"The new regulations don't do anything to stop terrorism, but are intended to increase efficiency, by eliminating the pricks who refuse to identify themselves based on ideological grounds."
Seems to me you could increase efficiency by pointing the way to the secondary screening line and being done with them, rather than quoting regulations at them. I mean, they're obviously not a terrorist if they are making a completely unnecessary scene at the security checkpoint, so it's awfully inefficient of the TSA to spend more time on them. If they don't show you ID, don't ask why, just send them to secondary screening and be done with them. Of course, that assumes you're more interested in security than with "winning".
Oh, and you don't have to help them ascertain your identity; you just say "I forgot my ID" in a convincingly distressed voice, and they let you go with an extra pat-down. Been there, done that. Heck, what else could they (reasonably) do? I can't prove who I am in time to make my flight. I'm almost certainly some poor schmuck who left his wallet at home. And I don't have anything dangerous on me. Why wouldn't they let me go?
"Using the term 'mythology' has an implied derision toward whatever you're talking about."
I don't see any implied derision in the word 'mythology', and it wouldn't be toward "whatever" you're talking about, because you could only be talking about religion. "Mythology" is just a word for religious beliefs the speaker doesn't ascribe to.
"If you honestly believe... that all religious people are being taken advantage of by their leaders"
When people take money to tell people things that aren't true, I consider that taking advantage of them.
"when you can actually prove them wrong, you can run around calling them idiots if they still persist in believing in God."
What if I insisted there were invisible unicorns flying around my head, and wanted to tell you about it, extensively? You wouldn't be able to prove me wrong, yet somehow I think you might call me an idiot. Would you really treat my ideas with so much respect you would refrain from using any words so harsh as "mythology"? Do you want me to treat all ridiculous ideas with respect, or just certain pre-approved ones?
When ideas must insist on not being challenged out of "respect", that should tell you something.
I don't, in fact, generally run around calling religious people idiots, because I like to get along nicely with nice people. And most religious people are nice people, besides being gullible, fearful, and uninformed in critical areas. But those faults are mostly overlookable; it's just when they keep steering the conversation back to the invisible unicorns circling their head, it gets tedious.
"There are a lot of atheist/agnostic and gay groups that receive both state and federal funding, do you oppose them as well?"
Well, I don't know. Perhaps if you would like, name any.
I can't actually think of any group that only admits atheists, nor any that only admits gays. There probably are some I don't know about, but that receive federal funding? I guess I'd oppose that if I thought it were true, but I don't; I think you're making shit up.
Personally, the federal funding angle is secondary to me. The homophobia and anti-secularism are just the obvious symptoms of the organizations hijacking by insecure conformance fetishists.
"Please provide some evidence that the current BSA leadership and policies still takes the position that you accuse them of."
How about these:
"... Scouting does not accept atheists and agnostics as members or adult volunteer leaders."
"...Boy Scouts of America will not employ atheists, agnostics, known or avowed homosexuals..."
Those are the first two statements that jumped out at me from this page: http://www.bsalegal.org/duty-to-god-cases-224.asp
which appears to reflect he official position of BSA. The site was updated last week.
It's interesting how you assume the organization has changed, and even berate others for not knowing this, when 20 seconds of research will show they have not changed, and are even currently pursuing lawsuits in favor of their homophobic anti-secular agenda.
So you got that "having sex with females" merit badge? I only went through "Star" scout, but I don't recall a single scouting activity that depended on my ability to have the hots for women. Scouting is a place that has no need to reference sexual orientation at all. It has, collectively, no need or ability to affect the sexual orientation of its members. Why exactly it has decided to have the desire is beyond me.
As a child I was part of the scout troop that met in the basement of my church. As an adult, I have becoime an atheist. But I will forever have the deepest respect for the church I grew up in for at least one reason: In the aftermath of the referenced court decision, they reflected upon their Christian values, and kicked the scouts to the curb.
You said: "'I took the initiative in creating the Internet.'...sounds frighteningly close to 'I invented the Internet' to me."
I took that as a defense of the use of the latter quote. I may have misunderstood. Beginning from that context, I took your further arguments to be a defense of the practice of misquoting people. Finally, I don't see why you mentioned Clinton at all if you "couldn't agree more" that her statement was entirely different and not relevant, which was my point.
I do not care if Gore made a political exageration or not. The reasonableness of Gore's actual statement is irrelevant to my argument, which is that ascribing to him a statement he did not make is unreasonable.
Oh, give me a break. This isn't that hard to understand; even you can handle it: They won't let you fly if you say "I don't want to show ID". They will let you fly if you say, "I forgot my ID". That won't stop a single bad guy ever. It doesn't solve any problem at all even a little bit, except for people expressing opinions the TSA doesn't like.
"Well, according to the constitution, a well-regulated militia is..."
I have read the entire text of the constitution several times and "well regulated" is not defined within it, nor does the phrase you quote appear in any context.
My understanding is that "well regulated" would have been understood by the framers to mean simply "well equipped". This is an archaic meaning of "regulated" in our day, but was current in theirs, and makes obvious sense in the context.
In other writings, Thomas Jefferson specifically referred to "the militia of the State, that is to say, every man in it able to bear arms." He clearly intended that every individual have the right to the most powerful arms in existence. Which simply weren't very powerful.
Of course, he also is quite clear about how the pressing need for an armed populace is created because it is essential that the country should not have a standing Army. So having completely blown the whole point, let's now make sure any thug who wants it can get a cheap handgun...
"To be charitable, I assume his point is you cannot just ignore an inconvenient amendment, you have to overturn it."
Sure, but the discussion is about what issues are important in the election, so that doesn't wash. I can certainly pick and choose which amendments I think should be vigorously defended in deciding who to vote for.
Our countries current approach to the Second Amendment is problematic. We argue over precise details of what it means while ignoring the enormous elephant in the room: "Can I (or even a well regulated militia) have a nuke?". If yes, that's insane. If no, then we've abandoned sticking to the letter of the amendment in favor of sensible regulation.
"There's nothing muddy about the Second Amendment"
Actually, I agree, I said that poorly. I think the Second Amendment is crystal clear, and unquestionably grants me the right to own nuclear bombs. Hence, obsolete. Since it would be political suicide to suggest updating the second amendment, but we still don't want people to have nukes, we as a country are forced to act like it was muddily written.
Mostly, I think the whole issue is overblown. Nobody really favors the second amendment as it is clearly written. Nobody really favors mass confiscations. Everybody, from the NRA to the "anti-gun zealots" favors some level of sensible regulation. You'll note that the basic level of regulation has not changed significantly.
When politicians make a lot of noise about people coming to get your gunz!!!! it's because they don't think you'll vote for them based on things that matter. Things they are actually going to do anything about.
This article list their positions, which I assume they arrived at by surrounding themselves with well informed advisers and considering their input.
So following what I assume is the very same sort of process they will use in office, they have arrived at different positions on these topics, and my conclusion is that one of them has reached good conclusions and the other has not.
OK, I did. I expected the case would be ambiguous, but WOW, get a new example buddy! Based on the first figures I could find, the UKs per-capita murder rate is about one fifth that of the US, and the majority of the murders in the US used guns, whereas almost none in th UK did.
"Quit trying to pick and choose which ones you agree with."
For Gods sake why? This isn't holy scripture, it was written by men who did their best, and did by-and-large a damn fine job. The Second Amendment was muddily written, and is badly obsolete.
Groups with small arms are great at making things so unpleasant an occupying modern military decides it's not worth it and goes home.
But for taking over the country where that modern military is based? Useless, or worse. From the examples I can think of the key is to have enough of the populace on your side that the rank-and-file soldiers are just too embarrassed to be on the governments side. Armed Guerrillas just provide a pretext to motivate a military response.
When we have a disagreement with one group of people, why don't we grab a gun and run off to the middle east to start a war with an entirely different group of people?
"Gore's statement can't be anything but a gross exaggeration of his accomplishments, EVEN in the full context of what he said. "
It looks to me like a poor choice of phrasing by a politician trying, as politicians do, make as big a deal as possible out of something positive he legitimately did. But if we assume your contention, that his statement is entirely damning in context, than only a complete idiot would ascribe a patently false misquote to him instead.
"I suppose Hilary Clinton's recollection of dodging sniper-fire is also protected by people 'intentionally distorting someones (sic) statement'?"
Hillary's "recollection" is most damning if you quote her exact words with as much context as possible. She clearly claimed to remember something that never happened, with plenty of false supporting detail.
1. In the last 2 years, McCain voted for the the Administration position 100% of the time. He talks up "maverick", but he supports Bush every time it matters. 2. I'm sure Republicans will declare Obama the same as Carter just because he's the least popular Democrat they can remember. But in saying "we all know" how well that went, you ignore that Carter was so long ago a large fraction of voters weren't even born yet. As far as boogeymen, you've got an unpopular Democratic president hazily remembered even by the older of us up against a Republican sitting in the Whitehouse. Who is right now the least popular President ever. We all know how Carter went? Yeah, and he was much more popular than Bush.
Sorry, but in the "He'll be just like..." sweepstakes, the Republicans are fracked. Hard. Which looks to me to be the theme of this election in general.
"Can anyone here imagine a situation where a technically illegal act by the President prevents more harm than it causes?"
Sure. And while it is technically illegal to drive over the speed limit, if you explain to the Judge you were rushing a critically wounded child to the Emergency Room, you may well get off. In short, Bush is welcome to make the argument that it was illegal, but critically necessary. (Well, it would be ridiculous given the permissiveness of the FISA court, and his not having asked congress for any change in the law; but theoretically) But he didn't claim it was illegal but necessary. He claims it's not illegal because the President can do whatever he wants in wartime, where "wartime" is defined by him. Which is obviously stupid, but as far as I can tell, McCain endorses this view.
"There is a market for a fisherprice OS, and it is you."
Perhaps there a market for a "fisherprice OS", since that is an excellent description of what you get pre-installed on the EEE. Do note that:
A) In that context, it's great.
B) It is Linux based.
On bigger hardware, where I don't need something as stripped down and simplified as possible, I use Windows. I in fact don't mind the lack of freedom, because hacking OS's isn't my thing. Being force fed some corporations of what I need isn't so bad either since that idea appears to be "everything available for Linux, plus games".
I assume most of the corporate world is much like where I work:
They buy from big mainstream hardware vendors (Dell) so supporting "much more hardware" is completely irrelevant. XP never bluescreens for us because bluescreens on XP are due to hardware problems, which again, we don't have because we buy new boring Dells.
And then there are a handful of must-have apps that are Windows only.
I use and enjoy Linux, but I can certainly see why my employers desktop IT guy doesn't push it.
TV companies like to cover their ass, so they have you sign away rights even though you probably don't have them. In any case, the rights you might have there are not copyrights, they are privacy rights. Prince had no expectation of privacy while performing at a massive music festival. At least that would be my read if the issue went to court, but regardless of that, the recourse Prince has to enforce the rights he might have is not a DMCA takedown notice, because his rights are not copyrights.
Slashdot Mirror
"The new regulations don't do anything to stop terrorism, but are intended to increase efficiency, by eliminating the pricks who refuse to identify themselves based on ideological grounds."
Seems to me you could increase efficiency by pointing the way to the secondary screening line and being done with them, rather than quoting regulations at them. I mean, they're obviously not a terrorist if they are making a completely unnecessary scene at the security checkpoint, so it's awfully inefficient of the TSA to spend more time on them. If they don't show you ID, don't ask why, just send them to secondary screening and be done with them. Of course, that assumes you're more interested in security than with "winning".
Oh, and you don't have to help them ascertain your identity; you just say "I forgot my ID" in a convincingly distressed voice, and they let you go with an extra pat-down. Been there, done that. Heck, what else could they (reasonably) do? I can't prove who I am in time to make my flight. I'm almost certainly some poor schmuck who left his wallet at home. And I don't have anything dangerous on me. Why wouldn't they let me go?
"Using the term 'mythology' has an implied derision toward whatever you're talking about."
I don't see any implied derision in the word 'mythology', and it wouldn't be toward "whatever" you're talking about, because you could only be talking about religion. "Mythology" is just a word for religious beliefs the speaker doesn't ascribe to.
"If you honestly believe... that all religious people are being taken advantage of by their leaders"
When people take money to tell people things that aren't true, I consider that taking advantage of them.
"when you can actually prove them wrong, you can run around calling them idiots if they still persist in believing in God."
What if I insisted there were invisible unicorns flying around my head, and wanted to tell you about it, extensively? You wouldn't be able to prove me wrong, yet somehow I think you might call me an idiot. Would you really treat my ideas with so much respect you would refrain from using any words so harsh as "mythology"? Do you want me to treat all ridiculous ideas with respect, or just certain pre-approved ones?
When ideas must insist on not being challenged out of "respect", that should tell you something.
I don't, in fact, generally run around calling religious people idiots, because I like to get along nicely with nice people. And most religious people are nice people, besides being gullible, fearful, and uninformed in critical areas. But those faults are mostly overlookable; it's just when they keep steering the conversation back to the invisible unicorns circling their head, it gets tedious.
"There are a lot of atheist/agnostic and gay groups that receive both state and federal funding, do you oppose them as well?"
Well, I don't know. Perhaps if you would like, name any.
I can't actually think of any group that only admits atheists, nor any that only admits gays. There probably are some I don't know about, but that receive federal funding? I guess I'd oppose that if I thought it were true, but I don't; I think you're making shit up.
Personally, the federal funding angle is secondary to me. The homophobia and anti-secularism are just the obvious symptoms of the organizations hijacking by insecure conformance fetishists.
"Please provide some evidence that the current BSA leadership and policies still takes the position that you accuse them of."
How about these:
"... Scouting does not accept atheists and agnostics as members or adult volunteer leaders."
"...Boy Scouts of America will not employ atheists, agnostics, known or avowed homosexuals..."
Those are the first two statements that jumped out at me from this page:
http://www.bsalegal.org/duty-to-god-cases-224.asp
which appears to reflect he official position of BSA. The site was updated last week.
It's interesting how you assume the organization has changed, and even berate others for not knowing this, when 20 seconds of research will show they have not changed, and are even currently pursuing lawsuits in favor of their homophobic anti-secular agenda.
So you got that "having sex with females" merit badge? I only went through "Star" scout, but I don't recall a single scouting activity that depended on my ability to have the hots for women. Scouting is a place that has no need to reference sexual orientation at all. It has, collectively, no need or ability to affect the sexual orientation of its members. Why exactly it has decided to have the desire is beyond me.
As a child I was part of the scout troop that met in the basement of my church. As an adult, I have becoime an atheist. But I will forever have the deepest respect for the church I grew up in for at least one reason: In the aftermath of the referenced court decision, they reflected upon their Christian values, and kicked the scouts to the curb.
You said: "'I took the initiative in creating the Internet.' ...sounds frighteningly close to 'I invented the Internet' to me."
I took that as a defense of the use of the latter quote. I may have misunderstood. Beginning from that context, I took your further arguments to be a defense of the practice of misquoting people. Finally, I don't see why you mentioned Clinton at all if you "couldn't agree more" that her statement was entirely different and not relevant, which was my point.
I do not care if Gore made a political exageration or not. The reasonableness of Gore's actual statement is irrelevant to my argument, which is that ascribing to him a statement he did not make is unreasonable.
Oh, give me a break. This isn't that hard to understand; even you can handle it:
They won't let you fly if you say "I don't want to show ID". They will let you fly if you say, "I forgot my ID". That won't stop a single bad guy ever. It doesn't solve any problem at all even a little bit, except for people expressing opinions the TSA doesn't like.
"Well, according to the constitution, a well-regulated militia is..."
I have read the entire text of the constitution several times and "well regulated" is not defined within it, nor does the phrase you quote appear in any context.
My understanding is that "well regulated" would have been understood by the framers to mean simply "well equipped". This is an archaic meaning of "regulated" in our day, but was current in theirs, and makes obvious sense in the context.
In other writings, Thomas Jefferson specifically referred to "the militia of the State, that is to say, every man in it able to bear arms." He clearly intended that every individual have the right to the most powerful arms in existence. Which simply weren't very powerful.
Of course, he also is quite clear about how the pressing need for an armed populace is created because it is essential that the country should not have a standing Army. So having completely blown the whole point, let's now make sure any thug who wants it can get a cheap handgun...
Actually, I was asking the previous poster when he expected the Iraqi insurgency to take over the US.
If it's not obsolete, can I have a Nuke?
"To be charitable, I assume his point is you cannot just ignore an inconvenient amendment, you have to overturn it."
Sure, but the discussion is about what issues are important in the election, so that doesn't wash. I can certainly pick and choose which amendments I think should be vigorously defended in deciding who to vote for.
Our countries current approach to the Second Amendment is problematic. We argue over precise details of what it means while ignoring the enormous elephant in the room: "Can I (or even a well regulated militia) have a nuke?". If yes, that's insane. If no, then we've abandoned sticking to the letter of the amendment in favor of sensible regulation.
"There's nothing muddy about the Second Amendment"
Actually, I agree, I said that poorly. I think the Second Amendment is crystal clear, and unquestionably grants me the right to own nuclear bombs. Hence, obsolete. Since it would be political suicide to suggest updating the second amendment, but we still don't want people to have nukes, we as a country are forced to act like it was muddily written.
Mostly, I think the whole issue is overblown. Nobody really favors the second amendment as it is clearly written. Nobody really favors mass confiscations. Everybody, from the NRA to the "anti-gun zealots" favors some level of sensible regulation. You'll note that the basic level of regulation has not changed significantly.
When politicians make a lot of noise about people coming to get your gunz!!!! it's because they don't think you'll vote for them based on things that matter. Things they are actually going to do anything about.
This article list their positions, which I assume they arrived at by surrounding themselves with well informed advisers and considering their input.
So following what I assume is the very same sort of process they will use in office, they have arrived at different positions on these topics, and my conclusion is that one of them has reached good conclusions and the other has not.
When do you expect them to take over the US?
"Try England's crime rate as an example."
OK, I did. I expected the case would be ambiguous, but WOW, get a new example buddy! Based on the first figures I could find, the UKs per-capita murder rate is about one fifth that of the US, and the majority of the murders in the US used guns, whereas almost none in th UK did.
"Quit trying to pick and choose which ones you agree with."
For Gods sake why? This isn't holy scripture, it was written by men who did their best, and did by-and-large a damn fine job. The Second Amendment was muddily written, and is badly obsolete.
Groups with small arms are great at making things so unpleasant an occupying modern military decides it's not worth it and goes home.
But for taking over the country where that modern military is based? Useless, or worse. From the examples I can think of the key is to have enough of the populace on your side that the rank-and-file soldiers are just too embarrassed to be on the governments side. Armed Guerrillas just provide a pretext to motivate a military response.
When we have a disagreement with one group of people, why don't we grab a gun and run off to the middle east to start a war with an entirely different group of people?
Duh. Because we're smarter than you.
"Gore's statement can't be anything but a gross exaggeration of his accomplishments, EVEN in the full context of what he said. "
It looks to me like a poor choice of phrasing by a politician trying, as politicians do, make as big a deal as possible out of something positive he legitimately did. But if we assume your contention, that his statement is entirely damning in context, than only a complete idiot would ascribe a patently false misquote to him instead.
"I suppose Hilary Clinton's recollection of dodging sniper-fire is also protected by people 'intentionally distorting someones (sic) statement'?"
Hillary's "recollection" is most damning if you quote her exact words with as much context as possible. She clearly claimed to remember something that never happened, with plenty of false supporting detail.
--
"I am a complete moron." --Stewbacca
1. In the last 2 years, McCain voted for the the Administration position 100% of the time. He talks up "maverick", but he supports Bush every time it matters.
2. I'm sure Republicans will declare Obama the same as Carter just because he's the least popular Democrat they can remember. But in saying "we all know" how well that went, you ignore that Carter was so long ago a large fraction of voters weren't even born yet. As far as boogeymen, you've got an unpopular Democratic president hazily remembered even by the older of us up against a Republican sitting in the Whitehouse. Who is right now the least popular President ever. We all know how Carter went? Yeah, and he was much more popular than Bush.
Sorry, but in the "He'll be just like..." sweepstakes, the Republicans are fracked. Hard. Which looks to me to be the theme of this election in general.
Personally, Christian Extremists scare me the most.
"Can anyone here imagine a situation where a technically illegal act by the President prevents more harm than it causes?"
Sure. And while it is technically illegal to drive over the speed limit, if you explain to the Judge you were rushing a critically wounded child to the Emergency Room, you may well get off. In short, Bush is welcome to make the argument that it was illegal, but critically necessary. (Well, it would be ridiculous given the permissiveness of the FISA court, and his not having asked congress for any change in the law; but theoretically) But he didn't claim it was illegal but necessary. He claims it's not illegal because the President can do whatever he wants in wartime, where "wartime" is defined by him. Which is obviously stupid, but as far as I can tell, McCain endorses this view.
Sure, and as long as you're intentionally distorting someones statement by pulling it out of context, why bother actually using their words?
--
"Bullshit is cooler than truth." -- Albert Einstein
"There is a market for a fisherprice OS, and it is you."
Perhaps there a market for a "fisherprice OS", since that is an excellent description of what you get pre-installed on the EEE. Do note that:
A) In that context, it's great.
B) It is Linux based.
On bigger hardware, where I don't need something as stripped down and simplified as possible, I use Windows. I in fact don't mind the lack of freedom, because hacking OS's isn't my thing. Being force fed some corporations of what I need isn't so bad either since that idea appears to be "everything available for Linux, plus games".
I assume most of the corporate world is much like where I work:
They buy from big mainstream hardware vendors (Dell) so supporting "much more hardware" is completely irrelevant. XP never bluescreens for us because bluescreens on XP are due to hardware problems, which again, we don't have because we buy new boring Dells.
And then there are a handful of must-have apps that are Windows only.
I use and enjoy Linux, but I can certainly see why my employers desktop IT guy doesn't push it.
TV companies like to cover their ass, so they have you sign away rights even though you probably don't have them. In any case, the rights you might have there are not copyrights, they are privacy rights. Prince had no expectation of privacy while performing at a massive music festival. At least that would be my read if the issue went to court, but regardless of that, the recourse Prince has to enforce the rights he might have is not a DMCA takedown notice, because his rights are not copyrights.