Well, you're wrong. America's economy depended on slavery. Guns were necessary for slavery. Connect the dots.
Or continue to believe your fairy tale; it's a free country after all.
Look, I don't disagree that without an armed citizenry some Federal power might have swooped down and brought injustice. But it should be obvious that without armed slaveholders, slavery itself would simply have been unworkable. Thus, the right to bear arms was in fact a concession to the South. Without the Second Amendment, Congress could have de facto ended slavery simply by outlawing personal possession of firearms. It was this concern on the part of the slave states that led the amendment to be drafted in the first place.
Then, to sell it to the whole, they came up with the rhetoric you espouse, that it protects us from tyranny.
Where was that protection from tyranny during the Whiskey Rebellion? Why do you continue to believe it's about protection from tyranny when the armed populous was crushed by the Federal government as early as 1791?
There are those who would say we are already slaves considering that while we own shotguns the Army owns F-16s. No militia of the people could possibly stand against the Federal government today.
The point of my post was to correct the parent, who thought the Second Amendment was intended to serve as some sort of back-stop against Federal tyrrany. While that's true, the practical reason for the Second Amendment is that private ownership of guns was necessary to perpetuate slavery.
How this notion of protection from Federal largesse survived the Whiskey Rebellion is anybody's guess. I suppose even Libertarians need their mythology.
Actually, come to think of it, isn't this exactly what that part of your constitution about carrying guns is for?
No. The Second Amendment of our Constitution guarantees the slave states the right to quickly put down slave uprisings on their own (with a "militia"), rather than wait for the National Guard or the Federal Army to intervene.
I'm not denying the existence of Foundational rhetoric purporting a right to bear arms as a check against tyranny. But as a practical matter, it was about slavery. Quite ironic, actually.
Ask yourself this: How many times were arms used to fight the tyranny of the government? There are a few historical examples (Whiskey Rebellion, Civil War, Wounded Knee) but they are few and far between -- and, to date, unsuccessful. Now, for how many years were privately-held guns used to keep slaves in check? You are invited to "do the math."
The purpose of the Second Amendment was to allow slavery to continue unencumbered, despite the regulatory and military power of the new Federal government. Any other explanation (and the accompanying rhetoric) is window dressing.
It's willful ignorance to suppose that the Founding Fathers recognized the necessity of firearms to prevent tyranny, but didn't acknowledge their role in maintaining slavery.
But don't take my word for it.
"To disarm the people - that was the best and most effectual way to enslave them." -- George Mason
"No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave. He, who has nothing, and who himself belongs to another, must be defended by him, whose property he is, and needs no arms. But he, who thinks he is his own master, and has what he can call his own, ought to have arms to defend himself, and what he possesses; else he lives precariously, and at discretion. -- James Burgh
We need to stop listening to Keynesian and socialist economists who don't have the first clue what they're talking about and are trying to give solutions based on theory instead of what's been shown to work.
Furthermore, we should stop listening to the Adam Smith Luddites and Ayn Rand Libertarians whose economic oeuvre is an obeisance to some mythological, childish notion of a "free market."
All government can do is get out of the way, and keep the playing field fair for the players.
Keeping it fair means the government has to get in the way.
I'll give you this, considering the size of our government, things should be a hell of a lot fairer than they are today.
But it's complicated. Bush was only able to keep unemployment in check by doubling the number of Federal workers; do you really think we should fire all those people (about 500,000) with the economy the way it is today?
4. Rather than compensating for the symptom with meds, look into the cause. Review your newborn's diet. If you're not breastfeeding it, consider giving nature a try.
Also, you know, newborns spit up a lot, they are basically little self-contained goo factories. You could be overreacting. Is this your first child?
***
With respect to health insurance, the legislated non-existence of a "free market" is indeed of the biggest problems. But hey, it's designed to be broken. The AMA has done an all too effective job brainwashing people about the evils of "socialized medicine." People still oppose it, despite overwhelming evidence that nationalized systems deliver a higher standard of care at significantly lower cost.
Cuba has roughly the same standard of care as the United States if you judge by infant mortality and life expectancy. Think about what that means in terms of efficiencies; it's orders of magnitude.
I agree that it is a challenge to discern the science from the political shitstorm surrounding it. That doesn't mean there isn't valid science in there, somewhere. Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.
What good is more "plant food?" Plants don't need more CO2 than was present in the atmosphere, pre-industrial revolution. Humans don't need as much food as we grow today either... we are now seeing a whole host of health problems that originate in overnutrition rather than undernutrition.
Roughly half the nitrate "plant food" in the world today is derived from fossil fuels. Production of chemical fertilizer consumes about 1% of the energy we produce. And, of course, the stuff is toxic once it inevitably washes down the Mississippi and creates a huge dead zone in the Gulf, for example.
More isn't always better. There is such a thing as "too much."
I worked for Volt at MS for a year. They offer a 401k plan and match a small percentage which is vested after a year. My year ended (MS only lets you stay a year due to the perma-temp settlement, then you have to take a 100-day break), but the Volt match never materialized in my 401k. Volt explained that to get the match I had to work 12 complete months. Sounds like a year, right? No. Since I started in the middle of the month, my first month wasn't a "complete" month, and it didn't count towards matching.
I told them their policy was BS, since 1 in 30 employees must start on the first day of the month, assuming people's contracts are as likley to start on day 1 as any other day. They didn't respond.
But the really nice part is today, when everybody on Slashdot gets to read about it.
Assuming all the free carbon in the cycle now was available then; wouldn't the amount of CO2 in the air 100's of millions of years ago been far greater than it is today?
Changes in carbon dioxide during the Phanerozoic (the last 542 million years). The recent period is located on the left-hand side of the plot, and it appears that much of the last 550 million years has experienced carbon dioxide concentrations significantly higher than the present day.
We are adding it back quickly; but bringing it to levels where it previously has been. An we went through ice ages AND heat spells then. Are we really changing anything?
I am going to paraphrase your question: It gets warm in the summer and cold in the winter. But then it gets warm again. So does anything really change?
I agree with most of what you said (all of it execpt CRA loans were a minor factor; heck all loans were a minor factor until they got leveraged 30-1).
But I fundamentally disagree with the notion that this bubble wasn't foreseen.
Take a look at DHI, CTX, RYL, etc. They peaked in '05, years before the market "realized" something was amiss. These people knew exactly what they were doing. Many Wall Street insiders have stated as much; that it was a game of hot potato, and they knew it, but they kept playing until they all got burned.
If you believe Greenspan's crocodile tears, well, I assure you he's been crying all the way to the bank, ever since the 80s.
Fundamentally it's not a whole lot different from what Enron did. The "genius" of this bubble was that it involved so many players -- the Fed, the financial sector, home builders, Congress -- and it involved so many millions of Americans, and finally it was baked to perfection. Who doesn't believe in the American Dream of owning your own home?
Considering the stakes, it was probably right for the government to blink. Unfortunately it's probably the only sensible thing the government has done in about 35 years of "oversight."
Social Security is a Federal tax, and it's actually regressive. Medicare is a Federal tax. Fuel tax is partially Federal tax.
I can't say for certain, but I think at least some of the telephone tax is Federal. Passport fees, 9/11 security fees, federal tobacco tax; Americans pay a lot of Federal taxes, and not just on April 15th.
On the notion that the rich are getting shafted, let's consult the CIA World Factbook: Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households.
If that's your definition of getting shafted, sign me up!
he now claims he wants to reduce the deficit by 2/3 by increasing the tax on the employers. (Who do you think the "rich" are anyway???)
Why shouldn't the rich pay more taxes than the poor?
Haven't you ever heard of Robin Hood? You do realize he was one of the good guys, right?
With Bush, we reduced taxes on the rich. Did their money trickle down? Not so much. Instead, they used it to inflate a huge stock market bubble. Now, everyday Americans see their retirement savings cut in half.
Seems like not taxing the rich was a huge mistake.
(The same mistake was made before the Crash of '29 and the Great Depression, though other mistakes were made too.)
Try replacing them with someone who has actually done productive work, not lawyers.
As a matter of fact, the past half-century or so has seen an influx of non-lawyers into the legislature. The predictable result: Poorly written, unjust, often unconstitutional laws. Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act FTW.
And you... you want more of this?
Let's break it down: Lawyer. Legal. Legislature.
Please consider thinking before you parrot your next ignorant truism.
Then a bug is discovered in the game rendering engine that causes actual delivered framerate to be understated by somewhere between 20-50%.
Well guess what - your test is WRONG. And all that lovely historical data is worthless, no matter how pretty the graph.
It's not worthless simply because it's understated by 20-50%. You can still, with reasonable certainty, compare the framerate from 10 years ago to the framerate of today. Knowing there's a 30% variance inherent to the test actually makes the statistics easier. With such a large variance, it might present problems determining which of today's video cards are fastest. But this variance will be insignificant compared to the effects of Moore's Law over a ten-year span.
Think of it this way: Each new generation of video card is probably 20-50% faster than the last gen. Over ten years, assuming video performance adheres to Moore's Law, the video cards of today are... 337% to 1493% faster than 10 years ago; an order of magnitude larger than the 20-50% variance in the test.
To sum up: There's a big difference between "uncertainty" and "wrong."
this whole idea that not regulating is a "right-wing" ideology is ridiculous.
No it isn't.
The word "regulation" appears twice in the 2008 Republican Party Platform. In both cases, they are talking about reducing or removing regulation.
Economic freedom expands the prosperity pie; government can only divide it up. That is why Republicans advocate lower taxes, reasonable regulation, and smaller, smarter government.
Our approach to regulation - basing it on sound science to achieve goals that are technically feasible - will protect against job-killing intrusions into small businesses.
Israel did import a million Jews from Russia to ensure a few more decades of Jewish majority in their ostensibly democratic government.
Theocracy? Not as such... Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers stream into the West Bank, towards the "substantive reality" manifest within "surface symbolism."
The difficulty in getting a (representatively diverse) rabbinical council to agree on anything is testament to the tolerance for diversity within Jewish opinion. In other words, it is not the theocracy, per se, which concerns us about Iran, it is the narrow-minded outlook of theocratic leadership.
Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush are both devout Christians...
For the record I oppose any religious state, be it symbolically or substantively so, largely on "slippery slope" grounds -- and I think Israel has slid a fair bit since her inception.
Receiver takes his entangled particle with, leaving the other entangled half with the Sender many light years behind on Earth.
Receiver now monitors his entangled particle, knowing any changes are communication from the Sender, and happen instantaneously.
To sum up: Once you've built the channel (by taking two entangled particles and separating them, something we can only do at slower-than-light speeds) future communications down that channel are instantaneous.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, you're wrong. America's economy depended on slavery. Guns were necessary for slavery. Connect the dots.
Or continue to believe your fairy tale; it's a free country after all.
Look, I don't disagree that without an armed citizenry some Federal power might have swooped down and brought injustice. But it should be obvious that without armed slaveholders, slavery itself would simply have been unworkable. Thus, the right to bear arms was in fact a concession to the South. Without the Second Amendment, Congress could have de facto ended slavery simply by outlawing personal possession of firearms. It was this concern on the part of the slave states that led the amendment to be drafted in the first place.
Then, to sell it to the whole, they came up with the rhetoric you espouse, that it protects us from tyranny.
Where was that protection from tyranny during the Whiskey Rebellion? Why do you continue to believe it's about protection from tyranny when the armed populous was crushed by the Federal government as early as 1791?
There are those who would say we are already slaves considering that while we own shotguns the Army owns F-16s. No militia of the people could possibly stand against the Federal government today.
The point of my post was to correct the parent, who thought the Second Amendment was intended to serve as some sort of back-stop against Federal tyrrany. While that's true, the practical reason for the Second Amendment is that private ownership of guns was necessary to perpetuate slavery.
How this notion of protection from Federal largesse survived the Whiskey Rebellion is anybody's guess. I suppose even Libertarians need their mythology.
Actually, come to think of it, isn't this exactly what that part of your constitution about carrying guns is for?
No. The Second Amendment of our Constitution guarantees the slave states the right to quickly put down slave uprisings on their own (with a "militia"), rather than wait for the National Guard or the Federal Army to intervene.
I'm not denying the existence of Foundational rhetoric purporting a right to bear arms as a check against tyranny. But as a practical matter, it was about slavery. Quite ironic, actually.
Ask yourself this: How many times were arms used to fight the tyranny of the government? There are a few historical examples (Whiskey Rebellion, Civil War, Wounded Knee) but they are few and far between -- and, to date, unsuccessful. Now, for how many years were privately-held guns used to keep slaves in check? You are invited to "do the math."
The purpose of the Second Amendment was to allow slavery to continue unencumbered, despite the regulatory and military power of the new Federal government. Any other explanation (and the accompanying rhetoric) is window dressing.
It's willful ignorance to suppose that the Founding Fathers recognized the necessity of firearms to prevent tyranny, but didn't acknowledge their role in maintaining slavery.
But don't take my word for it.
"To disarm the people - that was the best and most effectual way to enslave them." -- George Mason
"No kingdom can be secured otherwise than by arming the people. The possession of arms is the distinction between a freeman and a slave. He, who has nothing, and who himself belongs to another, must be defended by him, whose property he is, and needs no arms. But he, who thinks he is his own master, and has what he can call his own, ought to have arms to defend himself, and what he possesses; else he lives precariously, and at discretion. -- James Burgh
We need to stop listening to Keynesian and socialist economists who don't have the first clue what they're talking about and are trying to give solutions based on theory instead of what's been shown to work.
Furthermore, we should stop listening to the Adam Smith Luddites and Ayn Rand Libertarians whose economic oeuvre is an obeisance to some mythological, childish notion of a "free market."
All government can do is get out of the way, and keep the playing field fair for the players.
Keeping it fair means the government has to get in the way.
I'll give you this, considering the size of our government, things should be a hell of a lot fairer than they are today.
But it's complicated. Bush was only able to keep unemployment in check by doubling the number of Federal workers; do you really think we should fire all those people (about 500,000) with the economy the way it is today?
4. Rather than compensating for the symptom with meds, look into the cause. Review your newborn's diet. If you're not breastfeeding it, consider giving nature a try.
Also, you know, newborns spit up a lot, they are basically little self-contained goo factories. You could be overreacting. Is this your first child?
***
With respect to health insurance, the legislated non-existence of a "free market" is indeed of the biggest problems. But hey, it's designed to be broken. The AMA has done an all too effective job brainwashing people about the evils of "socialized medicine." People still oppose it, despite overwhelming evidence that nationalized systems deliver a higher standard of care at significantly lower cost.
Cuba has roughly the same standard of care as the United States if you judge by infant mortality and life expectancy. Think about what that means in terms of efficiencies; it's orders of magnitude.
I agree that it is a challenge to discern the science from the political shitstorm surrounding it. That doesn't mean there isn't valid science in there, somewhere. Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.
What good is more "plant food?" Plants don't need more CO2 than was present in the atmosphere, pre-industrial revolution. Humans don't need as much food as we grow today either... we are now seeing a whole host of health problems that originate in overnutrition rather than undernutrition.
Roughly half the nitrate "plant food" in the world today is derived from fossil fuels. Production of chemical fertilizer consumes about 1% of the energy we produce. And, of course, the stuff is toxic once it inevitably washes down the Mississippi and creates a huge dead zone in the Gulf, for example.
More isn't always better. There is such a thing as "too much."
I think it's more likely that people don't even know where the voting buttons are in Outlook.
I worked for Volt at MS for a year. They offer a 401k plan and match a small percentage which is vested after a year. My year ended (MS only lets you stay a year due to the perma-temp settlement, then you have to take a 100-day break), but the Volt match never materialized in my 401k. Volt explained that to get the match I had to work 12 complete months. Sounds like a year, right? No. Since I started in the middle of the month, my first month wasn't a "complete" month, and it didn't count towards matching.
I told them their policy was BS, since 1 in 30 employees must start on the first day of the month, assuming people's contracts are as likley to start on day 1 as any other day. They didn't respond.
But the really nice part is today, when everybody on Slashdot gets to read about it.
Your post ignores:
1. Science
Assuming all the free carbon in the cycle now was available then; wouldn't the amount of CO2 in the air 100's of millions of years ago been far greater than it is today?
An answer to that question can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_the_Earth's_atmosphere
Changes in carbon dioxide during the Phanerozoic (the last 542 million years). The recent period is located on the left-hand side of the plot, and it appears that much of the last 550 million years has experienced carbon dioxide concentrations significantly higher than the present day.
We are adding it back quickly; but bringing it to levels where it previously has been. An we went through ice ages AND heat spells then. Are we really changing anything?
I am going to paraphrase your question:
It gets warm in the summer and cold in the winter. But then it gets warm again. So does anything really change?
I don't exactly know what obligation I have to do anything for the earth if there is no God and I'm a product of evolution.
Well then you should give that one some thought, since at least the latter half of your statement is undeniably true.
Seeing everything as a dichotomy = your problem. A lot of others suffer from the same disease.
I agree with most of what you said (all of it execpt CRA loans were a minor factor; heck all loans were a minor factor until they got leveraged 30-1).
But I fundamentally disagree with the notion that this bubble wasn't foreseen.
Take a look at DHI, CTX, RYL, etc. They peaked in '05, years before the market "realized" something was amiss. These people knew exactly what they were doing. Many Wall Street insiders have stated as much; that it was a game of hot potato, and they knew it, but they kept playing until they all got burned.
If you believe Greenspan's crocodile tears, well, I assure you he's been crying all the way to the bank, ever since the 80s.
Fundamentally it's not a whole lot different from what Enron did. The "genius" of this bubble was that it involved so many players -- the Fed, the financial sector, home builders, Congress -- and it involved so many millions of Americans, and finally it was baked to perfection. Who doesn't believe in the American Dream of owning your own home?
Considering the stakes, it was probably right for the government to blink. Unfortunately it's probably the only sensible thing the government has done in about 35 years of "oversight."
Social Security is a Federal tax, and it's actually regressive. Medicare is a Federal tax. Fuel tax is partially Federal tax.
I can't say for certain, but I think at least some of the telephone tax is Federal. Passport fees, 9/11 security fees, federal tobacco tax; Americans pay a lot of Federal taxes, and not just on April 15th.
On the notion that the rich are getting shafted, let's consult the CIA World Factbook:
Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20% of households.
If that's your definition of getting shafted, sign me up!
Your well-formatted, statistically dense post conveniently glossed over the fact that income taxes are not reflective of the entire tax burden.
Care to have another go at it?
he now claims he wants to reduce the deficit by 2/3 by increasing the tax on the employers. (Who do you think the "rich" are anyway???)
Why shouldn't the rich pay more taxes than the poor?
Haven't you ever heard of Robin Hood? You do realize he was one of the good guys, right?
With Bush, we reduced taxes on the rich. Did their money trickle down? Not so much. Instead, they used it to inflate a huge stock market bubble. Now, everyday Americans see their retirement savings cut in half.
Seems like not taxing the rich was a huge mistake.
(The same mistake was made before the Crash of '29 and the Great Depression, though other mistakes were made too.)
Try replacing them with someone who has actually done productive work, not lawyers.
As a matter of fact, the past half-century or so has seen an influx of non-lawyers into the legislature. The predictable result: Poorly written, unjust, often unconstitutional laws. Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act FTW.
And you... you want more of this?
Let's break it down: Lawyer. Legal. Legislature.
Please consider thinking before you parrot your next ignorant truism.
Be well,
Qrlx
Then a bug is discovered in the game rendering engine that causes actual delivered framerate to be understated by somewhere between 20-50%.
Well guess what - your test is WRONG. And all that lovely historical data is worthless, no matter how pretty the graph.
It's not worthless simply because it's understated by 20-50%. You can still, with reasonable certainty, compare the framerate from 10 years ago to the framerate of today. Knowing there's a 30% variance inherent to the test actually makes the statistics easier. With such a large variance, it might present problems determining which of today's video cards are fastest. But this variance will be insignificant compared to the effects of Moore's Law over a ten-year span.
Think of it this way: Each new generation of video card is probably 20-50% faster than the last gen. Over ten years, assuming video performance adheres to Moore's Law, the video cards of today are... 337% to 1493% faster than 10 years ago; an order of magnitude larger than the 20-50% variance in the test.
To sum up: There's a big difference between "uncertainty" and "wrong."
this whole idea that not regulating is a "right-wing" ideology is ridiculous.
No it isn't.
The word "regulation" appears twice in the 2008 Republican Party Platform. In both cases, they are talking about reducing or removing regulation.
Economic freedom expands the prosperity pie; government can only divide it up. That is why Republicans advocate lower taxes, reasonable regulation, and smaller, smarter government.
Our approach to regulation - basing it on sound science to achieve goals that are technically feasible - will protect against job-killing intrusions into small businesses.
Since you mention candidates for office...
Israel did import a million Jews from Russia to ensure a few more decades of Jewish majority in their ostensibly democratic government.
Theocracy? Not as such... Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers stream into the West Bank, towards the "substantive reality" manifest within "surface symbolism."
The difficulty in getting a (representatively diverse) rabbinical council to agree on anything is testament to the tolerance for diversity within Jewish opinion. In other words, it is not the theocracy, per se, which concerns us about Iran, it is the narrow-minded outlook of theocratic leadership.
Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush are both devout Christians...
For the record I oppose any religious state, be it symbolically or substantively so, largely on "slippery slope" grounds -- and I think Israel has slid a fair bit since her inception.
suspicion of iran has to do with it being a theocracy.
I wonder if you've seen the flag of Israel lately?
(Yes, I'm picking on Israel. Probably owing to their ballistic nuclear capability.)
So then... quantum entanglement for FTL communications just ain't gonna work? Or did I miss a step?
Not sure why I'm asking you when I could just Google it. Perhaps I think you might be more authoritative owing to your userid.
Anyway I just googled it on wikipedia (brain...exploding) and I think I've got my answer.
I thought it was like this:
Receiver and sender both start out on Earth.
Receiver takes his entangled particle with, leaving the other entangled half with the Sender many light years behind on Earth.
Receiver now monitors his entangled particle, knowing any changes are communication from the Sender, and happen instantaneously.
To sum up: Once you've built the channel (by taking two entangled particles and separating them, something we can only do at slower-than-light speeds) future communications down that channel are instantaneous.
But like I said I don't really understand.
AFAIK, "nekulturny" (literally, uncultured) is still the highest insult you can throw at a Russian.
In terms of absolute magnitude, how does that compare to telling a Turk he's not really European?
Why you gotta pick on ducks? The entire production animal ecosystem consist of animals "artificially enlarged."
Cows don't normally eat corn, antibiotics, and parts of other cows. But that's what we put in the feed trough.
The notion of "animal abuse" seems incongruous with the fact that said animals exist solely to be slaughtered and eaten.