I agree completely. if we, meaning a large enough group, held the bastards truly accountable they'd make this a free country again. They'd hate to lose the degree of control they have, but to stay in power they'd do it.
However, "we" aren't some monolithic group. We will disagree on many things. That's why it takes a lot of work from the "people" to get a government that more or less works as the "people" want.
I made terrible grades and dropped out of high school. Just didn't go back after barely getting out of the 11th grade. My kids are the first in my paternal line to EVER go to college as far as I know. I was a carpenter(though not a coal miner) for the first 13 years of my working adult life.
Then I bought a first gen IBM pc and started teaching myself programming, just for the hell of it. Loved it.
Yeah, my first coding efforts were crap, but I busted my ass and learned how to do it right. Quickly enough to be a real asset to my employers.
I've made my living as a software developer for more than 30 years now.
Learning something technical is almost 100% desire, not some special talent given to the blessed few.
If governments can tell you what car to drive and how much CO2 it can emit, why not tell people what they can eat, how much animal protein, and put a methane tax on cows and pigs? All this concern over cars and driving and global warming but eating meat seems to be worse than driving a Hummer.
http://www.scientificamerican....
Eating meat may the only thing that can save us: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... Fight desertification, sequester carbon AND grow good food. The guy in the TED talk points out that this works well in terrible conditions.
"Fascism is for the only liberty which can be a serious thing, the liberty of the state and of the individual in the state. Therefore for the fascist, everything is in the state, and no human or spiritual thing exists, or has any sort of value, outside the state. In this sense fascism is totalitarian, and the fascist state which is the synthesis and unity of every value, interprets, develops and strengthens the entire life of the people."
—Benito Mussolini, Giovanni Gentile, Doctrine of Fascism (1932)
Many, many people WANT this in America. Flame away, but pretty much everyone who votes for Democrats explicitly support this. (Not that Republicans give any real alternative *heavy sigh*). Of course they expect that the real burden will fall on someone else, but the principle is that the government will take care of everything and make all the important decisions. Decisions about food, housing, healthcare, guns, everything. Did you get an expensive loan for a university degree in interpretive dance? No problem, the government will take money away from "rich people" and pay it for you.
Please ignore the fact that if ALL the theoretical money from ALL the "rich" was confiscated it wouldn't pay but a fraction of one year of the Obama deficit. Not the budget, a tiny portion of the deficit for one year.
Folks, you can't have all that without a totalitarian State. Or at least a State that TRIES to control everything.
Or just do what this gut in the TED talk does: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Fight desertification AND grow good food. The guy in the TED talk points out that this works well in terrible conditions.
Years ago, Gerald Ford came to my town to make a speech of some sort. The local paper told when and where he'd be landing. It was a large grass area in a local park. My friends and I showed up for the heck of it. Marine One landed, POTUS got out, waved, got in the limo and drove off. No big deal. Didn't close the roads for miles, didn't keep us very far back, didn't have squads of machine gun toting military around. Hardly any noticeable security.
Yes, I remember RR getting shot, saw it on TV. But my point is that we now have an Imperial Presidency. Al Gore came to Minneapolis during the Clinton era. Shut down every road he might even consider traveling on. Screwed up the airport. Rode around like Caesar.
The bastards now are so full of themselves that they don't even pretend anymore.
Sure, security is needed to POTUS, but damn, it's all gotten blown out of proportion.
Sadly, I think we're stuck with obamacare, and it won't be repealed, but it needs to seriously be altered. Why not remove so many of the minimums for the insurance coverage (as an older man, I don't really need prenatal coverage), and open up insurance competition to allow it to cross state lines. I mean, I can buy motorcycle insurance from a national company across lines, why can't I buy health ins across state lines?
Sadly, this has nothing to do with healthcare. It has everything to do with pumping money into the healthcare industry. Under the guise of Socialism. You have to pay for prenatal care for other people. That's the very DEFINITION of Socialism, take from those that have and give to those that want.
What!? you don't want to buy insurance for other people?! Greedy bastard to think that your concerns matter more than "the children"!
We could make a beetle analog with modern technology and have it be extremely cheap, but instead people have decided that they prefer buying more car.
Yes and no. I recently bought a new car after 15 years in my old one. I really like the tech. BUT, I'd also love the option of buying a 40 year old car (yes, I'm that old) at a 40 year old adjusted price. No more mandated safety and mileage features than were current then, bumper welded to the chassis like the '46 Dodge truck I drove around the country in the '70's, etc. I might not buy one now at this stage of life, but I wish my kids at least had the option.
And yes, before the flames start, I DO believe the fuel efficiency of my car is my business, not the governments. Pollution, not so much, but cost of gas to run the damn thing? No one else's business but my own.
Once drivers are faced with paying $10/gallon, they'll look for fuel efficient commute alternatives themselves (which includes transit (which can be funded from the fuel tax), cycling and moving closer to work, so it will reduce congestion at the same time -- just putting everyone in an EV doesn't help with congestion).
I love that argument. Nirvana can come if we just raise taxes enough! We'll all bike to work on green parkways serenaded by bluebirds. If we just raise taxes enough.
Of course, costs for food and everything else we don't make at home from stuff we already have at home, will skyrocket, but hey, who cares? We'll all just ride public transit funded by high taxes that no one can afford, that being the point of raising the cost of gas in the first place. You know, to make people stop using gas? How will that work exactly?
Stop believing in magic. Seriously, repeat after me:These is no Soma, there is no Soma.
Sorry folks, as someone who stopped counting at around 250 acid trips, I can tell you that discipline, hard work and NOT dulling/scrambling the senses is your best bet to transcend your current limitations.
Any reasonable recommendations can only come from large, longitudinal studies, over multiple generations. You know, those that shape the food pyramid / WHO guidelines.
Bullshit. Look at the actual science. Endocrinologists can tell you how your body processes nutrients based on hormones. Hormones COMPLETELY control fat storage and use. Diet dramatically affects hormone secretion. As one put it: "Carbohydrate drives insulin drives fat storage"
Everyone and I mean EVERYONE simply believes what they want. No, really. We all have a world view that makes sense to us.
Hate Republicans? Then you believe in socialism, you know, for the children.
Hate commie bastards? You probably believe that God gave the deed to Israel to Jews.
Purely rational? Not like those other dumbasses that believe in that goofy shit? Then you probably believe you really see the world completely, no limitations, no illusions, no misunderstandings.
It's only close to home, because marketers decided every American should have a single family home (detached home in the rest of the world)...
No marketer decided that for my family or our parents or their parents, etc. We simply like living in our own place and small bit of space.
A place, I might add, that I customize freely. Not every American makes that choice and indeed I have made different choices at different times.
Why do you presume to know other peoples reasons for choosing a living space?
Why do people even bother to say this?!? WTF does that even mean?
Politics is ONLY about money.
Oh, you mean somehow make it so that people can run for office without having any money. Really? In what possible system can that happen?
I ran for city council in a small suburb of Minneapolis recently. Cost me about $8000 for ads, mailings, etc. How the hell are the "people" supposed to evaluate candidates without an information stream, i.e., "publicity"?
Oh, you say, "We'll have government paid for publicity for candidates. That'll get the money out of politics!"
Wrong! All that does is let the government decide who can run for government.
For those of us who eat dead animals, eggs are health food. I eat 5-6 eggs a day for breakfast. Sometimes more later when I'm feeling lazy.
I lost 40lbs and my cholesterol panels went form heart-attack-soon to teen age athlete levels.
All this stupid "Don't eat eggs or fat" bullshit is literally killing us.
I was maybe 8 or 9 and had a great little 3" reflector, could even see the rings of Saturn. I was in a grocery store one day and saw a star book on the end cap. Got it, took it home, opened it up and WTF? I was astonished. What a load of crap.
That's just FUD. The creation of the NHTSA made it possible, and that came long before Obamacare.
Well, the NHTSA just made it possible. The ACA made it *probable*. When the Supreme Court OK to forcing Americans to buy stuff from giant corporations, everything is on the table. You'll all quietly go along when a Republican administration forces you all to expensive guns, whether you need them or not, I'm sure.
You are not forced to buy the most expensive plans
Why am I being forced to buy anything?
Furthermore, you are discounting all the people who are benefiting from the expansion of Medicaid in states that chose to allow the expansion.
Where do you think the money comes from for free stuff? The magic government bank account?
Folks, the answer isn't more and more insurance. The desperate need is to lower the cost of sensible heath care. Decent health care is the "what". Insurance is simply a "how". One of many, probably the worst.
Surely all you developers out there have fought that battle. Trying to drag the actual "what do you need" instead of "Here's how to do it" from users wanting software.
The law also provides a solution to the pre-existing condition problem.
Definition of "pre-existing condition": An insurance industry term denoting a chronic medical condition that someone want's someone else to pay for. Heartless? No, merely accurate. The goal should be to lower the cost, not think up creative and painful ways to make it cost more.
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However, "we" aren't some monolithic group. We will disagree on many things. That's why it takes a lot of work from the "people" to get a government that more or less works as the "people" want.
Outside. At night. Awake.
Of course not everyone WANTS to code.
I made terrible grades and dropped out of high school. Just didn't go back after barely getting out of the 11th grade. My kids are the first in my paternal line to EVER go to college as far as I know. I was a carpenter(though not a coal miner) for the first 13 years of my working adult life.
Then I bought a first gen IBM pc and started teaching myself programming, just for the hell of it. Loved it.
Yeah, my first coding efforts were crap, but I busted my ass and learned how to do it right. Quickly enough to be a real asset to my employers. I've made my living as a software developer for more than 30 years now.
Learning something technical is almost 100% desire, not some special talent given to the blessed few.
You guys didn't seem to care so much when Michael Moore did the same thing. Bowling For Columbine
It pretty much seems to be an observable fact from trees to planetary bodies to particle physics. Dig deeper and the parts resemble the whole.
If governments can tell you what car to drive and how much CO2 it can emit, why not tell people what they can eat, how much animal protein, and put a methane tax on cows and pigs? All this concern over cars and driving and global warming but eating meat seems to be worse than driving a Hummer. http://www.scientificamerican....
Eating meat may the only thing that can save us: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... Fight desertification, sequester carbon AND grow good food. The guy in the TED talk points out that this works well in terrible conditions.
"Fascism is for the only liberty which can be a serious thing, the liberty of the state and of the individual in the state. Therefore for the fascist, everything is in the state, and no human or spiritual thing exists, or has any sort of value, outside the state. In this sense fascism is totalitarian, and the fascist state which is the synthesis and unity of every value, interprets, develops and strengthens the entire life of the people."
—Benito Mussolini, Giovanni Gentile, Doctrine of Fascism (1932)
Many, many people WANT this in America. Flame away, but pretty much everyone who votes for Democrats explicitly support this. (Not that Republicans give any real alternative *heavy sigh*). Of course they expect that the real burden will fall on someone else, but the principle is that the government will take care of everything and make all the important decisions. Decisions about food, housing, healthcare, guns, everything. Did you get an expensive loan for a university degree in interpretive dance? No problem, the government will take money away from "rich people" and pay it for you.
Please ignore the fact that if ALL the theoretical money from ALL the "rich" was confiscated it wouldn't pay but a fraction of one year of the Obama deficit. Not the budget, a tiny portion of the deficit for one year.
Folks, you can't have all that without a totalitarian State. Or at least a State that TRIES to control everything.
Or just do what this gut in the TED talk does: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... Fight desertification AND grow good food. The guy in the TED talk points out that this works well in terrible conditions.
Yes, I remember RR getting shot, saw it on TV. But my point is that we now have an Imperial Presidency. Al Gore came to Minneapolis during the Clinton era. Shut down every road he might even consider traveling on. Screwed up the airport. Rode around like Caesar. The bastards now are so full of themselves that they don't even pretend anymore.
Sure, security is needed to POTUS, but damn, it's all gotten blown out of proportion.
Sadly, I think we're stuck with obamacare, and it won't be repealed, but it needs to seriously be altered. Why not remove so many of the minimums for the insurance coverage (as an older man, I don't really need prenatal coverage), and open up insurance competition to allow it to cross state lines. I mean, I can buy motorcycle insurance from a national company across lines, why can't I buy health ins across state lines?
Sadly, this has nothing to do with healthcare. It has everything to do with pumping money into the healthcare industry. Under the guise of Socialism. You have to pay for prenatal care for other people. That's the very DEFINITION of Socialism, take from those that have and give to those that want.
What!? you don't want to buy insurance for other people?! Greedy bastard to think that your concerns matter more than "the children"!
We could make a beetle analog with modern technology and have it be extremely cheap, but instead people have decided that they prefer buying more car.
Yes and no. I recently bought a new car after 15 years in my old one. I really like the tech. BUT, I'd also love the option of buying a 40 year old car (yes, I'm that old) at a 40 year old adjusted price. No more mandated safety and mileage features than were current then, bumper welded to the chassis like the '46 Dodge truck I drove around the country in the '70's, etc. I might not buy one now at this stage of life, but I wish my kids at least had the option.
And yes, before the flames start, I DO believe the fuel efficiency of my car is my business, not the governments. Pollution, not so much, but cost of gas to run the damn thing? No one else's business but my own.
Once drivers are faced with paying $10/gallon, they'll look for fuel efficient commute alternatives themselves (which includes transit (which can be funded from the fuel tax), cycling and moving closer to work, so it will reduce congestion at the same time -- just putting everyone in an EV doesn't help with congestion).
I love that argument. Nirvana can come if we just raise taxes enough! We'll all bike to work on green parkways serenaded by bluebirds. If we just raise taxes enough.
Of course, costs for food and everything else we don't make at home from stuff we already have at home, will skyrocket, but hey, who cares? We'll all just ride public transit funded by high taxes that no one can afford, that being the point of raising the cost of gas in the first place. You know, to make people stop using gas? How will that work exactly?
Sorry folks, as someone who stopped counting at around 250 acid trips, I can tell you that discipline, hard work and NOT dulling/scrambling the senses is your best bet to transcend your current limitations.
Any reasonable recommendations can only come from large, longitudinal studies, over multiple generations. You know, those that shape the food pyramid / WHO guidelines.
Bullshit. Look at the actual science. Endocrinologists can tell you how your body processes nutrients based on hormones. Hormones COMPLETELY control fat storage and use. Diet dramatically affects hormone secretion. As one put it: "Carbohydrate drives insulin drives fat storage"
Everyone and I mean EVERYONE simply believes what they want. No, really. We all have a world view that makes sense to us.
Hate Republicans? Then you believe in socialism, you know, for the children. Hate commie bastards? You probably believe that God gave the deed to Israel to Jews.
Purely rational? Not like those other dumbasses that believe in that goofy shit? Then you probably believe you really see the world completely, no limitations, no illusions, no misunderstandings.
If so, you're the most obnoxious of them all.
It's only close to home, because marketers decided every American should have a single family home (detached home in the rest of the world)...
No marketer decided that for my family or our parents or their parents, etc. We simply like living in our own place and small bit of space. A place, I might add, that I customize freely. Not every American makes that choice and indeed I have made different choices at different times.
Why do you presume to know other peoples reasons for choosing a living space?
Damn. I bet you're a lot of fun on dates.
Hell, we ALL want to be the guy that develops some dumb thing someone else buys for billions of dollars.
Get money out of politics...
Why do people even bother to say this?!? WTF does that even mean?
Politics is ONLY about money. Oh, you mean somehow make it so that people can run for office without having any money. Really? In what possible system can that happen? I ran for city council in a small suburb of Minneapolis recently. Cost me about $8000 for ads, mailings, etc. How the hell are the "people" supposed to evaluate candidates without an information stream, i.e., "publicity"?
Oh, you say, "We'll have government paid for publicity for candidates. That'll get the money out of politics!" Wrong! All that does is let the government decide who can run for government.
For those of us who eat dead animals, eggs are health food. I eat 5-6 eggs a day for breakfast. Sometimes more later when I'm feeling lazy. I lost 40lbs and my cholesterol panels went form heart-attack-soon to teen age athlete levels.
All this stupid "Don't eat eggs or fat" bullshit is literally killing us.
And much of THAT was put into place by Democrats and signed into law by Clinton after the first WTC attempted bombing.
I was maybe 8 or 9 and had a great little 3" reflector, could even see the rings of Saturn. I was in a grocery store one day and saw a star book on the end cap. Got it, took it home, opened it up and WTF? I was astonished. What a load of crap.
A group that largely voted for Obama as Savior thinks astrology is good science and this surprises anyone?
That's just FUD. The creation of the NHTSA made it possible, and that came long before Obamacare.
Well, the NHTSA just made it possible. The ACA made it *probable*. When the Supreme Court OK to forcing Americans to buy stuff from giant corporations, everything is on the table. You'll all quietly go along when a Republican administration forces you all to expensive guns, whether you need them or not, I'm sure.
You are not forced to buy the most expensive plans
Why am I being forced to buy anything?
Furthermore, you are discounting all the people who are benefiting from the expansion of Medicaid in states that chose to allow the expansion.
Where do you think the money comes from for free stuff? The magic government bank account? Folks, the answer isn't more and more insurance. The desperate need is to lower the cost of sensible heath care. Decent health care is the "what". Insurance is simply a "how". One of many, probably the worst.
Surely all you developers out there have fought that battle. Trying to drag the actual "what do you need" instead of "Here's how to do it" from users wanting software.
The law also provides a solution to the pre-existing condition problem.
Definition of "pre-existing condition": An insurance industry term denoting a chronic medical condition that someone want's someone else to pay for. Heartless? No, merely accurate. The goal should be to lower the cost, not think up creative and painful ways to make it cost more.