Why do you Americans treat the words of your Founding Fathers like religious edict?
Dude, your security agencies' behaviour has a lot less support than the PPACA, and a lot less democratic oversight, but that's allowed to continue. Ditto for your endless wars, and ANY given opinion about abortion, marriage, taxation, private ownership (consider e.g. gun ownership and property taxes)...
If you really were a country which only did things when supported by an overwhelming majority, you'd do pretty much fuck all except have the police stop people murdering and attacking each other, and stopping people from actually coming to your country and attacking it. Slavery would also have carried on nicely. The whole "only if the overwhelming majority of people" thing is quaint fantasy.
There was blatant bribery where one state was gifted special benefits to purchase a yea vote on the bill.
Evidence beyond reasonable doubt - e.g. conviction in court of law, please. Evidence that your allegations, if true, would have made a difference.
Others were pushed out of congress through scandals which may or may not have been fabricated.
"Something bad may have happened but I have no evidence for it."
The legislation itself was never fully available so that we could even know what was up for vote.
Sorry, what? Are you claiming that your representatives didn't have the full text of primary legislation available, or that secondary legislation is left to the executive (which is standard for all lawmaking)?
The vote itself was pushed time and time again until the outcome was assured.
What do you mean by this? That the legislation was modified until enough people were happy with it? IOW standard legislative process?
Heck, they even kept the legislature in DC during the winter break so that legislators wouldn't go home and hear directly from the people.
What do you actually mean by this? Define "kept".
A major bill like this, getting voted through with not one vote from the opposite party all but ensured something like this would happen.
"The opposite party". Way to declare your enjoyment for two-party politics. It was passed. Nobody forced people to vote Democrat, and nobody forced the elected Congresscritters to vote in favour of the bill.
What the GOP is doing is no worse than what the dems had to do to pass it in the first place.
Obamacare was already voted by the representatives of the people. Refusing to fund it is ignoring the will of the people.
The monopoly on origination of spending&taxing bills has also been recently abused in the UK by the Commons to stop measures which the one house doesn't like. It's a corruption which could ultimately be used to override nearly any law, because 1) Nearly every measure costs money; 2) the House could just refuse to budget for *anything* in particular until *any* law it doesn't like is repealed.
Please note that the "right-wingers" got into congress by BEING ELECTED
Yeah. And I've never seen a functional representative democracy in which a majority vote can be overridden by simply putting the whole government on hold until the minority gets its way. It's a childish, undemocratic waste of resources.
And even the left-wingers who are trying to bankrupt the country
Yes yes selling off government to the military-industrial complex and short-term profiteering form the long-term solution to medium-term budget problems. The problem is quite simply that the government currently belongs to the private sector, rather than working on behalf of the people. This should be a problem whether you're on the left or the right.
I realize that SlashDot is predominantly peopled by lefties who believe that the Federal Government SHOULD exercise the sorts of imperial power by decree
You misspelled "democratic" as "imperial".
Obama is trying mightily to make everybody feel the pain of his displeasure
Yeah, this one guy hates you alllll and wants to make you feel bad because.. because... oh he's just PURE EVIL:'(.
Christ, I couldn't stand GWB (and don't like Obama that much more), but I didn't invent sadistic fantasies that he just wanted to "make everybody feel the pain of his displeasure". And I can even grin and bear admitting that GWB was almost democratically elected.
I'd love to send some of these small government fetishists back to the start of the 19th century to see what it really felt like for the average man (or, worse, woman).
Or we could just shut down government entirely, looters will take ALL the money out of your "tax-payer pocket", long-term (i.e. high risk) research will come to a stand-still, and America will reach the Somalian dream.
...I've been affected by the way that the "leader of the free world" has once again demonstrated its disdain for democracy: if the right wing don't like something passed by representatives of the people, it seems they can just deny everything else. If I can't keep a few million of you in desperation, FUCK YOU I'M TAKING MY BALL HOME, &c.
I look forward to my country following this awful example.
Ah, I remember the ARM1 springboard thingy. I got an A3000 around 1990, although that was a bit inadequate - no hard drive, coprocessor slot, etc. But yeah, similar throughout. 26-bit architecture is more elegant than 32-bit, too:P.
And thanks to the internet being the world's most effective copying machine, if these episodes do release, we'll never have to worry about this particular series going dark again.
Why do people have so much more faith in the Internet than any other medium before it? It is young and requires an incredible level of infrastructure to exist and advanced factories to maintain. Do you know how much data you would lose access to if your country were without even power stations for even a couple of days? How long did it take for civilisation to be able to build a thermionic valve, let alone a modern CPU?
Obvious troll is obvious, but depending on where you set your standards, all science fiction, all fiction, or even the wonder of life itself is reserved for "for adolescents who never grew up". Put another way:
"We conceal it from ourselves in vain - we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and we cannot possibly live for a moment without it." - Pascal
Across Bachelors and Masters, I did about 80% mathematics and theoretical physics, 10% computing, and 10% history of mathematics. The greatest challenge was in history of mathematics, as it combined mathematics, linguistics (interpreting unfamiliar languages and unfamiliar notations), philosophy and history.
Well, I'd say about 20 years - there's nothing I can do on my main computer today that I couldn't do on the Acorn ARM-based desktop I bought in 1994. There's not one idea that is implemented now but wasn't implemented then.
With one exception: more space-efficiency. Although these have been cancelled out by so many layers of bloat that RISC OS then feels as snappy as Windows 8 today.
the average age of a house in the USA is 30-40 years old
Living as I do in a ~250 year old English house, once a coaching inn, I sometimes forget just how young much of the US is. Which is regrettable, because it's its youth which has made it so dynamic and at the same time so naïve.
You're saying I can call someone and say "I failed, please give me all my money back" because I created an LLC? Or have I actually lost everything, just like the person you said was wrong claimed?
"If I do something completely stupid, am I likely to be fucked at the end of the day?"
Yes, you are. What does this have to do with how American capitalism works?
Starting a successful company requires more than working in an office and saying up money. If you mean you got the capital to start one that way, ok, but then if you folded the company without paying your employees you aren't a success, you are scum. Not paying employees isn't an inherent feature of capitalism.
Err, I didn't do that, but I could have, and it absolutely is an inherent feature of the LLC that you can do that. In fact, it's the whole point: you can create debt then ignore it, because it belongs to an imaginary person who you "own" and can "kill".
This phrase makes no sense, so I'm going to try using it in a sentence to see if I understand it correctly.
Yesterday someone calling himself a capitalist/god-worshipper/communist killed someone. I think that puts proof to the lie that activist capitalists/god-worshippers/communists are improving the world. They're not. They're murderers, just like all other capitalists/god-worshippers/communists.
Slashdot Mirror
Why do you Americans treat the words of your Founding Fathers like religious edict?
Dude, your security agencies' behaviour has a lot less support than the PPACA, and a lot less democratic oversight, but that's allowed to continue. Ditto for your endless wars, and ANY given opinion about abortion, marriage, taxation, private ownership (consider e.g. gun ownership and property taxes)...
If you really were a country which only did things when supported by an overwhelming majority, you'd do pretty much fuck all except have the police stop people murdering and attacking each other, and stopping people from actually coming to your country and attacking it. Slavery would also have carried on nicely. The whole "only if the overwhelming majority of people" thing is quaint fantasy.
There was blatant bribery where one state was gifted special benefits to purchase a yea vote on the bill.
Evidence beyond reasonable doubt - e.g. conviction in court of law, please. Evidence that your allegations, if true, would have made a difference.
Others were pushed out of congress through scandals which may or may not have been fabricated.
"Something bad may have happened but I have no evidence for it."
The legislation itself was never fully available so that we could even know what was up for vote.
Sorry, what? Are you claiming that your representatives didn't have the full text of primary legislation available, or that secondary legislation is left to the executive (which is standard for all lawmaking)?
The vote itself was pushed time and time again until the outcome was assured.
What do you mean by this? That the legislation was modified until enough people were happy with it? IOW standard legislative process?
Heck, they even kept the legislature in DC during the winter break so that legislators wouldn't go home and hear directly from the people.
What do you actually mean by this? Define "kept".
A major bill like this, getting voted through with not one vote from the opposite party all but ensured something like this would happen.
"The opposite party". Way to declare your enjoyment for two-party politics. It was passed. Nobody forced people to vote Democrat, and nobody forced the elected Congresscritters to vote in favour of the bill.
What the GOP is doing is no worse than what the dems had to do to pass it in the first place.
"HE STARTED IT!" Grow the fuck up.
So you want to maintain laws but not the means needed to implement them?
Wait, no... in the next paragraph you complain about regulation, which is a type of law. What is it you really want?
Wait... are you saying that living in France/California is like living in Somalia? Is this how religious people really think?
Obamacare was already voted by the representatives of the people. Refusing to fund it is ignoring the will of the people.
The monopoly on origination of spending&taxing bills has also been recently abused in the UK by the Commons to stop measures which the one house doesn't like. It's a corruption which could ultimately be used to override nearly any law, because 1) Nearly every measure costs money; 2) the House could just refuse to budget for *anything* in particular until *any* law it doesn't like is repealed.
Please note that the "right-wingers" got into congress by BEING ELECTED
Yeah. And I've never seen a functional representative democracy in which a majority vote can be overridden by simply putting the whole government on hold until the minority gets its way. It's a childish, undemocratic waste of resources.
And even the left-wingers who are trying to bankrupt the country
Yes yes selling off government to the military-industrial complex and short-term profiteering form the long-term solution to medium-term budget problems. The problem is quite simply that the government currently belongs to the private sector, rather than working on behalf of the people. This should be a problem whether you're on the left or the right.
I realize that SlashDot is predominantly peopled by lefties who believe that the Federal Government SHOULD exercise the sorts of imperial power by decree
You misspelled "democratic" as "imperial".
Obama is trying mightily to make everybody feel the pain of his displeasure
Yeah, this one guy hates you alllll and wants to make you feel bad because.. because... oh he's just PURE EVIL :'(.
Christ, I couldn't stand GWB (and don't like Obama that much more), but I didn't invent sadistic fantasies that he just wanted to "make everybody feel the pain of his displeasure". And I can even grin and bear admitting that GWB was almost democratically elected.
For myself, I have always bought or lived in houses that were... ...a person of normal privileges...
What.
The whole problem?
I'd love to send some of these small government fetishists back to the start of the 19th century to see what it really felt like for the average man (or, worse, woman).
Or we could just shut down government entirely, looters will take ALL the money out of your "tax-payer pocket", long-term (i.e. high risk) research will come to a stand-still, and America will reach the Somalian dream.
...I've been affected by the way that the "leader of the free world" has once again demonstrated its disdain for democracy: if the right wing don't like something passed by representatives of the people, it seems they can just deny everything else. If I can't keep a few million of you in desperation, FUCK YOU I'M TAKING MY BALL HOME, &c.
I look forward to my country following this awful example.
Ah, I remember the ARM1 springboard thingy. I got an A3000 around 1990, although that was a bit inadequate - no hard drive, coprocessor slot, etc. But yeah, similar throughout. 26-bit architecture is more elegant than 32-bit, too :P.
And thanks to the internet being the world's most effective copying machine, if these episodes do release, we'll never have to worry about this particular series going dark again.
Why do people have so much more faith in the Internet than any other medium before it? It is young and requires an incredible level of infrastructure to exist and advanced factories to maintain. Do you know how much data you would lose access to if your country were without even power stations for even a couple of days? How long did it take for civilisation to be able to build a thermionic valve, let alone a modern CPU?
Obvious troll is obvious, but depending on where you set your standards, all science fiction, all fiction, or even the wonder of life itself is reserved for "for adolescents who never grew up". Put another way:
"We conceal it from ourselves in vain - we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and we cannot possibly live for a moment without it." - Pascal
That's very generalising of you.
Across Bachelors and Masters, I did about 80% mathematics and theoretical physics, 10% computing, and 10% history of mathematics. The greatest challenge was in history of mathematics, as it combined mathematics, linguistics (interpreting unfamiliar languages and unfamiliar notations), philosophy and history.
Well, I'd say about 20 years - there's nothing I can do on my main computer today that I couldn't do on the Acorn ARM-based desktop I bought in 1994. There's not one idea that is implemented now but wasn't implemented then.
With one exception: more space-efficiency. Although these have been cancelled out by so many layers of bloat that RISC OS then feels as snappy as Windows 8 today.
It's true, there's a MARXIST CONSPIRACY in mathematics faculties across the planet. Wall Street is full of LENINIST QUANTS.
This country were last subject to aerial attack in WW2, and the US in 2001.
This particular area has been populated for at least 6,000 years, and not been invaded since 1066. It has never been attacked from the air.
I wish you well over the next millennium.
And yet people will still say that your fate depends on how hard you try, rather than who your mother and father were.
Ball or aerosol?
Speaking as the average human, I carefully skimmed your post and understand that we should build tornado-proof homes out of black holes?
the average age of a house in the USA is 30-40 years old
Living as I do in a ~250 year old English house, once a coaching inn, I sometimes forget just how young much of the US is. Which is regrettable, because it's its youth which has made it so dynamic and at the same time so naïve.
A grammatical error causes me to slow down to make sure I've not misinterpreted, so it definitely causes me confusion.
Some people with big egos like to assume that they always know what was actually meant - which is how wars usually start.
tl;dr Grammar nazism stops wars.
While I agree that owning land is an absurdity, "Just move somewhere better!" is one of the least logical cries of the over-privileged.
You're saying I can call someone and say "I failed, please give me all my money back" because I created an LLC? Or have I actually lost everything, just like the person you said was wrong claimed?
"If I do something completely stupid, am I likely to be fucked at the end of the day?"
Yes, you are. What does this have to do with how American capitalism works?
Starting a successful company requires more than working in an office and saying up money. If you mean you got the capital to start one that way, ok, but then if you folded the company without paying your employees you aren't a success, you are scum. Not paying employees isn't an inherent feature of capitalism.
Err, I didn't do that, but I could have, and it absolutely is an inherent feature of the LLC that you can do that. In fact, it's the whole point: you can create debt then ignore it, because it belongs to an imaginary person who you "own" and can "kill".
"puts proof to the lie"
This phrase makes no sense, so I'm going to try using it in a sentence to see if I understand it correctly.
Yesterday someone calling himself a capitalist/god-worshipper/communist killed someone. I think that puts proof to the lie that activist capitalists/god-worshippers/communists are improving the world. They're not. They're murderers, just like all other capitalists/god-worshippers/communists.