Yeah, but the idiots will think it is an impenetrable shield. All this kind of shit does is encourage risky behavior by instilling a false sense of security when there is none.
At the very most, it should only be disruptive to the party you're protesting - not interfering with the lives, safety or movements of people who aren't involved.
Once they're affected by the protest they're no longer uninvolved. Again, that's precisely the point of a protest. If it can be easily dismissed and ignored then it's not an effective protest.
You may disagree with the message, but you're forced to deal with the protest, whether you like it or not. Mission Accomplished.
If I'm trying to just get the fuck to work so I can pay my bills, suffering a delay because some OWS chuckleheads have decided that it's a good idea to form an impromptu road block or occupy a fucking bridge is NOT going to get me to think any better of them or anything they say
Maybe not, but you will think about them, as opposed to the current, legal method of protest which barely gets a 30 second soundbite on the 11 o'clock news.
Do you think they honestly give a fuck what you think of their reasons for protest? The whole point is to bring attention to issues that normally do not get attention, and the way you do that is protests just like this.
How many people were "inconvenienced" by the sit-ins at the lunch counters down south in the 60's? I bet there were a lot people bitching that they just want a sandwich and that everyone should stop making it difficult for them to get one, just like you bitching about being late to work. Sometimes it takes drastic measures to get attention to a problem. It wasn't until the crack epidemic spilled out of the inner-cities that anyone started doing any fucking thing about it. People don't notice the homeless until they have to step over them on the curb or are forced to ignore them when they come by shaking their cup for some spare change.
You understand this perfectly, I know you do, which is why I'm forced to conclude that your problem is not with the protest itself but the message behind it, which is pretty obvious given the way you describe it. Based on that, I think you can now perfectly make the connection between your attitude and why they don't give a single fuck about you being late for work.
When a protest is planned and permitted, the appropriate police force is brought in ahead of time, barriers are erected, and the protesting group is cordoned into an appropriate area.
Thus becoming completely marginalized. This is precisely why protests like this are not done "by the books".
It's really no different than the "Free Speech Zones" they started breaking out during W.'s term. Keep the people with the bullhorns far away from the tourists so nobody has to look at them or hear what they're saying. You can understand why that's not exactly conducive to a 'protest' actually being effective, right?
The fact that you were inconvenienced means the protest is working exactly as intended.
"This is absolutely, unalterably correct and anybody entertaining even reasonable skepticism is an IDIOT"
Nobody has a problem with reasonable skepticism. It's unreasonable skepticism, such as that you often hear in the far-right wing media, that people are getting sick of.
The anti-vaccination assholes, and the people that just refuse to believe that mankind is having an effect on the climate, are two good examples of where you see a lot of unreasonable skepticism, but there are plenty others...
I knew the far-right had officially gone full retarded when I had someone tell me climate change was a myth because Al Gore. Seriously, that was the reason why it was a myth: Al Gore. Give me a fucking break.
I think it has a lot more to do with their piss-poor customer service and over-the-top pimping of the service plans, myself. I honestly don't know anybody that's had a good experience in a Best Buy in at least a year...not that it's a common topic of conversation or anything.
So is any potential employer that would warrant it in the first place by asking for shit they have no right to ask for.
I mean, employers outright lie to their employees all the time, and a job interview is often a competition in blowing smoke up the ass on both sides. How many people have been told one thing in an interview only to find out that reality is completely different once they're actually employed there? A padded resume versus the bullshit lie that most any given company is 'family oriented' (because we all know how often that is true), telling them you have no social media accounts versus them telling you that they promote based on merit alone (because we all know how often that is true)...I could go on and on...
4. A population too stupid to make a throw-away account to give the employer, that talks about how much the prospective employee likes cute puppies. Post something to it once a week or so, give it some friends.
Or, you know, just tell them you don't have an account. Even if you do, what are they going to do? Not hire you? Oh noes!!!
Although, I admit, a throwaway account would be pretty funny if you went completely overboard with it. Plaster it with a metric shit-ton of Christian imagery and talk about how much you love Jesus, church, and capitalism. That's sure to impress most any major employer in the U.S..
Pretty hard to do considering I don't have a Facebook account. If they want to make having a social media presence a condition of employment, I guess that's just not the job for me...
I seriously don't understand why people even admit to having one to a prospective employer in the first place. Kids, just say no! Worst case scenario, you don't get a job offer at a place that you probably wouldn't want to work at anyway.
Let's not pretend, though, that something like this is going to modify employer behavior in any way. I know people in HR that have using Facebook as an unofficial reference on potential applicants since not long after it was open to non-edu accounts. Proving this in court, especially in a discrimination case, is a pipe-dream. No lawyer would take the case in the first place.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's a good thing to have actual regulations on the books if it helps the.000001% of cases that actually get brought to trial. I'm just too realistic to see this as any sort of panacea at all.
If you run some statistics, I'm pretty sure you'd find a very low number of millionaires ever went on Welfare or Medicaid or Unemployment or Food Stamps or Section 8, etc, etc.
You do realize that taxes subsidize a hell of a lot more than that, don't you? Everything from the food you eat to the water you drink to the air you breathe all has a cost on society that is borne through taxation.
The overarching point is: Nobody, not even a millionaire, has lived independent of the "nanny state" they're bitching about having to support today. They're just pissed off because now it's their turn to pay into the system for the next generation. All those programs you mentioned came about long ago and have been supported through taxation since many of those bitching today were even fucking born. They weren't just created yesterday.
They're not special; generations before them bore the weight of these social programs, because the alternative is much worse. It's a shame so many people that grew up during the Depression are gone now...because I honestly doubt that things would have even gotten this far if a sizable number of them were still around to tell these anti-safety nets people how fucking retarded they are and how much worse things can be. It's really no different then all the people trying to wipe labor laws off the books in the interests of "spurring job growth"...you could ask someone working as a meat packer at the turn of the century how smart that is if any were alive today, which is also why I think things have even gotten to the point they have on that front, as well: nobody still around with first-hand knowledge.
If the government has to spend a bunch of money to make sure that doesn't happen, I'm perfectly okay with that.
What happens when they spend the money and it still happens? Is that cool, too? These guys are fucking criminals, I proctored the TSA testing for 3 years. Believe me, half of them looked like they were either under the influence of narcotics or had more than a passing familiarity with them. You are absolutely no safer with them then you were with the security you had before 9/11.
Thank you for once again proving my point that all of leftism is based on the threat of violence.
By the way, I'm wiling to bet that non-leftists have a higher gun ownership rate than "liberals" and "progressives".
Oh, read a history book for fuck's sake. There are numerous examples throughout human history of what happens when too much wealth and power become concentrated in the hands of too few. But please, give me an example of what happens when the poor "punishes" the rich too much through "excessive taxation". Oh wait, it's never fucking happened. Hell, I'm still waiting for the "job creators" to close their businesses like they keep threatening because of what a burden their wealth is. Ain't happened yet. Ditto with all the whiners bitching and crying about paying taxes that keep threatening to leave...they'll move their money overseas, but they'll never move themselves, because Lord knows they love the benefits of living in a first-world country, they just don't feel they should have to pay for it. Then they post comments on the internet and wonder why nobody has any fucking sympathy for them whatsoever, dismissing it as 'soshulism'. What a fucking joke...
As for the guns, well, again, guns don't count for shit when you've got numbers, and by playing these games and sucking more and more out of the middle class, they're ensuring that they're going to be outnumbered about 1,000,000 to one. Think that doesn't matter? Read that history book again, because there are also numerous examples of that in there, too.
Oh, my bad, I keep forgetting that people like you have no fucking concept of what it's like to be so dirt poor that you can't afford to take the day from work...
That's fine, and believe me, I already do (which is why I'm typing this on a 5 year old computer, haven't bought media in almost as long, bike to work, and buy local whenever I can) but I want my government to stop giving them money, too. I don't mind paying taxes when they go into the community and are actually used to help people that need help, but I'll be damned if I'm going to be supportive of giving huge subsidies to industries that are already insanely profitable.
But, please, don't let me get in the way of your excellent "hooray for me, fuck you"/"all's fair in love and war" attitude. Just don't expect much sympathy when society adopts the same mentality and starts rolling the guillotines through the gated communities. It's happened before, and it's gonna happen again.
The only way you were able to get the education and have the upbringing necessary to facilitate you getting a good job in the first place was through the taxes paid by those that came before you. Your upbringing was just as subsidized by the state as anyone else's in this country.
Think not? How many scholars are coming out of Somalia these days? Without a conducive environment that allows one to be upwardly mobile, there is nothing but the ultra-poor and the warlords before too long, just like in Somalia. That conducive environment is completely subsidized by the state, from something as base as the availability of clean drinking water to the government backed loans that students take out to go to school.
This "now that it's my turn I don't want to pay taxes!!!" bullshit is so completely ridiculous.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, but the idiots will think it is an impenetrable shield. All this kind of shit does is encourage risky behavior by instilling a false sense of security when there is none.
At the very most, it should only be disruptive to the party you're protesting - not interfering with the lives, safety or movements of people who aren't involved.
Once they're affected by the protest they're no longer uninvolved. Again, that's precisely the point of a protest. If it can be easily dismissed and ignored then it's not an effective protest.
You may disagree with the message, but you're forced to deal with the protest, whether you like it or not. Mission Accomplished.
If I'm trying to just get the fuck to work so I can pay my bills, suffering a delay because some OWS chuckleheads have decided that it's a good idea to form an impromptu road block or occupy a fucking bridge is NOT going to get me to think any better of them or anything they say
Maybe not, but you will think about them, as opposed to the current, legal method of protest which barely gets a 30 second soundbite on the 11 o'clock news.
Do you think they honestly give a fuck what you think of their reasons for protest? The whole point is to bring attention to issues that normally do not get attention, and the way you do that is protests just like this.
How many people were "inconvenienced" by the sit-ins at the lunch counters down south in the 60's? I bet there were a lot people bitching that they just want a sandwich and that everyone should stop making it difficult for them to get one, just like you bitching about being late to work. Sometimes it takes drastic measures to get attention to a problem. It wasn't until the crack epidemic spilled out of the inner-cities that anyone started doing any fucking thing about it. People don't notice the homeless until they have to step over them on the curb or are forced to ignore them when they come by shaking their cup for some spare change.
You understand this perfectly, I know you do, which is why I'm forced to conclude that your problem is not with the protest itself but the message behind it, which is pretty obvious given the way you describe it. Based on that, I think you can now perfectly make the connection between your attitude and why they don't give a single fuck about you being late for work.
When a protest is planned and permitted, the appropriate police force is brought in ahead of time, barriers are erected, and the protesting group is cordoned into an appropriate area.
Thus becoming completely marginalized. This is precisely why protests like this are not done "by the books".
It's really no different than the "Free Speech Zones" they started breaking out during W.'s term. Keep the people with the bullhorns far away from the tourists so nobody has to look at them or hear what they're saying. You can understand why that's not exactly conducive to a 'protest' actually being effective, right?
The fact that you were inconvenienced means the protest is working exactly as intended.
"This is absolutely, unalterably correct and anybody entertaining even reasonable skepticism is an IDIOT"
Nobody has a problem with reasonable skepticism. It's unreasonable skepticism, such as that you often hear in the far-right wing media, that people are getting sick of.
The anti-vaccination assholes, and the people that just refuse to believe that mankind is having an effect on the climate, are two good examples of where you see a lot of unreasonable skepticism, but there are plenty others...
I knew the far-right had officially gone full retarded when I had someone tell me climate change was a myth because Al Gore. Seriously, that was the reason why it was a myth: Al Gore. Give me a fucking break.
I think it has a lot more to do with their piss-poor customer service and over-the-top pimping of the service plans, myself. I honestly don't know anybody that's had a good experience in a Best Buy in at least a year...not that it's a common topic of conversation or anything.
Sure, ever play Out Of This World? Came out in 1991 and is chock full of cut-scenes.
We have to go deeper!
Very true...and that would include, in my opinion, places that tell a potential applicant "give us your facebook information, or else."
The better question is: do you want to work for a company that is constantly going behind your back digging into your personal life?
There are worse things in life than being fired. Working for an employer like that in the first place is probably one of them...
Lying is stupid and unethical.
So is any potential employer that would warrant it in the first place by asking for shit they have no right to ask for.
I mean, employers outright lie to their employees all the time, and a job interview is often a competition in blowing smoke up the ass on both sides. How many people have been told one thing in an interview only to find out that reality is completely different once they're actually employed there? A padded resume versus the bullshit lie that most any given company is 'family oriented' (because we all know how often that is true), telling them you have no social media accounts versus them telling you that they promote based on merit alone (because we all know how often that is true)...I could go on and on...
4. A population too stupid to make a throw-away account to give the employer, that talks about how much the prospective employee likes cute puppies. Post something to it once a week or so, give it some friends.
Or, you know, just tell them you don't have an account. Even if you do, what are they going to do? Not hire you? Oh noes!!!
Although, I admit, a throwaway account would be pretty funny if you went completely overboard with it. Plaster it with a metric shit-ton of Christian imagery and talk about how much you love Jesus, church, and capitalism. That's sure to impress most any major employer in the U.S..
Pretty hard to do considering I don't have a Facebook account. If they want to make having a social media presence a condition of employment, I guess that's just not the job for me...
I seriously don't understand why people even admit to having one to a prospective employer in the first place. Kids, just say no! Worst case scenario, you don't get a job offer at a place that you probably wouldn't want to work at anyway.
Let's not pretend, though, that something like this is going to modify employer behavior in any way. I know people in HR that have using Facebook as an unofficial reference on potential applicants since not long after it was open to non-edu accounts. Proving this in court, especially in a discrimination case, is a pipe-dream. No lawyer would take the case in the first place.
Don't get me wrong, I think it's a good thing to have actual regulations on the books if it helps the .000001% of cases that actually get brought to trial. I'm just too realistic to see this as any sort of panacea at all.
If you run some statistics, I'm pretty sure you'd find a very low number of millionaires ever went on Welfare or Medicaid or Unemployment or Food Stamps or Section 8, etc, etc.
You do realize that taxes subsidize a hell of a lot more than that, don't you? Everything from the food you eat to the water you drink to the air you breathe all has a cost on society that is borne through taxation.
The overarching point is: Nobody, not even a millionaire, has lived independent of the "nanny state" they're bitching about having to support today. They're just pissed off because now it's their turn to pay into the system for the next generation. All those programs you mentioned came about long ago and have been supported through taxation since many of those bitching today were even fucking born. They weren't just created yesterday.
They're not special; generations before them bore the weight of these social programs, because the alternative is much worse. It's a shame so many people that grew up during the Depression are gone now...because I honestly doubt that things would have even gotten this far if a sizable number of them were still around to tell these anti-safety nets people how fucking retarded they are and how much worse things can be. It's really no different then all the people trying to wipe labor laws off the books in the interests of "spurring job growth"...you could ask someone working as a meat packer at the turn of the century how smart that is if any were alive today, which is also why I think things have even gotten to the point they have on that front, as well: nobody still around with first-hand knowledge.
If the government has to spend a bunch of money to make sure that doesn't happen, I'm perfectly okay with that.
What happens when they spend the money and it still happens? Is that cool, too? These guys are fucking criminals, I proctored the TSA testing for 3 years. Believe me, half of them looked like they were either under the influence of narcotics or had more than a passing familiarity with them. You are absolutely no safer with them then you were with the security you had before 9/11.
+1 Informative.
As someone that's also lost about 100 pounds over the past year through hard work and determination, good job!!
Eat half a bag of apples, spend the next 6 hours with explosive diarrhea.
It was a rough night.
I bet the French aristocracy made the same comments at their dinner parties back in 1789, and just laughed and laughed and laughed...
Thank you for once again proving my point that all of leftism is based on the threat of violence.
By the way, I'm wiling to bet that non-leftists have a higher gun ownership rate than "liberals" and "progressives".
Oh, read a history book for fuck's sake. There are numerous examples throughout human history of what happens when too much wealth and power become concentrated in the hands of too few. But please, give me an example of what happens when the poor "punishes" the rich too much through "excessive taxation". Oh wait, it's never fucking happened. Hell, I'm still waiting for the "job creators" to close their businesses like they keep threatening because of what a burden their wealth is. Ain't happened yet. Ditto with all the whiners bitching and crying about paying taxes that keep threatening to leave...they'll move their money overseas, but they'll never move themselves, because Lord knows they love the benefits of living in a first-world country, they just don't feel they should have to pay for it. Then they post comments on the internet and wonder why nobody has any fucking sympathy for them whatsoever, dismissing it as 'soshulism'. What a fucking joke...
As for the guns, well, again, guns don't count for shit when you've got numbers, and by playing these games and sucking more and more out of the middle class, they're ensuring that they're going to be outnumbered about 1,000,000 to one. Think that doesn't matter? Read that history book again, because there are also numerous examples of that in there, too.
Getting an ID is no burden.
For you.
Oh, my bad, I keep forgetting that people like you have no fucking concept of what it's like to be so dirt poor that you can't afford to take the day from work...
None of which are constitutionally guaranteed, and you know it.
There is a difference between a privilege and a right.
Poll Tax. The End.
That's fine, and believe me, I already do (which is why I'm typing this on a 5 year old computer, haven't bought media in almost as long, bike to work, and buy local whenever I can) but I want my government to stop giving them money, too. I don't mind paying taxes when they go into the community and are actually used to help people that need help, but I'll be damned if I'm going to be supportive of giving huge subsidies to industries that are already insanely profitable.
But, please, don't let me get in the way of your excellent "hooray for me, fuck you"/"all's fair in love and war" attitude. Just don't expect much sympathy when society adopts the same mentality and starts rolling the guillotines through the gated communities. It's happened before, and it's gonna happen again.
The only way you were able to get the education and have the upbringing necessary to facilitate you getting a good job in the first place was through the taxes paid by those that came before you. Your upbringing was just as subsidized by the state as anyone else's in this country.
Think not? How many scholars are coming out of Somalia these days? Without a conducive environment that allows one to be upwardly mobile, there is nothing but the ultra-poor and the warlords before too long, just like in Somalia. That conducive environment is completely subsidized by the state, from something as base as the availability of clean drinking water to the government backed loans that students take out to go to school.
This "now that it's my turn I don't want to pay taxes!!!" bullshit is so completely ridiculous.
No, which is why Voter-ID is being pushed so hard by Republicans. Gotta disenfranchise those poor minorities, you know...