Well, considering that the US allows the legal murdering of murderers (a.k.a capital punishment)
Murder is the "unlawful killing of of another human being". Given that the word "unlawful" is in that definition, and the government makes the laws, any killing done within the scope of those laws (self-defense, capital punishment, abortion) is, by definition not murder.
Note that abortion is not murder because it is legal (and therefore, by definition, not murder). It may also be not murder because a fetus is "not a human being". But our personal beliefs as to the humanity (or lack of same) of a fetus is irrelevant to the legality of abortion, hence abortion is not murder....
Conversely, Soyuz has flown a LOT more than the various shuttles have.
A slightly misleading statistic. The Soyuz launch vehicle has had nearly 1700 flights. Note that that launch vehicle is used for pretty much everything launched into space by the Russians (and the Soviets before them).
The manned Soyuz spacecraft, on the other hand, has had about 90 flights.
At three men per Soyuz (though some Soyuz carried fewer), the Soyuz spacecraft has put ~270 people into space.
The Space Shuttle, in 113 flights (at seven per, though some carried fewer), has put close to 800 people into space.
Luckily some well-meaning citizens in my state of Ohio are trying to get a constitutional amendment on the ballot to create a non-partisan board that is in charge of redistricting every ten years. Supposedly, the board will allow the people to submit plans and will decide which plan is the most fair.
Alas, down in the South, redistricting requires approval by the US Department of Justice. And it requires proportional Black-majority districts (that may not have been clear - if the population of the State is 40% Black, 40% of the Congressional Districts must be Black Majority). So Gerrymandering is pretty much required, as the Blacks and Whites don't live conveniently arranged to guarantee the required Black Majority Districts without a few oddly drawn districts (which implies a few oddly drawn White-majority districts as well.
Interestingly, the legislation that makes this mandatory was passed by the Democrats in 1965...(see Voting Rights Act)
As much as my Nerd Gene wants a manned mission to Mars, it's hard to argue with the scientific value of (relatively) cheap missions like this.
Of course, one must remember that if we'd sent men there, they'd have gone as far as Opportunity has gone by lunchtime of the second day on the ground. Or the first day, if they were in a hurry. It's not like Opportunity is as far from its landing site as work is from home for me.
And a crew of men, seeing some of the unusual things the Rovers have seen, wouldn't be in the position of "we need to design a new mission and send it off to investigate this neat feature in five years or so" - they'd have just gotten their tools out and gone to work.
A manned mission will be expensive as sin. And possibly risky. And we'll learn more in the year they're sitting on the ground on Mars than we'll learn in the next two centuries of sending " inexpensive probes with a narrow purpose"
In that respect the law seam incredibly stupid, but look at it this way. By granting a law like this, they can show the record industry that they act forcefully to prevent piracy. That may make it easier to prevent even more stupid suggestions from reccord industry lobbyists.
This is a common belief in some circles. But saying "yes" to someone who makes unreasonable demands doesn't cause them to make fewer unreasonable demands in the future - it causes them to make more unreasonable demands.
Yes, they CAN do that. It does not follow that they WILL do that. Any government can extradite someone for anything at all.
Or refuse extradition for anything at all. The UK will not extradite even a mass murderer to the USA if he/she will face the death penalty, for instance. But any country will extradite someone on any excuse if they have their own reasons for wanting that person out of their country.
That said...
Despite the fact that he had never left Australia and Despite the fact that he did not Protit from his work, the basis of the crime in Australia,
Just finished reading the Australian Copyright Act. Copyright Infringement does NOT require profit. "Infringement by Sale and Other Dealings" is only one mode of infringement, and the only one that requires profit to be sustained.
In fact, section 10AB defines a "non-infringing copy of a computer program" as:
A copy of a computer program is a non-infringing copy only if:
(a) it is made in a qualifying country; and
(b) its making did not constitute an infringement of any copyright in a work under a law of that country.
which looks like an infringement under US Law is an infringement under Australian Law by definition. And thus extraditable.
If you break American law (e.g. this one) and live in any country (like the UK) which has an extradition treaty with the USA you can be brought to America and charged with the crime.
Umm, no. The UK-US Extradition Treaty defines an extraditable offense as one which is a crime in both places. As long as this is legal in the UK, or does not qualify as a felony in the UK(as this now does in the USA), you cannot be extradited.
It's no surprise that the industrial revolution happenen when it did: people started to think that ownership of another person was wrong.
Umm, no. Slavery still exists to this day. Check the UN Reports on "Human Trafficking" sometime. Or read the National Geographic article on same.
Actually, what kicked the Industrial Revolution off was, rather indirectly, the Black Plague. It killed so many people that human labour became a scarce resource. This lack of people was exacerbated by the 30 Years War (which depopulated whole provinces in Germany), and by subseuent outbreaks of the Plague.
This produced several results - the survivors were richer, since they had everything that existed before, divided into fewer pocketbooks, and the survivors had more value placed upon their labour (less labour, same demand, higher value to same).
At the start of civilization, we were in the bronze age, no iron.
Actually, we weren't in the bronze age at the start of civilization. We were still in the Stone Age. I realize that we can quibble about the "start of Civilization", but cities (the defining characteristic of civilization) existed for millenia before bronze was discovered. The Bronze Age in the Middle East, for instance, began around 3500BC. Jericho was a "city" as early as 7000BC. Catal Huyuk in Turkey is older - 8000BC or earlier.
Bronze was used as a tool for warfare (and other reasons) before agriculture (maybe there are exceptions, but I seem to remember the Mesopotamians having bronze weapons)
Bronze was used for weapons and stoneworking tools first. Why? Because it was expensive as sin, and was only used in places where the cost was justified (by thecomparative advantage over stone weapons, and the near impossibility of working large blocks of stone with stone tools).
For another few thousands of years, technological advance was slow and generally not war related, although each new was applied to war.
It was certainly slow. Whether technological advance was "war-related" or not is debatable. Some were, some weren't. Just depends on the motivations of the individual inventors, most likely.
At some point in the fairly recent past, technological innovation significantly increased, and has continued to increase dramatically.
Yep. More people in general, combined with enough wealth that a higher fraction of the populace had the freedom from starvation implicit in the job description of "scientist/inventor" means the rate goes up. And it feeds on itself - each new discovery/invention raises the standard of living to the point where still more people don't have to scrabble for something to eat.
5000 years ago, 90% of everyone had to work full time at growing food, and starvation was still endemic. Now, 2% of us (in the "developed world") work full time growing food, and starvation is virtually unknown (again, in the "developed world", though even in the Third World, it is sufficiently rare that it makes the news - it used to be normal there as recently as 50 years ago).
Of course the writer bloody would, they are writing for the love of it, otherwise they would get a job counting beans or something.
Does the phrase "day job" mean anything to you? It's commonly used by author/actor wannabes to describe what they do to pay the bills. It's also something they all want to get past. Which happens just as soon as they start making enough money from writing/acting to pay the bills.
Why is it so hard for captialist pig dogs to grasp the simple concept that money != motivation, the accumulation of wealth is not the purpose of life.
Of course it's not. Which is why, I assume, you do everything you do with no thought of monetary return?
Writers write as they have a story they want to share with others.
Amateur writers do this. Professional writers (the kind that get published) do it for the money.
Companies would have to do research, or they wouldn't have anything to sell to keep them going.
If it weren't for Copyright/Patents, *I* wouldn't do research - I'd let *YOU* do research, then copy whatever the results of your research were. Yah, I'll be behind you in coming out with neat toys, but the savings in research budget would be worth it.
Consider - I am a book publisher in a world without Copyright. I see a book selling well, so I make my own version of the book. I price my version below your price, since I don't have to pay the Author a couple bucks per copy like you do. I make lots of money, you don't.
Neither does the author. He can't quit his dayjob, so he produces maybe one tenth as many books as he might have if he'd made enough on his books that he didn't have to spend 40 hours per week earning his daily bread....
Don't make the mistake of assuming Patent/Copyright are bad things. They're not. Implementation has issues right now - patents because the designers never conceived of hundreds of millions of patents, copyright because the designers never conceived of perpetual copyrights.
But implementation errors can be corrected. Removing the concept entirely would do more damage than good.
US Attorneys have to carry out the President's agenda
You don't seem to be aware of what a US Attorney is. US Attorney is the Federal version of District Attorney (DA).
I can't imagine how the President's agenda affects the Federal prosecutors, unless the President's agenda includes a lot of illegal activity....
My point was simply that this could be a handy way for you to self-diagnose whether your head was up your ass, because it was plainly wrong. If you disagree, you've reconsidered your position, and you would like to keep your head where it is, that's your business.
Nice to see someone who doesn't let their biases interfere in their life. So anyone who disagrees with you has their head up their ass "because it was plainly wrong"?
Well, it's your opinion that it was wrong. It is my opinion that it was more of the same ol', same ol'.
I even pointed out that I thought that sort of thing, when done be a President I disliked was no big deal. I notice that you excuse the Presidents on your side of the aisle who do similar (frankly, if this sort of thing were a big deal, replacing all the US Attorneys would be a MUCH more severe issue) things....
His choice, this time, seems punitive and unrelated to the activities of the IATC
And when he replaces an Ambassador with one of his supporters (every President does this - it's one of the best pieces of patronage left), this is also wrong? How about when he rids himself of the US Attorneys (another good piece of patronage, if you happen to be a lawyer), and replaces them en masse?
This isn't any more wrong than the above examples - the former of which is routinely done by all Presidents, the latter not so much, though Clinton did it.
Was I upset when Clinton replaced the US Attorneys with his own guys? Not especially.
Was I upset when Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan et al replaced large chunks of the Ambassadorial ranks? Not especially.
Am I upset over this? Not especially.
What this qualifies as is petty, not wrong. And it's only petty if, in fact, the reasons stated in the news article are the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
And I suspect that there is a bit more to it than that. Because, frankly, I wouldn't expect the President to be more than marginally aware of this meeting, or its participants, in the normal course of affairs. Certainly, if *I* were President, I'd not pay attention to something so trivial - a mention in somme SecState briefing, a nod, and on to important stuff.
Unbiassed in the sense that I don't have a preference for either of your two dominant parties
But, of course, you do, whether you know/acknowledge it or not. If both our Parties are seen as Right-wing to you, then the more Right-wing will be seen as more "extreme". Which produces a bias in your thinking.
Same as I look at European politics, and see your more Left-wing Parties as more extreme. When I discount my own prejudices, I can see that most of your Parties are no more extreme than the Dems/Reps here.
But the automatic assumption is that if your Parties are farther to left/right than the Parties I'm used to, they're more extreme. And you can no more help feeling that the Republicans are more extreme than I can help feeling that the German Green Party is rather extreme....
Health care is an issue where your position will be related to your party politics. Telecom interoperability is not.
Possibly. I tend to think that neither should be related to Party politics, but then I'm not a member of either (or any) Party.
I know nothing about this particular conference, and frankly care even less. However, if it is like most inter-governmental meetings, it's just a press-the-flesh sort of thing - the real decisions have already been made elsewhere (though it is always possible that this meeting is the elsewhere on this particular subject).
If that's so in this case, then it isn't terribly unreasonable of the White House to want people that are ostensibly on his team to be actually on his team.
I quite understand your point of view. It isn't really all that new and different, though it is (perhaps) a return to something we rid ourselves of. Once upon a time, before Civil Service exams and such, every job in the government was handed out this way. "You supported the other guy? well, you're fired as of today, so I can make room for someone who supported me" was a way of life.
It still is in big chunks of the government (pretty much everything not covered by Civil Service, in fact). The last relics of Party patronage won't go away until some bit of it is abused horribly (this isn't such an abuse) - enough so that the public outcry causes Congress to move those relics into Civil Service.
At which point, we'll have a Bureaucracy for a government, rather than a Democracy or a Republic. So I think I'll just continue to support the idea that the President has broad powers to choose his own people for the Executive. Which does include meetings with other governments and their agencies....
In any event, it's not relevent now, the difference between a guy with a hunting rifle and a aguy in an M1 Abrams is several of orders of magnitude beyond the differenc between a guy with a musket and a guy in a (bright) redcoat(with an X over his heart) with a musket.
Ever tried to run a Abrams by yourself?;)
Seriously, comparing a man with a rifle with an Abrams is just slightly unrealistic - like saying that a man with a M16 can't possibly beat the USS Consititution. It's certainly true, but doesn't in any way imply a reasonable comparison.
Try this, instead. We have about 3000 Abrams tanks in our arsenal. We have about 80,000,000 people who own rifles. Would one Abrams be able to defeat 27,000 people?
Unlikely.
If only because you have to climb out of the Abrams at some point, and it only takes four shots to put the crew of the Abrams down.
People who babble about the inability of the US populace to defeat the US military are fascinating, since they seem to forget the Vietcong, the insurgency in Iraq, little things like that.
If you can't keep your vote with peaceful means, you'll find yourself in a "Free Speech" zone surronded by tanks and begging to be allowed to trade your rifle for something that might do you some good.
If I believed I would lose my vote, I'd already be shooting government agents. I don't. Part of the reason I don't is that the Second Amendment makes a wonderful tripwire - as long as it exists, my vote is about as safe as it can be. As soon as it is repealed, it's time to start the shooting....
I'll bite. What is "new and different" about this? Looks like politics as usual in the big city from where I sit (and no, I didn't have a different opinion about this sort of thing when Clinton was in office - it was politics as usual then too).
But you obviously see something far more sinister than has ever happened in this country. Can you let me in on what that might be? It surely can't be the honesty of saying out in public that the administration did this for political reasons...
You're not a totally unbiased foreigner. If you were totally unbiased, you'd not say things like "To the rest of the world they both look right-wing" - after all, that implies a significant bias toward the left...
You don't know many Republicans, do you? I can't even recall my "religious leaders" (I wonder who they'd be, since the Pastor is just an employee of the congregation) saying anything about the election.
And here I thought the DMCA was passed in 1998, and signed by Clinton. Silly me! I should have known that only someonelike GW Bush could do something so heinous...
When the 2nd was written, there wasn't much difference between a hunting rifle and the arms of the regular army,
Let's see...back then, a civilian hunting rifle had a lower rate of fire, but was more accurate than a military weapon (can't call it a rifle, since most militaries didn't use rifles then). The military weapon was arguably harder hitting (they tended to be of larger caliber, but this was not universal).
Nowadays, of course, a civilian hunting rifle has a lower rate of fire than a military weapon, but is more accurate. And the civilian rifle is harder hitting.
I fail to see the difference, really. Yah, we have machineguns and heavy weapons now. But Armies had cannon then, and those cannon were quite effective at giving the military the edge needed to win.
Not to mention that the Redcoats used outmoded and ineffective infantry tactics.
My, you really should read more military history! British infantry tactics of the period were state of the art. The Continental Army spent a good chunk of the Revolution trying to teach its men those tactics (which tactics allowed the British to win most of the battles of the Revolution, I might add).
The tactics of the British Army in 1776 did not become "outmoded and ineffective" until the introduction of the minie ball (and the rifled musket) in the early part of the 19th century.
If you're living in the dreamland where the Revolution was won because the Americans hid behind trees and sniped at the British to win the Revolution, you should rejoin the real world. That happened in only a few battles, and was not especially important in the overall prosecution of the war.
All that said, the American population has enough firepower to overthrow the governnment. Fortunately, it hasn't seen enough reason to try to overthrow the government yet.
1873?? The teaching of American History wherever you are is in sad shape. Yah, no doubt you're not from the USA, and have more of a excuse than most Americans do for not knowing when the Civil War was, but still.
Aren't people curious about how primitive cultures were able to feed themselves with sharpened sticks?
No. I prefer to be able to eat a nice salad every day of the year. Which I couldn't do even in the 19th century, except in a few places with year-round growing seasons.
Those primitive cultures you refer to spent a lot of time starving, and had average lifespans shorter than my life to date.
And they had a population about 1% of current population. Are you volunteering to be part of the 99% of the people who have to die in order to allow the remaining 1% to live in misery?
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Murder is the "unlawful killing of of another human being". Given that the word "unlawful" is in that definition, and the government makes the laws, any killing done within the scope of those laws (self-defense, capital punishment, abortion) is, by definition not murder.
Note that abortion is not murder because it is legal (and therefore, by definition, not murder). It may also be not murder because a fetus is "not a human being". But our personal beliefs as to the humanity (or lack of same) of a fetus is irrelevant to the legality of abortion, hence abortion is not murder....
A slightly misleading statistic. The Soyuz launch vehicle has had nearly 1700 flights. Note that that launch vehicle is used for pretty much everything launched into space by the Russians (and the Soviets before them).
The manned Soyuz spacecraft, on the other hand, has had about 90 flights.
At three men per Soyuz (though some Soyuz carried fewer), the Soyuz spacecraft has put ~270 people into space.
The Space Shuttle, in 113 flights (at seven per, though some carried fewer), has put close to 800 people into space.
Alas, down in the South, redistricting requires approval by the US Department of Justice. And it requires proportional Black-majority districts (that may not have been clear - if the population of the State is 40% Black, 40% of the Congressional Districts must be Black Majority). So Gerrymandering is pretty much required, as the Blacks and Whites don't live conveniently arranged to guarantee the required Black Majority Districts without a few oddly drawn districts (which implies a few oddly drawn White-majority districts as well.
Interestingly, the legislation that makes this mandatory was passed by the Democrats in 1965...(see Voting Rights Act)
Of course, one must remember that if we'd sent men there, they'd have gone as far as Opportunity has gone by lunchtime of the second day on the ground. Or the first day, if they were in a hurry. It's not like Opportunity is as far from its landing site as work is from home for me.
And a crew of men, seeing some of the unusual things the Rovers have seen, wouldn't be in the position of "we need to design a new mission and send it off to investigate this neat feature in five years or so" - they'd have just gotten their tools out and gone to work.
A manned mission will be expensive as sin. And possibly risky. And we'll learn more in the year they're sitting on the ground on Mars than we'll learn in the next two centuries of sending " inexpensive probes with a narrow purpose"
This is a common belief in some circles. But saying "yes" to someone who makes unreasonable demands doesn't cause them to make fewer unreasonable demands in the future - it causes them to make more unreasonable demands.
Just ask any parent of small children....
Didn't we see this article earlier today under the headline "Room Temperature, Small-Scale Fusion at UCLA"?
Or refuse extradition for anything at all. The UK will not extradite even a mass murderer to the USA if he/she will face the death penalty, for instance. But any country will extradite someone on any excuse if they have their own reasons for wanting that person out of their country.
That said...
Despite the fact that he had never left Australia and Despite the fact that he did not Protit from his work, the basis of the crime in Australia,
Just finished reading the Australian Copyright Act. Copyright Infringement does NOT require profit. "Infringement by Sale and Other Dealings" is only one mode of infringement, and the only one that requires profit to be sustained.
In fact, section 10AB defines a "non-infringing copy of a computer program" as:
A copy of a computer program is a non-infringing copy only if:
(a) it is made in a qualifying country; and
(b) its making did not constitute an infringement of any copyright in a work under a law of that country.
which looks like an infringement under US Law is an infringement under Australian Law by definition. And thus extraditable.
Umm, no. The UK-US Extradition Treaty defines an extraditable offense as one which is a crime in both places. As long as this is legal in the UK, or does not qualify as a felony in the UK(as this now does in the USA), you cannot be extradited.
Correct.
1x10^100x10^100 = googolplex (a googol of googols)
therefore 1x10^10000 = googolplex?
1x10^(10^100) = googolplex.
Umm, no. Slavery still exists to this day. Check the UN Reports on "Human Trafficking" sometime. Or read the National Geographic article on same.
Actually, what kicked the Industrial Revolution off was, rather indirectly, the Black Plague. It killed so many people that human labour became a scarce resource. This lack of people was exacerbated by the 30 Years War (which depopulated whole provinces in Germany), and by subseuent outbreaks of the Plague.
This produced several results - the survivors were richer, since they had everything that existed before, divided into fewer pocketbooks, and the survivors had more value placed upon their labour (less labour, same demand, higher value to same).
Actually, we weren't in the bronze age at the start of civilization. We were still in the Stone Age. I realize that we can quibble about the "start of Civilization", but cities (the defining characteristic of civilization) existed for millenia before bronze was discovered. The Bronze Age in the Middle East, for instance, began around 3500BC. Jericho was a "city" as early as 7000BC. Catal Huyuk in Turkey is older - 8000BC or earlier.
Bronze was used as a tool for warfare (and other reasons) before agriculture (maybe there are exceptions, but I seem to remember the Mesopotamians having bronze weapons)
Bronze was used for weapons and stoneworking tools first. Why? Because it was expensive as sin, and was only used in places where the cost was justified (by thecomparative advantage over stone weapons, and the near impossibility of working large blocks of stone with stone tools).
For another few thousands of years, technological advance was slow and generally not war related, although each new was applied to war.
It was certainly slow. Whether technological advance was "war-related" or not is debatable. Some were, some weren't. Just depends on the motivations of the individual inventors, most likely.
At some point in the fairly recent past, technological innovation significantly increased, and has continued to increase dramatically.
Yep. More people in general, combined with enough wealth that a higher fraction of the populace had the freedom from starvation implicit in the job description of "scientist/inventor" means the rate goes up. And it feeds on itself - each new discovery/invention raises the standard of living to the point where still more people don't have to scrabble for something to eat.
5000 years ago, 90% of everyone had to work full time at growing food, and starvation was still endemic. Now, 2% of us (in the "developed world") work full time growing food, and starvation is virtually unknown (again, in the "developed world", though even in the Third World, it is sufficiently rare that it makes the news - it used to be normal there as recently as 50 years ago).
Does the phrase "day job" mean anything to you? It's commonly used by author/actor wannabes to describe what they do to pay the bills. It's also something they all want to get past. Which happens just as soon as they start making enough money from writing/acting to pay the bills.
Why is it so hard for captialist pig dogs to grasp the simple concept that money != motivation, the accumulation of wealth is not the purpose of life.
Of course it's not. Which is why, I assume, you do everything you do with no thought of monetary return?
Writers write as they have a story they want to share with others.
Amateur writers do this. Professional writers (the kind that get published) do it for the money.
Companies would have to do research, or they wouldn't have anything to sell to keep them going.
If it weren't for Copyright/Patents, *I* wouldn't do research - I'd let *YOU* do research, then copy whatever the results of your research were. Yah, I'll be behind you in coming out with neat toys, but the savings in research budget would be worth it.
Consider - I am a book publisher in a world without Copyright. I see a book selling well, so I make my own version of the book. I price my version below your price, since I don't have to pay the Author a couple bucks per copy like you do. I make lots of money, you don't.
Neither does the author. He can't quit his dayjob, so he produces maybe one tenth as many books as he might have if he'd made enough on his books that he didn't have to spend 40 hours per week earning his daily bread....
Don't make the mistake of assuming Patent/Copyright are bad things. They're not. Implementation has issues right now - patents because the designers never conceived of hundreds of millions of patents, copyright because the designers never conceived of perpetual copyrights.
But implementation errors can be corrected. Removing the concept entirely would do more damage than good.
You don't seem to be aware of what a US Attorney is. US Attorney is the Federal version of District Attorney (DA).
I can't imagine how the President's agenda affects the Federal prosecutors, unless the President's agenda includes a lot of illegal activity....
My point was simply that this could be a handy way for you to self-diagnose whether your head was up your ass, because it was plainly wrong. If you disagree, you've reconsidered your position, and you would like to keep your head where it is, that's your business.
Nice to see someone who doesn't let their biases interfere in their life. So anyone who disagrees with you has their head up their ass "because it was plainly wrong"?
Well, it's your opinion that it was wrong. It is my opinion that it was more of the same ol', same ol'.
I even pointed out that I thought that sort of thing, when done be a President I disliked was no big deal. I notice that you excuse the Presidents on your side of the aisle who do similar (frankly, if this sort of thing were a big deal, replacing all the US Attorneys would be a MUCH more severe issue) things....
And when he replaces an Ambassador with one of his supporters (every President does this - it's one of the best pieces of patronage left), this is also wrong? How about when he rids himself of the US Attorneys (another good piece of patronage, if you happen to be a lawyer), and replaces them en masse?
This isn't any more wrong than the above examples - the former of which is routinely done by all Presidents, the latter not so much, though Clinton did it.
Was I upset when Clinton replaced the US Attorneys with his own guys? Not especially.
Was I upset when Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan et al replaced large chunks of the Ambassadorial ranks? Not especially.
Am I upset over this? Not especially.
What this qualifies as is petty, not wrong. And it's only petty if, in fact, the reasons stated in the news article are the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
And I suspect that there is a bit more to it than that. Because, frankly, I wouldn't expect the President to be more than marginally aware of this meeting, or its participants, in the normal course of affairs. Certainly, if *I* were President, I'd not pay attention to something so trivial - a mention in somme SecState briefing, a nod, and on to important stuff.
But, of course, you do, whether you know/acknowledge it or not. If both our Parties are seen as Right-wing to you, then the more Right-wing will be seen as more "extreme". Which produces a bias in your thinking.
Same as I look at European politics, and see your more Left-wing Parties as more extreme. When I discount my own prejudices, I can see that most of your Parties are no more extreme than the Dems/Reps here.
But the automatic assumption is that if your Parties are farther to left/right than the Parties I'm used to, they're more extreme. And you can no more help feeling that the Republicans are more extreme than I can help feeling that the German Green Party is rather extreme....
Possibly. I tend to think that neither should be related to Party politics, but then I'm not a member of either (or any) Party.
I know nothing about this particular conference, and frankly care even less. However, if it is like most inter-governmental meetings, it's just a press-the-flesh sort of thing - the real decisions have already been made elsewhere (though it is always possible that this meeting is the elsewhere on this particular subject).
If that's so in this case, then it isn't terribly unreasonable of the White House to want people that are ostensibly on his team to be actually on his team.
I quite understand your point of view. It isn't really all that new and different, though it is (perhaps) a return to something we rid ourselves of. Once upon a time, before Civil Service exams and such, every job in the government was handed out this way. "You supported the other guy? well, you're fired as of today, so I can make room for someone who supported me" was a way of life.
It still is in big chunks of the government (pretty much everything not covered by Civil Service, in fact). The last relics of Party patronage won't go away until some bit of it is abused horribly (this isn't such an abuse) - enough so that the public outcry causes Congress to move those relics into Civil Service.
At which point, we'll have a Bureaucracy for a government, rather than a Democracy or a Republic. So I think I'll just continue to support the idea that the President has broad powers to choose his own people for the Executive. Which does include meetings with other governments and their agencies....
Ever tried to run a Abrams by yourself? ;)
Seriously, comparing a man with a rifle with an Abrams is just slightly unrealistic - like saying that a man with a M16 can't possibly beat the USS Consititution. It's certainly true, but doesn't in any way imply a reasonable comparison.
Try this, instead. We have about 3000 Abrams tanks in our arsenal. We have about 80,000,000 people who own rifles. Would one Abrams be able to defeat 27,000 people?
Unlikely.
If only because you have to climb out of the Abrams at some point, and it only takes four shots to put the crew of the Abrams down.
People who babble about the inability of the US populace to defeat the US military are fascinating, since they seem to forget the Vietcong, the insurgency in Iraq, little things like that.
If you can't keep your vote with peaceful means, you'll find yourself in a "Free Speech" zone surronded by tanks and begging to be allowed to trade your rifle for something that might do you some good.
If I believed I would lose my vote, I'd already be shooting government agents. I don't. Part of the reason I don't is that the Second Amendment makes a wonderful tripwire - as long as it exists, my vote is about as safe as it can be. As soon as it is repealed, it's time to start the shooting....
But you obviously see something far more sinister than has ever happened in this country. Can you let me in on what that might be? It surely can't be the honesty of saying out in public that the administration did this for political reasons...
You're not a totally unbiased foreigner. If you were totally unbiased, you'd not say things like "To the rest of the world they both look right-wing" - after all, that implies a significant bias toward the left...
Perhaps I slept through too many sermons....
And here I thought the DMCA was passed in 1998, and signed by Clinton. Silly me! I should have known that only someonelike GW Bush could do something so heinous...
Let's see...back then, a civilian hunting rifle had a lower rate of fire, but was more accurate than a military weapon (can't call it a rifle, since most militaries didn't use rifles then). The military weapon was arguably harder hitting (they tended to be of larger caliber, but this was not universal).
Nowadays, of course, a civilian hunting rifle has a lower rate of fire than a military weapon, but is more accurate. And the civilian rifle is harder hitting.
I fail to see the difference, really. Yah, we have machineguns and heavy weapons now. But Armies had cannon then, and those cannon were quite effective at giving the military the edge needed to win.
Not to mention that the Redcoats used outmoded and ineffective infantry tactics.
My, you really should read more military history! British infantry tactics of the period were state of the art. The Continental Army spent a good chunk of the Revolution trying to teach its men those tactics (which tactics allowed the British to win most of the battles of the Revolution, I might add).
The tactics of the British Army in 1776 did not become "outmoded and ineffective" until the introduction of the minie ball (and the rifled musket) in the early part of the 19th century.
If you're living in the dreamland where the Revolution was won because the Americans hid behind trees and sniped at the British to win the Revolution, you should rejoin the real world. That happened in only a few battles, and was not especially important in the overall prosecution of the war.
All that said, the American population has enough firepower to overthrow the governnment. Fortunately, it hasn't seen enough reason to try to overthrow the government yet.
1873?? The teaching of American History wherever you are is in sad shape. Yah, no doubt you're not from the USA, and have more of a excuse than most Americans do for not knowing when the Civil War was, but still.
The Civil War started in 1861, ended in 1865....
Umm, no. If that were the case, I'd like everything to be given to me for free.
Actually, the market works like this : give people something they want at a mutually agreeable price.
No. I prefer to be able to eat a nice salad every day of the year. Which I couldn't do even in the 19th century, except in a few places with year-round growing seasons.
Those primitive cultures you refer to spent a lot of time starving, and had average lifespans shorter than my life to date.
And they had a population about 1% of current population. Are you volunteering to be part of the 99% of the people who have to die in order to allow the remaining 1% to live in misery?