Of course it was a death threat -- and a thinly veiled one at that. If the person who threatened my life and threatened to "cut [my] legs off with a machete and feed them to dogs" wants to show up at my home, I will shoot him dead -- as in brains splattered out the back of his skull. That's not a threat. It's a warning.
You vote time and time again against guns then pull a publicity stunt with a gun you attempted to ban.
None of the guns that I own were banned by the assault weapons ban or any other ban. I've not voted on any gun legislation, either.
US corporations have been offshoring/outsourcing jobs for more than thirty years, and yet the average standard of living has trended upwards for the same period. Do you think there's something "special" about developper jobs as opposed to, say, auto or garment workers, which means losing these jobs will damn us to economic downfall?
Yes. There are three things that make the tech sector jobs "special."
1. Pay. Jobs lost in the past have been lower-paying jobs and the jobs being created were comparable or better in pay.
2. Training. A manufacturing sector worker could be retrained for a job with comparable pay in a period of weeks, or, at most, months. If you wwere a garment worker, you could take a job doing soldering with a few weeks of training. A tech sector worker looking for similar pay to his now-outsourced job would have to go into a profession which required years of training.
3. Lack of friction. Tech sector jobs can be moved practically overnight with little cost. We're talking about some phones, some computers, and a broadband connection and, poof, you have a tech support or software development center. Moving a manufacturing facility is expensive, time-consuming, and has recurring costs for transporting manufactured goods. What's the cost to transmit software over a VPN? $1 for a big project?
Oh well, time to focus on the next big thing...
And just what is that "next big thing"? That's one of the problems with this: there is no next big thing that anyone has identified.
Just out of curiosity, which President signed the Americans with Disabilities Act?
S.933 was introduced by Senator Tom Harkin, a Democrat from Iowa, and was signed by President George H. W. Bush. Bush unsucessfully lobbied to prevent the incorporation of punitive damages, which would have taken the teeth out of the bill. In a strikingly close vote -- 199 to 187--the House supported the exclusion of persons with HIV and AIDS from food handling -- despite the fact that there was no evidence that HIV/AIDS could be spread through food preparation. Eighty percent of Republicans supported the measure while 67 percent of the Democrats opposed it.
Throughout the consideration of the ADA, the Republicans in Congress and in the Bush White House tried to weaken the bill with various amendments designed to limit risks to businesses which might violate the ADA in the future.
At best, I would say that George H. W. Bush signed the bill with reservations.
He has an established liberal voting record that is only obscured in this study due to his absence during the election campaign.
Good. I want a liberal President. I don't know how anyone managed to equate "liberal" with "bad", but they need their heads examined. Liberals are why women and black people can vote, why there aren't separate bathrooms for "colored" people, why women can join the military, why sexual harassment in the workplace isn't legal, why handicapped people have access to public buildings, why the elderly poor can get Medicare, and why someone who loses their job can get unemployment. How the hell did we ever go from the liberal optimism of the '60s to the conservative fear mongering and negativity that we have today?
Do you have the ability to think beyond step one, or are you really that dull?
Apparently, I am much brighter than you are when it comes to economics. Read on.
What happens to dollars that are sent to foreign markets?
Typically, those dollars are used to purchase goods and services in the home country of the recipient. For example, an Indian software engineer from Bangalore who has an income of $6,000 per year is not going to be buying a new Ford Mustang with that income. Neither is he likely to spend much of it at U.S. owned and staffed businesses.
Now let's examine the effect on the U.S. economy. Suppose that a U.S. engineer who was making $60K/year is laid off and his company outsources his job to the aforementioned $6K/year Indian engineer. Until that U.S. engineer is employed again, he has no income and, thus, is paying no income taxes. He may collect unemployment, socking the tax system with a double whammy. As a result of his unemployment, he is likely to drastically reduce spending on non-essentials, like restaurant meals, movies, DVDs and CDs, vacations, or that motorcycle that he's had his eye on. That, in turn, affects the restaurants, movie theatres, merchants, hotel keepers, and motorcycle dealer where he would have been spending his money. It also means that the state collects no sales tax on the now-forsaken purchases.
If he is forced to accept a job at a lower wage (due to so many tech workers flooding the job market), then tax revenues, both federal and state, collected from him will go down, too. So will his discretionary income, meaning fewer purchases of non-essentials for the long term.
All of that has a domino effect. Reduced spending for restaurant meals leads to loss of jobs at restaurants. Out of work restaurant workers will look for jobs at the mall, probably driving down wages there. The reduced discretionary spending might mean job losses at movie theatres, resorts, motorcycle dealers, snowmobile dealers, hobby shops, etc.
What's so wrong about people seeking work that pays better than what they had originally?
Nothing. Seek anything you like, but don't expect me to support something that is likely to lower the standard of living in my country.
Just because they're of a different ethnicity than you, or they speak a different language, you think we should forbid them from coming here to work?
No. We should forbid it because it is taking dollars out of the U.S. economy and sending those dollars to foreign markets. We should forbid it because major corporations are using it as a tool to drive down U.S. workers' wages and, hence, standard of living. We should forbid it because it is being used by U.S. companies to circumvent regulations relating to safe workplaces, overtime pay, etc.
Large corporations don't view outsourcing as a way to help the underpriviledged foreign workers. They view it as a way to lay off American workers, driving down costs in the process. Nothing more and nothing less.
Who is the "Gun Nut" - that would have to be you, mister "fmaxwell" - A real gun owner wouldnt be pointing his weapon at someone else.
I never suggested that I would be holding the weapon or which end of the barrel the other poster would be on. I look down the barrels of every gun that I consider buying. Nothing odd there.
Kerry, unlike Bush, does not have a black and white view of the world. He isn't pro or anti gun. Nor am I. I think that there is a right for the citizenry as a whole to own guns, but I do not think that such a right is Constitutionally mandated to be unlimited in scope.
There is no rhyme or reason to most gun laws..50 caliber bolt guns are banned in CA. The rounds cost $3-$6 per round,.50BMG, and the gun weighs 40+ lbs, and the guns cost $2200 and up. Never has one been used in a crime. But they are banned.
Nuclear weapons have never been used in crimes, but they, too, are banned for private ownership. The rationale for the bans is two-fold:
1. How much have they been used in crimes? 2. How dangerous would they be in the wrong hands?
Now the politicians don't always get this right and that assualt weapons ban was a good example of that. Many people from both sides will agree on that.
All gun legislation has one goal in mind. It is another step closer to a total and complete ban,
I disagree completely with that. Legislation requiring background checks is to keep guns out of the wrong hands. So is legislation which seeks to prevent those convicted of domestic abuse from owning guns. I'd support legislation that banned unsafe "junk guns", grenade launchers, bazookas, and shoulder fired missiles, but I don't support legislation aimed at taking away all arms.
It's a mistake to subject all politicians to a 'Second Amendment Purity Test' in which any vote limiting any kind of arms ownership results in a failing grade. Don't just assume that everyone who votes for a ban on certain types of weapons is trying to take away all guns. In most cases, they aren't.
When I come to kill you, it will be with a quantity of battery acid, duct tape, chloroform, an electric meat cutting blade.
You'll wish I'd have used a gun to kill you. Right before you die, you'll be begging to be coup de gras with a gun.
You really are pretty good at the trolling, but you might want to look for another mark. As I read that, I just imagined some scrawny 14 year old kid at a keyboard pecking away after getting his ass kicked again at school. Whatever floats your boat.
I want to cut your legs off with a machete and feed them to dogs, you fuckign ANTI-GUN-NUT. Your treason against my civil rights is noted. You have been slated to have your legs removed by a knife and fed to dogs. That is the fate you deserve for treason against me.
Okay, I've been trolled. I admit it. At first I thought that you were serious (nutty, but serious) and now I see that you were just trolling. Good one.
I'll call myself anything that choose and you can look down the barrel of any shotgun, rifle, or pistol that I own if you doubt that I'm a real gun owner.
He voted yes on legislation to ban ALL CENTERFIRE.
Liar. It was a ban only on armor piercing bullets: "a projectile for a centerfire rifle, designed or marketed as having armor piercing capability, that the Attorney General determines, pursuant to section 926(d), to be more likely to penetrate body armor than standard ammunition of the same caliber." 34 of 97 Senators present voted in favor of that legislation, so don't try to portray Kerry as wildly out of step with the mainstream.
John Kerry gets an F in Civil rights because the NRA give him an F on his voting record. PERIOD. END.
I have zero respect for the NRA since fringe element nuts like Wayne LaPierre and Tanya Metaksa shifted it to the kind of organization that attracts kooks, so don't waste your time quoting what the NRA has said about Kerry. Not interested. PERIOD. END.
You are a horribly uniformed voter and you will lead to totalitarianism in the USA. You could never be a Libertarian with your communist views on Gestapo like agencies like the Treasury, BATF, FBI and totalitarian LEOs crushing the American people with superior {snip} You support totalitarianism and your position is indefensible. Maybe when you are being shoved into a crematorium by an Islamo-fascist alive you'll finally realize what an ass you are.
If you honestly believe what you wrote, then you need psychiatric help. The paranoid, delusional rantings you've posted are way outside any definition of normalcy and sanity. It's really sad that you are going through your life so afraid. You don't have to. Seek professional help and your life might really turn around.
A better question is "what the hell is wrong with you?"
Who the hell cares if the government enabled it, Verizon is spending the millions of dollars and putting in the time to make this possible. They should have monopoly rights on their investment and hard work.
Bullshit. They are installing their fiber on publically owned lands. When they dig up public lands -- streets, sidewalks, and parks -- to run their fiber, then everyone should benefit from it, not just them. It's fscking asinine to suggest that my street should be jack-hammered and patched seven times so that Verizon, then Covad, then AOL, then Earthlink, then AT&T, and then Velocity, and then Speakeasy can each run parallel fiber optics that they don't share. It's not in the interest of consumers or businesses.
We don't need the government stepping in to tell Verizon that XYZ is the rate that they can lease their fiber at and there's nothing they can do about it.
Spoken like a true Republican: Give public lands to some huge corporation to run fiber and then let them have a monopoly (since no other company could run parallel fiber networking and take away enough customers from Verizon to make a profit).
Right to bear arms is a fundamental Civil Right in the US. Kerry is awful in this department.
What utter fscking BS. Kerry is a gun owner and a hunter. He has never advocated taking all guns away from Americans.
You are just another one-issue deluded voter who wants to twist "a well regulated militia" into unregulated ownership of any and all weapons capable of killing people. Well here's a clue for you: The founding fathers didn't intend for you to be able to buy.50 caliber machine guns, bazookas, shoulder-fired anti-aircraft Stinger missiles, or nuclear weapons. Nothing in the Second Amendment precluded state or federal laws which ban or limit the sale of certain types of weapons. Nor is it unconstitutional to prevent convicted felons from owning firearms. Get over it.
And before you make an ass of yourself in your reply, know that I just went to a gun show in the last few weeks and bought a Yugoslavian M-24/47 Mauser (8x57mm) to add to my collection, so don't try to paint me as some kind of anti-gun extremist.
They did pay for the item in question, but they paid a) less (3$ vs. 15$) and b) to another person (the pirate vs. the legitimate copyright owner), so therefore they are a potential customer.
I'm willing to pay you $50,000 for a Lear Jet. Does that mean that I'm a potential customer for the Lear Jet corporation? No, unless Lear Jet is seriously considering selling their planes for $50,000.
Your argument reminds me of the pro software piracy crowd who claim that they're not really hurting anybody because they wouldn't have bought it anyways.
If they are being truthful, then they aren't harming anyuone. That doesn't make it legal, but some 14 year old kid getting a cracked version of Photoshop isn't hurting anyone (unless he's using that in lieu of buying a $20 shareware or bargain package).
don't rationalize what I'm doing by hiding behind "it's not technically theft" or "it's overpriced anyways" - I do it because the chance that I'll get caught is so minuscule as to make it well worth the risk (which is pretty much why anybody does it, with the possible exception of people who might well be termed cyber-kleptomaniacs).
While I applaud your candor, there is a difference between theft and copyright infringement. Theft is the unlawful or felonious taking and removing of personal property with an intent to deprive the rightful owner of the property. To constitute theft, every part of the property stolen must be removed and it must be, at least momentarily, in the complete possession of the thief. That's not the same as copyright infringement or CD piracy.
If you go back to my original post, what I was pointing out was that it's easy to take the moral high road and not purchase pirated CDs if you can just open your wallet a little wider to buy the legitimate recordings. Some kid in Russia who's barely eeking out an existence doesn't have the option of paying full price for a legit CD, so it's hardly fair for us to look down on him for buying a pirated CD.
Britney Spears has no fewer CDs, but she has got one fewer potential customer, which I think is what bothers her label.
While that might bother her label, losing a potential customer is not the same as having personal property stolen from you.
Just because the kids in Russia (or, hey, Florida for that matter) can't afford to buy a CD for 15$ doesn't give someone else the right to sell them a pirate copy of one for 3$.
I never said that it gave them a "right", just that the Bill Gates/Mercedes Benz theft scenario was not analogous.
But let's examine this further. Earlier, you referred to the each buyer of these pirated CDs as a "potential customer." Now you admit that many of the buyers of pirated CDs can't afford to buy a CD for $15. Which is it? You can't be a potential customer for something that costs far more than you can afford to spend. For example, I'm not a potential customer for a Lear Jet even though I want one.
Britney Spears has no fewer CDs, but she has got one fewer potential customer, which I think is what bothers her label.
I don't doubt that it bothers her label, but it does not mean that it's analogous to personal property theft.
Just because the kids in Russia (or, hey, Florida for that matter) can't afford to buy a CD for 15$ doesn't give someone else the right to sell them a pirate copy of one for 3$.
Nor did I say that it meant that anyone had such a right.
But let's go back to the "potential customer" argument. In order for someone to be a potential customer, they have to be capable of paying for the item in question. Someone who does not have $15 is not a potential customer for the hypothetical Britney Spears CD. This reminds me of the software anti-piracy crowd who tries to argue that some 14 year old kid with pirated copies of AutoCad, 3D Studio Max, Photoshop, Softimage, and Maya cost the software industry thousands of dollars. Just how did they figure that the kid would have come up with thousands of dollars to pay for said software had he not pirated it?
He has no problem with trampling someone's property rights in the name of the environment, because he believes it is the "right" thing to do, and he will gladly use the force of law to impose his values on others.
Individual property rights are trivially unimportant compared with protecting the environment for present and future generations.
It is just on the hot-button issues like abortion or gay marriage where Kerry hides behind this nice-sounding but empty argument. He invokes it to avoid having to avoid having to reconcile his own contradictory positions.
Given that you are apparently a right-winger, the concept of nuanced, complex belief systems are probably lost on you. Nonetheless, I'll try to convey the concept. Let's look at an example: I despise white supremicists. I greatly value free speech. So should I be in favor of a law making it illegal for white supremicists to express their vile views? I have to weigh my values and think about the ramifications of such a law. I don't have to "reconcile [my] contradictory positions." Your religion can teach you that abortion is wrong but you can recognize that others don't share your religious beliefs and that it's wrong to codify those beliefs into law.
Summary: Life's not simple, even if most right-wingers are.
But he also wants to project an image as some sort of principled Catholic.
Given the number of children who were sexually molested by priests and the decades spent by the Catholic church protecting the priests who molested the children, the concept of a "principled Catholic" is one that I'm having trouble with.
ill gates earns more in two-three weeks than i do in.... a lifetime.
do you see me using that excuse to justify buying a stolen mercedez?
If someone steals a Mercedes, someone else is deprived of it. If I steal your car, you no longer have it. If some kid in Russia buys a pirated copy of, let's say, Britney Spears latest CD, Britney Spears has no fewer CDs. Her record company has no fewer CDs. No one has been deprived of their copy of her CD.
If you are going to make analogies, at least shoot for something that is somewhat parallel.
Let me ask this, what is your main gripe with the Libertarian platform?
Their belief that unregulated free-market capitalism is the answer to virtually all of our problems and that government is inherently "bad" and should be minimized, and that reducing taxes should is paramount.
...EVERY single CD I found in shops were bootlegs. I couldn't believe that people were actually buying them. Some of them were so bad that you could see the inkjet printer lines on the cover/back. Needless to say, I didn't buy any of it, but in some places, people have no trouble with this kind of behaviour.
It's easy to take the moral high road when you earn more in two-three weeks than the average Russian person earns in a year, isn't it?
"If polls showed Badnarik at 10% or more, his answers would have been here" How do you get a car with a dead battery started without a jump start?
John Kerry didn't rely on televised debates to make him a contender. He relied on campaigning. He relied on television ads, radio ads, and public rallies.
You mistake cause and effect: John Kerry participated in debates because polls show him to be a leading contender. He didn't become a contender because of being in the debates.
Funny and ironic how you ignore the fact that your opinion and mine are not to be debated whereas even the most insignificant candidate's, from the point of view of popularity, is.
We are debating right here, so I don't know what you are talking about.
As far as the democracy in action comment. That's not democracy. Democracy is open dialogue of everyone's position. The moment you exclude someone, you stop talking about democracy.
No, democracy is about everyone casting votes. It's not about giving the stage to every person in the U.S. who declares that they are running for President.
The moment you even accept the concept of silencing someon based on some Pop Idol rules enforced by the media then you are no longer worthy of democracy and deserve everything you get.
No one is silencing anyone. But don't expect to get to debate on national television just because you got.000003% of the U.S. citizens to sign petitions for your candidacy.
Memory and cognitive abilities. People generally have trouble ranking favorites in lists with more than three members. There is also the issue of remembering, correctly, the names of, say, a dozen candidates.
Approval voting is reasonable also, so long as one can opt-out for candidates with whom they are not familiar. Borda voting does have its problems, but it's a lot better than the system we now use.
Slashdot Mirror
Get a sense of humor.
Of course it was a death threat -- and a thinly veiled one at that. If the person who threatened my life and threatened to "cut [my] legs off with a machete and feed them to dogs" wants to show up at my home, I will shoot him dead -- as in brains splattered out the back of his skull. That's not a threat. It's a warning.
You vote time and time again against guns then pull a publicity stunt with a gun you attempted to ban.
None of the guns that I own were banned by the assault weapons ban or any other ban. I've not voted on any gun legislation, either.
US corporations have been offshoring/outsourcing jobs for more than thirty years, and yet the average standard of living has trended upwards for the same period. Do you think there's something "special" about developper jobs as opposed to, say, auto or garment workers, which means losing these jobs will damn us to economic downfall?
Yes. There are three things that make the tech sector jobs "special."
1. Pay. Jobs lost in the past have been lower-paying jobs and the jobs being created were comparable or better in pay.
2. Training. A manufacturing sector worker could be retrained for a job with comparable pay in a period of weeks, or, at most, months. If you wwere a garment worker, you could take a job doing soldering with a few weeks of training. A tech sector worker looking for similar pay to his now-outsourced job would have to go into a profession which required years of training.
3. Lack of friction. Tech sector jobs can be moved practically overnight with little cost. We're talking about some phones, some computers, and a broadband connection and, poof, you have a tech support or software development center. Moving a manufacturing facility is expensive, time-consuming, and has recurring costs for transporting manufactured goods. What's the cost to transmit software over a VPN? $1 for a big project?
Oh well, time to focus on the next big thing...
And just what is that "next big thing"? That's one of the problems with this: there is no next big thing that anyone has identified.
Just out of curiosity, which President signed the Americans with Disabilities Act?
S.933 was introduced by Senator Tom Harkin, a Democrat from Iowa, and was signed by President George H. W. Bush. Bush unsucessfully lobbied to prevent the incorporation of punitive damages, which would have taken the teeth out of the bill. In a strikingly close vote -- 199 to 187--the House supported the exclusion of persons with HIV and AIDS from food handling -- despite the fact that there was no evidence that HIV/AIDS could be spread through food preparation. Eighty percent of Republicans supported the measure while 67 percent of the Democrats opposed it.
Throughout the consideration of the ADA, the Republicans in Congress and in the Bush White House tried to weaken the bill with various amendments designed to limit risks to businesses which might violate the ADA in the future.
At best, I would say that George H. W. Bush signed the bill with reservations.
He has an established liberal voting record that is only obscured in this study due to his absence during the election campaign.
Good. I want a liberal President. I don't know how anyone managed to equate "liberal" with "bad", but they need their heads examined. Liberals are why women and black people can vote, why there aren't separate bathrooms for "colored" people, why women can join the military, why sexual harassment in the workplace isn't legal, why handicapped people have access to public buildings, why the elderly poor can get Medicare, and why someone who loses their job can get unemployment. How the hell did we ever go from the liberal optimism of the '60s to the conservative fear mongering and negativity that we have today?
Do you have the ability to think beyond step one, or are you really that dull?
Apparently, I am much brighter than you are when it comes to economics. Read on.
What happens to dollars that are sent to foreign markets?
Typically, those dollars are used to purchase goods and services in the home country of the recipient. For example, an Indian software engineer from Bangalore who has an income of $6,000 per year is not going to be buying a new Ford Mustang with that income. Neither is he likely to spend much of it at U.S. owned and staffed businesses.
Now let's examine the effect on the U.S. economy. Suppose that a U.S. engineer who was making $60K/year is laid off and his company outsources his job to the aforementioned $6K/year Indian engineer. Until that U.S. engineer is employed again, he has no income and, thus, is paying no income taxes. He may collect unemployment, socking the tax system with a double whammy. As a result of his unemployment, he is likely to drastically reduce spending on non-essentials, like restaurant meals, movies, DVDs and CDs, vacations, or that motorcycle that he's had his eye on. That, in turn, affects the restaurants, movie theatres, merchants, hotel keepers, and motorcycle dealer where he would have been spending his money. It also means that the state collects no sales tax on the now-forsaken purchases.
If he is forced to accept a job at a lower wage (due to so many tech workers flooding the job market), then tax revenues, both federal and state, collected from him will go down, too. So will his discretionary income, meaning fewer purchases of non-essentials for the long term.
All of that has a domino effect. Reduced spending for restaurant meals leads to loss of jobs at restaurants. Out of work restaurant workers will look for jobs at the mall, probably driving down wages there. The reduced discretionary spending might mean job losses at movie theatres, resorts, motorcycle dealers, snowmobile dealers, hobby shops, etc.
Still feeling frisky?
What's so wrong about people seeking work that pays better than what they had originally?
Nothing. Seek anything you like, but don't expect me to support something that is likely to lower the standard of living in my country.
Just because they're of a different ethnicity than you, or they speak a different language, you think we should forbid them from coming here to work?
No. We should forbid it because it is taking dollars out of the U.S. economy and sending those dollars to foreign markets. We should forbid it because major corporations are using it as a tool to drive down U.S. workers' wages and, hence, standard of living. We should forbid it because it is being used by U.S. companies to circumvent regulations relating to safe workplaces, overtime pay, etc.
Large corporations don't view outsourcing as a way to help the underpriviledged foreign workers. They view it as a way to lay off American workers, driving down costs in the process. Nothing more and nothing less.
Who is the "Gun Nut" - that would have to be you, mister "fmaxwell" - A real gun owner wouldnt be pointing his weapon at someone else.
I never suggested that I would be holding the weapon or which end of the barrel the other poster would be on. I look down the barrels of every gun that I consider buying. Nothing odd there.
no one I have ever met thinks Kerry is pro gun.
.50 caliber bolt guns are banned in CA. The rounds cost $3-$6 per round, .50BMG, and the gun weighs 40+ lbs, and the guns cost $2200 and up. Never has one been used in a crime. But they are banned.
Kerry, unlike Bush, does not have a black and white view of the world. He isn't pro or anti gun. Nor am I. I think that there is a right for the citizenry as a whole to own guns, but I do not think that such a right is Constitutionally mandated to be unlimited in scope.
There is no rhyme or reason to most gun laws.
Nuclear weapons have never been used in crimes, but they, too, are banned for private ownership. The rationale for the bans is two-fold:
1. How much have they been used in crimes?
2. How dangerous would they be in the wrong hands?
Now the politicians don't always get this right and that assualt weapons ban was a good example of that. Many people from both sides will agree on that.
All gun legislation has one goal in mind. It is another step closer to a total and complete ban,
I disagree completely with that. Legislation requiring background checks is to keep guns out of the wrong hands. So is legislation which seeks to prevent those convicted of domestic abuse from owning guns. I'd support legislation that banned unsafe "junk guns", grenade launchers, bazookas, and shoulder fired missiles, but I don't support legislation aimed at taking away all arms.
It's a mistake to subject all politicians to a 'Second Amendment Purity Test' in which any vote limiting any kind of arms ownership results in a failing grade. Don't just assume that everyone who votes for a ban on certain types of weapons is trying to take away all guns. In most cases, they aren't.
When I come to kill you, it will be with a quantity of battery acid, duct tape, chloroform, an electric meat cutting blade.
You'll wish I'd have used a gun to kill you. Right before you die, you'll be begging to be coup de gras with a gun.
You really are pretty good at the trolling, but you might want to look for another mark. As I read that, I just imagined some scrawny 14 year old kid at a keyboard pecking away after getting his ass kicked again at school. Whatever floats your boat.
I want to cut your legs off with a machete and feed them to dogs, you fuckign ANTI-GUN-NUT. Your treason against my civil rights is noted. You have been slated to have your legs removed by a knife and fed to dogs. That is the fate you deserve for treason against me.
Okay, I've been trolled. I admit it. At first I thought that you were serious (nutty, but serious) and now I see that you were just trolling. Good one.
Don't you ever call yourself a real gun owner.
I'll call myself anything that choose and you can look down the barrel of any shotgun, rifle, or pistol that I own if you doubt that I'm a real gun owner.
He voted yes on legislation to ban ALL CENTERFIRE.
Liar. It was a ban only on armor piercing bullets: "a projectile for a centerfire rifle, designed or marketed as having armor piercing capability, that the Attorney General determines, pursuant to section 926(d), to be more likely to penetrate body armor than standard ammunition of the same caliber." 34 of 97 Senators present voted in favor of that legislation, so don't try to portray Kerry as wildly out of step with the mainstream.
John Kerry gets an F in Civil rights because the NRA give him an F on his voting record. PERIOD. END.
I have zero respect for the NRA since fringe element nuts like Wayne LaPierre and Tanya Metaksa shifted it to the kind of organization that attracts kooks, so don't waste your time quoting what the NRA has said about Kerry. Not interested. PERIOD. END.
You are a horribly uniformed voter and you will lead to totalitarianism in the USA. You could never be a Libertarian with your communist views on Gestapo like agencies like the Treasury, BATF, FBI and totalitarian LEOs crushing the American people with superior {snip}
You support totalitarianism and your position is indefensible. Maybe when you are being shoved into a crematorium by an Islamo-fascist alive you'll finally realize what an ass you are.
If you honestly believe what you wrote, then you need psychiatric help. The paranoid, delusional rantings you've posted are way outside any definition of normalcy and sanity. It's really sad that you are going through your life so afraid. You don't have to. Seek professional help and your life might really turn around.
What the hell is wrong with the moderators?
A better question is "what the hell is wrong with you?"
Who the hell cares if the government enabled it, Verizon is spending the millions of dollars and putting in the time to make this possible. They should have monopoly rights on their investment and hard work.
Bullshit. They are installing their fiber on publically owned lands. When they dig up public lands -- streets, sidewalks, and parks -- to run their fiber, then everyone should benefit from it, not just them. It's fscking asinine to suggest that my street should be jack-hammered and patched seven times so that Verizon, then Covad, then AOL, then Earthlink, then AT&T, and then Velocity, and then Speakeasy can each run parallel fiber optics that they don't share. It's not in the interest of consumers or businesses.
We don't need the government stepping in to tell Verizon that XYZ is the rate that they can lease their fiber at and there's nothing they can do about it.
Spoken like a true Republican: Give public lands to some huge corporation to run fiber and then let them have a monopoly (since no other company could run parallel fiber networking and take away enough customers from Verizon to make a profit).
Right to bear arms is a fundamental Civil Right in the US. Kerry is awful in this department.
.50 caliber machine guns, bazookas, shoulder-fired anti-aircraft Stinger missiles, or nuclear weapons. Nothing in the Second Amendment precluded state or federal laws which ban or limit the sale of certain types of weapons. Nor is it unconstitutional to prevent convicted felons from owning firearms. Get over it.
What utter fscking BS. Kerry is a gun owner and a hunter. He has never advocated taking all guns away from Americans.
You are just another one-issue deluded voter who wants to twist "a well regulated militia" into unregulated ownership of any and all weapons capable of killing people. Well here's a clue for you: The founding fathers didn't intend for you to be able to buy
And before you make an ass of yourself in your reply, know that I just went to a gun show in the last few weeks and bought a Yugoslavian M-24/47 Mauser (8x57mm) to add to my collection, so don't try to paint me as some kind of anti-gun extremist.
They did pay for the item in question, but they paid a) less (3$ vs. 15$) and b) to another person (the pirate vs. the legitimate copyright owner), so therefore they are a potential customer.
I'm willing to pay you $50,000 for a Lear Jet. Does that mean that I'm a potential customer for the Lear Jet corporation? No, unless Lear Jet is seriously considering selling their planes for $50,000.
Your argument reminds me of the pro software piracy crowd who claim that they're not really hurting anybody because they wouldn't have bought it anyways.
If they are being truthful, then they aren't harming anyuone. That doesn't make it legal, but some 14 year old kid getting a cracked version of Photoshop isn't hurting anyone (unless he's using that in lieu of buying a $20 shareware or bargain package).
don't rationalize what I'm doing by hiding behind "it's not technically theft" or "it's overpriced anyways" - I do it because the chance that I'll get caught is so minuscule as to make it well worth the risk (which is pretty much why anybody does it, with the possible exception of people who might well be termed cyber-kleptomaniacs).
While I applaud your candor, there is a difference between theft and copyright infringement. Theft is the unlawful or felonious taking and removing of personal property with an intent to deprive the rightful owner of the property. To constitute theft, every part of the property stolen must be removed and it must be, at least momentarily, in the complete possession of the thief. That's not the same as copyright infringement or CD piracy.
If you go back to my original post, what I was pointing out was that it's easy to take the moral high road and not purchase pirated CDs if you can just open your wallet a little wider to buy the legitimate recordings. Some kid in Russia who's barely eeking out an existence doesn't have the option of paying full price for a legit CD, so it's hardly fair for us to look down on him for buying a pirated CD.
Britney Spears has no fewer CDs, but she has got one fewer potential customer, which I think is what bothers her label.
While that might bother her label, losing a potential customer is not the same as having personal property stolen from you.
Just because the kids in Russia (or, hey, Florida for that matter) can't afford to buy a CD for 15$ doesn't give someone else the right to sell them a pirate copy of one for 3$.
I never said that it gave them a "right", just that the Bill Gates/Mercedes Benz theft scenario was not analogous.
But let's examine this further. Earlier, you referred to the each buyer of these pirated CDs as a "potential customer." Now you admit that many of the buyers of pirated CDs can't afford to buy a CD for $15. Which is it? You can't be a potential customer for something that costs far more than you can afford to spend. For example, I'm not a potential customer for a Lear Jet even though I want one.
Britney Spears has no fewer CDs, but she has got one fewer potential customer, which I think is what bothers her label.
I don't doubt that it bothers her label, but it does not mean that it's analogous to personal property theft.
Just because the kids in Russia (or, hey, Florida for that matter) can't afford to buy a CD for 15$ doesn't give someone else the right to sell them a pirate copy of one for 3$.
Nor did I say that it meant that anyone had such a right.
But let's go back to the "potential customer" argument. In order for someone to be a potential customer, they have to be capable of paying for the item in question. Someone who does not have $15 is not a potential customer for the hypothetical Britney Spears CD. This reminds me of the software anti-piracy crowd who tries to argue that some 14 year old kid with pirated copies of AutoCad, 3D Studio Max, Photoshop, Softimage, and Maya cost the software industry thousands of dollars. Just how did they figure that the kid would have come up with thousands of dollars to pay for said software had he not pirated it?
He has no problem with trampling someone's property rights in the name of the environment, because he believes it is the "right" thing to do, and he will gladly use the force of law to impose his values on others.
Individual property rights are trivially unimportant compared with protecting the environment for present and future generations.
It is just on the hot-button issues like abortion or gay marriage where Kerry hides behind this nice-sounding but empty argument. He invokes it to avoid having to avoid having to reconcile his own contradictory positions.
Given that you are apparently a right-winger, the concept of nuanced, complex belief systems are probably lost on you. Nonetheless, I'll try to convey the concept. Let's look at an example: I despise white supremicists. I greatly value free speech. So should I be in favor of a law making it illegal for white supremicists to express their vile views? I have to weigh my values and think about the ramifications of such a law. I don't have to "reconcile [my] contradictory positions." Your religion can teach you that abortion is wrong but you can recognize that others don't share your religious beliefs and that it's wrong to codify those beliefs into law.
Summary: Life's not simple, even if most right-wingers are.
But he also wants to project an image as some sort of principled Catholic.
Given the number of children who were sexually molested by priests and the decades spent by the Catholic church protecting the priests who molested the children, the concept of a "principled Catholic" is one that I'm having trouble with.
ill gates earns more in two-three weeks than i do in.... a lifetime.
do you see me using that excuse to justify buying a stolen mercedez?
If someone steals a Mercedes, someone else is deprived of it. If I steal your car, you no longer have it. If some kid in Russia buys a pirated copy of, let's say, Britney Spears latest CD, Britney Spears has no fewer CDs. Her record company has no fewer CDs. No one has been deprived of their copy of her CD.
If you are going to make analogies, at least shoot for something that is somewhat parallel.
Let me ask this, what is your main gripe with the Libertarian platform?
Their belief that unregulated free-market capitalism is the answer to virtually all of our problems and that government is inherently "bad" and should be minimized, and that reducing taxes should is paramount.
...EVERY single CD I found in shops were bootlegs. I couldn't believe that people were actually buying them. Some of them were so bad that you could see the inkjet printer lines on the cover/back. Needless to say, I didn't buy any of it, but in some places, people have no trouble with this kind of behaviour.
It's easy to take the moral high road when you earn more in two-three weeks than the average Russian person earns in a year, isn't it?
"If polls showed Badnarik at 10% or more, his answers would have been here"
How do you get a car with a dead battery started without a jump start?
John Kerry didn't rely on televised debates to make him a contender. He relied on campaigning. He relied on television ads, radio ads, and public rallies.
You mistake cause and effect: John Kerry participated in debates because polls show him to be a leading contender. He didn't become a contender because of being in the debates.
Funny and ironic how you ignore the fact that your opinion and mine are not to be debated whereas even the most insignificant candidate's, from the point of view of popularity, is.
.000003% of the U.S. citizens to sign petitions for your candidacy.
We are debating right here, so I don't know what you are talking about.
As far as the democracy in action comment. That's not democracy. Democracy is open dialogue of everyone's position. The moment you exclude someone, you stop talking about democracy.
No, democracy is about everyone casting votes. It's not about giving the stage to every person in the U.S. who declares that they are running for President.
The moment you even accept the concept of silencing someon based on some Pop Idol rules enforced by the media then you are no longer worthy of democracy and deserve everything you get.
No one is silencing anyone. But don't expect to get to debate on national television just because you got
What, and Nader does?
No, he does not. Were it up to me, his answers would not have been included.
So why is Nader in it?
I didn't put him in it or defend him being in it. Were it up to me, he would not be in it.
Insightful? Please.
Yes, it was insightful. That you fail to recognize it is a poor reflection on you, not me.
And why should it be exactly three candidates?
Memory and cognitive abilities. People generally have trouble ranking favorites in lists with more than three members. There is also the issue of remembering, correctly, the names of, say, a dozen candidates.
Approval voting is reasonable also, so long as one can opt-out for candidates with whom they are not familiar. Borda voting does have its problems, but it's a lot better than the system we now use.