if you overload a cell tower cos it's a centralised network and sucks in an emergency, then you have your high density mesh right there around that tower,
The point was that this functions when the network is down, not just overloaded at one tower. And relying on having a high density of users right around the non-working towers is a dangerous assumption, outside the cities that already have other notification systems. From TFS:
The result is that information can propagate even when centralized networks fail.
And, of course, that the concern over data costs was ridiculous.
it doesn't have to cover an area the size of Nebraska.
I didn't say it did. I said it wouldn't be able to cover much of Nebraska at all, outside the cities. Even small sections would have no coverage with this, even at 500' range. Having an emergency notification system that relies on Farmer Bob being home, with a working and enabled cell phone, to bridge the warning from the next neighbor further away to you is a disaster waiting to happen.
100% of the people in Nebraska could have cell phones and you wouldn't have enough cell phone density in most of the state to make a mesh at 200' range.
How much do you pay for bluetooth and WiFi on your phone?
This is fascinating, intended for third world use. Do we imagine that the density of cell phones in the third world is really sufficient to meet the 200' range? Maybe in the city, on the streets. Anywhere else, huh?
I've been on Boost for a many years, so I haven't dealt with the high prices, poor customer service,
Boost Mobile has the worst customer service I have ever experienced. Not even close to T-Mobile when it is bad, or even Comcast. I could never get through on their customer support number, and this was a well-known enough problem that people were posting the secret codes so customers could get through as if they were sales reps. That's the only way to talk to them.
There will be other people charging $1000 (for an inferior apartment) whose customers will be those who only have UBI.
What happens to the people who own the $3000 apartments who go out of business because there is not enough demand anymore? Where do we get all the $1000 apartments that weren't built because they couldn't meet code, or there wasn't space for them?
Yes, the $3000/apt buildings can be torn down at a loss to the owners and $1000 crapholes build in their place, after about a decade of wrangling with the city development board. Nobody wants cheap apartments built next to them, so the neighbors will object. Smaller apartment will mean more people, more traffic, and demand more parking to meet code. And money to build them to begin with. And maybe zoning changes that will take a few years to migrate through the land use process.
Arguments that equate UBI with pure communism, so that everyone has exactly the same amount of money and assets, are strawmen arguments.
But the arguments that most people will have the same amount are not strawmen, and arguments solving the problems of cash flow under UBI that rely on all the really rich people paying all the taxes so handouts can be made are naive at best.
Yes, this theory comes up every time UBI comes up. People will move out of the cities to the small towns and rural areas, living in housing that does not exist in those towns and rural areas, and driving the prices up for what housing there is in small towns and rural areas. Also changing the nature of the small towns and rural areas so that they are not so nice anymore.
A rising tide floats all boats. A falling tide leaves all boats mired in muck.
that means the guy paying $100 in taxes and receiving $7,000 doesn't count as "reducing the tax burden by $6,900" because he is the tax burden.
How interesting that you understand that this guy is a tax burden, but don't realize that under UBI everyone is a tax burden. Everyone gets the same amount, don't they?
And thus to manage to hand money out to your guy paying $100 in taxes, someone else has to give up their UBI. The people who work for extra money have to hand over more of that money so that everyone can get UBI. You can't start handing money out to everyone without increasing the tax burden on those who pay taxes.
It is, in fact, a necessary fact that the tax burden will be lower;
Necessary fact that handing out more money means the tax burden will be lower.
I find it interesting that every time someone figures out a better way to tax people, or hand out free money, they claim that my taxes won't go up. And then I run my numbers through their plan and wind up paying a lot more. (The "fair tax", for example.) And I'm hardly rich. If I'm getting soaked, then I know that there are a lot of people in my same middle class range that are going to be soaked, too.
Your plan may work using 2013 numbers by assuming nothing else changes, but massive changes to the economy in freebies means massive changes elsewhere. And assuming that there will be a huge supply of your 244 sq. ft housing is nonsense. There are housing shortages today; who is paying for the massive building boom to create all this cheap housing, and who pays for the existing larger housing that would then go idle? Where do we put all that new housing? We have very little space to do that in this city, and we're not special.
Cabrini-Green housing project in Chicago, Il. The housing project deteriorated to the point that it was eventually destroyed.
But I'm sure you already know many examples of this effect. Perhaps you've never loaned anything you value to your friends. You value it, but to them it's just something they borrowed for free. Or perhaps your children, who have grown up living in a house that you had to work very hard to provide, but to them it is something they've always had and expect to have in the future. Or perhaps some simple electronics you own, like a cell phone. Do you treat a $40 phone the same way you treat a $600 phone? Or the "free" phone that comes with your wireless account the same way you treat the $600 phone you paid for out of your pocket?
Mostly from VAT. Wow, that was easy.
First, there is no VAT. And second, what astronomical percentage of VAT do you have to charge to have any revenue from all the free or really low cost stuff that the automated factories are turning out for free? Not so easy after all.
When a girl walks into your immaculate, 12,000 square foot mansion,
If you are making enough to afford a 12,000 square foot mansion, you are going to be taxed at a ridiculously high rate to pay for all the people who sit on the couch watching TV to earn their UBI. Money comes from somewhere. You can't eat the rich or tax them into oblivion without repercussions.
Because there's more to living than just surviving.
Yep. And having my weekends free is one of those things I find "better" about living.
If you already make the median income of around $25k/yr, which must surely be enough to survive, why would you ever take any steps to try to earn any more than that?
You assume that the only steps to earn more is to give up weekends for a low-paying job. My goal would to be paid more for the same amount of time, but with UBI you cannot do that. You get what the government thinks you need.
And, as I have pointed out, when you are given money for free, it loses value as something to be worked for. It becomes a human right to get money for what you want without having to work for it. Human rights never seem to contract, they always seem to expand. It's a natural progression. One you get a generation thinking that it is their right to one thing, they move on to another. We got people used to having access to telephones. They became necessary to live. Now we have people who actually think that the Internet is necessary to survive and want it provided to them. UBI will follow the same path. Human nature is human nature, and every utopian plan that relies on human nature changing is destined to fail.
Where does any money the government ever spends come from? Taxes.
I thought I already talked about the tax problem. Who is paying the taxes? Where are the sales or corporate taxes on all the things these wonderful factories are making for free? You cannot tax the people who make the money enough to give it all to the non-workers.
People making way above it pay for that hand up.
That's a utopian view of the system. In reality, there will be far fewer "way above it" than "hand out" people. If there is just three to one, you need to tax every worker THREE TIMES THE UBI just to break even. That means you take the entire UBI away from them, plus twice the UBI. Why would ANYONE work when they would be subject to such ridiculous levels of taxation?
People making a little below it get a little hand up,
There is nobody making below UBI. Everyone gets the same amount. There is no "little hand up". There is only "hand out" and "take it away in taxes". If you work a job that pays $2000/month and UBI is $2500, you don't get handed just $500 to make up the difference. You get handed $2500 from the government, and $2000 from the employer. There is no way that someone can make "a little below UBI". But if you are making $4500/month, you're now going to be taxed to pay for other people's UBI.
So if the tax means that you are in the 44% bracket (which it will almost certainly have to be to pay for all the UBI) you lose your entire paycheck. You are now working 40 hours or more a week for $500. Is your time worth that little to you? Would you work that hard to make so little?
And everyone's still better off working than not working,
Not when they have to give up their free time to do it (your $500 weekend job), or they move into a tax bracket where they're paying the UBI back plus a bundle of what they worked to get.
both the rich and the poor and everyone in between.
The rich get taxed into oblivion, those in between get taxed alot, the poor make out like bandits because they get free money.
It dos affect the number of congrsscritters which is important.
No, I'm sorry, you are wrong. Gerrymandering is how the borders of an existing district are set, not how many districts there are. It has relevance when you discuss who gets elected in that district, but it changes nothing regarding the number of electors a state has. One per Senator and Representative. And it changes nothing in the results for a Presidential election -- the votes from all districts are summed up for the state total. You could put 100% of a state's minority population into one district and their votes would still be one each in the state total.
It's amazing the sheer desparation with which you will deny racism.
Where have I denied the existence of racism? I have told you that with regard to the electoral college and allocation of electors, gerrymandering within a state has no relevance.
I don't even understand why:
I think the key words there are "[you] don't understand", because you are arguing with me over something I didn't say. And now I will say that you can continue on your own in this mission, which I assume you will misinterpret as me telling you to shut up and that I will not listen.
I am talking about Trump and his cohorts trying to blame Obama for their own unconstitutional actions
No, actually, you were providing a list of why you hate Trump. The first one, your "Muslim ban", doesn't exist. The others were specious hyperbole.
RIIIIIGHT! OK... So that's the new standard?
Well, your new standard for "disaster" seems to be "did something I don't like." I'm just trying to bring us back to a more reasonable standard. You claimed the calls were "disastrous", I'm just trying to figure out exactly what that disaster was. Do you have anything at all, or just more flummery and insult?
IT ain't 1960's bro. Nobody's putting up missiles.
Right. North Korea isn't busy testing them so they can, we don't have any missiles in Europe, Russia doesn't have any missiles... and I'm not your "bro". But it doesn't matter, because the examples I used weren't the only "disasters" that could have happened. But when the correct answer is "there was no disaster", it's hard to justify your claim.
Maybe then you'd realize that when the President of a country makes an ass of himself in front of the foreign leaders and the whole world - it kinda matters.
Obama spent eight years doing it. Where was your nearly illiterate outrage then? Is there a new standard at play here?
LYING IS BAAAAAD!
Yes. Like claiming there is a "Muslim ban" or that a couple of diplomatic calls where the new chief executive changed the tone of foreign relations away from "we're terribly sorry for everything we've ever done" were "disastrous".
That is like saying if you make $2000 a month at your job you have no reason to work a side job on the weekends because it only pays $500.
If you are being given enough to survive, why would you want to work a weekend job? Unless the money means something to you, it won't be a reward for working. And we've too much history that shows that when you give people stuff for free it loses value to them.
It's still $500 more than you had before.
But I have exchange my labor for it, where the other money I get I don't. Is it worth $500 to me to turn control of my life over to someone else? And if you think this won't be a problem when UBI is first implemented, think ahead to when the next generation grows up expecting free money from the government just because they exist. You don't think this will lead to even more demands for free stuff from the government? It's already showing up with people who think the government owes them a college education.
unless you are printing money to pay for your basic income.
Where do you think the money will come from to implement UBI? The automated factories another poster went on at length about makes stuff for free. A 100% tax on the sales of free stuff is $0. Will there be anyone making anything that will generate tax revenue, and if you tax it high enough to pay for UBI, why would they continue?
Yeah, I expect a trial in Kenya with 6000 people will be a great success. It's such a microcosm that is outside the real 1st world (or even 2nd world) experience that it will have no bearing on how it would work here.
I find lots of marketing things annoying, because I understand that they're trying to get me to buy more stuff. But I'm a big boy now and I can decide not to buy something even if "other people who bought X also bought Y." But I also understand that they do those things because they work -- people buy stuff because they see suggestions of similar or related products.
I also understand that marketers don't care what I find annoying because of that latter bit. One of the most annoying TV ads evah was the kid making slurping noises sucking the last drop of Pepsi out of the bottle and he wound up inside. A close second is the Kit Kat jingle done in crunching noises. A current third place goes to a local dental outfit that thinks that crunching noises -- and nothing but crunching noises -- are good advertising.
So, are you pointing out Jeff's web pages because you think he's good at marketing, or bad for using marketing, and therefore his abilities are good or bad?
Is there a ban on being muslim? I know of none. I suspect you are talking about the suspension of immigration from seven specific countries, using the incorrect language the mass media has attached to it.
Have you read the "Muslim ban"? I have. See no reference to muslims or Islam anywhere in it. You can read it for yourself and point out the places I missed, perhaps? I do see references to refugee status for religious persecution, but the religion is not specified any further than "must be a minority religion in the country of origin". This aligns rather well with the concept that those who are part of the majority can't be persecuted, they are always the persecutors, which is commonly applied to situations in the US where there are minority/majority issues.
Yemen raid fiasco
Military ops sometime go pear shaped. A flight of helicopters trying to rescue hostages in a desert country getting taken out by the sandy conditions, for example. (That was Carter, by the way.) I expect there is an ambassador who would have appreciated a military response when he was in trouble, even if it had been ineffectual. Trump is not unique in something like this.
Trump's disastrous calls to Mexican and Australian heads of state.
I'm not sure what disaster has resulted from those calls. Is either country busy importing Russian nuclear missiles to try to make us behave? Was there a plague of locusts, or what?
If this removal was a demand made of the last two "admin", then it surely wasn't caused by Trump. Who was giving the "option" of removing this material to the USDA? And if there was no demand, what was there to refuse -- in the name of "transparency"?
Nothing in the electoral college process has to do with white people in one state versus black people in another. The number of electors is not decided by the race of anyone involved; the winner of a state has nothing to do with who won each district in the state.
Whether or not there is "blatantly racial gerrymandering" is irrelevant to this discussion.
Why should votes in South Dakota be worth more than those in San Francisco?
They aren't. Electors are based on the number of Senators and Representatives. Representatives are allocated based on population.
Since we are a union of STATES, the system of electing the federal executive recognizes that there are both STATE and POPULATION based concerns, and the electoral college reflects that.
Why should votes of black people in North Carolina be worth less than those of white people in Kentucky?
Since you want to make this a racial issue, you may continue on your own.
Interestingly, I think President Johnson actually felt that way. But weirdly it didn't stop him from being an egomaniacle, incompetent sot.
Are you talking about Lyndon Baines Johnson or Andrew Johnson, neither of whom ascended to the office by being elected to it? I would guess that neither, when it came time to leave the office the first time, thought about running because of "civic duty", but both thought "this is cool being President, I am incumbent and can probably waltz through the campaign..."
Jeff Bezos: One way to his abilities is to look at any Amazon web page.
Yes, Jeff cannot afford to be President because he's too busy writing all those Amazon pages on the fly as people look at different products. I don't think Amazon web pages reflect too much on his abilities.
But notice that the "people who bought this also bought" and "other things you might like" are well below the part of the page where you buy with one click.
But this raises the question: are you insulting him for distracting you while you shop, or praising him for good marketing in that he distracts you with other things you can buy?
Because this action is being used to make political hay, and for political purposes knowing who did what matters.
Why the FUCK should I care
Nobody was saying you should. If you don't care whether it was done under Obama or Trump, that's fine.
But obviously you care enough to post a comment that amounts to "I don't care". That's an interesting contradiction between words and deeds.
Not when the "deletion" is a takedown from a website.
I take things off my websites (I run five) all the time. Does that make all that stuff "automatically important"? That's what Russ Kick thinks:
Whenever there are documents that were online, but got pulled offline, they're automatically important
So every time I update my personal website with a new "editorial" on some issue and take down the previous one, my opinion suddenly becomes important to him?
And does the fact that you don't have a link to the data mean the data has been permanently deleted? What an odd notion, most likely fed by a complete ignorance of how the web works. The "web" is not just another view of a filesystem like Explorer on Windows or Nautilus on Linux. It is a painting created by the web operator that consists of things that may be files on the system, collected as the operator wants you to view them, or live data, or extracts from a database. I have heard people tell me that a URL or URI must be a physical link to some file on the system. The point is, the disappearance of something from a website doesn't mean the information has been deleted, it means the operator has changed the picture he has painted for you.
And an even stupider idea Mr. Kick has:
"Nobody's going to go through the trouble to delete something that doesn't matter."
As my home directory and other directories fill up over time with cruft and obsolete downloads, I ROUTINELY delete things that don't matter anymore. As a web operator, I ROUTINELY take down material that doesn't matter anymore. An announcement of an activity that took place in 2010 doesn't matter anymore. It used to, but not today. And a list of things that are happening today will be obsolete and not matter anymore next week, if not sooner. Perhaps Mr. Kick never deletes anything from his web pages because he just doesn't want to "go through the trouble" of keeping it up to date, but a lot of other web operators do.
No, "public domain" means use of the works isn't legally restricted. It doesn't mean anyone actually has access to it.
So the "now available" is the only significant part of the statement; the "unrestricted use" is redundant. The way it was written is that the "unrestricted use" is the new part.
Slashdot Mirror
if you overload a cell tower cos it's a centralised network and sucks in an emergency, then you have your high density mesh right there around that tower,
The point was that this functions when the network is down, not just overloaded at one tower. And relying on having a high density of users right around the non-working towers is a dangerous assumption, outside the cities that already have other notification systems. From TFS:
And, of course, that the concern over data costs was ridiculous.
it doesn't have to cover an area the size of Nebraska.
I didn't say it did. I said it wouldn't be able to cover much of Nebraska at all, outside the cities. Even small sections would have no coverage with this, even at 500' range. Having an emergency notification system that relies on Farmer Bob being home, with a working and enabled cell phone, to bridge the warning from the next neighbor further away to you is a disaster waiting to happen.
Yes most people in third world have cell phones,
100% of the people in Nebraska could have cell phones and you wouldn't have enough cell phone density in most of the state to make a mesh at 200' range.
What about data and txt costs?
How much do you pay for bluetooth and WiFi on your phone?
This is fascinating, intended for third world use. Do we imagine that the density of cell phones in the third world is really sufficient to meet the 200' range? Maybe in the city, on the streets. Anywhere else, huh?
I've been on Boost for a many years, so I haven't dealt with the high prices, poor customer service,
Boost Mobile has the worst customer service I have ever experienced. Not even close to T-Mobile when it is bad, or even Comcast. I could never get through on their customer support number, and this was a well-known enough problem that people were posting the secret codes so customers could get through as if they were sales reps. That's the only way to talk to them.
Housing in small towns has a huge glut.
Not anyplace I know of in the US. Not here.
There will be other people charging $1000 (for an inferior apartment) whose customers will be those who only have UBI.
What happens to the people who own the $3000 apartments who go out of business because there is not enough demand anymore? Where do we get all the $1000 apartments that weren't built because they couldn't meet code, or there wasn't space for them?
Yes, the $3000/apt buildings can be torn down at a loss to the owners and $1000 crapholes build in their place, after about a decade of wrangling with the city development board. Nobody wants cheap apartments built next to them, so the neighbors will object. Smaller apartment will mean more people, more traffic, and demand more parking to meet code. And money to build them to begin with. And maybe zoning changes that will take a few years to migrate through the land use process.
Arguments that equate UBI with pure communism, so that everyone has exactly the same amount of money and assets, are strawmen arguments.
But the arguments that most people will have the same amount are not strawmen, and arguments solving the problems of cash flow under UBI that rely on all the really rich people paying all the taxes so handouts can be made are naive at best.
A rising tide floats all boats. A falling tide leaves all boats mired in muck.
that means the guy paying $100 in taxes and receiving $7,000 doesn't count as "reducing the tax burden by $6,900" because he is the tax burden.
How interesting that you understand that this guy is a tax burden, but don't realize that under UBI everyone is a tax burden. Everyone gets the same amount, don't they?
And thus to manage to hand money out to your guy paying $100 in taxes, someone else has to give up their UBI. The people who work for extra money have to hand over more of that money so that everyone can get UBI. You can't start handing money out to everyone without increasing the tax burden on those who pay taxes.
It is, in fact, a necessary fact that the tax burden will be lower;
Necessary fact that handing out more money means the tax burden will be lower.
I find it interesting that every time someone figures out a better way to tax people, or hand out free money, they claim that my taxes won't go up. And then I run my numbers through their plan and wind up paying a lot more. (The "fair tax", for example.) And I'm hardly rich. If I'm getting soaked, then I know that there are a lot of people in my same middle class range that are going to be soaked, too.
Your plan may work using 2013 numbers by assuming nothing else changes, but massive changes to the economy in freebies means massive changes elsewhere. And assuming that there will be a huge supply of your 244 sq. ft housing is nonsense. There are housing shortages today; who is paying for the massive building boom to create all this cheap housing, and who pays for the existing larger housing that would then go idle? Where do we put all that new housing? We have very little space to do that in this city, and we're not special.
Any examples?
Cabrini-Green housing project in Chicago, Il. The housing project deteriorated to the point that it was eventually destroyed.
But I'm sure you already know many examples of this effect. Perhaps you've never loaned anything you value to your friends. You value it, but to them it's just something they borrowed for free. Or perhaps your children, who have grown up living in a house that you had to work very hard to provide, but to them it is something they've always had and expect to have in the future. Or perhaps some simple electronics you own, like a cell phone. Do you treat a $40 phone the same way you treat a $600 phone? Or the "free" phone that comes with your wireless account the same way you treat the $600 phone you paid for out of your pocket?
Mostly from VAT. Wow, that was easy.
First, there is no VAT. And second, what astronomical percentage of VAT do you have to charge to have any revenue from all the free or really low cost stuff that the automated factories are turning out for free? Not so easy after all.
When a girl walks into your immaculate, 12,000 square foot mansion,
If you are making enough to afford a 12,000 square foot mansion, you are going to be taxed at a ridiculously high rate to pay for all the people who sit on the couch watching TV to earn their UBI. Money comes from somewhere. You can't eat the rich or tax them into oblivion without repercussions.
Because there's more to living than just surviving.
Yep. And having my weekends free is one of those things I find "better" about living.
If you already make the median income of around $25k/yr, which must surely be enough to survive, why would you ever take any steps to try to earn any more than that?
You assume that the only steps to earn more is to give up weekends for a low-paying job. My goal would to be paid more for the same amount of time, but with UBI you cannot do that. You get what the government thinks you need.
And, as I have pointed out, when you are given money for free, it loses value as something to be worked for. It becomes a human right to get money for what you want without having to work for it. Human rights never seem to contract, they always seem to expand. It's a natural progression. One you get a generation thinking that it is their right to one thing, they move on to another. We got people used to having access to telephones. They became necessary to live. Now we have people who actually think that the Internet is necessary to survive and want it provided to them. UBI will follow the same path. Human nature is human nature, and every utopian plan that relies on human nature changing is destined to fail.
Where does any money the government ever spends come from? Taxes.
I thought I already talked about the tax problem. Who is paying the taxes? Where are the sales or corporate taxes on all the things these wonderful factories are making for free? You cannot tax the people who make the money enough to give it all to the non-workers.
People making way above it pay for that hand up.
That's a utopian view of the system. In reality, there will be far fewer "way above it" than "hand out" people. If there is just three to one, you need to tax every worker THREE TIMES THE UBI just to break even. That means you take the entire UBI away from them, plus twice the UBI. Why would ANYONE work when they would be subject to such ridiculous levels of taxation?
People making a little below it get a little hand up,
There is nobody making below UBI. Everyone gets the same amount. There is no "little hand up". There is only "hand out" and "take it away in taxes". If you work a job that pays $2000/month and UBI is $2500, you don't get handed just $500 to make up the difference. You get handed $2500 from the government, and $2000 from the employer. There is no way that someone can make "a little below UBI". But if you are making $4500/month, you're now going to be taxed to pay for other people's UBI.
So if the tax means that you are in the 44% bracket (which it will almost certainly have to be to pay for all the UBI) you lose your entire paycheck. You are now working 40 hours or more a week for $500. Is your time worth that little to you? Would you work that hard to make so little?
And everyone's still better off working than not working,
Not when they have to give up their free time to do it (your $500 weekend job), or they move into a tax bracket where they're paying the UBI back plus a bundle of what they worked to get.
both the rich and the poor and everyone in between.
The rich get taxed into oblivion, those in between get taxed alot, the poor make out like bandits because they get free money.
It dos affect the number of congrsscritters which is important.
No, I'm sorry, you are wrong. Gerrymandering is how the borders of an existing district are set, not how many districts there are. It has relevance when you discuss who gets elected in that district, but it changes nothing regarding the number of electors a state has. One per Senator and Representative. And it changes nothing in the results for a Presidential election -- the votes from all districts are summed up for the state total. You could put 100% of a state's minority population into one district and their votes would still be one each in the state total.
It's amazing the sheer desparation with which you will deny racism.
Where have I denied the existence of racism? I have told you that with regard to the electoral college and allocation of electors, gerrymandering within a state has no relevance.
I don't even understand why:
I think the key words there are "[you] don't understand", because you are arguing with me over something I didn't say. And now I will say that you can continue on your own in this mission, which I assume you will misinterpret as me telling you to shut up and that I will not listen.
NOPE!
Glad you admit there is no "Muslim ban".
I am talking about Trump and his cohorts trying to blame Obama for their own unconstitutional actions
No, actually, you were providing a list of why you hate Trump. The first one, your "Muslim ban", doesn't exist. The others were specious hyperbole.
RIIIIIGHT! OK... So that's the new standard?
Well, your new standard for "disaster" seems to be "did something I don't like." I'm just trying to bring us back to a more reasonable standard. You claimed the calls were "disastrous", I'm just trying to figure out exactly what that disaster was. Do you have anything at all, or just more flummery and insult?
IT ain't 1960's bro. Nobody's putting up missiles.
Right. North Korea isn't busy testing them so they can, we don't have any missiles in Europe, Russia doesn't have any missiles ... and I'm not your "bro". But it doesn't matter, because the examples I used weren't the only "disasters" that could have happened. But when the correct answer is "there was no disaster", it's hard to justify your claim.
Maybe then you'd realize that when the President of a country makes an ass of himself in front of the foreign leaders and the whole world - it kinda matters.
Obama spent eight years doing it. Where was your nearly illiterate outrage then? Is there a new standard at play here?
LYING IS BAAAAAD!
Yes. Like claiming there is a "Muslim ban" or that a couple of diplomatic calls where the new chief executive changed the tone of foreign relations away from "we're terribly sorry for everything we've ever done" were "disastrous".
That is like saying if you make $2000 a month at your job you have no reason to work a side job on the weekends because it only pays $500.
If you are being given enough to survive, why would you want to work a weekend job? Unless the money means something to you, it won't be a reward for working. And we've too much history that shows that when you give people stuff for free it loses value to them.
It's still $500 more than you had before.
But I have exchange my labor for it, where the other money I get I don't. Is it worth $500 to me to turn control of my life over to someone else? And if you think this won't be a problem when UBI is first implemented, think ahead to when the next generation grows up expecting free money from the government just because they exist. You don't think this will lead to even more demands for free stuff from the government? It's already showing up with people who think the government owes them a college education.
unless you are printing money to pay for your basic income.
Where do you think the money will come from to implement UBI? The automated factories another poster went on at length about makes stuff for free. A 100% tax on the sales of free stuff is $0. Will there be anyone making anything that will generate tax revenue, and if you tax it high enough to pay for UBI, why would they continue?
Yeah, I expect a trial in Kenya with 6000 people will be a great success. It's such a microcosm that is outside the real 1st world (or even 2nd world) experience that it will have no bearing on how it would work here.
I also understand that marketers don't care what I find annoying because of that latter bit. One of the most annoying TV ads evah was the kid making slurping noises sucking the last drop of Pepsi out of the bottle and he wound up inside. A close second is the Kit Kat jingle done in crunching noises. A current third place goes to a local dental outfit that thinks that crunching noises -- and nothing but crunching noises -- are good advertising.
So, are you pointing out Jeff's web pages because you think he's good at marketing, or bad for using marketing, and therefore his abilities are good or bad?
Like the Muslim ban,
Is there a ban on being muslim? I know of none. I suspect you are talking about the suspension of immigration from seven specific countries, using the incorrect language the mass media has attached to it.
Have you read the "Muslim ban"? I have. See no reference to muslims or Islam anywhere in it. You can read it for yourself and point out the places I missed, perhaps? I do see references to refugee status for religious persecution, but the religion is not specified any further than "must be a minority religion in the country of origin". This aligns rather well with the concept that those who are part of the majority can't be persecuted, they are always the persecutors, which is commonly applied to situations in the US where there are minority/majority issues.
Yemen raid fiasco
Military ops sometime go pear shaped. A flight of helicopters trying to rescue hostages in a desert country getting taken out by the sandy conditions, for example. (That was Carter, by the way.) I expect there is an ambassador who would have appreciated a military response when he was in trouble, even if it had been ineffectual. Trump is not unique in something like this.
Trump's disastrous calls to Mexican and Australian heads of state.
I'm not sure what disaster has resulted from those calls. Is either country busy importing Russian nuclear missiles to try to make us behave? Was there a plague of locusts, or what?
If this removal was a demand made of the last two "admin", then it surely wasn't caused by Trump. Who was giving the "option" of removing this material to the USDA? And if there was no demand, what was there to refuse -- in the name of "transparency"?
Whether or not there is "blatantly racial gerrymandering" is irrelevant to this discussion.
Why should votes in South Dakota be worth more than those in San Francisco?
They aren't. Electors are based on the number of Senators and Representatives. Representatives are allocated based on population.
Since we are a union of STATES, the system of electing the federal executive recognizes that there are both STATE and POPULATION based concerns, and the electoral college reflects that.
Why should votes of black people in North Carolina be worth less than those of white people in Kentucky?
Since you want to make this a racial issue, you may continue on your own.
Interestingly, I think President Johnson actually felt that way. But weirdly it didn't stop him from being an egomaniacle, incompetent sot.
Are you talking about Lyndon Baines Johnson or Andrew Johnson, neither of whom ascended to the office by being elected to it? I would guess that neither, when it came time to leave the office the first time, thought about running because of "civic duty", but both thought "this is cool being President, I am incumbent and can probably waltz through the campaign..."
Jeff Bezos: One way to his abilities is to look at any Amazon web page.
Yes, Jeff cannot afford to be President because he's too busy writing all those Amazon pages on the fly as people look at different products. I don't think Amazon web pages reflect too much on his abilities.
But notice that the "people who bought this also bought" and "other things you might like" are well below the part of the page where you buy with one click.
But this raises the question: are you insulting him for distracting you while you shop, or praising him for good marketing in that he distracts you with other things you can buy?
May I ask why it matters?
Because this action is being used to make political hay, and for political purposes knowing who did what matters.
Why the FUCK should I care
Nobody was saying you should. If you don't care whether it was done under Obama or Trump, that's fine. But obviously you care enough to post a comment that amounts to "I don't care". That's an interesting contradiction between words and deeds.
Kinda hard to adjust a bulk deletion, ne?
Not when the "deletion" is a takedown from a website.
I take things off my websites (I run five) all the time. Does that make all that stuff "automatically important"? That's what Russ Kick thinks:
So every time I update my personal website with a new "editorial" on some issue and take down the previous one, my opinion suddenly becomes important to him?
And does the fact that you don't have a link to the data mean the data has been permanently deleted? What an odd notion, most likely fed by a complete ignorance of how the web works. The "web" is not just another view of a filesystem like Explorer on Windows or Nautilus on Linux. It is a painting created by the web operator that consists of things that may be files on the system, collected as the operator wants you to view them, or live data, or extracts from a database. I have heard people tell me that a URL or URI must be a physical link to some file on the system. The point is, the disappearance of something from a website doesn't mean the information has been deleted, it means the operator has changed the picture he has painted for you.
And an even stupider idea Mr. Kick has:
As my home directory and other directories fill up over time with cruft and obsolete downloads, I ROUTINELY delete things that don't matter anymore. As a web operator, I ROUTINELY take down material that doesn't matter anymore. An announcement of an activity that took place in 2010 doesn't matter anymore. It used to, but not today. And a list of things that are happening today will be obsolete and not matter anymore next week, if not sooner. Perhaps Mr. Kick never deletes anything from his web pages because he just doesn't want to "go through the trouble" of keeping it up to date, but a lot of other web operators do.
2018 however, the economy will tank, and we can blame Obama for that.
Does this mean we've officially ended the last eight years where we blamed Bush for everything?
No, "public domain" means use of the works isn't legally restricted. It doesn't mean anyone actually has access to it.
So the "now available" is the only significant part of the statement; the "unrestricted use" is redundant. The way it was written is that the "unrestricted use" is the new part.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art announced Tuesday that more than 375,000 of its "public-domain artworks" are now available for unrestricted use.
Isn't that what "public domain" means already?