What's worse, is that these same states that are sparsely populated also tend to be welfare states where they're contributing far less to the federal tax receipts than they're receiving in tax dollars. All while fighting to eliminate programs that are necessary to keep the urban decay to a minimum.
You're making an error by assuming that the states exist only as administrative subdivisions of the United States. They aren't. While much of their independence has atrophied over the centuries, the 50 States are all (semi-) sovereign bodies. Why should say, Hawai'i, Montana, or Alaska remain in the union, if they're not going to get equal representation at any level of government because "they don't have enough people"? They could certainly find a market for their innate resources without needing to be part of the United States.
Or he could, you know, *actually pay* the people who established, maintain, and own the domain. Ron Paul's 2012 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination spent over $40 million. Some quick googling shows that the domain owners (who are quite obviously running a real website and not cyber-squatting) are asking for a fraction of what his presidential campaign spent on postage, and less than they spent on "political strategy consulting", campaign merch, or airfare.
I agree, that it's a very honest example of libertarianism. Gaming the system for one's personal advantage while screwing over others is exactly what the corporate-run state that libertarians support (whether eagerly or out of ignorance) is all about.
It ought to make it easier to separate the honest libertarians, those who sincerely hold to their beliefs on the free market, from the Paul cultists who just believe whatever their idol(s) are saying today.
Yes, because the truth is a terrible thing children must be protected from. That way they can grow up just as delusional as their parents.
...and keep voting Republican.
Not that Democrats are much better, but lately the Republicans have been winning the 'party of reprehensible poltroons' contest hands down. (Republicans currently hold 65% of the Missouri House and 75% of the Missouri Senate.)
Unfortunately, America's "install democratic government" app keeps crashing. Perhaps we should go back to whichever one we were using in the mid-1940s?
It's not just that the Chinese prefer having an ally (no matter how crazy and tyrannical) to a U.S. puppet on their border. They're not idiots, and they really, really, don't want to be forced to deal with the humanitarian disaster that a N. Korean collapse would create.
Probably a good thing. Zahn's stories were fun reads, and felt a least somewhat Star Wars-ish, but more like Expanded Universe material (which is what they were, after all) than potential equals to the original trilogy.
Obviously, the beings running the simulation just changed a constant. Or maybe the computer our universe is currently running on has a manufacturing flaw in some of its hardware.
This is a violation of International treaties and amounts to conspiracy to commit theft.
This is a federal crime under US law.
They're a corporation. You must not live in the U.S. or you'd know that laws don't apply to corporations unless they fail to pay their brib^H^H^H^H Freedom & Democracy Support Fees.
regularly using robots to kill random strangers in distant countries
factually incorrect troll statement. they are neither random, nor strangers. if you ever had any real exposure tot he intel world or the drone ops, you would never spout such BS. also, most people are of that mind that if you can get a bad guy without risking a good guy, it's a good thing; basic us vs them evaluation.
Bare refutation without reason or evidence, appeal to authority, ad hominem, appeal to fear, and a ridiculous level of simplification. Yes, it would be nice if we had a magic button that just blew up "bad guys" without any bad effect, ever. Unfortunately... Drone strikes kill, maim and traumatize too many civilians, U.S. study says http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/25/world/asia/pakistan-us-drone-strikes/index.html From the article, "TBIJ reports that from June 2004 through mid-September 2012, available data indicate that drone strikes killed 2,562 - 3,325 people in Pakistan, of whom 474 - 881 were civilians, including 176 children."
spending hundreds of billions prosecuting minor, victimless crimes
too vague to be worth debating. could be any of a hundred little pet topics people have around here. specifics needed
You're not debating, you're just engaging in fallacious naysaying. When you actually make a point, I may deign to respond in detail. XD
while consistently ignoring massive and wide-spread criminal wrongdoing by giant corporations because, "hey, they're big!"
again too vague. some people, especilly around here, simply consider CEO's being paid according to their contracts, or the idea that companies are oriented around making money and not morals, a crime.
Straw man. Try billions in money laundering, or causing deaths by deliberately avoiding FDA testing, or rampant mortgage fraud, just to get started.
handing control of their currency to a clique of unelected bankers who then hand out said money by the (virtual) truckload to the aforementioned giant corporations
something tells me you're one of those anti-federal reserve guys who sees it as a vast conspiracy...
Ignored my point, attempted ridicule and ad hominem. You're probably attempting to poison the well, too. Going for a new record on different fallacious attacks in a single post? XD
cutting sweetheart deals with industry on everything from medical care to oil spill cleanup, at the expense of said majority
and now im convinced of it. and again, its a simple us vs them evaluation. ask someone if they want jobs and money to flow to their community, see what they say. go ahead.
Wow. Red herring and False dilemma, without even bothering to present an implausibly bad alternative. Good job!
Focusing on those two (whose behavior does indeed seem pretty despicable) is going to accomplish very little in the long term. Instead, lets revamp some of the fundamentals of our so-called Justice System. Stop letting prosecutors pick and choose who to charge at their own whim, with little to zero oversight. Punish prosecutors who bring charges in bad faith. End the system of plea-bargains and return to the jury trials that are supposed to be the core of our criminal law.
Somehow I doubt the "majority of people" in the U.S. would be in favor of:
regularly using robots to kill random strangers in distant countries spending hundreds of billions prosecuting minor, victimless crimes while consistently ignoring massive and wide-spread criminal wrongdoing by giant corporations because, "hey, they're big!" handing control of their currency to a clique of unelected bankers who then hand out said money by the (virtual) truckload to the aforementioned giant corporations cutting sweetheart deals with industry on everything from medical care to oil spill cleanup, at the expense of said majority
Why? I am not a planetary scientist nor a microbiologist, but my understanding is that Venus is basically a toxic pressure-cooker, while Mars is more of a frozen desert. The latter certainly sounds like a less hostile environment, even if it is far from being a friendly one.
How long before some nation or well-funded group decides that the time to start terraforming Mars is 'right now', and without bothering about world opinion, puts together a tailored package of microbes at just lobs them to Mars?
More likely, they'll start arresting people who don't "understand" that the current one-party-pretending-to-be-two-parties system is the bestest form of government ever.
Perhaps the residents of those "backward regions" know their history? It's full of literally centuries of treaty-breaking, double-dealing, resource exploitation, regicide, land grabs, ethnic cleansing, biological warfare, slavery, and cultural destruction at the hands of white Europeans. Why should they trust us? Because, "When we say it's for your own good, we mean it this time, really"? Add in things like the CIA's little Osama-hunting stunt and Obama's chronic missile-lobbing and the only thing that surprises me is that there isn't of this sort of violence.
My money is on some talented teen in the United States. With increasing levels of domestic drone deployment such kids will have levels of access to drones that only rural villagers on the Af-Pak border previously had.
Slashdot Mirror
What's worse, is that these same states that are sparsely populated also tend to be welfare states where they're contributing far less to the federal tax receipts than they're receiving in tax dollars. All while fighting to eliminate programs that are necessary to keep the urban decay to a minimum.
You're making an error by assuming that the states exist only as administrative subdivisions of the United States. They aren't. While much of their independence has atrophied over the centuries, the 50 States are all (semi-) sovereign bodies. Why should say, Hawai'i, Montana, or Alaska remain in the union, if they're not going to get equal representation at any level of government because "they don't have enough people"? They could certainly find a market for their innate resources without needing to be part of the United States.
I try not to be a grammar Nazi, but man you even italicized it.
The Italicians weren't Nazis, just allied to them. Grammar fascist would be more accurate.
roflmao
Or he could, you know, *actually pay* the people who established, maintain, and own the domain. Ron Paul's 2012 campaign for the Republican presidential nomination spent over $40 million. Some quick googling shows that the domain owners (who are quite obviously running a real website and not cyber-squatting) are asking for a fraction of what his presidential campaign spent on postage, and less than they spent on "political strategy consulting", campaign merch, or airfare.
I agree, that it's a very honest example of libertarianism. Gaming the system for one's personal advantage while screwing over others is exactly what the corporate-run state that libertarians support (whether eagerly or out of ignorance) is all about.
It ought to make it easier to separate the honest libertarians, those who sincerely hold to their beliefs on the free market, from the Paul cultists who just believe whatever their idol(s) are saying today.
Yes, because the truth is a terrible thing children must be protected from. That way they can grow up just as delusional as their parents.
...and keep voting Republican.
Not that Democrats are much better, but lately the Republicans have been winning the 'party of reprehensible poltroons' contest hands down. (Republicans currently hold 65% of the Missouri House and 75% of the Missouri Senate.)
Unfortunately, America's "install democratic government" app keeps crashing. Perhaps we should go back to whichever one we were using in the mid-1940s?
It's not just that the Chinese prefer having an ally (no matter how crazy and tyrannical) to a U.S. puppet on their border. They're not idiots, and they really, really, don't want to be forced to deal with the humanitarian disaster that a N. Korean collapse would create.
Now when the REAL zombie apocalypse arrives, everyone will assume it's just another prank...
Probably a good thing. Zahn's stories were fun reads, and felt a least somewhat Star Wars-ish, but more like Expanded Universe material (which is what they were, after all) than potential equals to the original trilogy.
Obviously, the beings running the simulation just changed a constant. Or maybe the computer our universe is currently running on has a manufacturing flaw in some of its hardware.
More likely Grenada 2.0, as soon as the government can gin up some "evidence" of "terrorists" using Antigua as a base of operations.
This is a violation of International treaties and amounts to conspiracy to commit theft.
This is a federal crime under US law.
They're a corporation. You must not live in the U.S. or you'd know that laws don't apply to corporations unless they fail to pay their brib^H^H^H^H Freedom & Democracy Support Fees.
Or by Yoyodyne.
Queue the military-industrial complex lobbying for money for volcano-nuking projects.
regularly using robots to kill random strangers in distant countries
factually incorrect troll statement. they are neither random, nor strangers. if you ever had any real exposure tot he intel world or the drone ops, you would never spout such BS. also, most people are of that mind that if you can get a bad guy without risking a good guy, it's a good thing; basic us vs them evaluation.
Bare refutation without reason or evidence, appeal to authority, ad hominem, appeal to fear, and a ridiculous level of simplification. Yes, it would be nice if we had a magic button that just blew up "bad guys" without any bad effect, ever. Unfortunately...
Drone strikes kill, maim and traumatize too many civilians, U.S. study says
http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/25/world/asia/pakistan-us-drone-strikes/index.html
From the article, "TBIJ reports that from June 2004 through mid-September 2012, available data indicate that drone strikes killed 2,562 - 3,325 people in Pakistan, of whom 474 - 881 were civilians, including 176 children."
spending hundreds of billions prosecuting minor, victimless crimes
too vague to be worth debating. could be any of a hundred little pet topics people have around here. specifics needed
You're not debating, you're just engaging in fallacious naysaying. When you actually make a point, I may deign to respond in detail. XD
while consistently ignoring massive and wide-spread criminal wrongdoing by giant corporations because, "hey, they're big!"
again too vague. some people, especilly around here, simply consider CEO's being paid according to their contracts, or the idea that companies are oriented around making money and not morals, a crime.
Straw man. Try billions in money laundering, or causing deaths by deliberately avoiding FDA testing, or rampant mortgage fraud, just to get started.
handing control of their currency to a clique of unelected bankers who then hand out said money by the (virtual) truckload to the aforementioned giant corporations
something tells me you're one of those anti-federal reserve guys who sees it as a vast conspiracy...
Ignored my point, attempted ridicule and ad hominem. You're probably attempting to poison the well, too. Going for a new record on different fallacious attacks in a single post? XD
cutting sweetheart deals with industry on everything from medical care to oil spill cleanup, at the expense of said majority
and now im convinced of it. and again, its a simple us vs them evaluation. ask someone if they want jobs and money to flow to their community, see what they say. go ahead.
Wow. Red herring and False dilemma, without even bothering to present an implausibly bad alternative. Good job!
Focusing on those two (whose behavior does indeed seem pretty despicable) is going to accomplish very little in the long term. Instead, lets revamp some of the fundamentals of our so-called Justice System. Stop letting prosecutors pick and choose who to charge at their own whim, with little to zero oversight. Punish prosecutors who bring charges in bad faith. End the system of plea-bargains and return to the jury trials that are supposed to be the core of our criminal law.
Somehow I doubt the "majority of people" in the U.S. would be in favor of:
regularly using robots to kill random strangers in distant countries
spending hundreds of billions prosecuting minor, victimless crimes
while consistently ignoring massive and wide-spread criminal wrongdoing by giant corporations because, "hey, they're big!"
handing control of their currency to a clique of unelected bankers who then hand out said money by the (virtual) truckload to the aforementioned giant corporations
cutting sweetheart deals with industry on everything from medical care to oil spill cleanup, at the expense of said majority
Why? I am not a planetary scientist nor a microbiologist, but my understanding is that Venus is basically a toxic pressure-cooker, while Mars is more of a frozen desert. The latter certainly sounds like a less hostile environment, even if it is far from being a friendly one.
How long before some nation or well-funded group decides that the time to start terraforming Mars is 'right now', and without bothering about world opinion, puts together a tailored package of microbes at just lobs them to Mars?
The "new" part of this news is HOW the erosion will happen - from subsurface groundwater instead of just surface erosion.
More likely, they'll start arresting people who don't "understand" that the current one-party-pretending-to-be-two-parties system is the bestest form of government ever.
...and the only thing that surprises me is that there isn't *more* of this sort of violence.
Perhaps the residents of those "backward regions" know their history? It's full of literally centuries of treaty-breaking, double-dealing, resource exploitation, regicide, land grabs, ethnic cleansing, biological warfare, slavery, and cultural destruction at the hands of white Europeans. Why should they trust us? Because, "When we say it's for your own good, we mean it this time, really"? Add in things like the CIA's little Osama-hunting stunt and Obama's chronic missile-lobbing and the only thing that surprises me is that there isn't of this sort of violence.
Please mod parent up.
My money is on some talented teen in the United States. With increasing levels of domestic drone deployment such kids will have levels of access to drones that only rural villagers on the Af-Pak border previously had.