Capability and use of these capabilities are two different things. With government power comes abuses, which is why we have laws that limit the government. Within the US there are laws protecting citizens from illegal surveillance in what are assumed to be private circumstances (like phone calls or your bedroom). Can we still be spied on? Sure. If it comes out that this happened, the bad actors in the government can still be charged with felonies, removed and incarcerated, so does it keep me up at night? No. We are still demonstrably the most free nation on the planet (2nd amendment anyone else?) Many so called free European states don't even have freedom of speech as a legally spelled out right and you can be jailed for "hate speech" which means whatever the ruling party thinks it means...
You have no understanding of just how free we are in America. It is true that we just had 8 years of the most lawless (attorney general Eric Holder is the only attorney general in history to leave office while being held in contempt of congress for not doing his damn job), dictatorial (pen and phone executive orders out the ass instead of working with elected representatives) president, but it appears that we are returning to the rule of law now that the media is doing its job again instead of towing the party line for comrade Obama.
Did you pay for your public education? If not then your 25% property tax that goes to public school is paying the state back for that ($10k x 13 years= you owe $130k).
Child tax credits are incentives to an otherwise very expensive process of raising the next generation that prevents our country from imploding.
I home school, so we are square on #1 already, and #2 the tax deductions are a drop in the bucket compared to my $1,000,000 investment per child and their 45 years of productive, tax paying citizenship. You are a dead end to society, and what you pay in taxes goes to support you and SS goes to your parents. You do realize that I pay property tax as well as you do, and only 25% of your property tax bill goes to K-12 education anyway. http://www.cbpp.org/research/p... Sorry to burst your bubble. The real ripoff is that I will pay about $60k towards public education as a fraction of my property tax while also putting in the effort to home school and pay for those expenses out of pocket, but such is life.
I have $1,000,000 investment, 18 years of effort, 10,000 years of history and 50,000 years of biology to support my position. Besides pulling it out of your ass, what is your basis for that assertion? Just because you are an ungrateful ass doesn't mean most people are.
Currently, SS contributions of the both parents and the childless go to the care of their parents. Because of the way SS was set up, people would have to double their contributions since the retired will still need their benefits and we can't change the system on them if we wanted to contribute to a retirement fund... which is what I do anyway on my 401K since I highly doubt I will ever see a dime of SS benefits.
I pay my property taxes too, and I homeschool, and rasing a child costs about $1,000,000 over 18 years. Call me when you have paid that in the small fraction of your property taxes that goes to schooling (hint: you never will).
I will put my money on cranky old armed people against violent young thugs any day of the week.
The fact is, conservatives, young and old are far more patient and civil because we believe in freedom of speech (not shouting down the opposition and violently chasing them away).
I homeschool my kids so they aren't clueless morons taught what to think instead of how to think and they will actually be able to enter college without taking remedial courses, care to try again?
Seems like an opportunity for a class action lawsuit for selling defective merchandise and not fixing it. The statement that dead or defective pixels is just part of displays is laughable. I played my original GameBoy a few weeks back, and every pixel still works 30 years on...
Blue collar jobs may be shrinking, but engineering is growing, the growth has just been concealed by all the H1B hiring that has been going on. Virtually every item you buy had a team of engineers design it and every product iteration requires a team of engineers. The number and types of engineers depends on the product, but Engineers are one of the smartest professions with zero likelihood of being replaced by AI or automation. All of the automation that is coming is only going to increase the demand for engineers.
Interestingly, here are a few jobs where women excel: - marketing/advertising - serving/hostess - counselor - special ed teacher - wholesale/retail buyer - movie/TV producer/director - personal trainer - customer service - OBGYN doctor - Nurse - preschool teacher and secretary
Raising my children is indeed a financial burden, and the problem is social security tax and disbursement. From the dawn of time up until the New Deal and Social Security, you raised your kids and then they took care of you in your old age (good motivation to raise them right).
Now the government steals part of my children's paycheck in the form of SS taxes and turns around and gives it to those who raised no children who by all rights should not receive a dime. If you don't have children, you should be blocked from receiving any SS disbursements, because SS is not an investment, it is a Ponzi scheme on the next generation. The money you pay in goes to your parents (I am 100% sure you have those), but if you don't have kids, you aren't investing in the next generation of financial support.
The dirty little secret that Hollywood movies never told you is that married people have way more sex than singles. This drop in sexy times correlates to the drop in married couples in general (as the article cites). If you want to get it regular, put a ring on it and work to have a good relationship with your spouse.
Or you know you could take the tax revenues that are paid by the citizens and provide the services that they need, like expanding the roads, instead of charging them twice, once at the toll booth and once on tax day...
Cant say because they wanted their involvement in the project kept confidential, but they were so serious about it that they had a dry disused mine to store their data in.
There used to be this thing called transportation planning, where needs were anticipated and met before an issue became a flaming pile of feces. Today's politicians want to inflict suffering on their constituents because the politician are confident that they know best and politicians want the dumb commuters to start taking mass transit, even though there are major drawbacks, rather than doing their damn jobs and accommodating the needs of the citizens.
Back when the freeways were originally built in the 60s, they were built with major excess capacity anticipating future growth. Until a city is approaching the population density of something like New York, subways and elevated trains just don't make sense for most people.
LOL, I will not go into my qualifications to discuss the issue, but they are significant, I will allow my arguments to stand on their own.
The problem with wind is that even if you build a shit ton of wind turbines all over the place, you can still have slack times where there is not enough wind on enough turbines to meet demand. You reference using gas turbines as backup, and while it is true that that is what takes up the slack now, it highlights the fact that wind/solar are not viable without fossil fuels to back them up when they fail, because the integrity of our electrical grid is not negotiable and can cause loss of life and certainly massive economic losses if the power goes down.
What we need is something like the liquid metal battery or the ionospheric capacitor where we can store massive amounts of electricity efficiently for later efficient discharge. Storing electricity by converting it to compressed air in a volume loses about 70% of the energy between converting to mechanical and then back to electrical.
If you didn't know this kind of thing was going on, you weren't paying attention. The job of the intelligence agencies is to... gather intelligence, particularly the kind that people don't want collected and kill foreign enemies covertly. This is why they are not allowed to act inside the US. Every other intelligence agency on the planet does exactly the same thing. If you think otherwise you are living in a fantasy land bubble.
BFD wind just surpassed the measly 6% generated by hydro... Call me when it surpasses natural gas. We are stuck with fossil fuels or nuclear until we can commercialize the technology to store large amounts of electricity (real efficient storage, not compressed air).
They just spent 6 years in my area widening a major freeway from 4 lanes each way to 6 lanes each way, totally eliminating gridlock, and they also managed to cram in a 2 lane dedicated HOV lane in the middle. They did it without bulldozing anyone's homes on the existing easements and went through densely populated cities as they did it. Even if they have to bulldoze or go TBM underground, there is no excuse for not improving freeways. Stop and go traffic is a completely avoidable pollution nightmare, and commuting is a reality that no one wants to give up because there is simultaneously comfort, flexibility, mobility and security in having a personal vehicle.
The ADA was full of good intentions, but it needs to be massively updated, including eliminating any requirements on non-profits and orgs offering free content. This is just the latest example of the damage that the ADA has done to our economy, businesses and society.
Deaf make up just 0.38% of the population, yet the rest of society is forced to bend over backwards to accommodate them, rather than them accepting that they are disabled and live within their limitations just like the rest of us (we all have limitations of one type or another, 1 in 5 in the US have a disability of some kind according to the latest census, 1 in 10 have a severe disability).
Or, you know, politicians could spend the gas tax funds to improve the freeways and stop pissing them away on mass transit buses that have a 15% utilization rate...
Slashdot Mirror
"I have such a weak argument that I must resort to personal attacks so that I can look at myself in a mirror again."
Fixed that for you.
Capability and use of these capabilities are two different things. With government power comes abuses, which is why we have laws that limit the government. Within the US there are laws protecting citizens from illegal surveillance in what are assumed to be private circumstances (like phone calls or your bedroom). Can we still be spied on? Sure. If it comes out that this happened, the bad actors in the government can still be charged with felonies, removed and incarcerated, so does it keep me up at night? No. We are still demonstrably the most free nation on the planet (2nd amendment anyone else?) Many so called free European states don't even have freedom of speech as a legally spelled out right and you can be jailed for "hate speech" which means whatever the ruling party thinks it means...
You have no understanding of just how free we are in America. It is true that we just had 8 years of the most lawless (attorney general Eric Holder is the only attorney general in history to leave office while being held in contempt of congress for not doing his damn job), dictatorial (pen and phone executive orders out the ass instead of working with elected representatives) president, but it appears that we are returning to the rule of law now that the media is doing its job again instead of towing the party line for comrade Obama.
I learned this bit of wisdom a long time ago and it has served me well over the years:
"God, grant me the strength to accept the things that I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I stay informed, I vote, I speak to my friends and distribute knowledge to those who will listen. I make the difference that I can.
And you have just fallen below the baseline for having a productive discussion with.
Did you pay for your public education? If not then your 25% property tax that goes to public school is paying the state back for that ($10k x 13 years= you owe $130k).
Child tax credits are incentives to an otherwise very expensive process of raising the next generation that prevents our country from imploding.
I home school, so we are square on #1 already, and #2 the tax deductions are a drop in the bucket compared to my $1,000,000 investment per child and their 45 years of productive, tax paying citizenship. You are a dead end to society, and what you pay in taxes goes to support you and SS goes to your parents. You do realize that I pay property tax as well as you do, and only 25% of your property tax bill goes to K-12 education anyway. http://www.cbpp.org/research/p... Sorry to burst your bubble. The real ripoff is that I will pay about $60k towards public education as a fraction of my property tax while also putting in the effort to home school and pay for those expenses out of pocket, but such is life.
I have $1,000,000 investment, 18 years of effort, 10,000 years of history and 50,000 years of biology to support my position. Besides pulling it out of your ass, what is your basis for that assertion? Just because you are an ungrateful ass doesn't mean most people are.
Currently, SS contributions of the both parents and the childless go to the care of their parents. Because of the way SS was set up, people would have to double their contributions since the retired will still need their benefits and we can't change the system on them if we wanted to contribute to a retirement fund... which is what I do anyway on my 401K since I highly doubt I will ever see a dime of SS benefits.
I pay my property taxes too, and I homeschool, and rasing a child costs about $1,000,000 over 18 years. Call me when you have paid that in the small fraction of your property taxes that goes to schooling (hint: you never will).
I will put my money on cranky old armed people against violent young thugs any day of the week.
The fact is, conservatives, young and old are far more patient and civil because we believe in freedom of speech (not shouting down the opposition and violently chasing them away).
I homeschool my kids so they aren't clueless morons taught what to think instead of how to think and they will actually be able to enter college without taking remedial courses, care to try again?
Seems like an opportunity for a class action lawsuit for selling defective merchandise and not fixing it. The statement that dead or defective pixels is just part of displays is laughable. I played my original GameBoy a few weeks back, and every pixel still works 30 years on...
Blue collar jobs may be shrinking, but engineering is growing, the growth has just been concealed by all the H1B hiring that has been going on. Virtually every item you buy had a team of engineers design it and every product iteration requires a team of engineers. The number and types of engineers depends on the product, but Engineers are one of the smartest professions with zero likelihood of being replaced by AI or automation. All of the automation that is coming is only going to increase the demand for engineers.
Interestingly, here are a few jobs where women excel:
- marketing/advertising
- serving/hostess
- counselor
- special ed teacher
- wholesale/retail buyer
- movie/TV producer/director
- personal trainer
- customer service
- OBGYN doctor
- Nurse
- preschool teacher and secretary
Raising my children is indeed a financial burden, and the problem is social security tax and disbursement. From the dawn of time up until the New Deal and Social Security, you raised your kids and then they took care of you in your old age (good motivation to raise them right).
Now the government steals part of my children's paycheck in the form of SS taxes and turns around and gives it to those who raised no children who by all rights should not receive a dime. If you don't have children, you should be blocked from receiving any SS disbursements, because SS is not an investment, it is a Ponzi scheme on the next generation. The money you pay in goes to your parents (I am 100% sure you have those), but if you don't have kids, you aren't investing in the next generation of financial support.
The dirty little secret that Hollywood movies never told you is that married people have way more sex than singles. This drop in sexy times correlates to the drop in married couples in general (as the article cites). If you want to get it regular, put a ring on it and work to have a good relationship with your spouse.
Or you know you could take the tax revenues that are paid by the citizens and provide the services that they need, like expanding the roads, instead of charging them twice, once at the toll booth and once on tax day...
Cant say because they wanted their involvement in the project kept confidential, but they were so serious about it that they had a dry disused mine to store their data in.
There used to be this thing called transportation planning, where needs were anticipated and met before an issue became a flaming pile of feces. Today's politicians want to inflict suffering on their constituents because the politician are confident that they know best and politicians want the dumb commuters to start taking mass transit, even though there are major drawbacks, rather than doing their damn jobs and accommodating the needs of the citizens.
Back when the freeways were originally built in the 60s, they were built with major excess capacity anticipating future growth. Until a city is approaching the population density of something like New York, subways and elevated trains just don't make sense for most people.
LOL, I will not go into my qualifications to discuss the issue, but they are significant, I will allow my arguments to stand on their own.
The problem with wind is that even if you build a shit ton of wind turbines all over the place, you can still have slack times where there is not enough wind on enough turbines to meet demand. You reference using gas turbines as backup, and while it is true that that is what takes up the slack now, it highlights the fact that wind/solar are not viable without fossil fuels to back them up when they fail, because the integrity of our electrical grid is not negotiable and can cause loss of life and certainly massive economic losses if the power goes down.
What we need is something like the liquid metal battery or the ionospheric capacitor where we can store massive amounts of electricity efficiently for later efficient discharge. Storing electricity by converting it to compressed air in a volume loses about 70% of the energy between converting to mechanical and then back to electrical.
If you didn't know this kind of thing was going on, you weren't paying attention. The job of the intelligence agencies is to... gather intelligence, particularly the kind that people don't want collected and kill foreign enemies covertly. This is why they are not allowed to act inside the US. Every other intelligence agency on the planet does exactly the same thing. If you think otherwise you are living in a fantasy land bubble.
BFD wind just surpassed the measly 6% generated by hydro... Call me when it surpasses natural gas. We are stuck with fossil fuels or nuclear until we can commercialize the technology to store large amounts of electricity (real efficient storage, not compressed air).
They just spent 6 years in my area widening a major freeway from 4 lanes each way to 6 lanes each way, totally eliminating gridlock, and they also managed to cram in a 2 lane dedicated HOV lane in the middle. They did it without bulldozing anyone's homes on the existing easements and went through densely populated cities as they did it. Even if they have to bulldoze or go TBM underground, there is no excuse for not improving freeways. Stop and go traffic is a completely avoidable pollution nightmare, and commuting is a reality that no one wants to give up because there is simultaneously comfort, flexibility, mobility and security in having a personal vehicle.
News flash, politicians and multinational CEOs meet with ambassadors... Show me some evidence of collusion or go home.
The ADA was full of good intentions, but it needs to be massively updated, including eliminating any requirements on non-profits and orgs offering free content. This is just the latest example of the damage that the ADA has done to our economy, businesses and society.
Deaf make up just 0.38% of the population, yet the rest of society is forced to bend over backwards to accommodate them, rather than them accepting that they are disabled and live within their limitations just like the rest of us (we all have limitations of one type or another, 1 in 5 in the US have a disability of some kind according to the latest census, 1 in 10 have a severe disability).
https://www.census.gov/newsroo...
Or, you know, politicians could spend the gas tax funds to improve the freeways and stop pissing them away on mass transit buses that have a 15% utilization rate...