While many bitch that Obama is a socialist/marxist (even though nobody in this country can describe what these are)
Marxism is an economic system where all means of production become common property (owned and controlled by the state), and private profit is disallowed. Socialism (according to Marx) is a transitional phase between capitalism and Marxism.
The current US economic system is more closely related to fascism, and has been for decades, accelerated under the current and previous administrations. That's an extremely unpopular label, but Musollini-style fascism - with close ties between the government and corporations, with each interdependent on the other - is the most accurate description of the current system. Typically euphemisms such as "public/private partnerships" or "privatizing" are used instead, but it's the same principle.
Well that's cool. You're right, there is more content than just the OTA channels over most of the providers. Leaves out a lot of stuff from being DVR'd, though. Everything from the "premium" channels is blocked, of course, but I've also noticed that most of the AMC shows (Walking Dead, for example), most of FX channel's content, and, oddly enough, practically every show on Discovery and Science channels (not that there's much there worth watching anymore, anyway).
Ever wonder why we need 1,835 PAGES of legislation to say "Do Not dump raw sewage into the river."?
No. Lawyers will endlessly debate that a regulation is too vague and does not cover the case, so you have to cover all the conceivable corner cases in legally specific wording. Because it will be interpreted in a legal venue. And build in loopholes for your contributors. That takes a lot of pages.
Bzzzt! Sorry, the only part you got right was all the lawyers involved. "The case" of "Do Not dump raw sewage into the river." is not vague, open to interpretation, or full of myriad loopholes. You need lawyers and thousands of clauses that refer to other, existing clauses and you have to get involved in writing the legislation. Which of course is never written by representatives or even staffers. It's primarily written by lobbyists. The reason for all the pages is so that you can create hidden privileges and advantages for specific industries or entities, difficult to work out. And then you have a nice set of rules that creates barriers to entry for any small guys, and codified advantages over your competition. A little funding for something that helps you out, too, if you're smart. After all, it's only going to cost the tax payers a few cents each. They'll never notice...
It didn't happen "despite that [constant vigilance]", it happened because the American people have been asleep at the wheel. For at least the last 50 years. People are waking up, but it takes time to root out the evil because it's so firmly rooted into the system.
There really hasn't been much of a result, other than finally the discussion over unsustainable debt and runaway deficits is happening. But you can't have unrealistic expectations, and you have to be as dedicated to keeping up the fight as the corrupt politicians are to trying to hold on to their seats.
good cheap healthcare for all
Nice example of unrealistic expectations. It can be good, or cheap, or unrationed, but it can't be all three.
And we don't have that issue today, right now, with the very law the subject is supposed to be about (SOPA)? The PP answered your complaint in his post, and you completely ignored it. Read the last sentence you quoted again.
This?
Sure you wouldn't be able to check up on how your representative voted, but that feature clearly isn't solving the problem anyway.
It's wrong. Entirely. Many representatives lost their seats in 2010 precisely because of their votes during the last session. Politicians will lie when the truth will do, and if you don't know how they are voting then there is no way to tell what they are lying about - the lies are your only way to judge. That's a piss-poor way to select a representative. In fact, if more people were less gullible, and looked at voting records more closely, we wouldn't have as many corrupt politicians as it is.
Take dumping raw sewage into the river. To stop that, we need law (regulation). This is an example of good regulation.
Ever wonder why we need 1,835 PAGES of legislation to say "Do Not dump raw sewage into the river."? But this is always the popular talking point of apologists for the current level of oppressive legislation, as if just because it doesn't take submitting 34 applications to 8 federal bureaucracies and paying $26,000 in fees means that suddenly meat packing plants will be putting rat feces into your cream of chicken soup. It's not 1906 anymore. The combination of regulations for do business in the US these days defies common sense.
Then there's this. SOPA regulation is the equivalent of allowing the factory owners to control what gets dumped into the river.
No, not at all. It's telling every landowner with waterway on their land that they have to put barriers at every ingress and egress of the river and make sure that only an approved list of chemicals, flotsam, and jetsam can be allowed through. Or something. Oh and if somebody throws something in the river and you don't return it to its rightful owner your waterway will be forfeited.
That article is pretty out of character for MediaMatters. It was practically devoid of hyperbole, provide details on methodology, and somehow even avoided blaming the whole issue on "teh satanic kitten-killing GOP and lying liars a teh Faux News".
It's easier to just take money out of the equation. How do you do that? Just make it so that house and senate votes use a secret ballot, just like the way we vote for our representatives. If they can't prove how they voted, then trying to buy their votes is pointless. The only incentive left to them will be to vote the way they *personally* think would be the best. For most of us, that's along our ideals. Sure you wouldn't be able to check up on how your representative voted, but that feature clearly isn't solving the problem anyway.
I think you've got an issue there with "accountability".
We need serious campaign reform to include barring direct financial contribution to any candidate and mandating that all elections be publicly funded equally to all qualifying candidates regardless of party affiliation. Everything short of that is just spinning our wheels and playing the rigged game with the cheaters.
That's a non-starter. Anything that gets any real consideration at all under the banner of "campaign finance reform" will be nothing but another way to protect incumbents and make it even harder for real grassroots efforts to get any traction. We've seen it happen with McCain-Fiengold, an nearly with the DISCLOSE act (which provided exemptions for groups like the NRA, but would have put any smaller issue-advocacy groups completely in chains).
You're not going to get ANY rules or laws passed that will allow you to avoid the necessary responsibility of keeping informed and involved in your government. Nothing. The American system will succumb to the monied interests and corrupt politicians over and over without constant vigilance of a significant proportion of the citizens - there is simply no way around it. We are where we are now because of too much apathy and too many people just not wanting to deal with politics.
Tuner boxes in your area don't have component out, do they?
They do everywhere else. Sucks to be you.
What good would that do, even if they were activated for HD? Even if you can find a component capture card, you won't get better than 480i resolution, and you're also still stuck with analog sound.
Windows Media Center had many great feature, even today it still provides feature that no other device has, like the ability to use as a DVR, and Digitial Tuner capabilities.
You mean like MythTV, SageTV, ReplayTV, Tivo, and every cable provided DVR box I've seen.
,
I get frustrated with most of the crap coming out of Microsoft. I tend to use Linux/Apple/Android/anything else if I can. But, with Media Center, it's one of those things they've managed to do a good job with.
Good luck getting any content from a cable provider with MythTV, SageTV, etc. If all you want is OTA local channels, they are fine. But if you want to tune in anything else you'll need a tuner box with another tuner, and none of that will be in HD. CableCard and Media Center works well. Don't even get me started on the horrid interfaces that come with the cable DVR boxes. I refuse to deal with that crap anymore.
Um.... I'm no expert, but what did that farmland look like before humans irrigated it? And, what were the environmental costs associated with the irrigation project?
Well it's been irrigated since the beginning of the 20th century, with most of the infrastructure in place since the 1920's. So I assume any pictures of the area beforehand are rare or non-existent. The only negative environmental cost was in the early 1980's when attempts to deal with the raised water table by subsurface drains resulted in increased selenium levels which was too high to be tolerated by migratory bird populations. That issue was quickly dealt with and is no longer an issue.
The EPA's concern was decreased populations of Delta Smelts in the San Joaquin river, which they attributed to the pumps. This connection was never satisfactorily made, but they made the decision to cut off the pumps anyway. There was no study into the impact of the Delta Smelt population, thorough investigation of the reasons for it, any effects that the reduction of Delta Smelts would have, or what the trade-offs were.
The real issue is that when the alarm was raised to "do something" about the Delta Smelt, the usual suspects (Monsanto and DuPont) made sure that it was not their products, used extensively throughout the watershed areas for the San Francisco bay, and so another scapegoat was found. So their shills in the Federal bureaucracy made sure that the finger was pointed to the irrigation pumps instead. They irrigate land mostly used for orchards, where it's mostly small farmers that us a lot of migratory labor and significantly less Monsanto and DuPont products than the farmers in the bay watershed area that till, RoundUp, plant seed, RoundUp, spray pesticide, and clear-cut harvest every year.
How about I take pictures of the once-fertile farmland that the EPA turned into a desolated desert and drove 70,000 people out of work and out of the area? Think they would highlight that one?
First, I don't accept your premise that "rights are guarantees". Second, reproductive freedom requires life, among other things. If you can't guarantee life, you can't guarantee reproduction. Dead things can't procreate, and just like life, procreation is only possible by taking the lives of other beings.
Even if it were, it's useless. If you're not allowed to exist, you can't bring other beings into existence, either.
You can't come up with any evidence to support your side, and you still assert that both sides have valid positions?
I don't have a "side", as I've stated over and over, you douchebag. FUCK! I should have known it was fruitless to try to discuss the issue and positions in this debate.
Do we have a right to exist?
No, of course not.
Then please fucking go kill yourself. Or I'll do it for you, since you don't think anyone should be allowed to stop me. If we don't have a right to exist, then your argument for "reproductive rights" is complete bullshit, because they don't exist either. If you don't have a right to exist, you sure as FUCK don't have a right to procreate. You don't have any fucking rights at all.
I agree, the line at birth is arbitrary. But if you want to improve on it, you're going to have to come up with some non-arbitrary measure.
I can't, which is my point. It's really complicated, and both sides have valid positions, even if there are a lot of really radically uncompromising ones from both camps.
How would you demonstrate empirically that a right to life exists, let alone that it is possessed by a fetus?
Do we have a right to exist? About the only empirical evidence of that is that we are here, so we have a right to be here. Although there certainly seems to be a lot of claims that the existence of the State takes precedent over the existence of any individual or group. If we can't get agreement that human beings have an intrinsic right to life and that governments should protect those rights, we're in a lot of trouble. Which is probably true, as it seems the President can now order the death of any citizen without trial based only on his discretion.
Every decision I make affects the people that love me. By your criteria, that means I essentially have no rights at all. The state can compel me to do anything it wants in the interests of those who care about me. This is an extremely troubling position for you to take.
I didn't advocate any such thing. The only issue that should be considered by a just government is when to intervene on behalf of citizens threatened with violence and death at the hand of another. A one-day-old is considered a person and his right to life is recognized. But to put that line at birth means there's no protection for a child the day before or even during labor, if the mother decides she wants to kill it.
I don't have the answer, but, again, I think it's more complicated than you want to make it seem.
Abortion is traumatic for some women, largely because of guilt complexes they wouldn't have if people would mind their own business.
That's part of it, but I was referring to the procedure itself, and the emotional toll rarely as anything to do with anyone else's opinion on the subject. I'm not a woman that has had an abortion, so I can't speak to it myself, but I've heard plenty of stories, and while the disgusting attempts of others to denigrate them for making the decision they did are ugly, that's not what I'm talking about. To dismiss the physical, emotional and other issues women go through is pretty narrow-minded.
I agree, but given that abortions don't affect anyone but yourself, it's irrelevant to the issue.
Not irrelevant - abortion affects lots of people. It affects everyone that loves the woman that had to go through it, and anyone that might have loved the dismissed life over the next 70 years. Besides, you were arguing about "reproductive rights", not abortion. And abortion is most often a result of two people being irresponsible with reproductive rights (yes, not always, I know).
If you want true liberty, you must be willing to take responsibility, and accept the consequences of your actions.
Slashdot Mirror
While many bitch that Obama is a socialist/marxist (even though nobody in this country can describe what these are)
Marxism is an economic system where all means of production become common property (owned and controlled by the state), and private profit is disallowed. Socialism (according to Marx) is a transitional phase between capitalism and Marxism.
The current US economic system is more closely related to fascism, and has been for decades, accelerated under the current and previous administrations. That's an extremely unpopular label, but Musollini-style fascism - with close ties between the government and corporations, with each interdependent on the other - is the most accurate description of the current system. Typically euphemisms such as "public/private partnerships" or "privatizing" are used instead, but it's the same principle.
Well that's cool. You're right, there is more content than just the OTA channels over most of the providers. Leaves out a lot of stuff from being DVR'd, though. Everything from the "premium" channels is blocked, of course, but I've also noticed that most of the AMC shows (Walking Dead, for example), most of FX channel's content, and, oddly enough, practically every show on Discovery and Science channels (not that there's much there worth watching anymore, anyway).
Wait ... what? Now we want more plastic? The fake environmentalists have jumped the shark for sure.
seriously
Maybe not ours but is life really defined by humans?
Yep, it really is. I mean, who will be around to define it after we're gone?
No. Lawyers will endlessly debate that a regulation is too vague and does not cover the case, so you have to cover all the conceivable corner cases in legally specific wording. Because it will be interpreted in a legal venue. And build in loopholes for your contributors. That takes a lot of pages.
Bzzzt! Sorry, the only part you got right was all the lawyers involved. "The case" of "Do Not dump raw sewage into the river." is not vague, open to interpretation, or full of myriad loopholes. You need lawyers and thousands of clauses that refer to other, existing clauses and you have to get involved in writing the legislation. Which of course is never written by representatives or even staffers. It's primarily written by lobbyists. The reason for all the pages is so that you can create hidden privileges and advantages for specific industries or entities, difficult to work out. And then you have a nice set of rules that creates barriers to entry for any small guys, and codified advantages over your competition. A little funding for something that helps you out, too, if you're smart. After all, it's only going to cost the tax payers a few cents each. They'll never notice...
It didn't happen "despite that [constant vigilance]", it happened because the American people have been asleep at the wheel. For at least the last 50 years. People are waking up, but it takes time to root out the evil because it's so firmly rooted into the system.
There really hasn't been much of a result, other than finally the discussion over unsustainable debt and runaway deficits is happening. But you can't have unrealistic expectations, and you have to be as dedicated to keeping up the fight as the corrupt politicians are to trying to hold on to their seats.
good cheap healthcare for all
Nice example of unrealistic expectations. It can be good, or cheap, or unrationed, but it can't be all three.
And we don't have that issue today, right now, with the very law the subject is supposed to be about (SOPA)? The PP answered your complaint in his post, and you completely ignored it. Read the last sentence you quoted again.
This?
Sure you wouldn't be able to check up on how your representative voted, but that feature clearly isn't solving the problem anyway.
It's wrong. Entirely. Many representatives lost their seats in 2010 precisely because of their votes during the last session. Politicians will lie when the truth will do, and if you don't know how they are voting then there is no way to tell what they are lying about - the lies are your only way to judge. That's a piss-poor way to select a representative. In fact, if more people were less gullible, and looked at voting records more closely, we wouldn't have as many corrupt politicians as it is.
Take dumping raw sewage into the river. To stop that, we need law (regulation). This is an example of good regulation.
Ever wonder why we need 1,835 PAGES of legislation to say "Do Not dump raw sewage into the river."? But this is always the popular talking point of apologists for the current level of oppressive legislation, as if just because it doesn't take submitting 34 applications to 8 federal bureaucracies and paying $26,000 in fees means that suddenly meat packing plants will be putting rat feces into your cream of chicken soup. It's not 1906 anymore. The combination of regulations for do business in the US these days defies common sense.
Then there's this. SOPA regulation is the equivalent of allowing the factory owners to control what gets dumped into the river.
No, not at all. It's telling every landowner with waterway on their land that they have to put barriers at every ingress and egress of the river and make sure that only an approved list of chemicals, flotsam, and jetsam can be allowed through. Or something. Oh and if somebody throws something in the river and you don't return it to its rightful owner your waterway will be forfeited.
That article is pretty out of character for MediaMatters. It was practically devoid of hyperbole, provide details on methodology, and somehow even avoided blaming the whole issue on "teh satanic kitten-killing GOP and lying liars a teh Faux News".
It's easier to just take money out of the equation. How do you do that? Just make it so that house and senate votes use a secret ballot, just like the way we vote for our representatives. If they can't prove how they voted, then trying to buy their votes is pointless. The only incentive left to them will be to vote the way they *personally* think would be the best. For most of us, that's along our ideals. Sure you wouldn't be able to check up on how your representative voted, but that feature clearly isn't solving the problem anyway.
I think you've got an issue there with "accountability".
We need serious campaign reform to include barring direct financial contribution to any candidate and mandating that all elections be publicly funded equally to all qualifying candidates regardless of party affiliation. Everything short of that is just spinning our wheels and playing the rigged game with the cheaters.
That's a non-starter. Anything that gets any real consideration at all under the banner of "campaign finance reform" will be nothing but another way to protect incumbents and make it even harder for real grassroots efforts to get any traction. We've seen it happen with McCain-Fiengold, an nearly with the DISCLOSE act (which provided exemptions for groups like the NRA, but would have put any smaller issue-advocacy groups completely in chains).
You're not going to get ANY rules or laws passed that will allow you to avoid the necessary responsibility of keeping informed and involved in your government. Nothing. The American system will succumb to the monied interests and corrupt politicians over and over without constant vigilance of a significant proportion of the citizens - there is simply no way around it. We are where we are now because of too much apathy and too many people just not wanting to deal with politics.
Tuner boxes in your area don't have component out, do they?
They do everywhere else. Sucks to be you.
What good would that do, even if they were activated for HD? Even if you can find a component capture card, you won't get better than 480i resolution, and you're also still stuck with analog sound.
Windows Media Center had many great feature, even today it still provides feature that no other device has, like the ability to use as a DVR, and Digitial Tuner capabilities.
You mean like MythTV, SageTV, ReplayTV, Tivo, and every cable provided DVR box I've seen.
I get frustrated with most of the crap coming out of Microsoft. I tend to use Linux/Apple/Android/anything else if I can. But, with Media Center, it's one of those things they've managed to do a good job with.
Good luck getting any content from a cable provider with MythTV, SageTV, etc. If all you want is OTA local channels, they are fine. But if you want to tune in anything else you'll need a tuner box with another tuner, and none of that will be in HD. CableCard and Media Center works well. Don't even get me started on the horrid interfaces that come with the cable DVR boxes. I refuse to deal with that crap anymore.
I think Google's real challenge is with the content owners. If it would 'just work', then I believe the product would sell.
Well Roku has managed it - can't imagine why Google wouldn't be able to do the same thing, with all the money they have.
Um.... I'm no expert, but what did that farmland look like before humans irrigated it? And, what were the environmental costs associated with the irrigation project?
Well it's been irrigated since the beginning of the 20th century, with most of the infrastructure in place since the 1920's. So I assume any pictures of the area beforehand are rare or non-existent. The only negative environmental cost was in the early 1980's when attempts to deal with the raised water table by subsurface drains resulted in increased selenium levels which was too high to be tolerated by migratory bird populations. That issue was quickly dealt with and is no longer an issue.
The EPA's concern was decreased populations of Delta Smelts in the San Joaquin river, which they attributed to the pumps. This connection was never satisfactorily made, but they made the decision to cut off the pumps anyway. There was no study into the impact of the Delta Smelt population, thorough investigation of the reasons for it, any effects that the reduction of Delta Smelts would have, or what the trade-offs were.
The real issue is that when the alarm was raised to "do something" about the Delta Smelt, the usual suspects (Monsanto and DuPont) made sure that it was not their products, used extensively throughout the watershed areas for the San Francisco bay, and so another scapegoat was found. So their shills in the Federal bureaucracy made sure that the finger was pointed to the irrigation pumps instead. They irrigate land mostly used for orchards, where it's mostly small farmers that us a lot of migratory labor and significantly less Monsanto and DuPont products than the farmers in the bay watershed area that till, RoundUp, plant seed, RoundUp, spray pesticide, and clear-cut harvest every year.
How about I take pictures of the once-fertile farmland that the EPA turned into a desolated desert and drove 70,000 people out of work and out of the area? Think they would highlight that one?
First, I don't accept your premise that "rights are guarantees". Second, reproductive freedom requires life, among other things. If you can't guarantee life, you can't guarantee reproduction. Dead things can't procreate, and just like life, procreation is only possible by taking the lives of other beings.
Even if it were, it's useless. If you're not allowed to exist, you can't bring other beings into existence, either.
I think it would be useful for you to actually try to explain to me in detail where this "right to exist" derives.
Maybe it would be more useful for you to explain why you think "reproductive rights" are sacrosanct but the right to be alive is bogus.
You can't come up with any evidence to support your side, and you still assert that both sides have valid positions?
I don't have a "side", as I've stated over and over, you douchebag. FUCK! I should have known it was fruitless to try to discuss the issue and positions in this debate.
Do we have a right to exist?
No, of course not.
Then please fucking go kill yourself. Or I'll do it for you, since you don't think anyone should be allowed to stop me. If we don't have a right to exist, then your argument for "reproductive rights" is complete bullshit, because they don't exist either. If you don't have a right to exist, you sure as FUCK don't have a right to procreate. You don't have any fucking rights at all.
I agree, the line at birth is arbitrary. But if you want to improve on it, you're going to have to come up with some non-arbitrary measure.
I can't, which is my point. It's really complicated, and both sides have valid positions, even if there are a lot of really radically uncompromising ones from both camps.
How would you demonstrate empirically that a right to life exists, let alone that it is possessed by a fetus?
Do we have a right to exist? About the only empirical evidence of that is that we are here, so we have a right to be here. Although there certainly seems to be a lot of claims that the existence of the State takes precedent over the existence of any individual or group. If we can't get agreement that human beings have an intrinsic right to life and that governments should protect those rights, we're in a lot of trouble. Which is probably true, as it seems the President can now order the death of any citizen without trial based only on his discretion.
Every decision I make affects the people that love me. By your criteria, that means I essentially have no rights at all. The state can compel me to do anything it wants in the interests of those who care about me. This is an extremely troubling position for you to take.
I didn't advocate any such thing. The only issue that should be considered by a just government is when to intervene on behalf of citizens threatened with violence and death at the hand of another. A one-day-old is considered a person and his right to life is recognized. But to put that line at birth means there's no protection for a child the day before or even during labor, if the mother decides she wants to kill it.
I don't have the answer, but, again, I think it's more complicated than you want to make it seem.
I agree. And getting an abortion is one of the least costly ways to do so.
As far as I am aware, abortion is the most costly form of birth control ever.
Thank you for demonstrating the "screaming at each other" with hyperbole point of my post.
Abortion is traumatic for some women, largely because of guilt complexes they wouldn't have if people would mind their own business.
That's part of it, but I was referring to the procedure itself, and the emotional toll rarely as anything to do with anyone else's opinion on the subject. I'm not a woman that has had an abortion, so I can't speak to it myself, but I've heard plenty of stories, and while the disgusting attempts of others to denigrate them for making the decision they did are ugly, that's not what I'm talking about. To dismiss the physical, emotional and other issues women go through is pretty narrow-minded.
I agree, but given that abortions don't affect anyone but yourself, it's irrelevant to the issue.
Not irrelevant - abortion affects lots of people. It affects everyone that loves the woman that had to go through it, and anyone that might have loved the dismissed life over the next 70 years. Besides, you were arguing about "reproductive rights", not abortion. And abortion is most often a result of two people being irresponsible with reproductive rights (yes, not always, I know).
If you want true liberty, you must be willing to take responsibility, and accept the consequences of your actions.