I don't think it's apathy, I think it's surrender of the governed.
For example, Congress currently has an approval rating of 7%, and a disapproval rating of 65% (Rasmussen). If there's one thing Americans agree on, it's that our elected leadership is, on average, terrible. And yet early polling suggests that of 435 Congressmen, only about 50 are likely to be replaced.
The fastest-growing party affiliation in America is independent. That strongly suggests that neither major party is representing the citizens. And yet there are only 3 independents holding federal elected office, and 1 of those independents (Joe Lieberman) is really a Democrat in disguise because his party supported him over the candidate chosen by voters in Connecticut in the primary.
So this leads to the argument that Americans are paying attention, think their elected leaders and political parties are horrible, and vote for them anyways because they think the alternatives are even worse.
This is why you're supposed to keep your pension funds, endowments, real property and other critical assets out of liquid markets. It is disappointing that doing this means they're not going to grow 8% a year, but juicy returns require big risks.
When the pension funds, endowments, etc were buying up various mortgage-backed securities, they were buying what they were told was AAA-grade investments. That's the same grade the rating agencies give US Treasury bonds (actually, for a little while it was a better grade than US Treasury bonds), and even now US Treasuries are pretty universally perceived as the safest investment on the planet. Another way of saying this: The big banks took turds, worked with the rating agencies to polish them up really nice, sold them as gold, and then successfully ducked responsibility when it turned out that they were still turds.
And yes, there were US federal regulatory agencies that at one time would have stopped this. They didn't, and it's a disgrace that they didn't, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't have the agencies, it means that the people who didn't do their jobs at the agencies should be fired and replaced by people who will do their jobs, and the bankers who committed these kinds of fraud should be spending a while in PMITA prison so that they will be less tempted to do it again.
That's because Mitt and the people who agree with him on economics are FUCKING MORONS....
That particular view of capitalism wants corruption, cheating, and outright theft to be rewarded, and is only advocated for people who would immediately start acting corrupt, cheating, and outright stealing. All these idiots who are worshiping at the altar of unrestricted capitalism basically want to get rid of the rules which keep them honest.
Umm, I think you just answered your own question: Mitt, who built his fortune on various forms of cheating and theft, wants to get rid of the rules that might stop him from continuing to cheat and steal. And he definitely doesn't want to be honest.
do you think that without the attack by the Union against the Confederacy that there would be a slavery-based agricultural economy in the South today?
1. The first attack of the war was by the Confederacy, on Jan 9, 1861, when they fired on a US Navy ship that was attempting to peaceably bring food to Fort Sumter. 2. No, I think there's be a slavery-based economy that was mostly industry and services, since slaves never were limited solely to agricultural labor. Don't think "slaves picking cotten" (although there'd still be some of that), think "slaves making Coca-Cola".
Progressives in the US tend to push for policies that have existed for decades in other industrialized democracies, like Finland, France, the UK, and Canada. You're casually equating a 45% tax rate on top earners to sending hundreds of thousands of people to their deaths in Siberia. That doesn't make the slightest bit of sense.
The simple fact is that, had the North lost, or not fought, millions of people would have been doomed to a life of slavery.
Complete and utter propaganda, entirely contradicted by the facts.
Err, what? The seceding states publicly declared that they were fighting to defend slavery. South Carolina goes on at length complaining about the northern states exercising their states rights and basically not enforcing fugitive slave laws. Jefferson Davis and his VP Alexander Stephens were very clear that slavery was the most important part of the Confederacy. Slaves in 1860 were the largest form of wealth in the US. And slave-based agriculture was extremely profitable.
Slavery ended in the rest of the world for that reason, not because they had bloody civil wars all over the world.
Nonsense. Slavery ended in the rest of the world for 4 major reasons: 1. Many religious groups had declared slavery to be morally evil. Right or wrong, that was a big influence. 2. Wage earners and their employers didn't want to have to compete with slaves and their slaveholders. Slaves have always been cheaper than wages. 3. Slaves revolted and/or escaped. Sometimes they won (e.g. Haiti), but even if they didn't win they raised the cost of holding slaves. 4. Governments who's ideology promoted equality (which the US kinda did, but Revolutionary France is a better example) banned slavery in order to be consistent.
At no time since the Revolutionary War... had things looked nearly so dire.
I can think of a point when things looked nearly so dire: 1814, the British (Canadian mostly) Army invaded, captured Washington D.C., burned the White House and Congress's meeting buildings to the ground, leaving President James Madison on the run in the face of a vastly superior force desperately trying to round up militia units to repel them.
But yes, anyone who doesn't think the Civil War was a serious threat to the US needs to have their head examined. Yes, the USA was in a superior strategic position to the CSA, but the CSA put about 10 times the troops in the field than the USA had ever faced before.
It's ok: The press muzzles the press too. For instance, David Gregory of NBC asked Glenn Greenwald (a journalist who worked with Snowden to break the NSA leaks) why he shouldn't be arrested.
If you take a sample size from a pool of kids who have been bullied and constantly picked-on you're going to find a propensity to act out whether it be video games, TV or learned behavior from their environment.
The constant "Does too!" and "Does Not!" debates from both sides of the gaming==evil_people debate are pointless because both arguments have some truth to them yet aren't directed at fixing the actual underlying problem.
It would seem like your argument lends itself pretty strongly towards "Does Not!", whether you intended it or not, because it boils down to "kids act out for reasons that have nothing to do with video games specifically".
I personally lean towards the "Does Not!" position, primarily because those claiming "Does Too" have yet to produce a shred of actual evidence.
Really I'd put teaching of concepts of logic ahead of teaching any kind of programming.
Logic isn't just about "a == b && c d" kinds of expressions. It's also about recognizing bogosity in all areas of life - which is of course probably why most schools don't teach it.
* Why was sharing all that data with the USA OK in the `war on terror`? * Why was it OK to violate privacy of EU citizens because of US demands?
Because those in power in the EU weren't penalized by those decisions.
* Why suddenly, when the EU leaders and G20 are spied upon, as it occurs, is this sharing suspended? * Why doesn't the EU show willingness to harbour Snowden, Assange and Manning as a gesture of humanitarian nature?
Because those in power in the EU would be penalized by those decisions.
* Why doesn't it occur in full yet that the USA are a totalitarian state and that they want to put their views onto the rest of the world?
Because the USA isn't trying to take over Europe, just the Middle East. The USA actually more-or-less thinks it owns the EU already.
* Why doesn't anyone understand that it won't help the USA at all if they incarcerate Manning, Assange and Snowden? The leaking will continue, just with more caution.
The totalitarian elements of the US government want any potential leakers to know that embarrassing them carries a penalty of torture and execution. They need to enforce that each time it happens, or the threat goes away, and more leakers will come forward.
Nope, I can't do that: I'm a firm believer that anyone has the right to say anything they want, no matter how stupid it is. Also known as the First Amendment to the US Constitution. In return, I reserve the right to call them stupid.
So why, then, did he choose to go into exile rather than accept the consequences and justify his actions in court?
Because he knows that the consequences involve being tortured (by the standards of the UN and Amnesty International) for years before his first day in court? If you're wondering how he knows this, it's because that's what the US did when it got its hands on Bradley Manning.
And what did he think he had to gain by going to Julian Assange?
A possible ally? An organization that's dedicated to spreading leaked information to the world, and has an infrastructure for doing so?
Life's about choices, and if you've made the kind of choices where the navy is firing at you, it's probably not a big loss to humanity if we have to kick you off the planet.
What about the people who just happen to be nearby the people the Navy is aiming at? Do they deserve to be killed too? How many of the approximately 500,000 people in Iraq who were killed qualify as the bad guys that aren't a big loss to humanity?
These are not people who will sit down at the breakfast table and discuss their problems calmly over a croissant.
Really? How many have you asked? I'm reminded of the point where we were planning to attack Iraq, and Dan Rather went over to Iraq and sat down with Saddam Hussein for a perfectly calm interview, which suggests that they might in fact be willing to talk. For what it's worth, the people of Iran just elected a guy who was pushing for just that approach to dealing with the US (assuming the croissant is halal).
They're going to kill people for what we consider no reason at all, and the only thing they can understand is force.
I strongly suspect that those who engage in terrorism think the same about us. For example, we have 86 Yemenis locked up in Gitmo right now that we have determined have committed no crime against us. We have killed more than a few Yemenis with drone strikes, despite no (publicly known) terrorist attacks from Yemen on the United States and an alliance with the Yemeni government.
For the record, there are a significant percentage of liberals who complain about Obama's behavior as much as we did Bush's.
I in fact see that as a quick test of which political figures and organizations have principles: If their opinions remain consistent (e.g. ACLU and Glenn Greenwald and the EFF), they're legit. If their opinions change based on who's committing the crime (e.g. MSNBC and Fox News), they're partisan hacks.
While we're on the subject of ancient Athenian solutions, a few of their ideas which probably helped keep things under control: 1. Many important offices were chosen at random. That may seem crazy, but I'm hard-pressed to figure out how that would end up with worse results than our current Congress (current approval rating, according to Rasmussen: 6%). 2. Once someone's term was up, they were immediately put on trial for their actions while in office, with threats of banishment, fines, and even execution in egregious cases. That kept public officials on their toes. 3. There was a widespread expectation that all citizens would hold an office in government at some point in their lives. By contrast, the most generous estimates have 500,000 elected offices in the US, which means that less than 1% of Americans ever participate directly in government except when serving on juries.
What we are today is more or less an oligarchy. Politics here are controlled by a couple families, one Republican, one Democrat.
I agree we're an oligarchy. However, I disagree that we're controlled by the Republicans and Democrats. I think we're controlled by the 1000 richest people that constitute the major political donors in the US, and use that to control the Republicans and Democrats put forward, as well as legally controlling approximately 50% of all wealth in the US.
Although I could see how you could be fooled, especially back when it looked like we were only going to have presidents named "Bush" or "Clinton" starting back in 1988 (a lot of commentators were projecting Hillary Clinton in 2008-16, Jeb Bush in 2016-24, Chelsea Clinton in 2024-30, and continuing like that for a very long time).
Just imagine if he had told the truth to the public about something serious. Then he'd be looking at a worldwide manhunt complete with drones and major diplomatic incidents involving violating the rights of foreign heads of state.
and also that Congress doesn't grok why we get upset about it.
Oh, Congress knows we're upset about it, and understands why we're upset, but about 3/4 of them don't care. There are a few major reasons for this: (1) The only major campaign donors who care about it support the surveillance. That means that doing the will of the people will incur a financial penalty and no financial gain.
(2) Because both major parties basically agree that this kind of thing is at the very least not a problem, there's no threat of the other party fielding an effective candidate that will campaign against them on the issue of privacy.
(3) The NSA may have dirt (or may be able to create dirt) on them that would make the flak they take for ignoring this problem insignificant by comparison. An example of someone possibly falling victim to this is Anthony Weiner.
(4) A significant number of Americans actually support the surveillance, providing political cover for any politicians who fail to act.
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I don't think it's apathy, I think it's surrender of the governed.
For example, Congress currently has an approval rating of 7%, and a disapproval rating of 65% (Rasmussen). If there's one thing Americans agree on, it's that our elected leadership is, on average, terrible. And yet early polling suggests that of 435 Congressmen, only about 50 are likely to be replaced.
The fastest-growing party affiliation in America is independent. That strongly suggests that neither major party is representing the citizens. And yet there are only 3 independents holding federal elected office, and 1 of those independents (Joe Lieberman) is really a Democrat in disguise because his party supported him over the candidate chosen by voters in Connecticut in the primary.
So this leads to the argument that Americans are paying attention, think their elected leaders and political parties are horrible, and vote for them anyways because they think the alternatives are even worse.
This is why you're supposed to keep your pension funds, endowments, real property and other critical assets out of liquid markets. It is disappointing that doing this means they're not going to grow 8% a year, but juicy returns require big risks.
When the pension funds, endowments, etc were buying up various mortgage-backed securities, they were buying what they were told was AAA-grade investments. That's the same grade the rating agencies give US Treasury bonds (actually, for a little while it was a better grade than US Treasury bonds), and even now US Treasuries are pretty universally perceived as the safest investment on the planet. Another way of saying this: The big banks took turds, worked with the rating agencies to polish them up really nice, sold them as gold, and then successfully ducked responsibility when it turned out that they were still turds.
And yes, there were US federal regulatory agencies that at one time would have stopped this. They didn't, and it's a disgrace that they didn't, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't have the agencies, it means that the people who didn't do their jobs at the agencies should be fired and replaced by people who will do their jobs, and the bankers who committed these kinds of fraud should be spending a while in PMITA prison so that they will be less tempted to do it again.
That's because Mitt and the people who agree with him on economics are FUCKING MORONS. ...
That particular view of capitalism wants corruption, cheating, and outright theft to be rewarded, and is only advocated for people who would immediately start acting corrupt, cheating, and outright stealing. All these idiots who are worshiping at the altar of unrestricted capitalism basically want to get rid of the rules which keep them honest.
Umm, I think you just answered your own question: Mitt, who built his fortune on various forms of cheating and theft, wants to get rid of the rules that might stop him from continuing to cheat and steal. And he definitely doesn't want to be honest.
After all, part of the practical side of testing these things would have to be making sure patrons don't get fiberglass in the butt.
do you think that without the attack by the Union against the Confederacy that there would be a slavery-based agricultural economy in the South today?
1. The first attack of the war was by the Confederacy, on Jan 9, 1861, when they fired on a US Navy ship that was attempting to peaceably bring food to Fort Sumter.
2. No, I think there's be a slavery-based economy that was mostly industry and services, since slaves never were limited solely to agricultural labor. Don't think "slaves picking cotten" (although there'd still be some of that), think "slaves making Coca-Cola".
Wow, talk about straw men.
Progressives in the US tend to push for policies that have existed for decades in other industrialized democracies, like Finland, France, the UK, and Canada. You're casually equating a 45% tax rate on top earners to sending hundreds of thousands of people to their deaths in Siberia. That doesn't make the slightest bit of sense.
The simple fact is that, had the North lost, or not fought, millions of people would have been doomed to a life of slavery.
Complete and utter propaganda, entirely contradicted by the facts.
Err, what? The seceding states publicly declared that they were fighting to defend slavery. South Carolina goes on at length complaining about the northern states exercising their states rights and basically not enforcing fugitive slave laws. Jefferson Davis and his VP Alexander Stephens were very clear that slavery was the most important part of the Confederacy. Slaves in 1860 were the largest form of wealth in the US. And slave-based agriculture was extremely profitable.
Slavery ended in the rest of the world for that reason, not because they had bloody civil wars all over the world.
Nonsense. Slavery ended in the rest of the world for 4 major reasons:
1. Many religious groups had declared slavery to be morally evil. Right or wrong, that was a big influence.
2. Wage earners and their employers didn't want to have to compete with slaves and their slaveholders. Slaves have always been cheaper than wages.
3. Slaves revolted and/or escaped. Sometimes they won (e.g. Haiti), but even if they didn't win they raised the cost of holding slaves.
4. Governments who's ideology promoted equality (which the US kinda did, but Revolutionary France is a better example) banned slavery in order to be consistent.
At no time since the Revolutionary War ... had things looked nearly so dire.
I can think of a point when things looked nearly so dire: 1814, the British (Canadian mostly) Army invaded, captured Washington D.C., burned the White House and Congress's meeting buildings to the ground, leaving President James Madison on the run in the face of a vastly superior force desperately trying to round up militia units to repel them.
But yes, anyone who doesn't think the Civil War was a serious threat to the US needs to have their head examined. Yes, the USA was in a superior strategic position to the CSA, but the CSA put about 10 times the troops in the field than the USA had ever faced before.
It's ok: The press muzzles the press too. For instance, David Gregory of NBC asked Glenn Greenwald (a journalist who worked with Snowden to break the NSA leaks) why he shouldn't be arrested.
If you take a sample size from a pool of kids who have been bullied and constantly picked-on you're going to find a propensity to act out whether it be video games, TV or learned behavior from their environment.
The constant "Does too!" and "Does Not!" debates from both sides of the gaming==evil_people debate are pointless because both arguments have some truth to them yet aren't directed at fixing the actual underlying problem.
It would seem like your argument lends itself pretty strongly towards "Does Not!", whether you intended it or not, because it boils down to "kids act out for reasons that have nothing to do with video games specifically".
I personally lean towards the "Does Not!" position, primarily because those claiming "Does Too" have yet to produce a shred of actual evidence.
Really I'd put teaching of concepts of logic ahead of teaching any kind of programming.
Logic isn't just about "a == b && c d" kinds of expressions. It's also about recognizing bogosity in all areas of life - which is of course probably why most schools don't teach it.
Why not just use a theta?
* Why was sharing all that data with the USA OK in the `war on terror`?
* Why was it OK to violate privacy of EU citizens because of US demands?
Because those in power in the EU weren't penalized by those decisions.
* Why suddenly, when the EU leaders and G20 are spied upon, as it occurs, is this sharing suspended?
* Why doesn't the EU show willingness to harbour Snowden, Assange and Manning as a gesture of humanitarian nature?
Because those in power in the EU would be penalized by those decisions.
* Why doesn't it occur in full yet that the USA are a totalitarian state and that they want to put their views onto the rest of the world?
Because the USA isn't trying to take over Europe, just the Middle East. The USA actually more-or-less thinks it owns the EU already.
* Why doesn't anyone understand that it won't help the USA at all if they incarcerate Manning, Assange and Snowden? The leaking will continue, just with more caution.
The totalitarian elements of the US government want any potential leakers to know that embarrassing them carries a penalty of torture and execution. They need to enforce that each time it happens, or the threat goes away, and more leakers will come forward.
and tamper-resistant
Well, that's your problem: The current system makes it harder to hide when your bag is being searched by some variety of law enforcement.
Nope, I can't do that: I'm a firm believer that anyone has the right to say anything they want, no matter how stupid it is. Also known as the First Amendment to the US Constitution. In return, I reserve the right to call them stupid.
"Dear Leaders" is actually a great term for these guys, seeing as how it was until recently reserved for rulers of North Korea.
So why, then, did he choose to go into exile rather than accept the consequences and justify his actions in court?
Because he knows that the consequences involve being tortured (by the standards of the UN and Amnesty International) for years before his first day in court? If you're wondering how he knows this, it's because that's what the US did when it got its hands on Bradley Manning.
And what did he think he had to gain by going to Julian Assange?
A possible ally? An organization that's dedicated to spreading leaked information to the world, and has an infrastructure for doing so?
Life's about choices, and if you've made the kind of choices where the navy is firing at you, it's probably not a big loss to humanity if we have to kick you off the planet.
What about the people who just happen to be nearby the people the Navy is aiming at? Do they deserve to be killed too? How many of the approximately 500,000 people in Iraq who were killed qualify as the bad guys that aren't a big loss to humanity?
These are not people who will sit down at the breakfast table and discuss their problems calmly over a croissant.
Really? How many have you asked? I'm reminded of the point where we were planning to attack Iraq, and Dan Rather went over to Iraq and sat down with Saddam Hussein for a perfectly calm interview, which suggests that they might in fact be willing to talk. For what it's worth, the people of Iran just elected a guy who was pushing for just that approach to dealing with the US (assuming the croissant is halal).
They're going to kill people for what we consider no reason at all, and the only thing they can understand is force.
I strongly suspect that those who engage in terrorism think the same about us. For example, we have 86 Yemenis locked up in Gitmo right now that we have determined have committed no crime against us. We have killed more than a few Yemenis with drone strikes, despite no (publicly known) terrorist attacks from Yemen on the United States and an alliance with the Yemeni government.
For the record, there are a significant percentage of liberals who complain about Obama's behavior as much as we did Bush's.
I in fact see that as a quick test of which political figures and organizations have principles: If their opinions remain consistent (e.g. ACLU and Glenn Greenwald and the EFF), they're legit. If their opinions change based on who's committing the crime (e.g. MSNBC and Fox News), they're partisan hacks.
While we're on the subject of ancient Athenian solutions, a few of their ideas which probably helped keep things under control:
1. Many important offices were chosen at random. That may seem crazy, but I'm hard-pressed to figure out how that would end up with worse results than our current Congress (current approval rating, according to Rasmussen: 6%).
2. Once someone's term was up, they were immediately put on trial for their actions while in office, with threats of banishment, fines, and even execution in egregious cases. That kept public officials on their toes.
3. There was a widespread expectation that all citizens would hold an office in government at some point in their lives. By contrast, the most generous estimates have 500,000 elected offices in the US, which means that less than 1% of Americans ever participate directly in government except when serving on juries.
What we are today is more or less an oligarchy. Politics here are controlled by a couple families, one Republican, one Democrat.
I agree we're an oligarchy. However, I disagree that we're controlled by the Republicans and Democrats. I think we're controlled by the 1000 richest people that constitute the major political donors in the US, and use that to control the Republicans and Democrats put forward, as well as legally controlling approximately 50% of all wealth in the US.
Although I could see how you could be fooled, especially back when it looked like we were only going to have presidents named "Bush" or "Clinton" starting back in 1988 (a lot of commentators were projecting Hillary Clinton in 2008-16, Jeb Bush in 2016-24, Chelsea Clinton in 2024-30, and continuing like that for a very long time).
Just imagine if he had told the truth to the public about something serious. Then he'd be looking at a worldwide manhunt complete with drones and major diplomatic incidents involving violating the rights of foreign heads of state.
That's not exactly a new phenomenon though: It's been more-or-less standard practice ever since Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon.
and also that Congress doesn't grok why we get upset about it.
Oh, Congress knows we're upset about it, and understands why we're upset, but about 3/4 of them don't care. There are a few major reasons for this:
(1) The only major campaign donors who care about it support the surveillance. That means that doing the will of the people will incur a financial penalty and no financial gain.
(2) Because both major parties basically agree that this kind of thing is at the very least not a problem, there's no threat of the other party fielding an effective candidate that will campaign against them on the issue of privacy.
(3) The NSA may have dirt (or may be able to create dirt) on them that would make the flak they take for ignoring this problem insignificant by comparison. An example of someone possibly falling victim to this is Anthony Weiner.
(4) A significant number of Americans actually support the surveillance, providing political cover for any politicians who fail to act.
I'm the same person I was 400 years ago. Sure, they replaced my head 3 times, and my body 4 times, but I'm the same person.
(for other examples of this, see Ship of Theseus Paradox)
It's all right: They've come up with a new system called GLADOS.