Chances are, if it is a contested district, you might get a phone call back.
And there is the first problem!
According to this ~82% of are not even close to being contested ("In the 2000 Congressional Elections, out of the 435 Congressional districts in which there were elections, 359 were listed as "safe" by Congressional Quarterly. [4] In all of these 359, there was no uncertainty as to who would win.")
Call their offices, ask to speak to their press secretaries or general council. Ask them with which groups they meet when they say they've met with "subject matter experts" to understand the issues. Then check on those experts. Call them. Then call the senator/congresswoman/city councilman/whatever...
Don't get me wrong, but I already have a full-time job (that usually takes up business hours when such calls would be made). You are thinking of a lobbyist that gets paid for doing things like that.
Yet another case of uneven playing field in our political system.
SOPA/PIPA was stopped because of people writing and calling their congressmen
Actually, SOPA/PIPA was stopped by various large organizations (Wikipedia had a full blackout day! Google promoted the issue).
People writing and calling had nothing to do with it - my letters opposing to any issue always return with "Thank you for supporting us on this issue" canned response. No one reads them as they don't come with a large campaign donation.
As an example, you mention IRAs which are not even an option to the wealthy because once your income is high enough you are no longer allowed to make pre-tax contributions.
Reality disagrees with you. See here. "According to Romneyâ(TM)s disclosure documents, the candidate has between $20.7 million and $101.6 million parked tax-free in his IRA".
Maybe you just have to be ultra-wealthy?
Today, if you have access to medical care,... we state that you are living in poverty.
You should quantify "medical care". Do you mean "medical care" as in "decent insurance/preventative care" or do you mean "medical care" as in "when you are in critical condition, an emergency room will not refuse you" (but probably bankrupt you with bills if you have any money)?
Sorry, both the Democrats and Republicans work in favor of the rich against the rest of us.
Well, yes and no. True, but misleading.
According to the announced tax plans, Obama at least plans to only permit tax cuts for the first $250K instead of $Everything (with average tax reduction of ~$20K vs ~$80K on the taxes per family based on the estimates I read).
Both D and R may be working in favor of the rich, but Republicans are working much harder in favor of the rich.
the high end executives get massive yearly bonuses as a matter of course - even if the company they are working at is tanking
I find this to be one of the most fascinating little facts. How can anyone be getting a bonus independent of actual company performance? From what I understand, many of these companies are publicly traded.
Who's defending _that_ practice?
The "real" terrorist is the one who uses terror (seemingly random attacks on the general population) for political ends. Al Qaeda is a terrorist organization. The US Military is not.
Oooh, and where does "collateral damage" reside in your black-and-white world? US Military is not a terrorist organization because any time it kills someone innocent, it was really trying to kill a terrorist (strongly suspected terrorist, anyway)?
And so if Al Qaeda limits itself to attacking US military installations, they'd would stop being classified as a terrorist organization? Somehow I doubt that.
Indeed. And they should move to KickStarter-like model for renewing show for next season, instead of relying on arbitrary metrics (such as number of viewers which often depends on the ever-moving timeslot and requires having cable to participate)
Bring back Firefly!:)
You are a fool if you think the DHS will ever get smaller or less invasive.
This may have been phrased abrasively. More informative would have been this little gem, that should tell you all you need to know about petitions
The "Abolish TSA" petition had successfully gathered a needed number of signatures and, as a reward, the director of TSA had copy-pasted what looks like a brochure that could be entitled "Why TSA is awesome and what are our plans for next 10 years"
The most galling part (besides the fact that TSA director responded to the abolish-TSA request) is the fact that he didn't feel the need to fake it and say "We are working to address some of your complaints." I am not surprised TSA is ignoring courts, too.
So, yeah, good luck with that next petition.
The decline began a few years ago when a new generation of players chose war/battle/FPS games over First Person Action games
I also mourn the disappearance of turn based games (i.e. X-COM-like). Nowdays a game is considered "turn based" if you can easily pause it at any time.
Stories in video games suck, at least when the game tries to make me care about them. When I'm playing a video game, I don't need to know why the bad guys are the bad guys
A large number of games, such as Heavy Rain would disagree. A good story can significantly enhance gaming experience.
Facebook screws with actual settings all the time, which goes well beyond UI changes
There was a recent email replacement issue. And logging in today I realized that my facebook chat now shows my online status, even though I explicitly disabled it a couple of months ago.
Keeping your settings on Facebook where you want them (if that is even feasible) is a full time job.
So obviously Islam isn't totally evil, and Muslims aren't a single organism. As with any group, there is a continuous spectrum between conservative and liberal.
It is very, very important to remember that graduate students who were interested in leaving their home country and traveling to US (quite possibly getting a job and settling here eventually) are a very biased sample. Such group in no way represents the average person from their respective home country.
Did you also form your impression about the conservative-liberal distribution among Americans based on the American PhD candidates and researchers that you know?
Nearly no one wants an unlimited call/txt plan. 100 of each would be more than enough for me.
You are forgetting young people (teenagers, mostly). Each of my nephews and my younger sister can go through a 20-30 texts per day without trying hard.
Only a blind fool would think there's any real difference between D and R
I don't think that's quite true. That may have been the case before, but Republicans have since slid into total insanity leaving Democrats behind (in part because Democrats are adopting Republican policy, forcing Republicans to go further right to differentiate themselves). Not to say that D are good, but R are really bad.
Just the fact that someone like Santorum was, for a while, a viable contender for a Republican president, is enough to prove my point.
US has lower individual tax rates, and higher corporate tax rates.
That is gross misinformation, even if technically true.
US may have high corporate tax rates on the books, but the effective tax rate is about 13.4% which is much closer to the bottom on the world scale.
if i close my eyes and fire into a crowd, that this somehow mitigates my legal responsibility since i didn't really know whether i was shooting anyone?
Obligatory Simpsons:
Nelson: Shoplifting is a victimless crime, like punching someone in the dark.
He probably confused Anwar Al-Awlaki with a minor.
No, I am pretty sure GP was referring to Al-Awlaki's son. here. I guess he was killed by accident. Then again, since the deliberations are secret, maybe he was killed on purpose.
Assassination was one of those things that "We just did not do anymore." and that we were morally past it, but realities changed and now it is necessary again.
I do hope you are being sarcastic, but there are plenty of people who think like this. I am sick of hearing "post-9/11" and terms like this Reality has not changed. US was subject to one (major) successful terrorist attack. In some countries, terrorist attacks are not an uncommon occurrence. Somehow their reality does not shift on regular basis.
9/11 may have been used as an excuse by US politicians to do a bunch of crap to "combat terrorism", but the world hasn't actually changed outside of what our actions are causing to happen in the world.
By having the government do it directly, it's more answerable to the people than a private company is.
Ooooh, yeah, TSA is totally answerable to people!
Did you read the response to a "Please abolish TSA" petition that was signed by ~37,000 people? Response written by TSA director and not even pretending. I.e. it didn't say "We understand your concerns and are improving this and that", but instead basically said "We are awesome and here's our plan for deployment for the next 10 years!"
UPS and Fedex are prohibited from providing standard mail service by Federal Law... Plus, the mail is not a societal problem, if the USPS was shut down all that would happen is I would have to throw out all that junk mail.
I respectfully call bullshit on your bullshit
It may be the case that UPS and Fedex are prohibited from providing standard mail service (I do not know). However, as I understand it, USPS is certainly forced to deliver mail everywhere, not just the well-populated and juicy areas. If you live an urban area, UPS/Fedex will step in to substitute for USPS. However, if you live in a remote village, you may notice that your letters will then cost $20 to deliver.
I personally don't see the huge issue with this, unless we are seeing a rash of prosecutions based on such evidence.
"We have sought repeatedly to gain an understanding of how many Americans have had their phone calls or emails collected and reviewed under this statute, but we have not been able to obtain even a rough estimate of this number," Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado wrote...
The senators said in the report that the Director of National Intelligence had told them it was not feasible to come up with such a number.
If nothing else, I worry that even the few senators who may be interested in protecting American rights are blatantly snubbed by the CIA when trying to do so. That doesn't concern you?
California Democrat Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the committee, said she believes that existing provisions in the law are adequate to prevent Americansâ(TM) communications from being mishandled.... But Sen. Feinstein said she agrees that the committee should know just how many Americans are having their communications monitored.
I am sure Senator Feinstein will see things differently if she was spied upon. And, even more interestingly, "Americans' communication... being mishandled" really depends on her definition "mishandled". Maybe she believes that not spell-checking the permanent records is "mishandling", but spying itself is fine?
As always, it is great to see that the only meaningful debate (which may or may not result in any changes) is whether the senators should be kept in the loop. Nothing about protecting Americans from being monitored 24-7.
But two senators are questioning whether a loophole allows the storage and search of messages from Americans that are picked up inadvertently while foreigners are being monitored. The intelligence community has repeatedly said it takes steps to minimize the data collected on Americans.
What does that 2nd sentence even mean and why was it included? Either they are allowed, which case no need to minimize the data on Americans or they are not allowed to. "Taking steps to minimize" means nothing quantifiable (up to 100% reduced!).
Even assuming I trust everyone here, that is still a totally meaningless and irrelevant statement included in the article.
Slashdot Mirror
Chances are, if it is a contested district, you might get a phone call back.
And there is the first problem!
According to this ~82% of are not even close to being contested ("In the 2000 Congressional Elections, out of the 435 Congressional districts in which there were elections, 359 were listed as "safe" by Congressional Quarterly. [4] In all of these 359, there was no uncertainty as to who would win.")
Call their offices, ask to speak to their press secretaries or general council. Ask them with which groups they meet when they say they've met with "subject matter experts" to understand the issues. Then check on those experts. Call them. Then call the senator/congresswoman/city councilman/whatever ...
Don't get me wrong, but I already have a full-time job (that usually takes up business hours when such calls would be made). You are thinking of a lobbyist that gets paid for doing things like that.
Yet another case of uneven playing field in our political system.
SOPA/PIPA was stopped because of people writing and calling their congressmen
Actually, SOPA/PIPA was stopped by various large organizations (Wikipedia had a full blackout day! Google promoted the issue).
People writing and calling had nothing to do with it - my letters opposing to any issue always return with "Thank you for supporting us on this issue" canned response. No one reads them as they don't come with a large campaign donation.
As an example, you mention IRAs which are not even an option to the wealthy because once your income is high enough you are no longer allowed to make pre-tax contributions.
Reality disagrees with you. See here. "According to Romneyâ(TM)s disclosure documents, the candidate has between $20.7 million and $101.6 million parked tax-free in his IRA".
Maybe you just have to be ultra-wealthy?
Today, if you have access to medical care, ... we state that you are living in poverty.
You should quantify "medical care". Do you mean "medical care" as in "decent insurance/preventative care" or do you mean "medical care" as in "when you are in critical condition, an emergency room will not refuse you" (but probably bankrupt you with bills if you have any money)?
Sorry, both the Democrats and Republicans work in favor of the rich against the rest of us.
Well, yes and no. True, but misleading.
According to the announced tax plans, Obama at least plans to only permit tax cuts for the first $250K instead of $Everything (with average tax reduction of ~$20K vs ~$80K on the taxes per family based on the estimates I read).
Both D and R may be working in favor of the rich, but Republicans are working much harder in favor of the rich.
the high end executives get massive yearly bonuses as a matter of course - even if the company they are working at is tanking
I find this to be one of the most fascinating little facts. How can anyone be getting a bonus independent of actual company performance? From what I understand, many of these companies are publicly traded.
Who's defending _that_ practice?
The "real" terrorist is the one who uses terror (seemingly random attacks on the general population) for political ends. Al Qaeda is a terrorist organization. The US Military is not.
Oooh, and where does "collateral damage" reside in your black-and-white world? US Military is not a terrorist organization because any time it kills someone innocent, it was really trying to kill a terrorist (strongly suspected terrorist, anyway)?
And so if Al Qaeda limits itself to attacking US military installations, they'd would stop being classified as a terrorist organization? Somehow I doubt that.
The future is channel-less.
Indeed. And they should move to KickStarter-like model for renewing show for next season, instead of relying on arbitrary metrics (such as number of viewers which often depends on the ever-moving timeslot and requires having cable to participate) :)
Bring back Firefly!
You are a fool if you think the DHS will ever get smaller or less invasive.
This may have been phrased abrasively. More informative would have been this little gem, that should tell you all you need to know about petitions
The "Abolish TSA" petition had successfully gathered a needed number of signatures and, as a reward, the director of TSA had copy-pasted what looks like a brochure that could be entitled "Why TSA is awesome and what are our plans for next 10 years"
The most galling part (besides the fact that TSA director responded to the abolish-TSA request) is the fact that he didn't feel the need to fake it and say "We are working to address some of your complaints." I am not surprised TSA is ignoring courts, too.
So, yeah, good luck with that next petition.
The decline began a few years ago when a new generation of players chose war/battle/FPS games over First Person Action games
I also mourn the disappearance of turn based games (i.e. X-COM-like). Nowdays a game is considered "turn based" if you can easily pause it at any time.
Stories in video games suck, at least when the game tries to make me care about them. When I'm playing a video game, I don't need to know why the bad guys are the bad guys
A large number of games, such as Heavy Rain would disagree. A good story can significantly enhance gaming experience.
Facebook screws with actual settings all the time, which goes well beyond UI changes
There was a recent email replacement issue. And logging in today I realized that my facebook chat now shows my online status, even though I explicitly disabled it a couple of months ago.
Keeping your settings on Facebook where you want them (if that is even feasible) is a full time job.
So obviously Islam isn't totally evil, and Muslims aren't a single organism. As with any group, there is a continuous spectrum between conservative and liberal.
It is very, very important to remember that graduate students who were interested in leaving their home country and traveling to US (quite possibly getting a job and settling here eventually) are a very biased sample. Such group in no way represents the average person from their respective home country.
Did you also form your impression about the conservative-liberal distribution among Americans based on the American PhD candidates and researchers that you know?
Nearly no one wants an unlimited call/txt plan. 100 of each would be more than enough for me.
You are forgetting young people (teenagers, mostly). Each of my nephews and my younger sister can go through a 20-30 texts per day without trying hard.
Only a blind fool would think there's any real difference between D and R
I don't think that's quite true. That may have been the case before, but Republicans have since slid into total insanity leaving Democrats behind (in part because Democrats are adopting Republican policy, forcing Republicans to go further right to differentiate themselves). Not to say that D are good, but R are really bad.
Just the fact that someone like Santorum was, for a while, a viable contender for a Republican president, is enough to prove my point.
US has lower individual tax rates, and higher corporate tax rates.
That is gross misinformation, even if technically true.
US may have high corporate tax rates on the books, but the effective tax rate is about 13.4% which is much closer to the bottom on the world scale.
if i close my eyes and fire into a crowd, that this somehow mitigates my legal responsibility since i didn't really know whether i was shooting anyone?
Obligatory Simpsons:
Nelson: Shoplifting is a victimless crime, like punching someone in the dark.
He probably confused Anwar Al-Awlaki with a minor.
No, I am pretty sure GP was referring to Al-Awlaki's son. here. I guess he was killed by accident. Then again, since the deliberations are secret, maybe he was killed on purpose.
Assassination was one of those things that "We just did not do anymore." and that we were morally past it, but realities changed and now it is necessary again.
I do hope you are being sarcastic, but there are plenty of people who think like this. I am sick of hearing "post-9/11" and terms like this
Reality has not changed. US was subject to one (major) successful terrorist attack. In some countries, terrorist attacks are not an uncommon occurrence. Somehow their reality does not shift on regular basis.
9/11 may have been used as an excuse by US politicians to do a bunch of crap to "combat terrorism", but the world hasn't actually changed outside of what our actions are causing to happen in the world.
By having the government do it directly, it's more answerable to the people than a private company is.
Ooooh, yeah, TSA is totally answerable to people!
Did you read the response to a "Please abolish TSA" petition that was signed by ~37,000 people? Response written by TSA director and not even pretending. I.e. it didn't say "We understand your concerns and are improving this and that", but instead basically said "We are awesome and here's our plan for deployment for the next 10 years!"
UPS and Fedex are prohibited from providing standard mail service by Federal Law ... Plus, the mail is not a societal problem, if the USPS was shut down all that would happen is I would have to throw out all that junk mail.
I respectfully call bullshit on your bullshit
It may be the case that UPS and Fedex are prohibited from providing standard mail service (I do not know). However, as I understand it, USPS is certainly forced to deliver mail everywhere, not just the well-populated and juicy areas. If you live an urban area, UPS/Fedex will step in to substitute for USPS. However, if you live in a remote village, you may notice that your letters will then cost $20 to deliver.
I personally don't see the huge issue with this, unless we are seeing a rash of prosecutions based on such evidence.
"We have sought repeatedly to gain an understanding of how many Americans have had their phone calls or emails collected and reviewed under this statute, but we have not been able to obtain even a rough estimate of this number," Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado wrote ...
The senators said in the report that the Director of National Intelligence had told them it was not feasible to come up with such a number.
If nothing else, I worry that even the few senators who may be interested in protecting American rights are blatantly snubbed by the CIA when trying to do so. That doesn't concern you?
California Democrat Dianne Feinstein, who chairs the committee, said she believes that existing provisions in the law are adequate to prevent Americansâ(TM) communications from being mishandled. ... But Sen. Feinstein said she agrees that the committee should know just how many Americans are having their communications monitored.
I am sure Senator Feinstein will see things differently if she was spied upon. And, even more interestingly, "Americans' communication ... being mishandled" really depends on her definition "mishandled". Maybe she believes that not spell-checking the permanent records is "mishandling", but spying itself is fine?
As always, it is great to see that the only meaningful debate (which may or may not result in any changes) is whether the senators should be kept in the loop. Nothing about protecting Americans from being monitored 24-7.
But two senators are questioning whether a loophole allows the storage and search of messages from Americans that are picked up inadvertently while foreigners are being monitored. The intelligence community has repeatedly said it takes steps to minimize the data collected on Americans.
What does that 2nd sentence even mean and why was it included? Either they are allowed, which case no need to minimize the data on Americans or they are not allowed to. "Taking steps to minimize" means nothing quantifiable (up to 100% reduced!).
Even assuming I trust everyone here, that is still a totally meaningless and irrelevant statement included in the article.