If the presidential candidate in question was a Republican,
There is no Presidential candidate involved. The hypothetical situation is a Democrat President (perhaps Hillary), a Democrat VP (perhaps Bill), and Republican Speaker of the House.
By "presidential candidate" in this context I mean someone who has a claim to the office. If you don't want to call them a "candidate" that's fine. I think we're both on the same page here, though.
In other words, the coservative members would vote for a conservative interpretation of the Constitution, and the liberal members would seek guidance in the laws of other countries and ignore the explicit language of the Constitution they took an oath to support and defend.
You're showing your bias a bit here in your wording:) I think both sides could have a valid argument here, with the Constitution written as-is. The 22nd amendment does explicitly say "elected" but common sense dictates that the intent of the amendment was to prevent someone from being president-for-life, with political games being played to keep someone in power for longer. That said, if we had a Congress worth anything I would hope they'd clarify and codify this one way or the other, before we get to the point of a constitutional crisis.
Your statement echoes the mistake that many people make about the SCOTUS decision regarding Gore. They did NOT elect Bush, they did not vote FOR Bush, they upheld the right of a STATE to enact their own laws regarding the selection of electors
Seeing as the SCOTUS overruled Florida's Supreme Court regarding the recount, I have to disagree with your assertion that they upheld the right of a state to enact their own laws regarding the selection of electors.
We lost around 2000 men in a single day during WWII. It was called D-Day. The UK lost 382,600 soldiers in WWII. The US lost over 400,000. We've lost around 3000 soldiers in Iraq over four years. If you just run the numbers, Iraq is one of the greatest military victories in history. It's the spin battle that we've lost.
And if you do more than "just run the numbers" you find that we've created an even bigger mess than we started with. The initial invasion may have accomplished its goals of defeating the Iraqi army and overthrowing Saddam Hussein. And I'll acknowledge that American soldiers really were greeted as liberators immediately following the invasion. However, the subsequent occupation was bumbled nearly every step of the way. During an occupation, it really is the "spin" that matters- not just the 'spin' in the US, but in Iraq- the people of the occupied country need to believe that the occupying army will improve things. Once we lose the hearts and minds of the occupied people, it's hard to get that back.
Also, 2007 was the deadliest year of the occupation so far, so it seems that things haven't started to improve yet.
That's like blaming all the deaths in WWII on Roosevelt or all the lives lost in the Revolutionary war on Washington.
If FDR fucked up WWII as badly as Bush did the Iraq War, we'd all be speaking German right now. So I think at least some of the blame for the colossal mess lies with Bush.
If you thought the furor over SCOTUS stopping Gore's shenanigans trying to keep Florida's electors from being certified according to Florida's laws was something, just wait until SCOTUS has to rule on whether the 22nd A means one cannot SERVE despite clear terminology that the limit is "elected", and Bill gets passed over for a Republican speaker of the house when Hill steps down. I'd almost pay to watch that
I can pretty much tell you right now what would happen-
If the presidential candidate in question was a Republican, then the more conservative members of the court would vote in favor if him becoming president, and the more liberal members would vote against it.
If the presidential candidate in question was a Democrat, then the more liberal members of the court would vote in favor if him becoming president, and the more conservative members would vote against it.
You may have Nixon confused with Andrew Johnson the 17th president who was impeached. In fact impeachment proceedings failed to make it out of committee in 1867 and then impeachment was successful in 1868. Johnson was acquitted by one vote in the Senate by Edmund G. Ross of Kansas.
Did you honestly think that the OP got Nixon and Andrew Johnson mixed up, or did you just want to spout your vast knowledge of impeachment history to the Slashdot crowd? You did manage to get modded-up to 5... Kudos!
That said, people are bringing too much shit as carry on anyways. Heaven forbid they check their clothing, I mean, mon dieu, they might be without their designer clothing for a whole flight, OH. MY. GOD.
I'm one of those assholes who bring as much stuff as possible onto the plane and avoid checking baggage. Want to know why?
Because at least half of the time when I fly, they manage to lose/delay my luggage. I don't care so much about being without my clothing for the duration of the flight, but I don't want to sit around for the next few days without the stuff I packed.
That's the only piece of trivia that survived the ages, if someone else has more to share that would be interesting.
I don't know if it's the case you're thinking of, but the Pirahã people don't have any counting words besides 'one', 'two' and 'many' (and there's some doubt that even 'one' and 'two' exist in their language.)
Do you have any examples of software that works in XP and needs rewriting for Vista?
One of my job duties is writing installation packages (we use InstallShield) and we have to jump through all sorts of crazy hoops to get around the Vista "security" so things actually install properly.
The study was specific to England/Wales, but I can't imagine it would be that much different in the US as well. Most people are going to commit minor crimes if it benefits them personally.
Especially if they're perceived as barely hurting anybody, or "victimless" crimes.
Charging first in a knifefight is rarely a good idea, shooting first in a gunfight is.
Sure, but charging knife-first into a gunfight is a very bad idea.
Actually, check google for the "21 foot rule"
According to police training, if a person has a knife within a 21 foot radius, they're close enough to reach the cop and start stabbing before the cop would have a chance to draw his gun and shoot an aimed shot.
So charging knife-first into a gunfight might be the best option for surviving it.
Let's compare the post Roman world to the pre-Roman world. Prior to Christianity, the world believed in conquest without justification. IF someone had more stuff than you, you sent in an army and took it. Then you brought home a bunch of loot, and were rewarded for it. Look at all the Roman celebrations of conquest - called "triumphs." In the ancient world - if the people were not of your country, it was desirable to kill them and take all of their stuff.
When the Romans were victorious in war, they believed it to be because the gods favored them. They were still operating under the assumption that they were doing the gods' work, only in their case, the gods apparently wanted them to conquer their neighbors.
In fact, many generals would do things like go on gambling binges before a big battle, believing that if they won, it showed they were still favored by the gods, and could expect to be victorious. If they lost, it was a bad omen.
In any case, your argument seems to be that since they weren't Christians, they were unmotivated by religion. While their wars may not have been primarily religious in nature, they still had some religious overtones to them. And besides, once Europe converted to Christianity, it's not like an extended peace followed. There were still plenty of wars, they just needed to find different justifications for them (such as people of another religion defiling the holy lands.)
Societies may have "invented" the notion of religion because religion led to ethics, which led to less killing of their neighbors. All of the sudden, it's survival of the fittest, as non-ethical tribes tended to be killed off, while religious tribes thrived.
No other species of animal on earth has what we would call a system of religion, but they've all managed to keep from slaughtering themselves into extinction. Why would humans need to be any different? Our natural instincts managed to keep us alive for a few hundred thousand years, without the help of religion.
Also, the argument that religion leads to less killing would be a tough one to prove. If anything, religion often teaches its followers to go out and kill off the unbelievers in other tribes (check the Old Testament, the Koran, etc.)
An obvious second example is the notion of being against birth control (or for large families). Tribes that were for large families and passed those beliefs down to their children tended to grow.
This didn't really become much of a factor until a sedentary, agricultural based system of human organization began. For nomadic/seminomadic people, when its time to travel, you can really only carry one child at a time. If you have more than one kid who can't walk yet... one gets left behind. This would favor abortion/infanticide in these cases.
When you're talking about massive loss of life while testing armed robots that the military wants to turn loose on the world, sometimes humor is the only way to deal with reality.
Seriously.. this thing was built with the explicit purpose of raining death down on people.
And lookee, it apparently did the job it was built to do.... Only on people we've all decided "deserved" to keep their lives.
Unlike the people this thing was *intended* to kill.
The fact that anybody is joking about 9 people losing their lives sickens mean. Have you all truly lost touch with reality to the point that the loss of human life is completely lost on you? Seriously?
Maybe if the weapons DON'T work properly, it will end up saving the lives of people who would have been blasted into oblivion by these things.
But they would want to impeach Hillary. Just like the impeached Bill (although they didn't remove him.) Why would they want to pass anti-choice/anti-gay legislation?
Anti-gay because the Republican party is made up of religious wackos and self-hating closet-cases.
And anti-choice because being fewer abortions means more babies for Republicans to eat.
Granted, but we are still talking about 160,000 years. This is the entire scope of our known history repeated 32 times. While certain people groups may have become isolated and backward, there is a lot of time in there for civilizations to emerge.
Another thing to keep in mind is that this is assuming that "civilization" as we think of it is the pinnacle of human achievement in social organization. Don't forget that when "civilization" expanded into new areas, many people died defending their way of life. Not everyone saw it as a blessing.
While civilization certainly has its merits, many people were perfectly content maintaining their hunter-gatherer lifestyles. Why bust your ass growing crops just to support some privileged class of priests and kings, when there's plenty of food out there free for the taking?
Think about it from the point of view of a person at the beginning of the 'agricultural revolution.' You can either continue your way of life which worked really well for hundreds of thousands of years, or take your chances on some rather difficult work for a not-really guaranteed payoff a few months down the line? The fact that anyone bothered *at all* with agriculture should be somewhat surprising.
Agriculture really is not that big of a stretch intellectually. Can someone explain how this is even plausible?
There are a few things off the top of my head.
1. Agriculture is (on average) actually a less efficient way of producing food than hunting/gathering, in terms of calories spent per calories produced. Why bother growing stuff (with backbreaking labor) when it takes less work to procure food through other means?
2. Large-scale agriculture requires a sufficiently developed system of social organization to basically keep the peons working, producing more than enough food for the farmers themselves. Also this goes back to #1
3. Not every area has crops that are suitable for agriculture, for one reason or another, or the people lack the materials to make the necessary tools for working the land, etc.
"George Bush is not stupid. He's evil. OK? There's a huge difference between stupid and evil."
"George Bush can speak perfectly well, just not when he's being caring or compassionate or concerned about human beings. That's when he stutters and says shit like 'Hey it's hard to put food on your family.' Which he actually said, he said it's hard to put food on your family. Do you know why he said that? 'Cause he could give a fuck how hard it is for you to put food on the table for your family. But you know when he gets really downright poetic and articulate and focused is when he's talking about war and death and murder and retribution. All of a sudden he's Dylan Thomas."
"Here's the thing, if you gave Darth Vader a big basket of puppies he'd look like a fucking imbecile. 'Hey Darth, how do you like those puppies?' 'Uh, well they're round...furry...to, uh, pet...here I don't really like puppies, here, take these.' 'What are you gonna do to Alderaan?' 'WE WILL DESTROY YOUR PLANET, YOU WILL BE DUST BENEATH THE HEELS OF OUR BOOTS!' That's George Bush! I know a supervillain when I see one!"
The jury's job is to determine if she broke the law, not determine if the law makes sense.
Actually a jury can do that too. If a defense can convince the jury that the law is unfair or being applied unjustly, the jury is able to find a not-guilty verdict, regardless of whether or not the defendant actually broke the law.
It's something of a long-shot defense, but it can work sometimes.
Wow. It really takes guts to accuse Christianity of "stealing" crucifixion from the Romans. What next, "Native Americans stole smallpox from the White man"?
OK, I'll admit I wasn't very clear. What I meant to say was, the idea of a God-man savior being crucified isn't unique to Christianity. Obviously they didn't "steal" crucifixion from the Romans.
To be really fair, there is no mention of hell in the old testament and is actually only referred to as the physical location in the new testament in name (not the lake of fire in revelations which isn't referred to as directly as hell) which was pulled directly to Roman-pagan mythology hades as a form of underworld punishment rather then the concept of "separation of God".
To be extra, super-duper turbo fair, pretty much the entire body of Christianity was lifted directly from pagan mythology, from the Romans, Egyptians, etc. Not just the concept of hell, but virgin birth, communion, crucifixion, resurrection, salvation, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
By "presidential candidate" in this context I mean someone who has a claim to the office. If you don't want to call them a "candidate" that's fine. I think we're both on the same page here, though.
You're showing your bias a bit here in your wording
Seeing as the SCOTUS overruled Florida's Supreme Court regarding the recount, I have to disagree with your assertion that they upheld the right of a state to enact their own laws regarding the selection of electors.
We lost around 2000 men in a single day during WWII. It was called D-Day. The UK lost 382,600 soldiers in WWII. The US lost over 400,000. We've lost around 3000 soldiers in Iraq over four years. If you just run the numbers, Iraq is one of the greatest military victories in history. It's the spin battle that we've lost.
And if you do more than "just run the numbers" you find that we've created an even bigger mess than we started with.
The initial invasion may have accomplished its goals of defeating the Iraqi army and overthrowing Saddam Hussein. And I'll acknowledge that American soldiers really were greeted as liberators immediately following the invasion. However, the subsequent occupation was bumbled nearly every step of the way. During an occupation, it really is the "spin" that matters- not just the 'spin' in the US, but in Iraq- the people of the occupied country need to believe that the occupying army will improve things. Once we lose the hearts and minds of the occupied people, it's hard to get that back.
Also, 2007 was the deadliest year of the occupation so far, so it seems that things haven't started to improve yet.
Rendition was a bit more odious but it didn't stop Clinton's first administration from using the practice.
Actually, when the Clinton administration did it, they took steps to make sure the receiving country did not torture or mistreat the prisoner.
The Bush admin, not so much, which is one of the aspects of the Bush version of rendition that is sharply criticized.
That's like blaming all the deaths in WWII on Roosevelt or all the lives lost in the Revolutionary war on Washington.
If FDR fucked up WWII as badly as Bush did the Iraq War, we'd all be speaking German right now.
So I think at least some of the blame for the colossal mess lies with Bush.
Wanting blue jeans, and ipods doesn't make them on our side.
Maybe not, but the more they enjoy American cultural exports, the less likely they're probably going to be to hate America.
I can pretty much tell you right now what would happen-
If the presidential candidate in question was a Republican, then the more conservative members of the court would vote in favor if him becoming president, and the more liberal members would vote against it.
If the presidential candidate in question was a Democrat, then the more liberal members of the court would vote in favor if him becoming president, and the more conservative members would vote against it.
You may have Nixon confused with Andrew Johnson the 17th president who was impeached. In fact impeachment proceedings failed to make it out of committee in 1867 and then impeachment was successful in 1868. Johnson was acquitted by one vote in the Senate by
Edmund G. Ross of Kansas.
Did you honestly think that the OP got Nixon and Andrew Johnson mixed up, or did you just want to spout your vast knowledge of impeachment history to the Slashdot crowd? You did manage to get modded-up to 5... Kudos!
That said, people are bringing too much shit as carry on anyways. Heaven forbid they check their clothing, I mean, mon dieu, they might be without their designer clothing for a whole flight, OH. MY. GOD.
I'm one of those assholes who bring as much stuff as possible onto the plane and avoid checking baggage.
Want to know why?
Because at least half of the time when I fly, they manage to lose/delay my luggage.
I don't care so much about being without my clothing for the duration of the flight, but I don't
want to sit around for the next few days without the stuff I packed.
That's the only piece of trivia that survived the ages, if someone else has more to share that would be interesting.
I don't know if it's the case you're thinking of, but the Pirahã people don't have any counting words besides 'one', 'two' and 'many' (and there's some doubt that even 'one' and 'two' exist in their language.)
also check out the wiki article on the Pirahã language
Interesting stuff...
The lead levels were upwards of 500 times the legal limit.
There's an easy solution for this:
Raise the legal limit to 500x the current limit.
Problem solved!
</BushAdminDomesticPolicy>
Do you have any examples of software that works in XP and needs rewriting for Vista?
One of my job duties is writing installation packages (we use InstallShield) and we have to jump through all sorts of crazy hoops to get around the Vista "security" so things actually install properly.
No, crime is a mindset. Most people are not criminals, and will never become criminals.
Well, that's nice and all but simply not true.
The study was specific to England/Wales, but I can't imagine it would be that much different in the US as well.
Most people are going to commit minor crimes if it benefits them personally.
Especially if they're perceived as barely hurting anybody, or "victimless" crimes.
Actually, check google for the "21 foot rule"
According to police training, if a person has a knife within a 21 foot radius, they're close enough to reach the cop and start stabbing before the cop would have a chance to draw his gun and shoot an aimed shot.
So charging knife-first into a gunfight might be the best option for surviving it.
Let's compare the post Roman world to the pre-Roman world. Prior to Christianity, the world believed in conquest without justification. IF someone had more stuff than you, you sent in an army and took it. Then you brought home a bunch of loot, and were rewarded for it. Look at all the Roman celebrations of conquest - called "triumphs." In the ancient world - if the people were not of your country, it was desirable to kill them and take all of their stuff.
When the Romans were victorious in war, they believed it to be because the gods favored them.
They were still operating under the assumption that they were doing the gods' work, only in their case,
the gods apparently wanted them to conquer their neighbors.
In fact, many generals would do things like go on gambling binges before a big battle, believing that if they won, it showed they were still favored by the gods, and could expect to be victorious. If they lost, it was a bad omen.
In any case, your argument seems to be that since they weren't Christians, they were unmotivated by religion.
While their wars may not have been primarily religious in nature, they still had some religious overtones to them.
And besides, once Europe converted to Christianity, it's not like an extended peace followed. There were still plenty of wars, they just needed to find different justifications for them (such as people of another religion defiling the holy lands.)
Societies may have "invented" the notion of religion because religion led to ethics, which led to less killing of their neighbors. All of the sudden, it's survival of the fittest, as non-ethical tribes tended to be killed off, while religious tribes thrived.
No other species of animal on earth has what we would call a system of religion, but they've all managed to keep from slaughtering themselves into extinction. Why would humans need to be any different? Our natural instincts managed to keep us alive for a few hundred thousand years, without the help of religion.
Also, the argument that religion leads to less killing would be a tough one to prove. If anything, religion often teaches its followers to go out and kill off the unbelievers in other tribes (check the Old Testament, the Koran, etc.)
An obvious second example is the notion of being against birth control (or for large families). Tribes that were for large families and passed those beliefs down to their children tended to grow.
This didn't really become much of a factor until a sedentary, agricultural based system of human organization began. For nomadic/seminomadic people, when its time to travel, you can really only carry one child at a time. If you have more than one kid who can't walk yet... one gets left behind. This would favor abortion/infanticide in these cases.
When you're talking about massive loss of life while testing armed robots that the military wants to turn loose on the world, sometimes humor is the only way to deal with reality.
Seriously.. this thing was built with the explicit purpose of raining death down on people.
And lookee, it apparently did the job it was built to do....
Only on people we've all decided "deserved" to keep their lives.
Unlike the people this thing was *intended* to kill.
The fact that anybody is joking about 9 people losing their lives sickens mean. Have you all truly lost touch with reality to the point that the loss of human life is completely lost on you? Seriously?
Maybe if the weapons DON'T work properly, it will end up saving the lives of people who would have been blasted into oblivion by these things.
But they would want to impeach Hillary. Just like the impeached Bill (although they didn't remove him.) Why would they want to pass anti-choice/anti-gay legislation?
Anti-gay because the Republican party is made up of religious wackos and self-hating closet-cases.
And anti-choice because being fewer abortions means more babies for Republicans to eat.
Granted, but we are still talking about 160,000 years. This is the entire scope of our known history repeated 32 times. While certain people groups may have become isolated and backward, there is a lot of time in there for civilizations to emerge.
Another thing to keep in mind is that this is assuming that "civilization" as we think of it is the pinnacle of human achievement in social organization. Don't forget that when "civilization" expanded into new areas, many people died defending their way of life. Not everyone saw it as a blessing.
While civilization certainly has its merits, many people were perfectly content maintaining their hunter-gatherer lifestyles.
Why bust your ass growing crops just to support some privileged class of priests and kings, when there's plenty of food out there free for the taking?
Think about it from the point of view of a person at the beginning of the 'agricultural revolution.'
You can either continue your way of life which worked really well for hundreds of thousands of years, or take your chances on some rather difficult work for a not-really guaranteed payoff a few months down the line?
The fact that anyone bothered *at all* with agriculture should be somewhat surprising.
Agriculture really is not that big of a stretch intellectually. Can someone explain how this is even plausible?
There are a few things off the top of my head.
1. Agriculture is (on average) actually a less efficient way of producing food than hunting/gathering, in terms of calories spent per calories produced. Why bother growing stuff (with backbreaking labor) when it takes less work to procure food through other means?
2. Large-scale agriculture requires a sufficiently developed system of social organization to basically keep the peons working, producing more than enough food for the farmers themselves. Also this goes back to #1
3. Not every area has crops that are suitable for agriculture, for one reason or another, or the people lack the materials to make the necessary tools for working the land, etc.
I'm sure there are plenty more I can't think of.
I think this guy said it well:
The jury's job is to determine if she broke the law, not determine if the law makes sense.
Actually a jury can do that too.
If a defense can convince the jury that the law is unfair or being applied unjustly, the jury is able
to find a not-guilty verdict, regardless of whether or not the defendant actually broke the law.
It's something of a long-shot defense, but it can work sometimes.
Wow. It really takes guts to accuse Christianity of "stealing" crucifixion from the Romans. What next, "Native Americans stole smallpox from the White man"?
OK, I'll admit I wasn't very clear.
What I meant to say was, the idea of a God-man savior being crucified isn't unique to Christianity.
Obviously they didn't "steal" crucifixion from the Romans.
Traditionally, the Pentateuch is held to have been written just after the Exodus; this would be sometime around 1500 BC or so.
That may be the traditionally held belief, but evidence would indicate it was written between about 850 BC to 621 BC or so.
So the OT is likely to have been written much later than what is traditionally held.
To be extra, super-duper turbo fair, pretty much the entire body of Christianity was lifted directly from pagan mythology, from the Romans, Egyptians, etc. Not just the concept of hell, but virgin birth, communion, crucifixion, resurrection, salvation, etc.