Keeping politicians afraid of an uprising is a perfectly legitimate use. And, yes, scary guns are better at that.
Lulz. Ask the Confederates how well that worked out for them, and they had an army, equivalent weapons, and the best generals. How are you and your fellow Wolverines going to fend off Predator Drones with your dick extenders?
Or you could pull your head out and read up on false dichotomies. Why you nuke fanboys keep pushing the "u must luv coal!" strawman when wind and solar are already cheaper is a question for the ages.
There's plenty of evidence, it's existence just isn't being covered by the news outlets you read.
Birthers said the same thing about Obama being born in Kenya. They had just as much evidence for their claims as do you neo-McCarthyites that Russia had anything to do with anything.
Yes, WITH regulation, like you said (Freudian slip?)
Nah, just replying to too many people at the same time and not editing before posting. But a valid nit.
That is because regulation creates the monopolies. Large, powerful, well-connected megacorporations can afford to pay all the stupid compliance fees. Smaller competitors cannot and they are destroyed by regulation, this entrenching the monopolies.
Nonsense. Monopolies existed long before any government regulation, and if you repealed all regulation, you'd quickly be left with a single internet service provider. Because market consolidation through mergers and buyouts would leave you with a single company. And the high costs of entry would prevent competition from coming in - unless if was from an even larger conglomerate in which case a merger or buyout would leave you with a single provider. Again.
How long are you going to continue making up this shit about Putin attacking Ukraine
How long are you going to continue making shit up about Putin attacking Ukraine? Years of neocon blather and not one photo from a drone or spy satellite, only pictures posted to social media by your literal neo-Nazi pals.
But even if Putin outright invaded Ukraine, it would only be a million times more justified than any U.S. "intervention" you could name, given the fact that the U.S. overthrew the elected government. It's not like the U.S. would just sit with its thumb up its ass if Russia overthrew the elected government of Mexico and immediately moved to expand the Warsaw Pact to America's border.
perhaps, check the Wikipedia page about the conflict.
The facts are indisputable. It's a fact that the United States spent billions to subvert Ukraine's democracy - the assistant Secretary of State is on video - right in front of a big Chevron banner - bragging about it. It's a fact that snipers and junta security officials have confessed to being behind the the attacks on protestors and police. It's a fact that the vote to impeach Yankovich was unconstitutional as it lacked the necessary votes. It's a fact that the United States swooped in and recognized the junta as "legitimate" and immediately gave it money and weapons.
It is super sad to see you spinning *so* hard to make it Obama's fault.
Just how willfully obtuse are you, really? Do you practice a few times a day, or does it come naturally?
Own up to the fact that while Obama appointed him to the commission the party you are trying so hard to keep spotless moved Pai to the chairmanship
Which does nothing to change who named him to the commission in the first place. Hard to say he was unacceptable to head the commission when he was perfectly acceptable to Democrats to be named to it in the first place by your party's leader.
Can't wait to see you whine the first time Trump signs a Patriot Act extension, after years of not giving a rats ass when it was Obama doing it.
Yeah. It was. Copying and pasting since you skipped over it the first time:
And that's the most that came out of that little chestnut. Thus the debunking.
This isn't a hard subject. No one is denying the meeting took place. But that's as far as it went - a meeting. The person wasn't a foreign intelligence agent (as opposed to Steele), no actionable information was given (as opposed to Steele) and no money changed hands (as opposed to Steele).
You see how I linked a story from a reputable news source?
A highly touted story yesterday from the New York Times - claiming that Russians used Twitter more widely known than before to manipulate U.S. politics - demonstrates this recklessness. The story is based on the claims of a new group formed just two months ago by a union of neocons and Democratic national security officials, led by long-time liars and propagandists such as Bill Kristol, former acting CIA chief Mike Morell, and Bush Homeland Security Secretary Mike Chertoff. I reported on the founding of this group, calling itself the Alliance for Securing Democracy, when it was unveiled (this is not to be confused with the latest new Russia group unveiled last week by Rob Reiner and David Frum and featuring a different former national security state official (former DNI James Clapper) - calling itself InvestigateRussia.org - featuring a video declaring that the U.S. is now "at war with Russia").
A little Occam's Razor might benefit you here.
You first, Slick.
Curious. Why is there no investigation? Why can't the sitting president, with a majority congress get an investigation into this obvious crime by Hilary? Why is there instead an investigation into Trump et. al?
Because neocons don't investigate other neocons. Also, Google "Kabuki theater". Any more is-water-wet questions, or are we done here?
Marc E. Elias, a lawyer representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, retained Fusion GPS, a Washington firm, to conduct the research.
After that, Fusion GPS hired dossier author Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer with ties to the FBI and the U.S. intelligence community, according to those people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Elias and his law firm, Perkins Coie, retained the company in April 2016 on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC. Before that agreement, Fusion GPSâ(TM)s research into Trump was funded by an unknown Republican client during the GOP primary.
That an anonymous GOP donor funded research in the primary does nothing to change the fact that Hillary did as well, and did what she accused Trump of doing: conspiring with foreign interests to influence an election in the United States.
Do you also think that doctors talk about the danger posed by measles without ever saying what can be done about it?
Posing another question doesn't help anything. Again, you didn't present anything constructive.
Sure I did: I pointed out in a sarcastic fashion that you were being willfully obtuse. The easy answer to your is-water-wet question is that of course, those warming of climate change have always had solutions proposed to deal with it. You know, like moving away from fossil fuels.
That you've worked hard at ignoring proposed solutions doesn't mean they don't exist.
Are you pretending that Russia didn't just recently do a hostile takeover of Crimea and attack Ukraine?
Crimea overwhelmingly voted to join Russia after your literal neo-Nazi pals in Ukraine started passing legislation hostile to minorities. Pals that were put in place when the United States overthrew the elected government of Ukraine.
So get the fuck outta here with your neocon propaganda.
Are you claiming that Putin doesn't regularly kill off journalists to make sure that the news says what he wants them to say?
Let's go ahead and say that all these assassinations actually happened and aren't just unproven neocon propaganda. Putin's still no worse than the United States, which has persecuted journalists and whisteblowers on its own soil, deliberately bombed press offices on foreign soil, and asked for journalists to be kept in brutal prisons for the "crime" of revealing U.S. claims on cluster bombs to be...neocon propaganda.
You're equating the US with Russia? Has Russia spent the last 15 years bombing countries on the other side of the planet for bullshit reasons?
Yes, or more specifically, Russia have been bombing nearby nations the last 15 years.
Specifically, which countries in Central America has Russia been bombing since 2002?
Don't pretend like Ukraine and Georgia aren't under attack from Russia.
They aren't, you fascist POS. Georgia invaded South Ossetia and the United States overthrew the elected government of Ukraine.
Oh, and of course Russia is also engaged in the current conflict in Syria and a couple of other middle east nations.
At Syria's invitation, to defeat U.S. and Saudi sponsored ISIS and Al Queda terrorists occupying the country. Decidedly not a bullshit reason, as opposed to the illegal American wars on Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia....
And are supplying North Korea with nuclear weapons for apparently no other reason than to create instability.
NK built their own nukes as regime change insurance against the invasion the U.S. has been practicing every year since the 90's. You aren't even trying here, are you?
This is such a bullshit argument. Those are NATO bases and the U.S. have soldiers there because the host countries wants them there because of Russia threatening them. If Russia didn't behave like a dick then the host countries would have thrown the U.S. presence out long ago.
Your bullshit. It's NATO that's been threatening Russia, not Russia threatening anyone else. But again: how many bases does Russia have around the world compared to the United States?
So tell him to pound sand. As other posters have pointed out, there are millions of other Republicans in the United States who aren't lobbyist hacks.
Duh.
a minor commissioner with essentially zero power
He's one of a handful of votes, which made him extremely powerful. Same as any single Supreme Court justice has power, despite there being 8 other jurists.
Duh.
Do you seriously think that Republicans wouldn't have appointed somebody like him anyway?
Then it would be entirely on Republicans, and not Obama for appointing him to the commission in the first place. Kinda hard to block the guy when your own party's leader just named him to the panel.
FTFY. Why don't you try naming the nuclear power plant that has cradle-to-grave costs factored into the rates it charges to its customers. You can't, because such a thing is a unicorn.
Just because some of what the government does is a money and power grab does not mean that all of them are.
Just like replacing coal and nuclear with wind and solar is not a "power grab". You contradicted your own thesis.
Can we let the market and not the government decide that?
Has it ever occurred to you how much money is SAVED by regulation? Do you really think that if TEPCO and Japan's government had to do it all over again, that they wouldn't have spent a few hundred million on a higher seawall and better backups instead of a few hundred BILLIONcleaning up up a disaster?
But even if you eliminated regulations and let every nuclear Dr. Nick build a plant, nuclear power would never be cost effective because of the costs of plant decommission and waste storage.
They agreed to inspections as a trade for civilian nuclear power technology. They've been caught violating this agreement several times and a report from 2015 shows them to be uncooperative at best in holding up their end on openness of their civil nuclear power program. If they want civil nuclear power so badly then they are going the wrong way about it.
That's Trump's spin on it, which is naturally bullshit. Not only have they been in compliance, the "deal" despite being hailed as Obama being the peacemaker was in fact Obama being a neocon warmonger.
Again: both the CIA and Mossad have said for 15 years that Iran has had no nuclear weapons program, but Obama spent years illegally threatening Iran with military force for weapons he knew Iran was not trying to obtain. He also crashed their economy with sanctions, blackmailed Iran with its own money, and if he didn't sign off on the CIA murdering Iran's nuclear scientists in terrorist attacks, he knows who did.
You want to look at a country in flagrant violation of the NPT, look in the mirror as the U.S. has not only been violating the disarmament provisions of the treaty, it's spending a trillion dollars to upgrade its own nuclear arsenal.
I don't care if they aren't building nuclear weapons. So long as they chant "death to America" in their parliament I see no reason for any Western nation to trade with them. That counts double for anything of military value.
Are you a hypocrite of Biblical proportions or just ignorant? Serious question. The United States overthrew Iran's government in '53, backed a torture-loving dictator for decades, backed Iraq when it invaded Iran (and used chemical weapons in the process), shot down an Iranian passenger plane murdering all aboard, invaded two countries on Iran's border for bullshit reasons, and then engaged in Obama's neocon warmongering as mentioned above.
Iranians have a very, very long list of perfectly legitimate reasons to resent the United States.
North Korea has nuclear weapons because the nation is run by an increasingly paranoid group of little dictators.
Since you dodged the facts I'll just copy and paste them again:
1) they remember the U.S. flattening all of their cities and killing millions of Koreans, even if your American Exceptionalist ass does not 2) the United States has been practicing invasions of North Korea every year since the 90's - look up Foal Eagle 3) Insurance against regime change - American Exceptionalists may have forgotten that the Iraq, Libya and Syria wars have all been based on total bullshit, but they haven't
It's not paranoia when the U.S. is literally out to get you.
I see, you equate a policy of issuing licenses as lifting all regulation completely.
Not even that far, given how they skip over "well regulated militia". Maybe someday they'll get to the part where if they were to take up arms against the government, not only would they be traitors, but the Constitution allows Congress to suspend habeas corpus in times of rebellion. So the government wouldn't even need trials to throw their dumb asses in prison.
It's not like felonies are committed involuntarily.
It's like you're being willfully obtuse again. You want that convicted meth dealer working at a landscaping company, or do you want him back making meth full time in the apartment across from yours?
It's not like committing a felony is the same as Steve Urkel doing something, and then saying "Oops! Did I do THAT?".
Nah, it's more like you're being obnoxious. No one is saying that crime shouldn't be punished, that's a willfully obtuse straw man. The point is that if you're going to treat people as pariahs after their time has been served, you're just begging for more crime to be committed. You deny a convicted meth dealer any and all employment - just what do you think he's going to do to make a living, slick?
The problem is that your serious criminals tend to be habitual offenders.
Maybe because they are kept in total poverty and treated like shit after their sentences have been served. You take a convicted meth dealer and deny him employment - just what do you think he's going to do to make a living?
I've seen it pointed out several times that just about any serious crime should probably disqualify somebody from being alone in a tiny, high speed vehicle that probably has the ability to control whether the passenger leaves or not (child locks).
Why. Statutory rape is a serious crime but it has nothing to do with driving. Which was the parent poster's point. There's no reason a convicted statutory rapist can't work in a bank, and there's no reason someone convicted of bank fraud can't work at a daycare.
Which is exactly how other, less-stupid countries do it. Rather than do a background check that can disqualify someone today based on a petty drug offense that occurred during the Carter Administration, an employer asks the local police department if the applicant has a record that applies to that job. Otherwise you're practically begging for recidivism. If you're going to continue to punish people after their sentences have been served, some of them will decide they may as well be guilty of something. Especially if you're keeping them in total poverty.
Slashdot Mirror
Lulz. Ask the Confederates how well that worked out for them, and they had an army, equivalent weapons, and the best generals. How are you and your fellow Wolverines going to fend off Predator Drones with your dick extenders?
More irrelevant examples. You can't use fists or baseball bats to mow down a roomful of people in a matter of seconds.
Bittorrent has never killed a person, much less thousands of people a year in the U.S. alone.
The ones who submit their claims for peer review as opposed to making shit up? Any more is-water-wet questions?
Or you could pull your head out and read up on false dichotomies. Why you nuke fanboys keep pushing the "u must luv coal!" strawman when wind and solar are already cheaper is a question for the ages.
Birthers said the same thing about Obama being born in Kenya. They had just as much evidence for their claims as do you neo-McCarthyites that Russia had anything to do with anything.
whatadumbfuck whatadumbfuck whatadumbfuck whatadumbfuck
Clean that beam outta your eye before whining about the mote in the other guy's.
Nah, just replying to too many people at the same time and not editing before posting. But a valid nit.
Nonsense. Monopolies existed long before any government regulation, and if you repealed all regulation, you'd quickly be left with a single internet service provider. Because market consolidation through mergers and buyouts would leave you with a single company. And the high costs of entry would prevent competition from coming in - unless if was from an even larger conglomerate in which case a merger or buyout would leave you with a single provider. Again.
How long are you going to continue making shit up about Putin attacking Ukraine? Years of neocon blather and not one photo from a drone or spy satellite, only pictures posted to social media by your literal neo-Nazi pals.
But even if Putin outright invaded Ukraine, it would only be a million times more justified than any U.S. "intervention" you could name, given the fact that the U.S. overthrew the elected government. It's not like the U.S. would just sit with its thumb up its ass if Russia overthrew the elected government of Mexico and immediately moved to expand the Warsaw Pact to America's border.
The facts are indisputable. It's a fact that the United States spent billions to subvert Ukraine's democracy - the assistant Secretary of State is on video - right in front of a big Chevron banner - bragging about it. It's a fact that snipers and junta security officials have confessed to being behind the the attacks on protestors and police. It's a fact that the vote to impeach Yankovich was unconstitutional as it lacked the necessary votes. It's a fact that the United States swooped in and recognized the junta as "legitimate" and immediately gave it money and weapons.
Just how willfully obtuse are you, really? Do you practice a few times a day, or does it come naturally?
Which does nothing to change who named him to the commission in the first place. Hard to say he was unacceptable to head the commission when he was perfectly acceptable to Democrats to be named to it in the first place by your party's leader.
Can't wait to see you whine the first time Trump signs a Patriot Act extension, after years of not giving a rats ass when it was Obama doing it.
Yeah. It was. Copying and pasting since you skipped over it the first time:
This isn't a hard subject. No one is denying the meeting took place. But that's as far as it went - a meeting. The person wasn't a foreign intelligence agent (as opposed to Steele), no actionable information was given (as opposed to Steele) and no money changed hands (as opposed to Steele).
Lulz. NYTimes reputable? They're a printing press for neocon propaganda:
You first, Slick.
Because neocons don't investigate other neocons. Also, Google "Kabuki theater". Any more is-water-wet questions, or are we done here?
Actually that's false:
That an anonymous GOP donor funded research in the primary does nothing to change the fact that Hillary did as well, and did what she accused Trump of doing: conspiring with foreign interests to influence an election in the United States.
Sure I did: I pointed out in a sarcastic fashion that you were being willfully obtuse. The easy answer to your is-water-wet question is that of course, those warming of climate change have always had solutions proposed to deal with it. You know, like moving away from fossil fuels.
That you've worked hard at ignoring proposed solutions doesn't mean they don't exist.
Crimea overwhelmingly voted to join Russia after your literal neo-Nazi pals in Ukraine started passing legislation hostile to minorities. Pals that were put in place when the United States overthrew the elected government of Ukraine.
So get the fuck outta here with your neocon propaganda.
Let's go ahead and say that all these assassinations actually happened and aren't just unproven neocon propaganda. Putin's still no worse than the United States, which has persecuted journalists and whisteblowers on its own soil, deliberately bombed press offices on foreign soil, and asked for journalists to be kept in brutal prisons for the "crime" of revealing U.S. claims on cluster bombs to be...neocon propaganda.
Specifically, which countries in Central America has Russia been bombing since 2002?
They aren't, you fascist POS. Georgia invaded South Ossetia and the United States overthrew the elected government of Ukraine.
At Syria's invitation, to defeat U.S. and Saudi sponsored ISIS and Al Queda terrorists occupying the country. Decidedly not a bullshit reason, as opposed to the illegal American wars on Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia....
NK built their own nukes as regime change insurance against the invasion the U.S. has been practicing every year since the 90's. You aren't even trying here, are you?
Your bullshit. It's NATO that's been threatening Russia, not Russia threatening anyone else. But again: how many bases does Russia have around the world compared to the United States?
Yeah. He is.
It's funny how denialists accuse scientists of making shit up and then latch on to the first one who does, when his opinions match their ideology.
So tell him to pound sand. As other posters have pointed out, there are millions of other Republicans in the United States who aren't lobbyist hacks.
Duh.
He's one of a handful of votes, which made him extremely powerful. Same as any single Supreme Court justice has power, despite there being 8 other jurists.
Duh.
Then it would be entirely on Republicans, and not Obama for appointing him to the commission in the first place. Kinda hard to block the guy when your own party's leader just named him to the panel.
Duh.
FTFY. Why don't you try naming the nuclear power plant that has cradle-to-grave costs factored into the rates it charges to its customers. You can't, because such a thing is a unicorn.
Just like replacing coal and nuclear with wind and solar is not a "power grab". You contradicted your own thesis.
Has it ever occurred to you how much money is SAVED by regulation? Do you really think that if TEPCO and Japan's government had to do it all over again, that they wouldn't have spent a few hundred million on a higher seawall and better backups instead of a few hundred BILLION cleaning up up a disaster?
But even if you eliminated regulations and let every nuclear Dr. Nick build a plant, nuclear power would never be cost effective because of the costs of plant decommission and waste storage.
That's Trump's spin on it, which is naturally bullshit. Not only have they been in compliance, the "deal" despite being hailed as Obama being the peacemaker was in fact Obama being a neocon warmonger.
Again: both the CIA and Mossad have said for 15 years that Iran has had no nuclear weapons program, but Obama spent years illegally threatening Iran with military force for weapons he knew Iran was not trying to obtain. He also crashed their economy with sanctions, blackmailed Iran with its own money, and if he didn't sign off on the CIA murdering Iran's nuclear scientists in terrorist attacks, he knows who did.
You want to look at a country in flagrant violation of the NPT, look in the mirror as the U.S. has not only been violating the disarmament provisions of the treaty, it's spending a trillion dollars to upgrade its own nuclear arsenal.
Are you a hypocrite of Biblical proportions or just ignorant? Serious question. The United States overthrew Iran's government in '53, backed a torture-loving dictator for decades, backed Iraq when it invaded Iran (and used chemical weapons in the process), shot down an Iranian passenger plane murdering all aboard, invaded two countries on Iran's border for bullshit reasons, and then engaged in Obama's neocon warmongering as mentioned above.
Iranians have a very, very long list of perfectly legitimate reasons to resent the United States.
Since you dodged the facts I'll just copy and paste them again:
1) they remember the U.S. flattening all of their cities and killing millions of Koreans, even if your American Exceptionalist ass does not
2) the United States has been practicing invasions of North Korea every year since the 90's - look up Foal Eagle
3) Insurance against regime change - American Exceptionalists may have forgotten that the Iraq, Libya and Syria wars have all been based on total bullshit, but they haven't
It's not paranoia when the U.S. is literally out to get you.
I see you're trying t
In other words, hand waiving that does nothing to explain why he's on the commission in the first place.
Not even that far, given how they skip over "well regulated militia". Maybe someday they'll get to the part where if they were to take up arms against the government, not only would they be traitors, but the Constitution allows Congress to suspend habeas corpus in times of rebellion. So the government wouldn't even need trials to throw their dumb asses in prison.
It's like you're being willfully obtuse again. You want that convicted meth dealer working at a landscaping company, or do you want him back making meth full time in the apartment across from yours?
Nah, it's more like you're being obnoxious. No one is saying that crime shouldn't be punished, that's a willfully obtuse straw man. The point is that if you're going to treat people as pariahs after their time has been served, you're just begging for more crime to be committed. You deny a convicted meth dealer any and all employment - just what do you think he's going to do to make a living, slick?
Maybe because they are kept in total poverty and treated like shit after their sentences have been served. You take a convicted meth dealer and deny him employment - just what do you think he's going to do to make a living?
Why. Statutory rape is a serious crime but it has nothing to do with driving. Which was the parent poster's point. There's no reason a convicted statutory rapist can't work in a bank, and there's no reason someone convicted of bank fraud can't work at a daycare.
Which is exactly how other, less-stupid countries do it. Rather than do a background check that can disqualify someone today based on a petty drug offense that occurred during the Carter Administration, an employer asks the local police department if the applicant has a record that applies to that job. Otherwise you're practically begging for recidivism. If you're going to continue to punish people after their sentences have been served, some of them will decide they may as well be guilty of something. Especially if you're keeping them in total poverty.