Raise taxes and cut spending. Do both. You can't agree?
The Republicans have signed a pledge that they will never vote to raise taxes on anybody for any reason whatsoever. If they violate that pledge, the head of the organization who created it can and will ensure they lose their seat by cutting off their campaign funding. So they really can't agree to raise taxes.
When it comes to spending cuts, the big-ticket items are Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the military. Any serious cuts need to affect one of those 4 items. The Democrats have been elected for decades with pledges to protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid at all costs - it's their party's signature program for the last 75 years or so, so they really can't cut any of those. The Republicans have been elected for decades with pledges to protect military manufacturing jobs in their district, so they really can't cut any of those.
So in short, no they really can't, not without betraying everything they claim to stand for.
The Democrats appear to have located their spines.
The game that's been going on for over a year is simple: 1. Make demands in exchange for continuing to have a functioning government after some deadline. 2. "negotiate" with the Democrats until several hours before the deadline. 3. Democrats blink, make an 11th-hour deal with Republicans to give them about 95% of their original demands. 4. Democrats declare victory and tell their constituents that the 5% that they got is worth it. Their constituents, apparently not as stupid as the Democratic politicians, don't believe them. 5. Republicans declare victory, and tell their constituents that the 5% cost was worth it, because they'll get rid of it soon enough. They then locate the next deadline they can use.
Here's the UN report. It should be pointed out that the UN investigator had to make this report without unmonitored access to Manning because the US government refused 'unfettered' access, which is what the UN expects of all cooperating states.
Here's a Welsh MP expressing her concern about Manning's treatment, particularly relevant because Manning is apparently a Welsh citizen in addition to being a US citizen.
If you haven't noticed that there's at least a serious question regarding whether Manning's been tortured, you've probably been limiting yourself to mainstream US media.
Very little in what Manning released had any reason to be secret.
More exactly, no legitimate reason to be kept secret. The reasons they were kept secret are: 1. The military nowadays reflexively declares almost all records of what they to be a secret of some kind unless it's something they want the US public to know. This is in part because a major lesson that US military leaders got from Vietnam was to do their utmost to prevent the US public from ever knowing what the military really does to the countries it attacks or occupies.
cause being held without due process for 18 months under conditions that are considered torture by international observers is full of awesome in this country.
You're right, you just didn't quite make the point strongly enough.
One interesting question is whether the treatment of Bradley Manning is better or worse than the treatment of Yaser Hamdi, a US citizen imprisoned for 3 years and then (once the US Supreme Court said that was not OK) deported to Saudi Arabia, all without having been charged with a crime, much less convicted of one.
One of the things that makes rugby significantly different from other sports is that there are well-defined roles that are actually make shorter better (e.g. hooker). On the flip side, though, it helps to have second rowers and an 8 that are on the tall side, if only to catch lineouts.
An even better counterargument: Association football ("soccer" to Americans) is widely played by people of every race and nationality from just about every social background imaginable. There's absolutely no statistically significant pattern of race and skill at the game.
I'm sure this is a useful program put together by well-meaning people. I'm reasonably certain that it's a net benefit for the patrons of the Fayetteville Free Library. But none of that remotely leads to the conclusion that "maker spaces" or "fab labs" are the future of public libraries. It just leads to the conclusion that it may be a program that's worth trying.
My general rule, whenever a 'news' story has a question in the title, is that the answer to the question is almost always "No". For instance, "Steve Jobs revered as the Second Coming?" or "Can we improve web performance by using a product from some obscure tech company?".
I'll vote for option 3: * A publicly available and heavily peer-reviewed system which is easily tested by thousands of security researchers in all sorts of creative ways.
There's absolutely no evidence that female leaders are less willing to go to war than male leaders. It is of course less common, but that has more to do with women being much less likely to be political and military leaders than men.
Programming is one part of what I do, but it's not my entire raison d'etre, and if it were I would consider it more than a little unhealthy. If nothing else, there's a significant risk of eyestrain and carpel tunnel syndrome or tendonitis. Plus my significant other, my close friends, my relatives, etc would be more than a little upset. And yes, it means I produce less code then somebody who lives in a cave with 47 computers and a direct line to the nearest pizza place, but I don't care.
You remind me of one of the interns I mentored: He was a very smart guy, did some pretty good work for us, and then stated that after he worked for us he would go back to where he was staying and code all evening. Our team did a lot of trying to convince him to try taking a walk in the park or go somewhere around town or take some time to just relax. We managed to corrupt him a bit, by buying him his first beer ever (he was in his mid-20's), but he seriously needed to spend time doing things other than coding.
I think this exchange explains the problem quite well:
Sean: Hey, Gerry, In the 1960s there was a young man that graduated from the University of Michigan. Did some brilliant work in mathematics. Specifically bounded harmonic functions. Then he went on to Berkeley. He was assistant professor. Showed amazing potential. Then he moved to Montana, and blew the competition away. Lambeau: Yeah, so who was he? Sean: Ted Kaczynski.
But I am for everybody having a nuclear bomb. Every single person. Unfortunately it's impractical, but every state should have their bombs.
I'm assuming that's just hyperbole, because nuclear weapons are only a deterrent for mentally stable people. If someone has no problem sacrificing themselves to blow others up, the whole idea of MAD and deterrence breaks down.
Except that there's almost never 1 person only who can actually launch the nukes, so all it takes is 1-2 guys somewhere in the chain of command who's not that stupid / crazy. Basically, you can stop a nutcase with a Stanislav Petrov.
It's a form of civil disobedience.... If you do civil disobedience, you expect to get hauled off to jail.
Civil disobedience, by definition, involves violating the law. That's why the details of the law are important: If the protesters were in the park legally, then the mayors and police acted against the Constitution of the United States by even attempting to remove the protesters, regardless of the tactics, force used, etc. If the protesters were in the park illegally, then there's at least the pretense of rule of law rather than suppression of free speech.
Squatting on property that isn't yours isn't a speech issue, it is a trespass or theft issue.
That's simply a bogus argument: 1. The reason the protesters were on private property rather than public property is that they'd been barred from using public property. 2. The owners of the private property never objected to the protester's presence there. In order for being on someone else's property to be considered trespassing, the owner has to not want you to be there (e.g. if I walk through a church parking lot and nobody complains, that's not trespassing). 3. The private property in question was actually required, by city ordinance, to be open to the public at all times, so even if they had objected they weren't allowed to do anything about it.
No permits
You don't need a permit to stand on a sidewalk holding a sign, unless you are planning on blocking something. The initial protests were in places the protesters had every right to be without a permit. The police responded with pepper spray.
paid for portapotties, etc.
The Occupy Wall St general meeting which is more-or-less in charge requested permission to have portapotties brought in, paid for by the protesters. The police refused to allow that.
Hell, most left the place cleaner than when they arrived.
When Bloomberg first suggested that people would have to leave the park so it could be cleaned, the protesters responded by cleaning up the park before the deadline.
And if anyone doubts this for a minute, let me toss some examples out there: 1. Asking Dennis Kucinich about UFOs instead of health care in 2007. 2. The "Howard Dean Scream" of 2003, which was mostly the result of sound editing, not at all representative of Dean's candidacy, and replayed constantly. 3. Treating Ron Paul as a joke no matter how well he does in polls or how important his points are or how many cheers he gets in a debate, while treating Michelle Bachmann as a serious candidate.
I see communism as a more rational political philosophy. That's really bad. The other parties are too small and too narrowly focused for my tastes so there is no real third party option for me.
There's an official Socialist Party that would possibly represent your views more accurately. You might also check out the Greens if you haven't: They're definitely one of the most established actually left-wing parties out there. There are definitely options other than Democrats, Republicans, or Libertarians.
Slashdot Mirror
Raise taxes and cut spending. Do both. You can't agree?
The Republicans have signed a pledge that they will never vote to raise taxes on anybody for any reason whatsoever. If they violate that pledge, the head of the organization who created it can and will ensure they lose their seat by cutting off their campaign funding. So they really can't agree to raise taxes.
When it comes to spending cuts, the big-ticket items are Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the military. Any serious cuts need to affect one of those 4 items. The Democrats have been elected for decades with pledges to protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid at all costs - it's their party's signature program for the last 75 years or so, so they really can't cut any of those. The Republicans have been elected for decades with pledges to protect military manufacturing jobs in their district, so they really can't cut any of those.
So in short, no they really can't, not without betraying everything they claim to stand for.
The Democrats appear to have located their spines.
The game that's been going on for over a year is simple:
1. Make demands in exchange for continuing to have a functioning government after some deadline.
2. "negotiate" with the Democrats until several hours before the deadline.
3. Democrats blink, make an 11th-hour deal with Republicans to give them about 95% of their original demands.
4. Democrats declare victory and tell their constituents that the 5% that they got is worth it. Their constituents, apparently not as stupid as the Democratic politicians, don't believe them.
5. Republicans declare victory, and tell their constituents that the 5% cost was worth it, because they'll get rid of it soon enough. They then locate the next deadline they can use.
Here's the UN report. It should be pointed out that the UN investigator had to make this report without unmonitored access to Manning because the US government refused 'unfettered' access, which is what the UN expects of all cooperating states.
Here's a Welsh MP expressing her concern about Manning's treatment, particularly relevant because Manning is apparently a Welsh citizen in addition to being a US citizen.
Here's Amnesty International.
If you haven't noticed that there's at least a serious question regarding whether Manning's been tortured, you've probably been limiting yourself to mainstream US media.
Actually, the stupid headline question here came from TFA.
Very little in what Manning released had any reason to be secret.
More exactly, no legitimate reason to be kept secret. The reasons they were kept secret are:
1. The military nowadays reflexively declares almost all records of what they to be a secret of some kind unless it's something they want the US public to know. This is in part because a major lesson that US military leaders got from Vietnam was to do their utmost to prevent the US public from ever knowing what the military really does to the countries it attacks or occupies.
2. Much of what Manning leaked was incriminating.
cause being held without due process for 18 months under conditions that are considered torture by international observers is full of awesome in this country.
You're right, you just didn't quite make the point strongly enough.
One interesting question is whether the treatment of Bradley Manning is better or worse than the treatment of Yaser Hamdi, a US citizen imprisoned for 3 years and then (once the US Supreme Court said that was not OK) deported to Saudi Arabia, all without having been charged with a crime, much less convicted of one.
There's one serious problem with making superhumans via genetic manipulation:
Khaaaaaan!
One of the things that makes rugby significantly different from other sports is that there are well-defined roles that are actually make shorter better (e.g. hooker). On the flip side, though, it helps to have second rowers and an 8 that are on the tall side, if only to catch lineouts.
An even better counterargument: Association football ("soccer" to Americans) is widely played by people of every race and nationality from just about every social background imaginable. There's absolutely no statistically significant pattern of race and skill at the game.
I'm sure this is a useful program put together by well-meaning people. I'm reasonably certain that it's a net benefit for the patrons of the Fayetteville Free Library. But none of that remotely leads to the conclusion that "maker spaces" or "fab labs" are the future of public libraries. It just leads to the conclusion that it may be a program that's worth trying.
My general rule, whenever a 'news' story has a question in the title, is that the answer to the question is almost always "No". For instance, "Steve Jobs revered as the Second Coming?" or "Can we improve web performance by using a product from some obscure tech company?".
I'll vote for option 3:
* A publicly available and heavily peer-reviewed system which is easily tested by thousands of security researchers in all sorts of creative ways.
I didn't realize Gene Simmons posted on Slashdot.
Actually, there are 2 moon bases, or moon units: Moon Unit Alpha and Moon Unit Zappa.
Do you think that maybe, just maybe, it might help to have more women in positions of power?
Hmmm, I really don't think so.
There's absolutely no evidence that female leaders are less willing to go to war than male leaders. It is of course less common, but that has more to do with women being much less likely to be political and military leaders than men.
programming is what you do
Programming is one part of what I do, but it's not my entire raison d'etre, and if it were I would consider it more than a little unhealthy. If nothing else, there's a significant risk of eyestrain and carpel tunnel syndrome or tendonitis. Plus my significant other, my close friends, my relatives, etc would be more than a little upset. And yes, it means I produce less code then somebody who lives in a cave with 47 computers and a direct line to the nearest pizza place, but I don't care.
You remind me of one of the interns I mentored: He was a very smart guy, did some pretty good work for us, and then stated that after he worked for us he would go back to where he was staying and code all evening. Our team did a lot of trying to convince him to try taking a walk in the park or go somewhere around town or take some time to just relax. We managed to corrupt him a bit, by buying him his first beer ever (he was in his mid-20's), but he seriously needed to spend time doing things other than coding.
I think this exchange explains the problem quite well:
Sean: Hey, Gerry, In the 1960s there was a young man that graduated from the University of Michigan. Did some brilliant work in mathematics. Specifically bounded harmonic functions. Then he went on to Berkeley. He was assistant professor. Showed amazing potential. Then he moved to Montana, and blew the competition away.
Lambeau: Yeah, so who was he?
Sean: Ted Kaczynski.
But I am for everybody having a nuclear bomb. Every single person. Unfortunately it's impractical, but every state should have their bombs.
I'm assuming that's just hyperbole, because nuclear weapons are only a deterrent for mentally stable people. If someone has no problem sacrificing themselves to blow others up, the whole idea of MAD and deterrence breaks down.
Except that there's almost never 1 person only who can actually launch the nukes, so all it takes is 1-2 guys somewhere in the chain of command who's not that stupid / crazy. Basically, you can stop a nutcase with a Stanislav Petrov.
Counterargument:
1. Iraq had no nukes. The US falsely claimed they did, and then used that as an excuse to blow them to smithereens.
2. North Korea has nukes, as well as a military much weaker than Iraq did. The US has generally rattled sabers but left them alone.
It's a form of civil disobedience. ... If you do civil disobedience, you expect to get hauled off to jail.
Civil disobedience, by definition, involves violating the law. That's why the details of the law are important: If the protesters were in the park legally, then the mayors and police acted against the Constitution of the United States by even attempting to remove the protesters, regardless of the tactics, force used, etc. If the protesters were in the park illegally, then there's at least the pretense of rule of law rather than suppression of free speech.
Squatting on property that isn't yours isn't a speech issue, it is a trespass or theft issue.
That's simply a bogus argument:
1. The reason the protesters were on private property rather than public property is that they'd been barred from using public property.
2. The owners of the private property never objected to the protester's presence there. In order for being on someone else's property to be considered trespassing, the owner has to not want you to be there (e.g. if I walk through a church parking lot and nobody complains, that's not trespassing).
3. The private property in question was actually required, by city ordinance, to be open to the public at all times, so even if they had objected they weren't allowed to do anything about it.
No permits
You don't need a permit to stand on a sidewalk holding a sign, unless you are planning on blocking something. The initial protests were in places the protesters had every right to be without a permit. The police responded with pepper spray.
paid for portapotties, etc.
The Occupy Wall St general meeting which is more-or-less in charge requested permission to have portapotties brought in, paid for by the protesters. The police refused to allow that.
Hell, most left the place cleaner than when they arrived.
When Bloomberg first suggested that people would have to leave the park so it could be cleaned, the protesters responded by cleaning up the park before the deadline.
Just wait until they get to the point where they can use a dead cop named Murphy to provide some of the decision-making capabilities for the robot.
Plus, as any Aussie can tell you, rooting a phone is more than little bit kinky.
How much you make doesn't indicate how much you know.
Sure it does, just not in the way you expect: Power = Work / Time. Knowledge=Power. Time=Money. Thus Money = Work / Knowledge. QED.
And if anyone doubts this for a minute, let me toss some examples out there:
1. Asking Dennis Kucinich about UFOs instead of health care in 2007.
2. The "Howard Dean Scream" of 2003, which was mostly the result of sound editing, not at all representative of Dean's candidacy, and replayed constantly.
3. Treating Ron Paul as a joke no matter how well he does in polls or how important his points are or how many cheers he gets in a debate, while treating Michelle Bachmann as a serious candidate.
I see communism as a more rational political philosophy. That's really bad. The other parties are too small and too narrowly focused for my tastes so there is no real third party option for me.
There's an official Socialist Party that would possibly represent your views more accurately. You might also check out the Greens if you haven't: They're definitely one of the most established actually left-wing parties out there. There are definitely options other than Democrats, Republicans, or Libertarians.
In the words of the immortal George Carlin
I believe you mean "In the immortal words of George Carlin". Alas, we've learned recently that he was quite mortal.