Or, deity forbid, someone actually cares about the addicted n00bs injuring themselves
Caring? How is sucking money out of people's pockets and redistributing it to bureaucracies and big corporations with powerful lobbyists "caring"? And how is it "caring" to continue to grow government programs which, in decades, have been utterly ineffective at achieving their stated goals decade after decade?
This is what you are actually advocating:
Let's create massive government programs so that industries with massive lobbying powers and political connections can profit.
"Caring" means donating your money to private charities and volunteering your time. "Caring" does not mean what you are doing, namely advocating crony capitalism and massive government spending on ineffective programs.
Then please don't use the same group health insurance company I do.
I would love to. Unfortunately, several decades of government meddling with US health insurance have killed any ability of people to choose their health insurance, or insurance companies to set prices based on actual risk.
What part of "single founding population that was the result of a single migration" is confusing to you?
Well, as I was saying: their conclusion is not fully supported by their data. It's a reasonable belief, but may never know whether there were humans in the Americas prior to the current population of American Indians. It took us nearly half a millennium to discover sound evidence that Columbus wasn't the first European in the Americas.
The simple fact is that "Native" Americans are no more native to the Americas than anybody else born here: they migrated from somewhere else, often in multiple waves. As your own article points out, "Native" Americans should simply be called Asian Americans, since that's where genetics tells us they came from. The only continent humans are native to is Africa, because that's where we evolved as a species.
The real question, however, is why we let racist pricks like you keep bringing up this crap as if it mattered. Your obsession with the origins of American Indians is comparable to the Nazi obsession with ancient Germanic tribes.
I guess the part where you insist that more money = more effective influence.
Not at all. I merely insist that the idea that $50000 won the election against Clinton's $650 million spending plus massive political and media machinery is ludicrous.
Clinton lost over and over again because people thought that she was a vile and incompetent human being; the only thing Russian operatives had to do with Clinton was massive donations to her foundation, which rightfully disturbed people.
None of the actual definitions of the term fit the one you choose to believe in.
Sure, your first definition pretty much says what I said.
LOL, "the problem isn't democracy itself, it's the forms of democracy that people use."
Minarchist democracies have been the norm through most of human history. The kind of totalitarian and majoritarian form of democracy you imagine is barely democratic and not stable.
Um, dude...
I know some of these concepts can be hard to understand. Keep trying.
"In his speech, Gates said that creating software was difficult, in part because it is easy to 'fool yourself' about what works and whether it can be easily scaled,"
All major Native American mtDNA and Y-chromosome haplogroups emerged in the same region of central Asia, and all share similar coalescent dates, indicating that a single ancient gene pool is ancestral to all Native American populations.
You'd expect to see the same thing if the current "Native American populations" killed off most of the prior populations. Note, incidentally, the qualifier "all major Native American...".
We stole this country from the people that lived here.
America's territory consists mostly of land that was depopulated by disease, and territory gained in war. You know, like the territories of pretty much every nation state on this planet. As a rule of thumb, a generation or two after a territory has been conquered, people learn to live with it, in particular when the conquering nation gives citizenship to the conquered people, like the US did for American Indians.
Over the last few hundred years, my own family was kicked out of several parts of Europe over religion, was conquered and became citizens of different countries several times. We didn't curl up into a ball and whined and complained about how unfair it all was, we figured out how to survive and prosper. Obsessing about who conquered what a few centuries back is counterproductive and sick.
And at the same time, nation states very much have a right to control immigration and protect their borders.
Very, very difficult in the US. The process takes years, and acceptance is unlikely even then.
So your answer, and the answer of Democrats, to that is to give illegals preferential treatment over legal immigrants, because that is what all the DACA and Dreamer discussion amounts to. How is that fair or reasonable?
Yeah, so we can become like Malmo, Sweden and adopt the crazy policies in Germany? I'll pass.
Germany let in a lot of refugees for a few years, mostly out of guilt over Germany's history, but otherwise, Germany is a lot less "crazy" than the US when it comes to immigration. Regular immigrant visas are primarily given to skilled workers, not for family reunification, like in the US. Germany requires people to learn German and to conform to German culture in order to naturalize. In fact, Germany's chancellor has repeatedly declared that Germany will not tolerate a multicultural society, and it is the declared objective of government to create a single German culture and identity. And Germany's welfare system is much less generous than that of the US.
Now, personally, I find Germany policies a bit too draconian. Nevertheless, the US government goes out of its way to encourage multilingualism and multiculturalism, as well as to bring in unskilled and low skilled workers, and tax payers pay enormous sums of money for those policies, and that makes no sense.
Clinton spent twice as much money as Trump and more than 10000 times as much as Russia, and most of the major sources of consumer and political data in the US (including Google and Facebook) were supporting Clinton with people and data. The idea that somehow Russia managed to do with $50k and no talent what Clinton didn't manage to do with nearly the entire press, PR machinery, academic community, and big data brain trust behind it is ludicrous.
The election does show that political advertising works to some degree: people like you still believe in the political equivalent of the Easter Bunny, against all reason and evidence. Fortunately, the American electorate kept you from stealing the show... this time. With a bit of luck, we can repeat that for a few more elections. Kicking out a few million illegals should also help.
It's less "I think" and more "there is sufficient empirical data to suggest that conclusion."... If advertising didn't work, it wouldn't be a multi-trillion dollar industry.
Which part of can be swayed by $50000 in false Russian advertising did you not understand?
Clinton spent $565 million.
Trump spent $322 million.
Russia spent $0.05 million
Liberty and democracy are often diametrically opposed concepts.
Democracy simply means that political power originates with the people (as opposed to God or kings). There is no inherent conflict between democracy and liberty.
The conflict is between specific forms of democracy: majoritarianism, parliamentary democracy, and democratic socialism are incompatible with liberty (they are also unstable and tend to turn into totalitarianism or dictatorships sooner or later).
Yes, but it potentially interferes with poor Ivan's ability to use US advertising platforms to spread misinformation.
And applied in reverse, it interferes with poor America's ability to use foreign advertising to spread information about the US, democracy, etc. And it interferes with the ability of Americans to hear foreign viewpoints
If you think that American voters are dumb enough that they can be swayed by $50000 in false Russian advertising, then you obviously don't believe in representative government or democracy; why even pretend to defend democracy and liberty?
Knowing the buyer of an advert doesn't matter if you can't get any info about the buyer's doners... basically, all this will do is move the needle to anonymous superpacs... "this ad is brought to you by [insert name of superpac]".
Yes, but it is very effective against political speech by individuals, which is of course, the primary purpose of these bills: to make sure that only big, well-financed, well-organized political players can speak.
We need legislation that let's us know who donates to these pacs to begin to understand their agendas... no anonymous donations
This too hurts political speech by those of normal means most.
Americans deserve to know who's paying (off) our Representatives and deserve to have those representatives and the others running our government to work for the benefit of ALL the people as a whole and not just the rich and powerful.
They are your representatives. They are supposed to represent you. If you don't know enough about them to need the federal government step in and attempt to force them to disclose this, they obviously aren't representing you and you probably shouldn't be voting for them in the first place.
The companies would be required to keep and release data on anyone spending more than $500 on political ads in a year.
This would basically mean the end of political speech for individuals, because anybody who publishes a controversial ad as an individual will be torn apart by "activists" from the opposing political party.
It's also unlikely to survive legal scrutiny, since SCOTUS has repeatedly affirmed the right to anonymous free speech; this isn't the first time politicians have tried to restrict it after all.
That's basically the fascist political program, aka "national socialism": same stated goals as socialism, but with redistribution and regulated private property.
Bear in mind that what I said doesn't require a totalitarian regime, so those would be irrelevant to the discussion.
Going down the path of socialism or fascism doesn't require a totalitarian regime; totalitarianism is simply what these kinds of systems invariably devolve into.
After comparing this with the statistical national average for each illness they found that those in the Mensa community had considerably higher rates of varying disorders.
Mensa members have a higher IQ than average, but they are also self-selected based on other criteria, like an obsessive need to demonstrate their intelligence to others. In addition, the conclusion also assumes that mental illness is diagnosed at the same rate independent of IQ, which seems implausible.
So this result only shows you that Mensa members are more prone to having mental illness diagnosed, not that people with high IQ in general have a higher rate of mental disease.
Slashdot turned 20 this month, which is ancient in internet years. How far have we come?
Slashdot has been almost run into the ground, with a large number of the stories having little to do with technology, and instead raising divisive political and social issues.
And the user interface is stuck somewhere in the previous decade.
My response : Can you show where I said they "cannot" ? Does it imply anywhere that US citizens are "obligated" to rebuild Florida but not Puerto Rico, except in your putrid imagination ?
We are discussing DeMaster's statement: I am appalled that Puerto Ricans are being treated as a second class citizens.. That's what this thread is about.
What people are using "socialism" to mean now is restrictions on what people can do to make money and support for those in difficulties. You may not like the new meaning of "socialism", but people are indeed using it in that way, and equating it with communism is thoroughly unproductive.
There is nothing new about that meaning either: that was widely tried in Europe in the 1930's, with equally disastrous results. Then as now, American Democrats and progressives were in love with it.
That's more in opposition to lassez-faire capitalism than capitalism as an economic system.
But nice Straw Man you got there, be a shame if logic and reason knocked out down. Just because Russia has been using our poor race relations against is for a while doesn't mean the didn't work with team Trump to get him elected.
I completely agree! The fact that Putin didn't get Trump elected is indeed unrelated to the fact that American leftists have traditionally been supported by Russia. It's just that if you put those two facts together, it makes the Democratic conspiracy theories even more ludicrous than they already are.
If anything Donny's the culmination of 20 years work to destabilize our country and congrats, we fell for it Hook line and sinker.
No, Hillary, Sanders, and their followers are the culmination of 20 years work to destabilize our country; those people are utterly bonkers. Trump was simply the Hail Mary choice that Americans elected because they didn't have any other reasonable option. If Bill Clinton had run again, he would have been elected, but he would be maligned as a racist neo-Nazi by the current Democratic party.
I am appalled that Puerto Ricans are being treated as a second class citizens.
That implies some obligation on the part of Americans to rebuild Puerto Rico with US tax dollars. I asked for a justification for that obligation. You have given none so far.
Your statement "As an American, I am not a citizen of Puerto Rico. Why do you think I am obligated to pay for the rebuilding of Puerto Rico?" still remains utter nonsense - as applicable to Florida as to Puerto Rico.
Well, since my statement didn't convince you, I clarified:
The fact remains that the relationship between Puerto Rico and the federal government is fundamentally different than the relationship between any US state and the federal government. Therefore, it is perfectly legitimate for the federal government to treat Puerto Rico differently from any state when it comes to disaster relief or rebuilding after a disaster.
So: respond to the clarification instead of the original statement.
It is sweat that you think this was either for one party or against the other party. It isn't. It is to put some serious shit between people in the US
Americans have traditionally been small government, classically liberal free market types with generally protestant culture, values, and work ethic. Historically, both parties broadly supported such views. What has changed is that the Democrats have been taken over by progressive, neo-Marxist, and social justice ideology; that is what has created the division. Many of Trump's positions and statements that Democrats denounce as extreme right wing are positions that would have been perfectly fine for Bill Clinton to take (in fact, he did take many of the same positions). So, Russia didn't have to support both sides equally; they simply needed to create and nurture an opposition to traditional US mainstream culture. That is exactly what the progressives and social justice movement represent: a rejection of protestant culture, values, and work ethic, and a demonization of the people most identified with it, namely white males. This started half a century ago, but it finally took over the Democratic party some time in the post-Clinton era.
And they are really good at it
Much as I would like to believe that Russia is the root cause of the idiocy that has taken a hold of the Democratic party, it is only a minor factor. A lot of our current divisiveness is the result of European intellectuals invading American universities since the 1930's and bringing their hare-brained theories with them. And a lot of our current divisiveness represents rational behavior for our politicians, given the reward structure of our bloated federal government.
Slashdot Mirror
Caring? How is sucking money out of people's pockets and redistributing it to bureaucracies and big corporations with powerful lobbyists "caring"? And how is it "caring" to continue to grow government programs which, in decades, have been utterly ineffective at achieving their stated goals decade after decade?
This is what you are actually advocating:
"Caring" means donating your money to private charities and volunteering your time. "Caring" does not mean what you are doing, namely advocating crony capitalism and massive government spending on ineffective programs.
I would love to. Unfortunately, several decades of government meddling with US health insurance have killed any ability of people to choose their health insurance, or insurance companies to set prices based on actual risk.
Well, as I was saying: their conclusion is not fully supported by their data. It's a reasonable belief, but may never know whether there were humans in the Americas prior to the current population of American Indians. It took us nearly half a millennium to discover sound evidence that Columbus wasn't the first European in the Americas.
The simple fact is that "Native" Americans are no more native to the Americas than anybody else born here: they migrated from somewhere else, often in multiple waves. As your own article points out, "Native" Americans should simply be called Asian Americans, since that's where genetics tells us they came from. The only continent humans are native to is Africa, because that's where we evolved as a species.
The real question, however, is why we let racist pricks like you keep bringing up this crap as if it mattered. Your obsession with the origins of American Indians is comparable to the Nazi obsession with ancient Germanic tribes.
(1) Don't pretend this is the Star Trek universe; it's too different.
(2) Stream it on standard platforms instead of your own pointless attempt at another streaming platform.
Not at all. I merely insist that the idea that $50000 won the election against Clinton's $650 million spending plus massive political and media machinery is ludicrous.
Clinton lost over and over again because people thought that she was a vile and incompetent human being; the only thing Russian operatives had to do with Clinton was massive donations to her foundation, which rightfully disturbed people.
Sure, your first definition pretty much says what I said.
Minarchist democracies have been the norm through most of human history. The kind of totalitarian and majoritarian form of democracy you imagine is barely democratic and not stable.
I know some of these concepts can be hard to understand. Keep trying.
There, FTFY.
You'd expect to see the same thing if the current "Native American populations" killed off most of the prior populations. Note, incidentally, the qualifier "all major Native American...".
America's territory consists mostly of land that was depopulated by disease, and territory gained in war. You know, like the territories of pretty much every nation state on this planet. As a rule of thumb, a generation or two after a territory has been conquered, people learn to live with it, in particular when the conquering nation gives citizenship to the conquered people, like the US did for American Indians.
Over the last few hundred years, my own family was kicked out of several parts of Europe over religion, was conquered and became citizens of different countries several times. We didn't curl up into a ball and whined and complained about how unfair it all was, we figured out how to survive and prosper. Obsessing about who conquered what a few centuries back is counterproductive and sick.
And at the same time, nation states very much have a right to control immigration and protect their borders.
So your answer, and the answer of Democrats, to that is to give illegals preferential treatment over legal immigrants, because that is what all the DACA and Dreamer discussion amounts to. How is that fair or reasonable?
Germany let in a lot of refugees for a few years, mostly out of guilt over Germany's history, but otherwise, Germany is a lot less "crazy" than the US when it comes to immigration. Regular immigrant visas are primarily given to skilled workers, not for family reunification, like in the US. Germany requires people to learn German and to conform to German culture in order to naturalize. In fact, Germany's chancellor has repeatedly declared that Germany will not tolerate a multicultural society, and it is the declared objective of government to create a single German culture and identity. And Germany's welfare system is much less generous than that of the US.
Now, personally, I find Germany policies a bit too draconian. Nevertheless, the US government goes out of its way to encourage multilingualism and multiculturalism, as well as to bring in unskilled and low skilled workers, and tax payers pay enormous sums of money for those policies, and that makes no sense.
Clinton spent twice as much money as Trump and more than 10000 times as much as Russia, and most of the major sources of consumer and political data in the US (including Google and Facebook) were supporting Clinton with people and data. The idea that somehow Russia managed to do with $50k and no talent what Clinton didn't manage to do with nearly the entire press, PR machinery, academic community, and big data brain trust behind it is ludicrous.
The election does show that political advertising works to some degree: people like you still believe in the political equivalent of the Easter Bunny, against all reason and evidence. Fortunately, the American electorate kept you from stealing the show... this time. With a bit of luck, we can repeat that for a few more elections. Kicking out a few million illegals should also help.
Which part of can be swayed by $50000 in false Russian advertising did you not understand?
Clinton spent $565 million.
Trump spent $322 million.
Russia spent $0.05 million
Democracy simply means that political power originates with the people (as opposed to God or kings). There is no inherent conflict between democracy and liberty.
The conflict is between specific forms of democracy: majoritarianism, parliamentary democracy, and democratic socialism are incompatible with liberty (they are also unstable and tend to turn into totalitarianism or dictatorships sooner or later).
And applied in reverse, it interferes with poor America's ability to use foreign advertising to spread information about the US, democracy, etc. And it interferes with the ability of Americans to hear foreign viewpoints
If you think that American voters are dumb enough that they can be swayed by $50000 in false Russian advertising, then you obviously don't believe in representative government or democracy; why even pretend to defend democracy and liberty?
Yes, but it is very effective against political speech by individuals, which is of course, the primary purpose of these bills: to make sure that only big, well-financed, well-organized political players can speak.
This too hurts political speech by those of normal means most.
They are your representatives. They are supposed to represent you. If you don't know enough about them to need the federal government step in and attempt to force them to disclose this, they obviously aren't representing you and you probably shouldn't be voting for them in the first place.
This would basically mean the end of political speech for individuals, because anybody who publishes a controversial ad as an individual will be torn apart by "activists" from the opposing political party.
It's also unlikely to survive legal scrutiny, since SCOTUS has repeatedly affirmed the right to anonymous free speech; this isn't the first time politicians have tried to restrict it after all.
That's basically the fascist political program, aka "national socialism": same stated goals as socialism, but with redistribution and regulated private property.
Going down the path of socialism or fascism doesn't require a totalitarian regime; totalitarianism is simply what these kinds of systems invariably devolve into.
Mensa members have a higher IQ than average, but they are also self-selected based on other criteria, like an obsessive need to demonstrate their intelligence to others. In addition, the conclusion also assumes that mental illness is diagnosed at the same rate independent of IQ, which seems implausible.
So this result only shows you that Mensa members are more prone to having mental illness diagnosed, not that people with high IQ in general have a higher rate of mental disease.
Slashdot has been almost run into the ground, with a large number of the stories having little to do with technology, and instead raising divisive political and social issues.
And the user interface is stuck somewhere in the previous decade.
I get it now: you are functionally illiterate.
We are discussing DeMaster's statement: I am appalled that Puerto Ricans are being treated as a second class citizens.. That's what this thread is about.
There is nothing new about that meaning either: that was widely tried in Europe in the 1930's, with equally disastrous results. Then as now, American Democrats and progressives were in love with it.
So, pretty much like the 1930's then.
I completely agree! The fact that Putin didn't get Trump elected is indeed unrelated to the fact that American leftists have traditionally been supported by Russia. It's just that if you put those two facts together, it makes the Democratic conspiracy theories even more ludicrous than they already are.
No, Hillary, Sanders, and their followers are the culmination of 20 years work to destabilize our country; those people are utterly bonkers. Trump was simply the Hail Mary choice that Americans elected because they didn't have any other reasonable option. If Bill Clinton had run again, he would have been elected, but he would be maligned as a racist neo-Nazi by the current Democratic party.
We are discussing this statement:
That implies some obligation on the part of Americans to rebuild Puerto Rico with US tax dollars. I asked for a justification for that obligation. You have given none so far.
Well, since my statement didn't convince you, I clarified:
The fact remains that the relationship between Puerto Rico and the federal government is fundamentally different than the relationship between any US state and the federal government. Therefore, it is perfectly legitimate for the federal government to treat Puerto Rico differently from any state when it comes to disaster relief or rebuilding after a disaster.
So: respond to the clarification instead of the original statement.
Americans have traditionally been small government, classically liberal free market types with generally protestant culture, values, and work ethic. Historically, both parties broadly supported such views. What has changed is that the Democrats have been taken over by progressive, neo-Marxist, and social justice ideology; that is what has created the division. Many of Trump's positions and statements that Democrats denounce as extreme right wing are positions that would have been perfectly fine for Bill Clinton to take (in fact, he did take many of the same positions). So, Russia didn't have to support both sides equally; they simply needed to create and nurture an opposition to traditional US mainstream culture. That is exactly what the progressives and social justice movement represent: a rejection of protestant culture, values, and work ethic, and a demonization of the people most identified with it, namely white males. This started half a century ago, but it finally took over the Democratic party some time in the post-Clinton era.
Much as I would like to believe that Russia is the root cause of the idiocy that has taken a hold of the Democratic party, it is only a minor factor. A lot of our current divisiveness is the result of European intellectuals invading American universities since the 1930's and bringing their hare-brained theories with them. And a lot of our current divisiveness represents rational behavior for our politicians, given the reward structure of our bloated federal government.