is not supporting these types of communities as well as independent labels such as Century Media and GUN Records are. They are still looking to manufacture trends and create the next multi-platinum acts.
Unfortunately for the RIAA, that is increasingly a vestigial occurrence due to the internet. The major record companies are unable to cope with the greatest change beyond file-sharing: viral, grassroots word-of-mouth through the internet. This has made it possible to learn about new bands and genres of music without ever turning on the TV or radio and is the driving force behind the discovery of new music for many people. The RIAA have made it quite clear they see it as nothing more than an avenue for copyright infringement and have had an antagonistic relationship with the online community for over a decade now. This inability to deal with the lose of control over creating trends is the music industry's greatest failing. These lawsuits are nothing more than old men screaming "GET OFF MY LAWN" to the younger generations who find music their own ways and not as their parents once did.
Last time I checked a woman's right to choose was protected by a Supreme Court decision, not the Constitution.
WRONG. You need to check again.
According to the Roe decision, most laws against abortion in the United States violated a constitutional right to privacy under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
I'll be honest: I absolutely cannot tell the difference between the posts that are modded "-1: Flamebait" and the ones modded "+5: Funny". Well done moderators!:) LOL!!!111 *
* The researchers also found that putting smilies and "LOL" in a sarcastic post substantially reduced the chances of a "Flamebait" moderation...
How about instead of arguing with each other over who is less corrupt, why don't people realize that republicans and democrats ARE BOTH AMERICAN!!! YOU ARE ON THE SAME TEAM!!!
Okay, but how would the Media make any money if they weren't able to rake in viewers by stoking partisan hatred?
Bullshit. Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio was able to stop counting his money long enough to obey the law. Nacchio was the only one who was fucked sideways by our government when they had a shitfit over his refusal to allow illegal wiretapping and eliminated Qwest from the running for a bunch of government contracts. Oh yeah, then they prosecuted him for insider trading when he sold a bunch of stock figuring that the contracts would help Qwest's financial woes.
The Telcos who assisted the government? Those motherfuckers get what they deserve and I hope the forthcoming class-action lawsuits bankrupt every last one of them. If we were a just society, we would send the executives and the Board of Directors from each company to Gitmo and let them rot in Enemy Combatant limbo. If pissing on the Constitution isn't the terrorist behavior of an American insurgent, then I don't know what is.
Then it's obviously a fraud perpetrated by the Japanese. As a user of Google Moon, I am well aware of the fact that the Moon is yellow at high resolutions.
Never, EVER forget that the rules of corporate culture are not created by an unknowable, amorphis entity. Individuals run, sit on the Boards of Directors of, and invest in these companies. Somewhere, there is a meatsack that can be held accountable for shitty decisions that are made by "companies". They are the ones that need to be identified and taken to task.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't forget, Hari Seldon's solution included the reduction of 10,000 years of barbarism to 1,000. I started counting at 2000. Only 990 years to go!
Stolen from a great post above, but see below. As Justice Stevens points out in his dissenting argument, the answer is a resounding "Yes".
But [Justice] Stevens and the dissenters said the majority was ignoring the long-understood rule that the government could limit election money from corporations, unions and others, such as foreign governments. "Under today's decision, multinational corporations controlled by foreign governments" would have the same rights as Americans to spend money to tilt U.S. elections. "Corporations are not human beings. They can't vote and can't run for office," Stevens said, and should be subject to restrictions under the election laws.
"Buddhism is atheistic"
Technically, Buddhism is non-theistic. God or gods may or may not exist, but the question is ultimately irrelevant because attachment is the cause of samsara.
Maybe in your snide haze, you missed the fact that those restrictive laws had virtually no effect on gun violence. Chicago's gun laws have been on the books since the early 80's and we just had one of the deadliest summers in a decade due to gun violence. Just like the War on Drugs, let's keep doing the same thing even though it's proven not to work. I agree with one of the other grandchildren posts in this thread: societal causes lead to violence, not guns. Given that over half of households in the country have at least one firearm in the house but deaths due to guns totaled only 16,000 or so, the prevalence of guns is obviously not the problem. Australia is a entirely different society and gun ownership was not ingrained in their history as deeply as ours, so stop comparing apples and oranges. I'm comparing American cities that have vastly different gun laws and vastly different rates of gun violence.
But I love how people how don't own guns immediately blame the tool instead of the perpetrator. Proper respect for guns comes from use. Most people who do not own guns have never held one, to say nothing of actually ever shooting one. They typically react uncomfortably, if not with outright alarm, when in their presence. All they know of firearms they learn from TV and movies. They never acknowledge these prejudices when it comes to discussion about gun laws. To quote a saying I've seen over the years, it's as if the illiterate were dictating what you can and cannot read.
I must be completely out of my head then, because I'm a self-described "liberal" who strongly supports the 2nd Amendment. I own a gun, precisely because Illinois (and Chicago in particular) have much stricter gun laws than the rest of the country. Coincidentally, we have higher murder rates and crimes in which a gun is used than the rest of the country too. The city with the highest murder rate (typically by firearms) is Washington D.C., which has a total ban on any firearms ownership. Seeing a trend?
And btw, martial arts as self-defense against a firearm is only realistic in the movies.
This is a very scary precedent, and it seems to blur some historical distinctions between federal agencies and private interests.
I don't think I'm being hyperbolic when I say, we are moving closer and closer to fascism in this country.
You're just using this opportunity to gloat. ... or lie.
And no, they don't always helpfully attack one or two at a time: watch half a dozen cops taking down a violent drunk some time.
That's only b/c the drunks never have a 6-foot bamboo stick with shattered ends. I saw Drunken Master 2 - as long as you have that stick you can be shit-faced and take out over 30 guys.
"Change we can believe in" No change at all...
Obama: Change we can believe in!
Me*: Guess who just changed his vote in November bitch!
*I am one of his Illinois constituents and helped him attain his Senate seat and Illinois Democratic Primary victory. The only two votes I will ever cast for this fraud.
I agree completely. That was taken across the street from my Dad's house. I think I really need to visit my old man more often.
You bring new meaning to the phrase "Talk to the hand".
From TFA:
OK, now I was getting a boner. Cabbage Patch Kids Adventures in the Park for Atari 2600.
Is it just me or did this creep out anyone else?
WTF? You want to decriminalize possession and use but don't want to pay the 1 cent of your tax dollars that goes into rehabilitation/treatment or welfare? But after methheads commit a crime, then lock them up! If it's your brother or mother, tough shit huh? So not only are you cold-hearted and cheap, but completely ignorant to the causes of a lot of violent crime.
Allowing people to clean up from drugs keeps them from committing crime when they inevitably bottom out. It must be hard for someone so arrogant to consider that some people may not have your superior foresight and cost/benefits analysis with regards to their own behavior. But many people who succumb to drug addiction would get clean if they had the resources to do so and never go down the path again. Society as a whole benefits from giving these people a helping hand. Rather than being unproductive and potentially criminal offenders, they become productive contributors to society who work a job, pay taxes, and hopefully use their own experiences to prevent others from following a self-destructive path.
Whether it is for rehabilitation programs or new jails, you are going to pay for something. Contrary to DNA collection, drug addiction treatment is an excellent way to actually prevent crimes before they are committed.
And to those who think the american form is not I submit
Exhibit A)Sandman
Exhibit B)The Watchmen
Both written by British authors!
I think some people are way too casual about having incompatible worldviews with a significant other, but then again, I'm a person with very firm atheistic beliefs. Maybe if you are agnostic, for example, you can tolerate someone who believes something which, by your view, could potentially be correct.
But if your mate believes something which you see as patently foolish - like the idea that everyone needs to be "saved" by believing a Jewish prophet rose from the dead to wipe away the sin of a woman eating a piece of fruit because a snake told her to do so, despite all evidence to the contrary, and despite a total lack of explanation as to how the cherry-picked oral histories of disparate societies written 2000 to 4000 years ago relates to human events - I think this deep disagreement about how life works will lead to bitterness and problems. It's hard to conceal contempt.
And yes, I'm braced for the blind Christian hypocrisy of Slashdot's low-modded fundamentalist users.
Perhaps everyone should start voting first before we start assuming the government is broken?
Voting is irrelevant. Rule of Law is not upheld by voting, it is upheld by bringing criminals to justice. When criminals control the dispensing of justice you have a broken system. Our forefathers rightly divided the government to institute checks and balances but what happens when all three refuse to maintain balance? You have the "nuclear option", clearly defined in our Declaration of Indepence; the governed must throw off their leaders.
Our executive branch acts like a dictator, our legislative branch legitimizes the most egregious and illegal activities of the executive, and our judicial branch is stacked with partisan hacks who use the most specious legal reasoning to uphold the values of their administration rather than the rule of law. This government is broken. How much more will Americans suffer before they demand change? Does anyone still think the 2nd Amendment is not important? I'm ready to stop writing letters and start firing weapons.
I agree with you completely. I don't think the revamping will be limited to the delivery method of music either (CD vs. digital download). The RIAA is not only guilty of failure to innovate technically and economically but also in marketing, promotion, and properly identifying niche audiences. I recently finished reading Ian Christe's Sound of the Beast, an excellent history of heavy metal. He has a telling statistic towards the end that sums up the RIAA's troubles:
Interesting how statistics like these are never mentioned. I doubt many multi-platinum records will be produced by bands like Lamb of God, Children of Bodom, or Opeth. However, these bands have rabid, enthusiastic, and EXTREMELY loyal fans who will continue to buy CDs to support the music they love. The RIAA is not supporting these types of communities as well as independent labels such as Century Media and GUN Records are. They are still looking to manufacture trends and create the next multi-platinum acts.
Unfortunately for the RIAA, that is increasingly a vestigial occurrence due to the internet. The major record companies are unable to cope with the greatest change beyond file-sharing: viral, grassroots word-of-mouth through the internet. This has made it possible to learn about new bands and genres of music without ever turning on the TV or radio and is the driving force behind the discovery of new music for many people. The RIAA have made it quite clear they see it as nothing more than an avenue for copyright infringement and have had an antagonistic relationship with the online community for over a decade now. This inability to deal with the lose of control over creating trends is the music industry's greatest failing. These lawsuits are nothing more than old men screaming "GET OFF MY LAWN" to the younger generations who find music their own ways and not as their parents once did.
WRONG. You need to check again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_V._Wade
Who would use this service? It's like going to a news site where all they do is provide a brief, degraded version of an actual news story...
In that case, it sounds like it's tailor-made for people who watch Fox News...
I'll be honest: I absolutely cannot tell the difference between the posts that are modded "-1: Flamebait" and the ones modded "+5: Funny". Well done moderators! :) LOL!!!111 *
* The researchers also found that putting smilies and "LOL" in a sarcastic post substantially reduced the chances of a "Flamebait" moderation...
How about instead of arguing with each other over who is less corrupt, why don't people realize that republicans and democrats ARE BOTH AMERICAN!!! YOU ARE ON THE SAME TEAM!!!
Okay, but how would the Media make any money if they weren't able to rake in viewers by stoking partisan hatred?
Bullshit. Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio was able to stop counting his money long enough to obey the law. Nacchio was the only one who was fucked sideways by our government when they had a shitfit over his refusal to allow illegal wiretapping and eliminated Qwest from the running for a bunch of government contracts. Oh yeah, then they prosecuted him for insider trading when he sold a bunch of stock figuring that the contracts would help Qwest's financial woes.
The Telcos who assisted the government? Those motherfuckers get what they deserve and I hope the forthcoming class-action lawsuits bankrupt every last one of them. If we were a just society, we would send the executives and the Board of Directors from each company to Gitmo and let them rot in Enemy Combatant limbo. If pissing on the Constitution isn't the terrorist behavior of an American insurgent, then I don't know what is.
Then it's obviously a fraud perpetrated by the Japanese. As a user of Google Moon, I am well aware of the fact that the Moon is yellow at high resolutions.
Never, EVER forget that the rules of corporate culture are not created by an unknowable, amorphis entity. Individuals run, sit on the Boards of Directors of, and invest in these companies. Somewhere, there is a meatsack that can be held accountable for shitty decisions that are made by "companies". They are the ones that need to be identified and taken to task.