Please don't complain about freedom while pointing at government coercion.
And the problem today is that the corporations have become the real government- the politicians are largely just the puppets of the corporations. *All* government regulation is vetted by the coprorate interests first. To the detriment of the small business person and the workers.
I'd be fine with a near laisez faire system- as long as you gave every citizen a mighty big stick to whack the corporation with when they did wrong. Say, the standard punishment in court not being a money settlement, but a stock settlement instead. For 51% share taken from all current stockholders.
Thank you for this- I just revised my estimation of when corporations started to become a problem downward a few decades- and I just lost a lot of what little respect I had left for the Republican Party and President Lincoln.
In those businesses working conditions were better than anywhere else in the Western world.
Do you have any proof of this? The family owned/operated businesses that I've seen have a tendency to treat all the workers as family- and in so doing, the "boss" becomes the "parent", and an autocratic one at that.
And, of course, no one talks about how all that great, wonderful, "for the people" legislation killed hundreds of thousands of small businesses, leaving corporations free to pick up the pieces, expand their markets, and levy their influence on a government eager to sell out. Nope, you won't find that in a high school or college text. It's anti-government and anti-corporation, and therefore anti-American!
Now that part I fully agree with. I also happen to think that changing from mere fines for everything to Jail Time (assets confiscated and placed in bank accounts for a time with the interest going to the victims) and Death Penalty (confiscation of your corporation or company by the Federal or better yet, the State Government) for corporate crimes is a darn good idea. Fines alone squeeze out the small business person- but other than fines methods squeeze the corporations harder.
But won't be complete until we can vote in our homes and have the vote instantaneously and securly posted to the election center.
But a far easier and cheaper democratic tool lies on the horizon, thanks to computer technology: taxpayer (as opposed to legislative) control of the budget. Many of us already file our tax returns electronically- it wouldn't be hard at all to add a few thousand questions to te form on how the government is allowed to spend the money.
Electronic voting does not encourage more people to vote, they still have to get off their backsides and go to a polling station regardless of whether they are greeted by a CRT or a pencil and paper. This idea that electronic voting is better for democracy is nothing but a myth.
Totally agreed. Oregon's on a much better track- if we ever have electronic voting, it will be over an SSL connection, because we already have no polling places left. Yes, folks, all the voters of Oregon are on the equivalent of permanent absentee voting; ain't no such thing as a polling place in the entire state, and we get two weeks to vote (ballots start going out October 13th). In the comfort of our homes, as Bill Bradbury says. And guess what- no discernable problems as of yet except for a few hanging chads in Washington County where they hasn't switched to scantron forms yet (they have now- our last two elections were scantron based).
Re:Of course the candidates are in favor!
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Assault Weapons Ban
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As you said 'that doesn't follow'. But I am curious, in a world of mutual physical exclusion, how will you prevent property? At the very minimum, lets say at a hypothetical start of the world, my property is the 2 square foots I'm standing on. Also the air I consume and the food I eat. If I am allowed to use this, it is in fact, my property. If I am not, no one else can be either -> no human life.
Mutual physical exclusion doesn't extend to the time axis, it only exists in the first three dimensions. The 2 square feet you're standing on will be vacant once you leave- you're only borrowing it, you don't own it. I'm not the inventor of this principle- even Christ used it in one of his parables (the parable of the talents, and how we're not the ultimate owners of the world, but rather mere stewards for the One True Owner). Use alone doesn't make for property ownership- only rental. Ownership would imply that once you've used it, nobody else can either- for any purpose. Of course, if that was true, the 30 or so ghosts standing behind each and every one of us would have used up the consumables on the planet long ago- no human life with that sort of ownership either. The air you consume and the food you eat will eventually be eliminated from your body, and will go back into the cycle of life, eventually becoming air and food consumed by somebody else. It's always been amazing to me how we use our technology to hide this fact from ourselves.
Of course, once you start thinking four dimensionally instead of three, it's hard to stop. But stop we must- for our minds and actions are commited to traveling only one direction along that axis and never stopping.
Actually, I'm a Catholic- and I don't see anything about disolving the ego in the New Testament written by Catholics for Catholics. YMMV with other denominations though.
I don't pretend to follow Hinduism closely, or in fact at all. My definition of God is based on Christianity, and would never destroy to create. The circlular meta-history that Hinduism is based on is not a part of my belief system; that's why the joke needed to be explained.
My form of enlightenment also doesn't require the destruction of ego as does the Hindu/Buddhist way.
Now, there's no doubt that Bush can continue on his path and ultimately defeat terrorism (ok, there's some doubt).
I agree that there is disagreement on how- I have great doubt not only that Bush's strategy can lead to a defeat of terrorism- I also have my doubts that terrorism hasn't already won.
I think we lost the war on terrorism the day we started torturing prisoners of war. And while Bush may not be responsible for it, the fact of the matter is that it's done and we can't change it.
Ok, this will get buried in the responses, so it will get somewhat hidden, which is what I wanted. In the GGP post, the 9 billion names of God refers to an Arthur C. Clarke story in which the ultimate Devil, the Hindu diety Shiva which destroys the universe, will come if this group of monks actually writes down all 9 billion names. In the story, some idiot sells them a computer- and as soon as they program the computer with their writing system, the universe is destroyed.
I combine this with my Scientific Catholic definition of God as "That force or being which created the universe". Since Shiva is the Destroyer, not the Creator, Shiva simply isn't in the list.
I thought it was really easy to get into Milliways. And then all sorts of neat stuff happens- the cow comes by and asks what steak it can donate for your dinner, and later on the universe will be ending for your entertainment.
But none of them mix economic liberalism, social conservativism, and the lessons learned from Operating Systems Design. That's where the Technocrats are different. Also, while it will be a lot of work, money will be minimal (at least in comparison to other political parties): we plan to run our entire campaign on under $500,000 of $10 donations to keep corporate money OUT. If you've got an Amtrak Station near you- then look for us in the Summer of 2007.
None seem to have a place for my unique mixture of being socially conservative and fiscally liberal (except for maybe the Franciscians, but they're a Catholic Monastic Order not a political party). Some come close- in this election I'm torn between voting for Kerry, Peroutka, and Badarnik as my top three choices. But none are exact, nor do any have the courage it will take to bring our troops home from Iraq, avoid being a pawn of the Corporations, and still win the War on Terror and reduce abortion.
I do have a budget for setting up my third party, and I will be setting up my website to collect donations. It's still expensive, but I think I can pull it off for about 1/600th what President Bush is spending on TV Advertisements (about $500,000). Plus it will be fun and I'll be able to write a book about corruption in politics and how it keeps good people out of office afterwards.:-)
:-) That's only if you're stupid enough to believe that Shiva is one of the names of God (without knowing what my definition of "God" is). I hate to give away the joke too soon...so I'll wait for the next stupid response to this before cluing people in.:-)
You're not the one missing something. The lexar software engineer who came up with this one obviously never read The Cookoo's Egg or the Linux Source Code- or he'd know how to do a password right (yes, the password does need to be stored someplace, NO, it does not need to be in it's original form, and ideally it should be either hashed beyond mathematical recognition or part of the encryption key for the rest of the data or ideally both).
I like those people. They're so stupid. I can get chocolate out of them simply by saying "I use the 9 billion names of God for my passwords. I'm up to Shiva".
Agreed, but they don't have the votes to get all three branches YET. They will one day if the whites and Kwakiutal don't get busy and start expanding their population, but not this round just yet.
Let's review the information at the time. A plane hit the WTC less than 40 minutes before. The second plane just hit. This is no coincidence, obviously, this is an attack.
The correct action, right after the 2nd plane hit, would have been an order for the Air Force to intercept and establish contact with all airliners currently on radar with their transponders turned off. As a pilot himself, he should have known that was the correct course of action. In addition, he should have appologised to the children, told them to go home and hug their parents, and left the school to find a communications center so that he could get in contact with the chain of command.
Once in contact with the chain of command, he would then be in a position to gather more information and take necessary action. He could have, at that point, prevented the attack on the Pentagon, or at least the chase pilots would have been able to radio a warning to evacuate Wedge 1.
The next day, we should have attacked Saudi Arabia, followed quickly by Afghanistan. Every illegal alien in the country should have been rounded up and either deported or held for questioning. Mecca should have been a radioactive ruin.
Not taking these actions proves W to be a coward- a puppet of the corporate interests who can't think for himself.
Also- what happened to the armed surrender option? We remove our soldiers from other countries, and in return, they either leave us alone or they get shot trying to cross the border. That would kill a lot fewer than a billion people. And it wouldn't use ANY WMDs at all (though it would require one change in our moral thinking- anybody trying to cross the border illegally is presumed guilty until proven innocent, and the penalty would be death on the spot).
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Please don't complain about freedom while pointing at government coercion.
And the problem today is that the corporations have become the real government- the politicians are largely just the puppets of the corporations. *All* government regulation is vetted by the coprorate interests first. To the detriment of the small business person and the workers.
I'd be fine with a near laisez faire system- as long as you gave every citizen a mighty big stick to whack the corporation with when they did wrong. Say, the standard punishment in court not being a money settlement, but a stock settlement instead. For 51% share taken from all current stockholders.
Thank you for this- I just revised my estimation of when corporations started to become a problem downward a few decades- and I just lost a lot of what little respect I had left for the Republican Party and President Lincoln.
small businesses, most of these family-operated.
In those businesses working conditions were better than anywhere else in the Western world.
Do you have any proof of this? The family owned/operated businesses that I've seen have a tendency to treat all the workers as family- and in so doing, the "boss" becomes the "parent", and an autocratic one at that.
And, of course, no one talks about how all that great, wonderful, "for the people" legislation killed hundreds of thousands of small businesses, leaving corporations free to pick up the pieces, expand their markets, and levy their influence on a government eager to sell out. Nope, you won't find that in a high school or college text. It's anti-government and anti-corporation, and therefore anti-American!
Now that part I fully agree with. I also happen to think that changing from mere fines for everything to Jail Time (assets confiscated and placed in bank accounts for a time with the interest going to the victims) and Death Penalty (confiscation of your corporation or company by the Federal or better yet, the State Government) for corporate crimes is a darn good idea. Fines alone squeeze out the small business person- but other than fines methods squeeze the corporations harder.
We can't put a corp in jail for 20 years, and we can't give it the death penalty for awful crimes.
Actually we could- we just don't because we don't have any politicians left to write the laws to do so, just corporate puppets.
How to put a corporation in jail for 20 years: take away it's bank accounts for 20 years and give the interest to the victims.
How to give a corporation the death penalty: Let the government confiscate it and start competing with other businesses in that industry.
Bet if you had those two punishments instead of the fines, the corporations would shape right up.
But won't be complete until we can vote in our homes and have the vote instantaneously and securly posted to the election center.
But a far easier and cheaper democratic tool lies on the horizon, thanks to computer technology: taxpayer (as opposed to legislative) control of the budget. Many of us already file our tax returns electronically- it wouldn't be hard at all to add a few thousand questions to te form on how the government is allowed to spend the money.
Electronic voting does not encourage more people to vote, they still have to get off their backsides and go to a polling station regardless of whether they are greeted by a CRT or a pencil and paper. This idea that electronic voting is better for democracy is nothing but a myth.
Totally agreed. Oregon's on a much better track- if we ever have electronic voting, it will be over an SSL connection, because we already have no polling places left. Yes, folks, all the voters of Oregon are on the equivalent of permanent absentee voting; ain't no such thing as a polling place in the entire state, and we get two weeks to vote (ballots start going out October 13th). In the comfort of our homes, as Bill Bradbury says. And guess what- no discernable problems as of yet except for a few hanging chads in Washington County where they hasn't switched to scantron forms yet (they have now- our last two elections were scantron based).
As you said 'that doesn't follow'. But I am curious, in a world of mutual physical exclusion, how will you prevent property? At the very minimum, lets say at a hypothetical start of the world, my property is the 2 square foots I'm standing on. Also the air I consume and the food I eat. If I am allowed to use this, it is in fact, my property. If I am not, no one else can be either -> no human life.
Mutual physical exclusion doesn't extend to the time axis, it only exists in the first three dimensions. The 2 square feet you're standing on will be vacant once you leave- you're only borrowing it, you don't own it. I'm not the inventor of this principle- even Christ used it in one of his parables (the parable of the talents, and how we're not the ultimate owners of the world, but rather mere stewards for the One True Owner). Use alone doesn't make for property ownership- only rental. Ownership would imply that once you've used it, nobody else can either- for any purpose. Of course, if that was true, the 30 or so ghosts standing behind each and every one of us would have used up the consumables on the planet long ago- no human life with that sort of ownership either. The air you consume and the food you eat will eventually be eliminated from your body, and will go back into the cycle of life, eventually becoming air and food consumed by somebody else. It's always been amazing to me how we use our technology to hide this fact from ourselves.
Of course, once you start thinking four dimensionally instead of three, it's hard to stop. But stop we must- for our minds and actions are commited to traveling only one direction along that axis and never stopping.
Actually, I'm a Catholic- and I don't see anything about disolving the ego in the New Testament written by Catholics for Catholics. YMMV with other denominations though.
Christian, creator God, not Old Testament Jewish Destroyer Vengeful God. Nuance, I know, but there it is.
I don't pretend to follow Hinduism closely, or in fact at all. My definition of God is based on Christianity, and would never destroy to create. The circlular meta-history that Hinduism is based on is not a part of my belief system; that's why the joke needed to be explained.
My form of enlightenment also doesn't require the destruction of ego as does the Hindu/Buddhist way.
Now, there's no doubt that Bush can continue on his path and ultimately defeat terrorism (ok, there's some doubt).
I agree that there is disagreement on how- I have great doubt not only that Bush's strategy can lead to a defeat of terrorism- I also have my doubts that terrorism hasn't already won.
I think we lost the war on terrorism the day we started torturing prisoners of war. And while Bush may not be responsible for it, the fact of the matter is that it's done and we can't change it.
Ok, just making sure I didn't overlook it in the GP post- I've got to save a link to your solution- looks good.
Ok, this will get buried in the responses, so it will get somewhat hidden, which is what I wanted. In the GGP post, the 9 billion names of God refers to an Arthur C. Clarke story in which the ultimate Devil, the Hindu diety Shiva which destroys the universe, will come if this group of monks actually writes down all 9 billion names. In the story, some idiot sells them a computer- and as soon as they program the computer with their writing system, the universe is destroyed.
I combine this with my Scientific Catholic definition of God as "That force or being which created the universe". Since Shiva is the Destroyer, not the Creator, Shiva simply isn't in the list.
I thought it was really easy to get into Milliways. And then all sorts of neat stuff happens- the cow comes by and asks what steak it can donate for your dinner, and later on the universe will be ending for your entertainment.
Uh, yes- that's why the loss of morality would be hard to replace, where we can always get another economic system after solidifying our borders.
But none of them mix economic liberalism, social conservativism, and the lessons learned from Operating Systems Design. That's where the Technocrats are different. Also, while it will be a lot of work, money will be minimal (at least in comparison to other political parties): we plan to run our entire campaign on under $500,000 of $10 donations to keep corporate money OUT. If you've got an Amtrak Station near you- then look for us in the Summer of 2007.
None seem to have a place for my unique mixture of being socially conservative and fiscally liberal (except for maybe the Franciscians, but they're a Catholic Monastic Order not a political party). Some come close- in this election I'm torn between voting for Kerry, Peroutka, and Badarnik as my top three choices. But none are exact, nor do any have the courage it will take to bring our troops home from Iraq, avoid being a pawn of the Corporations, and still win the War on Terror and reduce abortion.
:-)
I do have a budget for setting up my third party, and I will be setting up my website to collect donations. It's still expensive, but I think I can pull it off for about 1/600th what President Bush is spending on TV Advertisements (about $500,000). Plus it will be fun and I'll be able to write a book about corruption in politics and how it keeps good people out of office afterwards.
That would be using the password as part of (or the whole) encryption key of the data, correct?
:-) That's only if you're stupid enough to believe that Shiva is one of the names of God (without knowing what my definition of "God" is). I hate to give away the joke too soon...so I'll wait for the next stupid response to this before cluing people in. :-)
You're not the one missing something. The lexar software engineer who came up with this one obviously never read The Cookoo's Egg or the Linux Source Code- or he'd know how to do a password right (yes, the password does need to be stored someplace, NO, it does not need to be in it's original form, and ideally it should be either hashed beyond mathematical recognition or part of the encryption key for the rest of the data or ideally both).
I like those people. They're so stupid. I can get chocolate out of them simply by saying "I use the 9 billion names of God for my passwords. I'm up to Shiva".
Agreed, but they don't have the votes to get all three branches YET. They will one day if the whites and Kwakiutal don't get busy and start expanding their population, but not this round just yet.
Let's review the information at the time. A plane hit the WTC less than 40 minutes before. The second plane just hit. This is no coincidence, obviously, this is an attack.
The correct action, right after the 2nd plane hit, would have been an order for the Air Force to intercept and establish contact with all airliners currently on radar with their transponders turned off. As a pilot himself, he should have known that was the correct course of action. In addition, he should have appologised to the children, told them to go home and hug their parents, and left the school to find a communications center so that he could get in contact with the chain of command.
Once in contact with the chain of command, he would then be in a position to gather more information and take necessary action. He could have, at that point, prevented the attack on the Pentagon, or at least the chase pilots would have been able to radio a warning to evacuate Wedge 1.
The next day, we should have attacked Saudi Arabia, followed quickly by Afghanistan. Every illegal alien in the country should have been rounded up and either deported or held for questioning. Mecca should have been a radioactive ruin.
Not taking these actions proves W to be a coward- a puppet of the corporate interests who can't think for himself.
It's completely proper if you're slavic. Do I need to post the link to Elektronik Supersonik again?
Also- what happened to the armed surrender option? We remove our soldiers from other countries, and in return, they either leave us alone or they get shot trying to cross the border. That would kill a lot fewer than a billion people. And it wouldn't use ANY WMDs at all (though it would require one change in our moral thinking- anybody trying to cross the border illegally is presumed guilty until proven innocent, and the penalty would be death on the spot).