Who else would you want to decide what is or isn't allowed under the Constitution?
SCOTUS decides what the government will treat as constitutional or not; their opinions do not change what is actually constitutional. Just like a bad call by the refs doesn't change the rules of a game, even if there's no appeal, a bad call by the Supremes doesn't change the Constitution.
Ingredients to the US dollar are 98.5% nothing if I recall correctly.. Then about 1.5% paper..
All currencies are nothing but an assumption/hope/promise that someone else will recognize them as having value. This is just as true for those "backed" by some other substance or item; commodity money relies on the assumption/hope/promise that someone else will recognize the commodity as having value. (Take your gold to a tribe in Africa where wealth is measured in cows, and hilarity ensues.)
There's this stuff called "software" that is really good at tracking numbers automatically.
But not at tracking laws automatically. Or classifying goods as taxable or non-taxable (or taxable at a special rate) automatically. Or knowing what tax jurisdiction someone lives in automatically -- no, you can't reliably figure out what city or county someone lives in by their zip code, and some states sales tax laws depend on what jurisdiction the buyer lives in.
Sales tax on inter-state transactions is a gods-awful complicated mess.
There is nothing inherently noble or morally superior about being a small business on Main Street. It just means you're small, and also on Main Street.
But what you do have when you have 20 small stores versus one MonsterMart is competition. If you work for a sucky small store, you can quit and work for nice Mr. Jones down the street -- when MonsterMart is the only game in town, you're screwed.
It sure is. Say "fuck you" to Amazon and other large corporations that push for a race to the bottom, and make policy that supports the growth of local small businesses that keep the wealth they created in the community rather than drain it away to far-off absentee owners ("stockholders").
The "let's kowtow to big business" strategy has failed so completely and so consistently that the choice would be easy...in a well-informed and non-corrupt political system.
In one hour you can't figure out how to select neutral or at least turn off the key? No way.
From TFA: "...after his Renault Laguna, which is adapted for disabled drivers...A Renault technician had been on the phone with police throughout the chase trying to help but couldn't come up with a solution."
Apparently, whatever adaptation was done did not include the ability to put the car into neutral (or that also malfunctioned). If the company couldn't figure out how to stop the car, don't blame the driver.
Other people, OTOH, are exhibitionists and would like to have those acts public.
At its best, porn matches the exhibitionists up with the voyeurs and everybody gets off. At its usual, porn matches people who aren't exhibitionists but aren't shy up with the voyeurs, and the voyeurs get off and the porn models/performers get paid.
If you don't like the idea of having sex -- or just being naked -- in front of other disturbs you, then don't do it. But you can't justifiably use force against people who do like the idea of having sex in front of other people (subject to considerations of disturbing the peace, i.e. don't do it in the street and scare the horses).
Answer from Crucial: "Update Firmware". Updating involved the consumer understanding how to use cryptic commands in various states of the pre-boot process on a 2nd machine running Windows with wording no consumer would have ever likely understood and then used in a command line.
Answer from Ford: "Replace fuel pump." Replacement involved the consumer understanding how to follow directions no consumer would have ever likely understood.
Complex mechanisms require those who service and repair them to be capable of complex operations. If you don't have the skills to fix something and don't want to learn them, you hire someone who does have those skills.
Anyone can make a zip gun, but something more sophisticated without using prebuilt parts designed to be part of a gun does take a certain amount of specialist knowledge and the type of tools that aren't found in most people's garages.
Not in most people's garages, but in many people's. Resistance movements in Nazi occupied territories were able to build submachine guns. Back alley gunsmiths in the Philippines have been turning out automatic weapons for years.
Show me something that even compares to the rape, destruction, and general mayhem of the Occupy events.
WTF are you talking about?
I spent time at Occupy Baltimore. It was such a safe place that homeless folks and domestic violence victims were coming there rather than to the city shelters. I visited OWS's HQ in Zuccotti Park; there was no more "mayhem" than the parking lot of a Grateful Dead show.
The media loves to demonize Occupy. The media loves to demonize gun owners. Maybe everyone could learn from this that the media sucks.
No, it does not. We speak of software reading data all the time. In fact in Unix-type systems, the fundamental operation is called "read". ("man 2 read" if you're on a Linux box but don't really know how it works.)
These people are being "assassinated" while engaging with KNOWN terrorists.
If being in the vicinity of known terrorists justifies a death sentence, then anyone who's ever take a tour of the White House or Congress is fair game.
Talking to people -- even to "terrorists" -- doesn't earn a death sentence, and it certainly doesn't create an exception to due process.
YOUR neighbors celebrate weddings by firing off rapid-fire weapons into the air?
Not weddings, but in many American cities, celebratory gunfire is becoming more common. (It's a tremendously stupid thing to do, and people are killed. Don't shoot your gun into the air.)
I don't see anything about the rape of a woman, but there is no controversy that they were a group that used violence for their means.
They were willing to use force in self-defense -- thus the name, "Black Panther Party for Self-Defense".
Some took that too far, true. But some police take the use of force too far,usually against black citizens -- that's why the Panthers got started. Shall we then label the government a group that used violence for its means?
The allegation was not "the Panthers were willing to use force." It was not "some Panthers committed crimes". Neither of these are contentious points. The allegation was, "The Panthers encouraged black youth to commit crimes against whites." I await a citation to a publication or speech of the Panthers where they said, "Go rob Whitey, and rape his women."
The Black Panthers party even encourage Black Youth to commit crimes and commit crimes against Whites. They were disbanded at one point in time because one of their main leaders raped and killed white women claiming it was payback for the masters doing it to the slaves.
Citation needed.
Criminal enterprises notoriously buck the white system...
The most deadly and most profitable criminal enterprises are run by white guys in suits.
When you split a sarcastic statement between the title and the text of your comment, it's almost like an accidental(?) troll. But yep, if requiring a person be licensed to have a firearm doesn't violate the right of the people to keep and bear arms, then requiring newspapers, churches, assemblies of people, etc., to be licensed doesn't violate their First Amendment rights.
And since the courts do in fact seem to be starting down that line regarding our First Amendment rights...the Second Amendment rights become that much more important.
The only reason their kill numbers are anywhere near ours are because unlike in Vietnam, we're unwilling to scorch the Earth to defeat them.
And that worked so well in Vietnam, leading to total victory for the U.S. Oh, wait...
"Scorching the earth" doesn't work in a counter-insurgency campaign. Your objective is to win the "hearts and minds" of one side, and you can't do that when you burn their homes to the ground to root out insurgents.
By that logic, we should be encouraging other nations to develop nuclear weapons... after all, they would allow a weak country to protect itself from the strong, or from the many.
It's why we allowed Israel to develop nukes.
I think it might be the case that giving every nation a Hiroshima-sized bomb or three (and no more than that -- superpower disarmament), with an international agreement that developing a further arsenal or any first use of a nuke against a country that's not attacking you results in the whole world becoming your enemy and your nation ceasing to exist (your people and territory put under some U.N. mandate for a few decades), might lead to a more peaceful world.
Why is that? Because you are assuming that any action by your government is nefarious by default?
When it involves the military or police functions of that government? Fuck yes. I live in a country whose domestic policy is a harsh and corrupt police state, with the world's highest incarceration rate and a leader in executions, and whose foreign policy has for decades been one of brutal, stupid, and aggressive imperialism. "Nefarious" is an understatement for the default assumptions one should hold about it.
Unfortunately neither the democratic process nor the RKBA is a protection so long as most citizens perceive that their government is attacking "those people", not "us".
My Mother used to own a nut and candy store, and old folks would come in and ask for N***** Toes, a euphemism for Brazil Nuts. There was no dark intent, no racial slur, its just what people from a certain part of the country called Brazil Nuts.
(Warning -- un-asterisked use of racial slur ahead.)
When I was a boy, we called the prank of knocking on someone's door and then running away, "nigger knocking." There was no bad intent, it's just what we called it.
Somewhere around the age of eight, however, I found out what the word meant and stopped using it in that context because I didn't want to be an asshole.
Yes, there are no bad words (which is why I'm use the word itself rather than "the N word" or such) -- but there are patterns of use of words that indicate that the person using them is an asshole. Anyone who came into your mother's store and said "Gimme some nigger toes" was saying either "I am so damned ignorant that I can't be responsible for what I say" or "I don't give a damn about the feelings of African Americans."
Now I'll support their legal right to say any damn thing they want; but celebrating diversity doesn't mean celebrating asshole behavior.
For the record, what more polite term would you suggest to replace "person of subsaharan African descent in the woodpile"? Would "fugitive in the woodpile" work as well?
People who didn't want to appear to be complete assholes would avoid a phrase that not only used a vile racial slur, but was a metaphor suggesting that a fugitive slave was a hidden problem rather than a person to be aided by all means necessary.
In the GP post's context, such a person might say "The catch is the word `legitimate'," or "The snag is the word `legitimate'."
Slashdot Mirror
SCOTUS decides what the government will treat as constitutional or not; their opinions do not change what is actually constitutional. Just like a bad call by the refs doesn't change the rules of a game, even if there's no appeal, a bad call by the Supremes doesn't change the Constitution.
??? PayPal generates a huge amount of business for Visa, MC, Discover, and Amex. Why would they threaten PayPal?
All currencies are nothing but an assumption/hope/promise that someone else will recognize them as having value. This is just as true for those "backed" by some other substance or item; commodity money relies on the assumption/hope/promise that someone else will recognize the commodity as having value. (Take your gold to a tribe in Africa where wealth is measured in cows, and hilarity ensues.)
But not at tracking laws automatically. Or classifying goods as taxable or non-taxable (or taxable at a special rate) automatically. Or knowing what tax jurisdiction someone lives in automatically -- no, you can't reliably figure out what city or county someone lives in by their zip code, and some states sales tax laws depend on what jurisdiction the buyer lives in.
Sales tax on inter-state transactions is a gods-awful complicated mess.
...which is why many states tax shipping costs.
But what you do have when you have 20 small stores versus one MonsterMart is competition. If you work for a sucky small store, you can quit and work for nice Mr. Jones down the street -- when MonsterMart is the only game in town, you're screwed.
It sure is. Say "fuck you" to Amazon and other large corporations that push for a race to the bottom, and make policy that supports the growth of local small businesses that keep the wealth they created in the community rather than drain it away to far-off absentee owners ("stockholders").
The "let's kowtow to big business" strategy has failed so completely and so consistently that the choice would be easy...in a well-informed and non-corrupt political system.
From TFA: "...after his Renault Laguna, which is adapted for disabled drivers...A Renault technician had been on the phone with police throughout the chase trying to help but couldn't come up with a solution."
Apparently, whatever adaptation was done did not include the ability to put the car into neutral (or that also malfunctioned). If the company couldn't figure out how to stop the car, don't blame the driver.
Other people, OTOH, are exhibitionists and would like to have those acts public.
At its best, porn matches the exhibitionists up with the voyeurs and everybody gets off. At its usual, porn matches people who aren't exhibitionists but aren't shy up with the voyeurs, and the voyeurs get off and the porn models/performers get paid.
If you don't like the idea of having sex -- or just being naked -- in front of other disturbs you, then don't do it. But you can't justifiably use force against people who do like the idea of having sex in front of other people (subject to considerations of disturbing the peace, i.e. don't do it in the street and scare the horses).
Answer from Ford: "Replace fuel pump." Replacement involved the consumer understanding how to follow directions no consumer would have ever likely understood.
Complex mechanisms require those who service and repair them to be capable of complex operations. If you don't have the skills to fix something and don't want to learn them, you hire someone who does have those skills.
Not in most people's garages, but in many people's. Resistance movements in Nazi occupied territories were able to build submachine guns. Back alley gunsmiths in the Philippines have been turning out automatic weapons for years.
WTF are you talking about?
I spent time at Occupy Baltimore. It was such a safe place that homeless folks and domestic violence victims were coming there rather than to the city shelters. I visited OWS's HQ in Zuccotti Park; there was no more "mayhem" than the parking lot of a Grateful Dead show.
The media loves to demonize Occupy. The media loves to demonize gun owners. Maybe everyone could learn from this that the media sucks.
No, it does not. We speak of software reading data all the time. In fact in Unix-type systems, the fundamental operation is called "read". ("man 2 read" if you're on a Linux box but don't really know how it works.)
Anyone who thinks of Obama as "their guy" is, ipso facto, not anti-war.
If being in the vicinity of known terrorists justifies a death sentence, then anyone who's ever take a tour of the White House or Congress is fair game.
Talking to people -- even to "terrorists" -- doesn't earn a death sentence, and it certainly doesn't create an exception to due process.
Not weddings, but in many American cities, celebratory gunfire is becoming more common. (It's a tremendously stupid thing to do, and people are killed. Don't shoot your gun into the air.)
They were willing to use force in self-defense -- thus the name, "Black Panther Party for Self-Defense".
Some took that too far, true. But some police take the use of force too far,usually against black citizens -- that's why the Panthers got started. Shall we then label the government a group that used violence for its means?
The allegation was not "the Panthers were willing to use force." It was not "some Panthers committed crimes". Neither of these are contentious points. The allegation was, "The Panthers encouraged black youth to commit crimes against whites." I await a citation to a publication or speech of the Panthers where they said, "Go rob Whitey, and rape his women."
Citation needed.
The most deadly and most profitable criminal enterprises are run by white guys in suits.
When you split a sarcastic statement between the title and the text of your comment, it's almost like an accidental(?) troll. But yep, if requiring a person be licensed to have a firearm doesn't violate the right of the people to keep and bear arms, then requiring newspapers, churches, assemblies of people, etc., to be licensed doesn't violate their First Amendment rights.
And since the courts do in fact seem to be starting down that line regarding our First Amendment rights...the Second Amendment rights become that much more important.
And that worked so well in Vietnam, leading to total victory for the U.S. Oh, wait...
"Scorching the earth" doesn't work in a counter-insurgency campaign. Your objective is to win the "hearts and minds" of one side, and you can't do that when you burn their homes to the ground to root out insurgents.
It's why we allowed Israel to develop nukes.
I think it might be the case that giving every nation a Hiroshima-sized bomb or three (and no more than that -- superpower disarmament), with an international agreement that developing a further arsenal or any first use of a nuke against a country that's not attacking you results in the whole world becoming your enemy and your nation ceasing to exist (your people and territory put under some U.N. mandate for a few decades), might lead to a more peaceful world.
When it involves the military or police functions of that government? Fuck yes. I live in a country whose domestic policy is a harsh and corrupt police state, with the world's highest incarceration rate and a leader in executions, and whose foreign policy has for decades been one of brutal, stupid, and aggressive imperialism. "Nefarious" is an understatement for the default assumptions one should hold about it.
Unfortunately neither the democratic process nor the RKBA is a protection so long as most citizens perceive that their government is attacking "those people", not "us".
(Warning -- un-asterisked use of racial slur ahead.)
When I was a boy, we called the prank of knocking on someone's door and then running away, "nigger knocking." There was no bad intent, it's just what we called it.
Somewhere around the age of eight, however, I found out what the word meant and stopped using it in that context because I didn't want to be an asshole.
Yes, there are no bad words (which is why I'm use the word itself rather than "the N word" or such) -- but there are patterns of use of words that indicate that the person using them is an asshole. Anyone who came into your mother's store and said "Gimme some nigger toes" was saying either "I am so damned ignorant that I can't be responsible for what I say" or "I don't give a damn about the feelings of African Americans."
Now I'll support their legal right to say any damn thing they want; but celebrating diversity doesn't mean celebrating asshole behavior.
People who didn't want to appear to be complete assholes would avoid a phrase that not only used a vile racial slur, but was a metaphor suggesting that a fugitive slave was a hidden problem rather than a person to be aided by all means necessary.
In the GP post's context, such a person might say "The catch is the word `legitimate'," or "The snag is the word `legitimate'."
Why? Do a couple of $20s make your wallet too heavy?
Cash discounts -- which is what this is, in effect -- will get my business.