Again, the SS trust fund is a real thing, with real assets. It's like saying that if you bought a treasury bond for your grandkid that congress spent his money. It's a silly assertion.
There is a fundamental difference between buying a T-Bill for your grandkid from a third party (the government) and the government buying a T-Bill from itself.
You cannot owe yourself money in any meaningful way, which is what the SS Trust Fund consists of - money the government owes to itself....
It is the same with Social Security. Why is this such a difficult concept for people to understand about Social Security? The major difference is that it is run by the government, it is required to invest in government securities, and when it needs cash (to pay retirees) it cashes in those government securities.
Read the fine print sometime. Those government securities they're required to "invest" in are ZERO-INTEREST intragovernmental T-Bills (essentially, IOU's).
Note that even if they were interest-bearing, effectively the government is taking money out of it's left hip-pocket, spending it, then replacing it with an IOU to itself.
Consider how well YOUR finances would work if you did that - would it actually give you more money to take money out of your wallet, spend it, and replace it with an IOU which you will redeem from yourself as soon as you need money again?
It's my perception that the lower the level you get in government, the more controlling and power-hungry the officials are and the less they care about rights.
I've seen rather the reverse - when the people who elect you are your neighbors, they tend to be more vocal about your fits of idiocy.
Most likely it's just a function of how large your constituency is, though - I can see where the Mayor of New York or Chicago might have less interest in a vocal minority than would the Mayor of Covington....
Most car dealerships are not equipped to handle cash in large quantities, and would most likely offer to take you to your bank to have your wonderful stack of money converted into a banker-countersigned cashier's check for the purchase.
At which time, you point to the fine print on the cash - "legal tender for all debts, public and private".
There's nothing in the bill of rights about not laundering money yet we put it on the books at some point in time for good reason...
Of course, the Bill of Rights isn't about "crimes", now is it?
Note that the government (at the appropriate level, depending on the specifics of the crime) is allowed to pass laws restricting/forbidding/punishing/encouraging things, so long as the laws in question do NOT interfere with the Rights of the people.
And yes, the Ninth Amendment to the Constitution is still relevant, in addition to the First.
The government doesn't give us rights, we the people give it rights.
The government (at any level) has NO "rights". It has "powers". People have "rights".
Which is not meant to imply in any way that your statement is incorrect in essence, just in terminology. We need to get over the urge to think that the government has anything directly corresponding to "inalienable rights"....
Most bad-guy guns go through a handfull of routes, when law enforcement notices one of these gun dealers/"private collectors"/etc. all they have to do to shut him down is send an informant who'd fail the check to the suspected dealer, and of said informant gets a gun the dealer gets busted. Hopefully wth records showing who else he's armed...
Note that you have just described the current system, which has been in effect for decades.
Note that it works pretty well (unless the dealer has been told by BATFE to sell the guns to known criminals - Fast & Furious, anyone?).
Note that part of what makes it work are that the Dealer IS required to keep records of sales, even if BATFE is forbidden by law to keep records of background checks.
Note further that BATFE has been dinged several times in the last 20 years for ILLEGALLY keeping NICS records.
Once the government has shown that it can't be trusted to obey its own laws, why should you trust it to obey more expansive laws?
Suffice to say, be ready to shoot them in the face.
Anyone who aims at the face (or any other peripheral) shouldn't be trusted to own a gun - you aim at center of mass unless he's wearing obvious body-armour (and then you still put the first couple shots into center of mass to knock him down before you change point of aim to his head - at which point he continues to lie there quietly till the police show up).
Hell, here in New Orleans, if you shoot the bastard and he somehow makes it out of your house to die in the front yard, the cops here are usually nice enough to help you drag the body back indoors before they take the pics, etc....to help keep things 'neater'.
A great many years ago, after my grandfather had died, my grandmother was talking to the Sheriff, and the subject of burglars came up. According to Gran, the sheriff told her that if someone was prowling around her home, shoot him, then call the sheriff "unofficially" and he'd help her drag the body inside before calling in the sheriff "officially"...
Never knew whether she was pulling our legs with that one, but I'd not be surprised it if it was literal truth.
I'm as pro gun as anyone out there, but I'm baffled why gun safes are not mandatory for those who wish to keep a gun at home*.
Imaginary security?
If you're not home, any burglar can take the time to open your gun safe (or just take it too). It's not like it takes much more than a power drill....
The primary purpose of a gun safe is to protect your children from your guns (or vice versa, if your kids have taken to arguing over who gets the good Benelli shotgun after you croak)....
you could just get a nice shotgun as Joe Biden recommended recently.
Yes, but don't buy a double-barrel.
Buy a semi-auto shotgun instead.
Or a pump-action, if you're a traditionalist - hearing someone cycling a pump-action can make you wet yourself if you're somewhere you shouldn't be....
However, as to Joe Biden's recommendation - Joe Biden is NOT depending on double-barrel shotguns to defend HIMSELF, so I'm not sure why I should take his advice on the subject (sayeth a man who owns four shotguns, two each of 12 and 20 gauge, two each of semi-auto and pump)....
beg your pardon. How was the region occupied by the Germans any less desirable than that of the Gauls? Or was it that the Roman did not appreciate women who can bring large numbers of beer steins at once? (Give me a ten stein girl any day!). I think I catch a whiff of sour grapes (or is it malt?) here.
Germany was less desirable than Gaul largely because the rivers ran in the wrong directions - large-scale trade pretty much required water routes (leading to Rome, if you were Roman), and the Germanies didn't have too much of that sort of thing.
Unlike, say, France and Spain, which had direct access to the Med and rivers flowing into same.
Last thing we need is a president checking his smile for food particles in his reflection on his Nobel Peace Prize right before ordering U.S. citizens murdered like he does Middle Eastern ones.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't he already order a U.S. citizen to be murdered? Anwar al-Awlaki?
For that matter, didn't he do in al-Awlaki's kid as well in another strike? Though that one may have been collateral damage (which apparently makes it okay)....
Either way, I have a hard time believing the LA is in the saddest category....everyone here seems to generally be upbeat, happy, and glad we live in (at least in the NOLA area) a place with no open container laws, and you can get a drink 'to go' from a bar...and there's always a festival going on year round.
And mustn't forget the Drive-Thru Daiquiri Shops...
I think the secret to their analysis is that they didn't consider the possibility that some people are too busy partying to tweet. They're only accounting for the people who are happy, but not TOO happy....
The Roman expansion seemed to have stopped whenever they ran into cavalry-heavy enemies.
The Romans conquered the Persians at one point. Couldn't make it stick for more than a generation, but they managed.
They also conquered Spain and France. Against those barbarians that you think beat them.
The Romans did NOT successfully defeat the Germans, of course. Teutoberger Wald wasn't actually a case of "asymmetric warfare", since it involved a large Roman Army and a larger German Army (and a stupid Roman General, which was the real cause of the Roman defeat).
Of course the Romans never made a serious effort to conquer Germany. Why bother? The place was a worthless hellhole. Even Big Julie (who led punitive expeditions into Germany a couple of times) didn't think it was worth conquering. And the later Roman generals who led punitive expeditions into Germany whenever the Germans bothered the Romans living in France at the time didn't think Germany was worth bothering to conquer.
Not that they ventured often into those territories, but if I recall correctly, whenever they did, it was without significant success.
As an aside, the killing of enemy soldiers during an active war is not usually referred to as murder.
Six million Jews.
More than half the Soviet casualties were civilians.
A large fraction of German and Japanese casualties were civilian (don't have the numbers to hand, don't want to look them up, but it's in the millions each).
With the advent of modern weaponry, overwhelming numbers of troops being a tactical advantage became a thing of the past.
Sun Tzu - "numbers alone confer no advantage in war".
"Battle of Watling Street" - 10K Romans vs. 150-250K Britons. I'lll give you a hint if you're not sure - the winner wasn't the Britons.
No, it's not "modern weaponry" that made numbers "not a tactical advantage"....
Unless, of course, you define "overwhelming numbers" as "enough guys to win, no matter what". In which case, "overwhelming numbers" is still a tactical advantage, since no matter the weaponry, you can come up with a sufficiently large number as to be "overwhelming"....
but we underestimated them once before and it didn't go well. In fact it REALLY didn't go well - for 15 years.
Which 15 years are you talking about?
1950-1953, perhaps? During the Korean War (note that we annihilated the NK Army in the first year of that war, then spent the rest of the war fighting the PLA)?
In any case, that's only four years. Where are the other eleven?
I think we've pretty clearly established throughout the history of the U.S. technology alone don't win wars.
Actually, we've established that US technology alone NEVER wins wars.
What we've established that wins wars is US production - we didn't win WW2 with superior technology, we won it because we could do things like build a military up from "small" to "fricking huge" while still having enough production surplus to provide weapons/supplies/whatever to everyone else in the world.
Note that one of the most interesting bits of trivia about WW2 is that the USA, during the war, built more aircraft carriers than existed in the entire world before the war.
And, more importantly, we built more transports (Liberty ships, anyone) than existed in the entire world before the war.
In the mid '30s, a German general, doing an analysis of mechanized warfare concepts noted that the USA had ~75% of the world's production capability in internal combustion engines. And quite properly concluded that that meant that going to war with America would be suicidal for Germany.
Too bad (for Hitler) that Hitler didn't read that sort of report.
The Soviet T-34 was vastly inferior to the German panzers as well.
Umm, no.
The T34/76 was considerably superior to any panzer then extant in 1941, when they were first encountered.
It wasn't until 1944 that the Germans reached the point that the overwhelming majority of Panzers were better than the T34/76.
And at that point, the Russians were building the T34/85, which was rather better than the latest version of Pzkw-4 (which was about half the German panzer inventory), though somewhat inferior to Pzkw-5 (the other half).
The only real weakness the T34 series of tanks had was lack of proper communications equipment (only the company commander's tank had a radio, for instance, until late in the war).
Plus that gawdawful commander's hatch on the earliest T34s....
If you feel that technology assures victory where is the Roman empire today?
If you think that the Roman Empire dominated the Classical World due to superior technology, you know even less of history than your comments about T34 suggest.
Hint: the Legions' doctrine was far more important than the Legions' technology (which was basically the same as everyone else's (iron swords, spear, torso armor and helmet) and considerably inferior to that used by the Persian cavalry at the time (yes, I've always been rather fond of the Persian composite bows as weapons of war - it's really too bad the Romans worked out a counter to it).
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There is a fundamental difference between buying a T-Bill for your grandkid from a third party (the government) and the government buying a T-Bill from itself.
You cannot owe yourself money in any meaningful way, which is what the SS Trust Fund consists of - money the government owes to itself....
Read the fine print sometime. Those government securities they're required to "invest" in are ZERO-INTEREST intragovernmental T-Bills (essentially, IOU's).
Note that even if they were interest-bearing, effectively the government is taking money out of it's left hip-pocket, spending it, then replacing it with an IOU to itself.
Consider how well YOUR finances would work if you did that - would it actually give you more money to take money out of your wallet, spend it, and replace it with an IOU which you will redeem from yourself as soon as you need money again?
I've seen rather the reverse - when the people who elect you are your neighbors, they tend to be more vocal about your fits of idiocy.
Most likely it's just a function of how large your constituency is, though - I can see where the Mayor of New York or Chicago might have less interest in a vocal minority than would the Mayor of Covington....
At which time, you point to the fine print on the cash - "legal tender for all debts, public and private".
Of course, the Bill of Rights isn't about "crimes", now is it?
Note that the government (at the appropriate level, depending on the specifics of the crime) is allowed to pass laws restricting/forbidding/punishing/encouraging things, so long as the laws in question do NOT interfere with the Rights of the people.
And yes, the Ninth Amendment to the Constitution is still relevant, in addition to the First.
The government (at any level) has NO "rights". It has "powers". People have "rights".
Which is not meant to imply in any way that your statement is incorrect in essence, just in terminology. We need to get over the urge to think that the government has anything directly corresponding to "inalienable rights"....
Note that you have just described the current system, which has been in effect for decades.
Note that it works pretty well (unless the dealer has been told by BATFE to sell the guns to known criminals - Fast & Furious, anyone?).
Note that part of what makes it work are that the Dealer IS required to keep records of sales, even if BATFE is forbidden by law to keep records of background checks.
Note further that BATFE has been dinged several times in the last 20 years for ILLEGALLY keeping NICS records.
Once the government has shown that it can't be trusted to obey its own laws, why should you trust it to obey more expansive laws?
Anyone who aims at the face (or any other peripheral) shouldn't be trusted to own a gun - you aim at center of mass unless he's wearing obvious body-armour (and then you still put the first couple shots into center of mass to knock him down before you change point of aim to his head - at which point he continues to lie there quietly till the police show up).
A great many years ago, after my grandfather had died, my grandmother was talking to the Sheriff, and the subject of burglars came up. According to Gran, the sheriff told her that if someone was prowling around her home, shoot him, then call the sheriff "unofficially" and he'd help her drag the body inside before calling in the sheriff "officially"...
Never knew whether she was pulling our legs with that one, but I'd not be surprised it if it was literal truth.
Imaginary security?
If you're not home, any burglar can take the time to open your gun safe (or just take it too). It's not like it takes much more than a power drill....
The primary purpose of a gun safe is to protect your children from your guns (or vice versa, if your kids have taken to arguing over who gets the good Benelli shotgun after you croak)....
Yes, but don't buy a double-barrel.
Buy a semi-auto shotgun instead.
Or a pump-action, if you're a traditionalist - hearing someone cycling a pump-action can make you wet yourself if you're somewhere you shouldn't be....
However, as to Joe Biden's recommendation - Joe Biden is NOT depending on double-barrel shotguns to defend HIMSELF, so I'm not sure why I should take his advice on the subject (sayeth a man who owns four shotguns, two each of 12 and 20 gauge, two each of semi-auto and pump)....
Germany was less desirable than Gaul largely because the rivers ran in the wrong directions - large-scale trade pretty much required water routes (leading to Rome, if you were Roman), and the Germanies didn't have too much of that sort of thing.
Unlike, say, France and Spain, which had direct access to the Med and rivers flowing into same.
Anthropomorphize much?
No, this is a study of people who twitter.
Being technically savvy does not equate to "I use twitter".
Nor does "I use twitter" equate to "I am technically savvy".
So, you're saying that if you were to go on vacation in the UK, say, that the President could then declare "open season" on you legally?
Or if you were to cross into Canada? Or Mexico?
And how close to shore would you have to be to be deemed "safe"? Three Mile Limit? Twelve Mile Limit? 200 Mile Limit?
It's only near absolute zero in the shade.
As to vacuum, yes, the propellent in a bullet is self-contained, and will work nicely in a vacuum.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't he already order a U.S. citizen to be murdered? Anwar al-Awlaki?
For that matter, didn't he do in al-Awlaki's kid as well in another strike? Though that one may have been collateral damage (which apparently makes it okay)....
And mustn't forget the Drive-Thru Daiquiri Shops...
I think the secret to their analysis is that they didn't consider the possibility that some people are too busy partying to tweet. They're only accounting for the people who are happy, but not TOO happy....
The Romans conquered the Persians at one point. Couldn't make it stick for more than a generation, but they managed.
They also conquered Spain and France. Against those barbarians that you think beat them.
The Romans did NOT successfully defeat the Germans, of course. Teutoberger Wald wasn't actually a case of "asymmetric warfare", since it involved a large Roman Army and a larger German Army (and a stupid Roman General, which was the real cause of the Roman defeat).
Of course the Romans never made a serious effort to conquer Germany. Why bother? The place was a worthless hellhole. Even Big Julie (who led punitive expeditions into Germany a couple of times) didn't think it was worth conquering. And the later Roman generals who led punitive expeditions into Germany whenever the Germans bothered the Romans living in France at the time didn't think Germany was worth bothering to conquer.
You don't recall correctly.
Six million Jews.
More than half the Soviet casualties were civilians.
A large fraction of German and Japanese casualties were civilian (don't have the numbers to hand, don't want to look them up, but it's in the millions each).
Whatever gave you that idea?
I've never known a "civilized person" who didn't want to beat the living crap out of another" at one time or another.
The real marker of a civilized person isn't that he doesn't want to beat the crap out of another, but that he overcomes the urge to do so....
Sun Tzu - "numbers alone confer no advantage in war".
"Battle of Watling Street" - 10K Romans vs. 150-250K Britons. I'lll give you a hint if you're not sure - the winner wasn't the Britons.
No, it's not "modern weaponry" that made numbers "not a tactical advantage"....
Unless, of course, you define "overwhelming numbers" as "enough guys to win, no matter what". In which case, "overwhelming numbers" is still a tactical advantage, since no matter the weaponry, you can come up with a sufficiently large number as to be "overwhelming"....
Which 15 years are you talking about?
1950-1953, perhaps? During the Korean War (note that we annihilated the NK Army in the first year of that war, then spent the rest of the war fighting the PLA)?
In any case, that's only four years. Where are the other eleven?
Actually, we've established that US technology alone NEVER wins wars.
What we've established that wins wars is US production - we didn't win WW2 with superior technology, we won it because we could do things like build a military up from "small" to "fricking huge" while still having enough production surplus to provide weapons/supplies/whatever to everyone else in the world.
Note that one of the most interesting bits of trivia about WW2 is that the USA, during the war, built more aircraft carriers than existed in the entire world before the war.
And, more importantly, we built more transports (Liberty ships, anyone) than existed in the entire world before the war.
In the mid '30s, a German general, doing an analysis of mechanized warfare concepts noted that the USA had ~75% of the world's production capability in internal combustion engines. And quite properly concluded that that meant that going to war with America would be suicidal for Germany.
Too bad (for Hitler) that Hitler didn't read that sort of report.
Umm, no.
The T34/76 was considerably superior to any panzer then extant in 1941, when they were first encountered.
It wasn't until 1944 that the Germans reached the point that the overwhelming majority of Panzers were better than the T34/76.
And at that point, the Russians were building the T34/85, which was rather better than the latest version of Pzkw-4 (which was about half the German panzer inventory), though somewhat inferior to Pzkw-5 (the other half).
The only real weakness the T34 series of tanks had was lack of proper communications equipment (only the company commander's tank had a radio, for instance, until late in the war).
Plus that gawdawful commander's hatch on the earliest T34s....
If you think that the Roman Empire dominated the Classical World due to superior technology, you know even less of history than your comments about T34 suggest.
Hint: the Legions' doctrine was far more important than the Legions' technology (which was basically the same as everyone else's (iron swords, spear, torso armor and helmet) and considerably inferior to that used by the Persian cavalry at the time (yes, I've always been rather fond of the Persian composite bows as weapons of war - it's really too bad the Romans worked out a counter to it).