Checks do cost more than a debit card, and some banks are now being real pricks and charging merchants some pretty nasty fees for processing checks as well, not to mention fees for counting coins. or processing cash.
The other problem with cash is the need to have somebody securely carry the cash to a bank at sometimes predictable times or to hire security guards to perform that act at random times throughout the week. So yeah, I can see similar costs applying to cash transactions as well.
That doesn't diminish the costs that businesses are charged for processing debit and credit cards though.
Have you ever asked one of the merchants where you are making a purchase how much they are paying to the banks for the use of your debit card?
It isn't free. In fact it can be a very significant business expense depending on the kind of business they are running. You may not be charged that money due to some silly laws, but a typical merchant is much more appreciative of cash transactions, where you should see paying in cash for something as even a sort of a tip to that merchant in spite of the fact that you end up paying the same amount in theory that other customers are paying for the same items.
I know South American banks are run a whole lot more efficiently than North American banks (which tend to really pile up fees on their customers and treat their customers like scum), but the fees are still something that even a South American merchant needs to deal with.
Wait, who's paying atm fees every time they use their Mastercard at a merchant?
They need to find a new bank.
Sadly, it is the merchant who is paying the fees most of the time.
There ain't no free lunch, and if merchants were allowed to charge the debit/credit card fee that they are charged by the card company for each transaction, it is very possible that most people would be using cash instead.
Frankly, a $1.50 per transaction is pretty reasonable all things considered.
Yes, it is possible for some merchants to essentially be paying banks for the right to give you a free lunch if you are buying something for a relatively low amount of money. Not only are they not really making a profit because of the cost to prepare the meal, overhead, and other things, it is possible that they are having to pay more in transaction fees than the amount they are taking in from the transaction in the first place.
Yeah, it sometimes sucks to be a merchant. Fees for debit cards tend to be lower (to merchants) than credit cards, but not by a whole lot. God forbid a merchant who has to deal with a real prick of a customer who decides to protest the charge that he has already lost money on and incur a charge-back fee as well due to a "canceled transaction", and other games that banks play with merchants.
This is also one of the reasons why Wal-Mart wanted to set up a bank of their own, so all of this money they were losing in transaction fees could be recovered at least partially (there is still the network fees banks pay, but those are a fair bit less). Also Wal-Mart, as "the bank", could protest charge-backs easier. That generally isn't possible for a small merchant though unless they join a credit union with other merchants.
I know its easy to make this a humorous subject, and that's sad, because its deadly serious. A lot of rapist kill their victims hoping to avoid prosecution. A man was just recently found on a 1987 rape, murder in northern California because of the state's expanding DNA library. We need to be teaching our young men that this is a zero tolerance behavior, and that anyone who thinks that women are meat to be used, is an idiot and a dangerous sociopath.
The way to solve that problem is for guys to step up to the plate and be real men and fathers to their sons. Sadly, there are a bunch of guys (aka "not men") who are mere sperm donors (to put it very charitably) with one night stands and basically not caring about what they do with their reproductive abilities.
There are also a whole bunch of stupid women who sleep around with a bunch of guys that don't even deserve the time of day, but that doesn't excuse the guys who are also being pricks in this case. If a guy performs an act that creates a child, he damn should take care of that child which is produced.
There is even less of an excuse if you have made some sort of even remote "marriage" commitment (speaking very loosely by even including "common law" marriages or even simply becoming married by registering in a hotel together), where by making children you also commit to raising that child until they become an adult. That includes simply being a father and taking responsibility for those children.
If you have a son, sit down and explain the facts of life to your son about sex and that women are people and not something to be used. Then again I do think that a great part of the problem is that a bunch of these guys simply don't have a father who is willing to even talk to them at all, or even a significant male role model of any kind to do the same thing. Football coaches used to do this until too many lawsuits made it impossible to talk to kids frankly in that manner.
I don't think so, the US is fairly different to many other entities, the US was founded on violence and (at the time, perfectly justified) paranoia of the state.
If you compare this to other British colonies, that gained independence more peacefully over time, you find a completely different attitude. Nations like Canada, Australia, New Zealand - their states are a lot less paranoid about national government, and they're far less protective over the idea that everyone and his dog should have a gun etc.
I think on one hand the early Americans were justified in having a revolution, but on the other, it meant that their nation was created in anger, and hence built on less than ideal foundations, whilst again, countries like Canada, New Zealand etc., had the benefit of building their nations in less haste, and hence were able to do so more objectively, more sensibly, and with less tension and conflict.
It is an interesting theory, other than the fact that the history of the United Kingdom itself is one of incredible bloodshed, civil war, forced military invasion and conquest of governments (some of which never really went away) and paranoia. The same could be said about many other countries, and the nations of Scandinavia started out with what could charitably be called terrorists or even pirates that put to shame those pretenders from the Middle East or Somalia.
The War of the Roses was certainly a period of time in English history that put to shame anything that happened in Egypt, Tunisia, or even Libya and even makes the current fiasco in Syria look rather tame and civilized. To put it into context, the settlement of North America by the UK happened just a little after that. In comparison, for those people who first settled Boston remembered this particular war and was as contemporary as World War I and the Crimean War is today (or even more like World War II). William Shakespeare died just a couple of years before those first settlements in Virginia and Massachusetts (to put things into historical context).
I'll agree that the divestiture of most of the former colonies of the United Kingdom have generally been a rather smooth process, and I'll even go so far as to suggest that the UK has done a better job with its former colonies than the USA has done with its former colonies, and both certainly have done a better job than France and its former colonies.
There is a huge difference between a local government and the federal government doing stuff like this, and a much, much larger difference between a government agency doing photo reconnaissance (something police have been doing for 50+ years I should note) and going out to shoot and kill somebody.
Big flipping deal here. It isn't "spying" any more than a police officer doing a stake-out when they suspect somebody is doing something wrong (with probable cause and other things that must be proven when doing such things). Besides, there are so many other cameras and things being used to monitor the day to day lives of ordinary people this is so far down the list of concerns it isn't even funny.
I'd be much more concerned about why the NSA needs to review every data packet that leaves your router and travels across state lines.
If you honestly believe that the Obama administration is going to be using Predator drones against ordinary American citizens, you are so whacked out that it is beyond belief.
Seriously, I don't know where people come up with dumb ass ideas like this. You might see something like what happened in Waco, Texas with the Branch Davidians and the disaster ordered by Janet Reno (of the Clinton administration I might add), but it would be very unusual and not be seen as a regular event. It would also not be without significant political consequences either.
Yes, America is fixing its own problems very well. Could you find a much better problem like partial-birth abortions or homosexual marriage instead, or do you consider those distraction issues from the real things that need to be addressed?
I'd be curious where the EU will be 200 years from now. If the history of the USA is any indication, the UK will be screaming about "states' rights" louder than South Carolina ever though of the idea.
Let me return the advice for you: do as the Swiss people, stay the hell in your country and let the whole world breath free and I won't care if you accept or not whatever international court.
That was indeed a typical response from most Americans until Winston Churchill stepped in and push America into going to war against Germany in the 1940's. In general, most American would want that to happen again, but the concern that letting the USSR wander loose and free throughout the rest of the world was seen as an even larger danger than Nazi Germany ever posed, particularly once they got nuclear weapons.
As for why George W. Bush made his little trip into Iraq, I can't defend that. He violated his own oath of office as did most of the members of the U.S. congress as well by going in there. I could say the same thing about "W's" father, and the guy who served in between those two for doing other silly foreign adventures that cemented the practice of oath breaking on the part of those serving in the Presidency. Mostly, the various Presidents of the USA got used to the idea of a long almost never ending war against an intractable enemy and once that enemy was defeated they wouldn't give up that authority. Thank goodness that Switzerland never had a President which was given such authority which was greater than any Cesar ever held in Imperial Rome.
If this is more of that "state's rights" bullshit, let me remind you once again: the original and most powerful argument both for and against state's rights was slavery.
Then why did non slave states refuse to join the union? Maybe they disagreed with being ruled by a group of people who had nothing to do with their culture. So if you're just spouting more "the confederacy was nothing but people fighting slavery," let me remind you dumbasses once again, the political arguments that resonated the most with people surrounded slavery, which is why they were fed to the public and historians, and why political leaders didn't discuss slavery as actual reasons to subjugate the south.
You know so little of American history it could be put on a matchbook cover and go into more detail.
Refuse to join the union? The only state which didn't join the original American Union was Rhode Island, which largely ignored the Constitutional Convention and just lived their own lives. When George Washington was sending correspondence to the Governor of Rhode Island about exchanging ambassadors for diplomatic recognition and treating that former colony as a foreign country that the Rhode Island legislature finally got around to ratifying the U.S. Constitution and become a part of the USA.
All 13 former British colonies in North America had slaves in 1787. In some of them it wasn't a very common practice with just a handful of slaves, but it was found in every single one of them to some degree or other, and is documented in the U.S. Census of 1790. I don't know who this "slave state" is that you are referring to unless you are talking about the much later arguments that happened in 1860. That was over 70 years later in U.S. history, and the argument was over if states once made a part of the union could leave, and if they left if they could forcibly remove federal officers and institutions from their state once they have given notice that they have left the union as well.
It should be noted that the question of forced removal of federal institutions was a resounding "No", so much so that even Cuba still has to live with U.S. federal institutions and bases in spite of the fact they are no longer U.S. territory. Yes, Cuba was once a part of the USA. Gitmo is no different than Fort Sumter in many ways.
BTW, I don't think Lincoln acted in a constitutional manner in regards to South Carolina, but then again South Carolina sort of started the whole thing by being jerks to the U.S. government as well. The U.S. Civil War is a philosophical mine trap that is best tread lightly.
So why didn't the idiot state that in the first place.
Since the government of the USA has been established and supported by the people of the USA, it could be argued that broad policies are indeed established by the people of the USA as well.
Or perhaps he is stating that America no longer recognizes popular dissent over such policies and that the system is so corrupt that it has become a kleptocracy.
Regardless, the anti-American tripe was so awful that it can only be considered an insult to all Americans as well as the government. I sure as hell am not apologetic.
Which is why the U.S. military is being authorized to go in and "rescue" American citizens from those courts and/or prisons where they are held. The capture of an American citizen under such jurisdiction may be considered an act of war in some situations.
For an ordinary citizen, you live under the government of another country, which includes execution if you convert to Christianity in some places. Nice about that, isn't it?
BTW, I sure hope you aren't an American or living in America. If you are, get the hell out of here.
I'm not leaving my country just because some assholes think they should be able to torture without criticism. The UN and the International Court are an attempt to bring the world a little closer together. They've had some successes and some failures, but the most important thing is the effort. Turning our back on the UN means turning our back on the rest of the world, all for the sake of some worthless sovereignty?
I also want to note one important thing about my reply:
The person I was responding to couldn't find a single redeeming feature about America and in fact equated America to almost every one of the worst abuses of humanity over recorded history that was caused by any government that ever existed that could even be called a government. If you hate a country so awfully that you can't find even one good thing to say about it, you really don't belong there.
This isn't just saying "love it or leave it", but if you are going to be so vitriolic that there isn't anything good to say and you think life is so miserable living in America that you can't imagine why anybody would put up with it, why would you ever come here and if you are here why would you stay?
I think there is good in America, far more than was implied by that post. I could explain what I think America has done right and why the rest of the world would be screwed over if America no longer existed, but I feel talking about those things is sort of pointless when you already hate the country so much that you think dropping an asteroid upon it and wiping it out completely would be a better option.
Should an ordinary citizen be critical of their leaders because they don't like what they are doing? Absolutely! This is particularly true in a democratic republic with elected representatives who should be held to a higher standard and expected to be doing the right thing, or at least generally follow the will of the people they represent. It isn't perfect, but it sure sounds better than many other kinds of governments where an ordinary citizen has a whole lot less say in how their government works.
The problems with the United Nations is for multiple reasons, not the least of which is that the other countries in the UN really don't share the same culture, values, or for that matter even the same political systems as America. As a place to meet and discuss things of mutual concern, the United Nations is a wonderful organization and in general can and should be used as an instrument for world peace. It provides a forum for global debates and a place where leaders of different countries (or their representatives) can join together and accomplish some amazing things.
The United Nations was never intended to be a global government though that would take over the sovereignty of its member nations, and those who think it ought to be a global government really are seeking to establish a global tyranny that enslaves everybody.
"States rights" is a part of the American experiment in governance, where the idea originally proposed was to have a very small national government where almost all authority for actions rested as locally as possible. This is generally a good idea, as some small town mayor or police chief may get a swelled head and do stupid things, but their reach is very limited and can't act when somebody goes into a neighboring town or state. Another aspect of this experiment is to disperse power of governance as widely as possible and to deliberately slow down decision making in such a way that important things take a long time to be resolved. Almost every major political screw up (including the Gitmo internment of "terrorists" and other similar prisons operated by the CIA and the U.S. military) happen because those involved did not follow the constitution or laws were enacted which granted unconstitutional authority.
Subordinating the U.S. Supreme Court to become subordinate to the International Court or World Court (two different entities) is something that is simply unacceptable. Certainly it shouldn't be done without at least some sort of constitutional amendment (what I was talking about in terms of dispersed political power and time to debate the issue) that alters the original contract that Americans set up with our national government to make such a thing happen. If the President of the United States is saying that America won't be bound by rulings of that court and if the U.S. Congress goes out of their way to enact legislation to explicitly authorize the U.S. military to act against rulings of that court, that is not only constitutional but imperative to the operation and functioning of American society. That isn't "turning our back" on the UN, but rather not letting a couple idiots changing a basic part of our government without our consent.
I am also stating plainly that there is a snowball's chance in hell that an amendment to the U.S. Constitution would ever be passed by the required number of states to enable jurisdiction of these courts over Americans. Thus, when the U.S. President is saying that the courts have no jurisdiction over Americans, he is actually upholding his oath to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States of America". Strangely, that is really the only thing a U.S. President has to do as well that is a requirement of his position.
No, but they can extract it 50 miles off the shore of Texas and Louisiana like Brazil and China do without getting any sort of federal drilling permits like American companies need to get.
I think you miss the point of what the USA is doing here.
What is happening is that America (and most Americans) don't want the U.S. government to be subordinated below some global government. We've already seen what happens when sovereignty is surrendered to a more universal government, and for the most part we don't want to see that happen again. Once was enough and even then that universal government has likely gone too far.
You may like the fact that Germany is the same as Spain except for some quirky food and local slang differences. That still isn't an argument for a universal government or why America needs to join that government. Have fun with your games in the European Union, but the American Union is already seen as too powerful (sort of implied by your statements above I should note). You want to see a universal government over the whole world with that kind of unchecked power?
BTW, I sure hope you aren't an American or living in America. If you are, get the hell out of here. If America is such a crappy country, you aren't wanted here either. We will fix our problems in our own way. I should note that the reason you know about the problems in America is in part because we talk about them and don't hide them under the table like some countries do, such as perhaps Iran, China, and North Korea. Living in America as an ordinary citizen isn't nearly as bad as you make it out to be either.
They end up everywhere. The global radioactive emissions have more than doubled since the first atomic bomb, and they aren't going down anytime soon. Factor in 7 billion people and thats a lot of cancer.
That isn't even remotely true. There was a huge spike in worldwide radiation exposure during the massive number of tests conducted in the 1950's and 1960's with a number of radioactive elements introduced into the atmosphere that weren't there before, but the overall radiation levels have been gradually dropping since then and are about half of the increase from before World War II (aka before the first bomb and reactors were built).
There is a reason for the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and there have been some dividends from that agreement that have been beneficial not just to the countries who signed the treaty but also to the other countries of the Earth as well.
There certainly are some components of those tests which have long-lived isotopes which are still around and are causing damage even today, so concern is certainly there, but don't go making up stuff either. Certainly the Castle Bravo and Tsar Bomba tests produced more radioactive contamination worldwide than all of the nuclear reactor accidents (and even deliberate meltdown tests) combined.
Radioactive elements decay. That is a wonderful thing because over time you can go back into these areas where there have been accidents or even deliberate contamination. Nagasaki and Hiroshima are still being used by Japanese citizens in spite of the fact that nuclear bombs were deployed in those cities. They have been rebuilt. Yes, there are monuments in those cities, but there aren't areas in them now which you can't enter due to excessively high levels of radiation. Slightly elevated levels of radiation? Perhaps, but not awful and over time it is still going down.
Evacuating large groups of people for months at a time, and killing and burying their livestock "WAY deep" constitutes a magnitude of liability no private company is prepared to take on. Your comment suggests you are in favor of large, coercive groups of quasi-governmental officials with the power to evacuate or temporarily relocate populations, organized and financed by the government, and all for the sake of continued profits for the power companies. Seriously.
What happened at Fukushima was a very rare event that had national consequences. The moving of people and killing livestock would also be a government function in any situation, including similar situations where something like an oil refinery blows up or some other similar significant industrial accident.
Just look at what BP had to do with their oil rig accident in the Gulf of Mexico. Even that involved government actions to deal with the general public.
This isn't just for the sake of profits of power companies, but a vital national resource where power from an energy plant is necessary for economic vitality. Without power being produced in some form, a country like Japan simply couldn't survive as a nation and millions would die due to starvation, disease, and simply being without shelter of any kind. In this regard, I dare say that nuclear power plants actually save lives and most definitely improve the standard of living for not just the shareholders of the power plant but for everybody that uses the power from those plants.
In fact it could be argued that a better gauge of poverty is to calculate how much energy is at the disposal of the person being measured instead of calculating monetary wealth. Certainly people in developing nations (or frankly "undeveloped nations") don't have access to nearly the same amounts of energy that people in developed countries have.
I have seen massive evacuations for wildfires (sometimes started by people and not natural), tornadoes, hurricanes, and many other kinds of disasters. A problem with a nuclear power plant is unfortunate and experience should try to improve the situation because it is a man-made device, but that doesn't mean you need to have a knee jerk reaction against the idea due to irrational fear of the technology like some sort of Luddite.
If something is living there, then by definition there's an ecosystem - it may not be a diverse one, but it would be there.
It would also be hugely significant. Mars is probably not the greatest target for finding interesting life in the solar system, but if Martian-evolved life of any type were discovered it would pretty drastically alter at least 1 of the variables of the Drake equation.
There is a pretty good reason to think that geological material (potentially harboring microbes) has been exchanged several times over the past few billion years, with the K-T event (that killed off the dinosaurs) being one of those events that sent material back to Mars again and likely seeded at least some sort of life almost everywhere in the Solar System where liquid water can be found.
If fact, a strong hypothesis suggests that life as we know it may have even originated on Mars and then came to the Earth many millions of years ago to see the Earth.
This isn't galactic scale panspermia but rather just something happening on a stellar system scale and certainly sounds reasonable with current scientific thought on the subject. When Apollo 12 landed next to the Surveyor lander and then found microbes which lived on the surface of the Moon for several years (from the Surveyor spacecraft), it seems reasonable that at least some microbes could cope with a multi-year journey through the solar system.
In other words, the Drake equation would not be altered here as it still is just a sample size of one, just on a larger scale.
On the other hand, if you could find some type of life on Mars that uses something other than DNA to pass genetic information, that would be incredible in so many ways. I would expect that any sort of life on Mars must have found ways to cope with the environment there that would make it quite different from life on the Earth, even different from the extremophiles that are often used by comparison, but there may still be common genes that indicate a shared ancestor. Curiosity is not going to be examining potential life forms to that level of detail, so that would need to be a follow-up experiment if anything resembling a life form is even found at all.
Interplanetary panspermia might give hints to interstellar panspermia though, or at least not rule it out as a mechanism for spreading life throughout the universe. It may even be hypothesized that after a planet, any planet at all in a galaxy, has been able to develop life forms that over a comparatively short period of time (when measured in billions of years) the entire galaxy is eventually "infected" with life to some degree at least where it might be remotely possible. Even though it is still just a sample size of one in terms of having life self-generate, in terms of calculating the number of planets in the Milky Way that could have life it might make that part of the Drake equation much closer to one than zero.
Right, and so was the war in Korea, Afghanisan, Czechoslovakia, Cuba, and elsewhere.
I'll also point out that almost all of the equipment that was used in the Vietnam war came from Russia (the bullets, the weapons, even the MIG fighters which flew against the USAF). The Chinese had almost nothing to do with that other than grudgingly allowing those supplies to be trans-shipped across China as a gesture of goodwill to their fellow communist brethren. The only reason the USA "lost" the Vietnam War was mainly because the U.S. Congress didn't have the balls to formally declare a state of war against North Vietnam, and thus have the U.S. Army occupy Hanoi... and because the U.S. government at the time (all three branches I might add) didn't want the U.S. military engaging in a bombing campaign against the factories which supplied the arms. That is something which was routinely done in World War II, so it really was a change in policy.
What kept Afghanistan going was the nearly constant supplies of arms coming from the USA, in particular Stinger missiles that proved very effective against helicopters and even Russian MiG fighters (compared to the cost of making those missiles). For some reason the USSR didn't want to go on a bombing run over Los Angeles County where those missiles were made... for largely the same reason that the USAF didn't go bombing the suburbs of Moscow.
Don't get high and mighty here, this was a blood and guts war that happened in Vietnam and it was a clash of two huge empires, mainly that of the Soviet Union and the USA. That the USSR found somebody else to take the bullets and "die for their country" is more of a stroke of strategic genius, and something the Vietnamese people unfortunately suffered disproportionally because of that sacrifice. It was the Vietnamese people that ultimately got the shaft in that war, and I blame the USSR for screwing it up and not America. It is still a screwed up nation with an incredibly oppressive government and a legacy from that war that yet has to be written.
BTW, China and Vietnam are hardly "allies" and in fact rather bitter enemies. One of the first things that happened after the USA finally left Vietnam was to engage in open warfare against China, and a very uneasy truce currently holds on the northern border of Vietnam that is in some ways worse than between North & South Korea. North Korean support is laughable at best, especially seeing how they were then and still are one of the most poverty stricken nations of the world (or did you mean South Korean support for Vietnam?) North Korea couldn't build a tractor today without killing a dozen of its citizens. I'll also note that China and Russia (even before the collapse of the USSR) barely get along and in fact the largest commitment that the "People's Liberation Army" has for national defense is against Russia. That was also true in the 1960's, but they kept a public face of goodwill towards the USSR in the interest of "International Communism". China still sees modern Russia as their most significant military opponent, even though they are trying to prepare to take on the USA if the need arises.
It's not that he misunderstands. It's that he disagrees. As far as he's concerned, an "orderly transition" means he rules until he dies, and then his picked successor rules until he dies, ad infinitum. It's worked for long periods of time, though usually in hereditary monarchies.
That worked out real well for the Romanov family. I suppose that they enjoy living in Paris with a death threat against them if they step back into their homeland. The "handpicked successor" didn't work out very well for Mikhail Gorbachev either.
I guess that could be a reasonable conclusion, seeing that their empire pretty much collapsed following that war. It just took a little longer for the USSR to have the same fate.
Then there was the massive Warsaw Pact tank armies poised to drive through Western Europe at a moment's notice.
You forgot 'so they could jump out of their tanks and apply for political asylum.' or perhaps 'Turn them around and start to fight'.
You also forget that those Soviet soldiers also had "political officers" who made sure those soldiers wouldn't jump out of their tanks to apply for political asylum, that there were massive defense barriers designed explicitly to keep people in (ever hear about the "Berlin Wall"?)
For the most part the people of the Soviet Union, particularly Russian nationals, were very patriotic and loved their country. They also didn't really worry about the politics so much other than wanting a warm house to sleep in, a bottle of vodka to drink, some bread in the belly, and perhaps making sweet love to somebody (usually the opposite sex) on a cold Russian night. That they might have thought the leaders of their country were a bunch of jerks, I think that could be said about most countries.
Russia and the USA engaged in open warfare against each other where over a hundred thousand U.S. and Russian soldiers (on each side) died in that warfare... sometimes in pitch battles and large scale engagements. There is a large monument to one aspect of that war in the middle of Washington DC listing the names of many of those U.S. soldiers who died in that warfare, and other monuments are found elsewhere. That sometimes "proxies" were put into play is also true, but when you cut through the BS, it was America vs. Russia.
To say that it was waiting for who was going to pull the trigger first is mainly to say it was a concern about which country was going to stop pretending this open warfare was done on behalf of proxy governments and instead just go all out and finish the war. That the casualties stayed at the hundred thousand (give or take a few) level instead of escalating to the millions is sort of fortunate, but there were still a great many people who died in that struggle.
The sad thing about Putin is that he sort of wants that "low threshold" warfare between Russia and America to start up again. I'm trying to say.... why?
I don't understand why this was labeled as a troll. While I might have said the same thing more eloquently and possibly with fewer insults, I happen to agree with this conviction.
America "won" the Cold War in part because Communism was a failed political philosophy where the people starved, millions were killed (far more people were killed in the USSR for political reasons than Nazi Germany killed in World War II, even counting the Jews in the concentration camps) and in general the philosophy failed to live up to its promise of bringing a better life to its citizens. Perhaps the Russians of 1980 were better off than the Russians of 1880, but in many cases it could be argued that serfs were still working the fields of Russia on the behest of the aristocracy, only the names changed and the coat of arms.
Putin is just a tyrant, of the kind that my ancestors (who lived in America) explicitly fought against and explicitly didn't want to see ever come to North America. I feel for the people in Russia, as they have so much promise and have an amazing cultural heritage that is also admirable as well. It just seems that as soon as one tyrant is deposed or even executed, that another one seems to pop up in their place like some cruel game of wack-a-mole that the Russian people can never quite get rid of.
I certainly admire Kasparov (somebody who openly ran against Putin for the Russian presidency I might add) and to me he is the kind of leadership that Russia desperately needs right now. The amazing thing is that the Russian people are fighting Putin, and that the world as a whole is becoming aware of the problems that the current Russian leadership is bringing to its own people.
Putin also seems to be misunderstanding the purpose of basic freedoms such as free speech, freedom to assemble peaceably, and the freedom for ordinary people to decide the next government leaders: By granting these freedoms, the society and the government in question can have an orderly transition from one governing philosophy to the next and "revolutions" take place at the ballot box instead of at gunpoint. By trying to suppress these kind of voices of opposition, Putin is insisting that he get assassinated and that his legacy will be seen as being a tyrant. Just as Stalin's legacy is now seen as being a petty tyrant, the same will be said about Putin. Perhaps not as evil as Stalin, but he will still not be remembered warmly.
I think in the long term (say over the next few centuries), Russia is going to become a major beacon of freedom and liberty, and Kasparov along with many others in Russia who are fighting for those liberties will be seen as inspirational heroes not just for Russia but throughout the world and the rest of humanity.
Slashdot Mirror
Checks do cost more than a debit card, and some banks are now being real pricks and charging merchants some pretty nasty fees for processing checks as well, not to mention fees for counting coins. or processing cash.
The other problem with cash is the need to have somebody securely carry the cash to a bank at sometimes predictable times or to hire security guards to perform that act at random times throughout the week. So yeah, I can see similar costs applying to cash transactions as well.
That doesn't diminish the costs that businesses are charged for processing debit and credit cards though.
Have you ever asked one of the merchants where you are making a purchase how much they are paying to the banks for the use of your debit card?
It isn't free. In fact it can be a very significant business expense depending on the kind of business they are running. You may not be charged that money due to some silly laws, but a typical merchant is much more appreciative of cash transactions, where you should see paying in cash for something as even a sort of a tip to that merchant in spite of the fact that you end up paying the same amount in theory that other customers are paying for the same items.
I know South American banks are run a whole lot more efficiently than North American banks (which tend to really pile up fees on their customers and treat their customers like scum), but the fees are still something that even a South American merchant needs to deal with.
Wait, who's paying atm fees every time they use their Mastercard at a merchant?
They need to find a new bank.
Sadly, it is the merchant who is paying the fees most of the time.
There ain't no free lunch, and if merchants were allowed to charge the debit/credit card fee that they are charged by the card company for each transaction, it is very possible that most people would be using cash instead.
Frankly, a $1.50 per transaction is pretty reasonable all things considered.
Yes, it is possible for some merchants to essentially be paying banks for the right to give you a free lunch if you are buying something for a relatively low amount of money. Not only are they not really making a profit because of the cost to prepare the meal, overhead, and other things, it is possible that they are having to pay more in transaction fees than the amount they are taking in from the transaction in the first place.
Yeah, it sometimes sucks to be a merchant. Fees for debit cards tend to be lower (to merchants) than credit cards, but not by a whole lot. God forbid a merchant who has to deal with a real prick of a customer who decides to protest the charge that he has already lost money on and incur a charge-back fee as well due to a "canceled transaction", and other games that banks play with merchants.
This is also one of the reasons why Wal-Mart wanted to set up a bank of their own, so all of this money they were losing in transaction fees could be recovered at least partially (there is still the network fees banks pay, but those are a fair bit less). Also Wal-Mart, as "the bank", could protest charge-backs easier. That generally isn't possible for a small merchant though unless they join a credit union with other merchants.
I know its easy to make this a humorous subject, and that's sad, because its deadly serious. A lot of rapist kill their victims hoping to avoid prosecution. A man was just recently found on a 1987 rape, murder in northern California because of the state's expanding DNA library. We need to be teaching our young men that this is a zero tolerance behavior, and that anyone who thinks that women are meat to be used, is an idiot and a dangerous sociopath.
The way to solve that problem is for guys to step up to the plate and be real men and fathers to their sons. Sadly, there are a bunch of guys (aka "not men") who are mere sperm donors (to put it very charitably) with one night stands and basically not caring about what they do with their reproductive abilities.
There are also a whole bunch of stupid women who sleep around with a bunch of guys that don't even deserve the time of day, but that doesn't excuse the guys who are also being pricks in this case. If a guy performs an act that creates a child, he damn should take care of that child which is produced.
There is even less of an excuse if you have made some sort of even remote "marriage" commitment (speaking very loosely by even including "common law" marriages or even simply becoming married by registering in a hotel together), where by making children you also commit to raising that child until they become an adult. That includes simply being a father and taking responsibility for those children.
If you have a son, sit down and explain the facts of life to your son about sex and that women are people and not something to be used. Then again I do think that a great part of the problem is that a bunch of these guys simply don't have a father who is willing to even talk to them at all, or even a significant male role model of any kind to do the same thing. Football coaches used to do this until too many lawsuits made it impossible to talk to kids frankly in that manner.
I don't think so, the US is fairly different to many other entities, the US was founded on violence and (at the time, perfectly justified) paranoia of the state.
If you compare this to other British colonies, that gained independence more peacefully over time, you find a completely different attitude. Nations like Canada, Australia, New Zealand - their states are a lot less paranoid about national government, and they're far less protective over the idea that everyone and his dog should have a gun etc.
I think on one hand the early Americans were justified in having a revolution, but on the other, it meant that their nation was created in anger, and hence built on less than ideal foundations, whilst again, countries like Canada, New Zealand etc., had the benefit of building their nations in less haste, and hence were able to do so more objectively, more sensibly, and with less tension and conflict.
It is an interesting theory, other than the fact that the history of the United Kingdom itself is one of incredible bloodshed, civil war, forced military invasion and conquest of governments (some of which never really went away) and paranoia. The same could be said about many other countries, and the nations of Scandinavia started out with what could charitably be called terrorists or even pirates that put to shame those pretenders from the Middle East or Somalia.
The War of the Roses was certainly a period of time in English history that put to shame anything that happened in Egypt, Tunisia, or even Libya and even makes the current fiasco in Syria look rather tame and civilized. To put it into context, the settlement of North America by the UK happened just a little after that. In comparison, for those people who first settled Boston remembered this particular war and was as contemporary as World War I and the Crimean War is today (or even more like World War II). William Shakespeare died just a couple of years before those first settlements in Virginia and Massachusetts (to put things into historical context).
I'll agree that the divestiture of most of the former colonies of the United Kingdom have generally been a rather smooth process, and I'll even go so far as to suggest that the UK has done a better job with its former colonies than the USA has done with its former colonies, and both certainly have done a better job than France and its former colonies.
There is a huge difference between a local government and the federal government doing stuff like this, and a much, much larger difference between a government agency doing photo reconnaissance (something police have been doing for 50+ years I should note) and going out to shoot and kill somebody.
Big flipping deal here. It isn't "spying" any more than a police officer doing a stake-out when they suspect somebody is doing something wrong (with probable cause and other things that must be proven when doing such things). Besides, there are so many other cameras and things being used to monitor the day to day lives of ordinary people this is so far down the list of concerns it isn't even funny.
I'd be much more concerned about why the NSA needs to review every data packet that leaves your router and travels across state lines.
If you honestly believe that the Obama administration is going to be using Predator drones against ordinary American citizens, you are so whacked out that it is beyond belief.
Seriously, I don't know where people come up with dumb ass ideas like this. You might see something like what happened in Waco, Texas with the Branch Davidians and the disaster ordered by Janet Reno (of the Clinton administration I might add), but it would be very unusual and not be seen as a regular event. It would also not be without significant political consequences either.
Yes, America is fixing its own problems very well. Could you find a much better problem like partial-birth abortions or homosexual marriage instead, or do you consider those distraction issues from the real things that need to be addressed?
I'd be curious where the EU will be 200 years from now. If the history of the USA is any indication, the UK will be screaming about "states' rights" louder than South Carolina ever though of the idea.
Let me return the advice for you: do as the Swiss people, stay the hell in your country and let the whole world breath free and I won't care if you accept or not whatever international court.
That was indeed a typical response from most Americans until Winston Churchill stepped in and push America into going to war against Germany in the 1940's. In general, most American would want that to happen again, but the concern that letting the USSR wander loose and free throughout the rest of the world was seen as an even larger danger than Nazi Germany ever posed, particularly once they got nuclear weapons.
As for why George W. Bush made his little trip into Iraq, I can't defend that. He violated his own oath of office as did most of the members of the U.S. congress as well by going in there. I could say the same thing about "W's" father, and the guy who served in between those two for doing other silly foreign adventures that cemented the practice of oath breaking on the part of those serving in the Presidency. Mostly, the various Presidents of the USA got used to the idea of a long almost never ending war against an intractable enemy and once that enemy was defeated they wouldn't give up that authority. Thank goodness that Switzerland never had a President which was given such authority which was greater than any Cesar ever held in Imperial Rome.
If this is more of that "state's rights" bullshit, let me remind you once again: the original and most powerful argument both for and against state's rights was slavery.
Then why did non slave states refuse to join the union? Maybe they disagreed with being ruled by a group of people who had nothing to do with their culture. So if you're just spouting more "the confederacy was nothing but people fighting slavery," let me remind you dumbasses once again, the political arguments that resonated the most with people surrounded slavery, which is why they were fed to the public and historians, and why political leaders didn't discuss slavery as actual reasons to subjugate the south.
You know so little of American history it could be put on a matchbook cover and go into more detail.
Refuse to join the union? The only state which didn't join the original American Union was Rhode Island, which largely ignored the Constitutional Convention and just lived their own lives. When George Washington was sending correspondence to the Governor of Rhode Island about exchanging ambassadors for diplomatic recognition and treating that former colony as a foreign country that the Rhode Island legislature finally got around to ratifying the U.S. Constitution and become a part of the USA.
All 13 former British colonies in North America had slaves in 1787. In some of them it wasn't a very common practice with just a handful of slaves, but it was found in every single one of them to some degree or other, and is documented in the U.S. Census of 1790. I don't know who this "slave state" is that you are referring to unless you are talking about the much later arguments that happened in 1860. That was over 70 years later in U.S. history, and the argument was over if states once made a part of the union could leave, and if they left if they could forcibly remove federal officers and institutions from their state once they have given notice that they have left the union as well.
It should be noted that the question of forced removal of federal institutions was a resounding "No", so much so that even Cuba still has to live with U.S. federal institutions and bases in spite of the fact they are no longer U.S. territory. Yes, Cuba was once a part of the USA. Gitmo is no different than Fort Sumter in many ways.
BTW, I don't think Lincoln acted in a constitutional manner in regards to South Carolina, but then again South Carolina sort of started the whole thing by being jerks to the U.S. government as well. The U.S. Civil War is a philosophical mine trap that is best tread lightly.
So why didn't the idiot state that in the first place.
Since the government of the USA has been established and supported by the people of the USA, it could be argued that broad policies are indeed established by the people of the USA as well.
Or perhaps he is stating that America no longer recognizes popular dissent over such policies and that the system is so corrupt that it has become a kleptocracy.
Regardless, the anti-American tripe was so awful that it can only be considered an insult to all Americans as well as the government. I sure as hell am not apologetic.
Which is why the U.S. military is being authorized to go in and "rescue" American citizens from those courts and/or prisons where they are held. The capture of an American citizen under such jurisdiction may be considered an act of war in some situations.
For an ordinary citizen, you live under the government of another country, which includes execution if you convert to Christianity in some places. Nice about that, isn't it?
Also: fuck you. What is this shit?
BTW, I sure hope you aren't an American or living in America. If you are, get the hell out of here.
I'm not leaving my country just because some assholes think they should be able to torture without criticism. The UN and the International Court are an attempt to bring the world a little closer together. They've had some successes and some failures, but the most important thing is the effort. Turning our back on the UN means turning our back on the rest of the world, all for the sake of some worthless sovereignty?
I also want to note one important thing about my reply:
The person I was responding to couldn't find a single redeeming feature about America and in fact equated America to almost every one of the worst abuses of humanity over recorded history that was caused by any government that ever existed that could even be called a government. If you hate a country so awfully that you can't find even one good thing to say about it, you really don't belong there.
This isn't just saying "love it or leave it", but if you are going to be so vitriolic that there isn't anything good to say and you think life is so miserable living in America that you can't imagine why anybody would put up with it, why would you ever come here and if you are here why would you stay?
I think there is good in America, far more than was implied by that post. I could explain what I think America has done right and why the rest of the world would be screwed over if America no longer existed, but I feel talking about those things is sort of pointless when you already hate the country so much that you think dropping an asteroid upon it and wiping it out completely would be a better option.
Should an ordinary citizen be critical of their leaders because they don't like what they are doing? Absolutely! This is particularly true in a democratic republic with elected representatives who should be held to a higher standard and expected to be doing the right thing, or at least generally follow the will of the people they represent. It isn't perfect, but it sure sounds better than many other kinds of governments where an ordinary citizen has a whole lot less say in how their government works.
The problems with the United Nations is for multiple reasons, not the least of which is that the other countries in the UN really don't share the same culture, values, or for that matter even the same political systems as America. As a place to meet and discuss things of mutual concern, the United Nations is a wonderful organization and in general can and should be used as an instrument for world peace. It provides a forum for global debates and a place where leaders of different countries (or their representatives) can join together and accomplish some amazing things.
The United Nations was never intended to be a global government though that would take over the sovereignty of its member nations, and those who think it ought to be a global government really are seeking to establish a global tyranny that enslaves everybody.
"States rights" is a part of the American experiment in governance, where the idea originally proposed was to have a very small national government where almost all authority for actions rested as locally as possible. This is generally a good idea, as some small town mayor or police chief may get a swelled head and do stupid things, but their reach is very limited and can't act when somebody goes into a neighboring town or state. Another aspect of this experiment is to disperse power of governance as widely as possible and to deliberately slow down decision making in such a way that important things take a long time to be resolved. Almost every major political screw up (including the Gitmo internment of "terrorists" and other similar prisons operated by the CIA and the U.S. military) happen because those involved did not follow the constitution or laws were enacted which granted unconstitutional authority.
Subordinating the U.S. Supreme Court to become subordinate to the International Court or World Court (two different entities) is something that is simply unacceptable. Certainly it shouldn't be done without at least some sort of constitutional amendment (what I was talking about in terms of dispersed political power and time to debate the issue) that alters the original contract that Americans set up with our national government to make such a thing happen. If the President of the United States is saying that America won't be bound by rulings of that court and if the U.S. Congress goes out of their way to enact legislation to explicitly authorize the U.S. military to act against rulings of that court, that is not only constitutional but imperative to the operation and functioning of American society. That isn't "turning our back" on the UN, but rather not letting a couple idiots changing a basic part of our government without our consent.
I am also stating plainly that there is a snowball's chance in hell that an amendment to the U.S. Constitution would ever be passed by the required number of states to enable jurisdiction of these courts over Americans. Thus, when the U.S. President is saying that the courts have no jurisdiction over Americans, he is actually upholding his oath to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States of America". Strangely, that is really the only thing a U.S. President has to do as well that is a requirement of his position.
No, but they can extract it 50 miles off the shore of Texas and Louisiana like Brazil and China do without getting any sort of federal drilling permits like American companies need to get.
I think you miss the point of what the USA is doing here.
What is happening is that America (and most Americans) don't want the U.S. government to be subordinated below some global government. We've already seen what happens when sovereignty is surrendered to a more universal government, and for the most part we don't want to see that happen again. Once was enough and even then that universal government has likely gone too far.
You may like the fact that Germany is the same as Spain except for some quirky food and local slang differences. That still isn't an argument for a universal government or why America needs to join that government. Have fun with your games in the European Union, but the American Union is already seen as too powerful (sort of implied by your statements above I should note). You want to see a universal government over the whole world with that kind of unchecked power?
BTW, I sure hope you aren't an American or living in America. If you are, get the hell out of here. If America is such a crappy country, you aren't wanted here either. We will fix our problems in our own way. I should note that the reason you know about the problems in America is in part because we talk about them and don't hide them under the table like some countries do, such as perhaps Iran, China, and North Korea. Living in America as an ordinary citizen isn't nearly as bad as you make it out to be either.
They end up everywhere. The global radioactive emissions have more than doubled since the first atomic bomb, and they aren't going down anytime soon. Factor in 7 billion people and thats a lot of cancer.
That isn't even remotely true. There was a huge spike in worldwide radiation exposure during the massive number of tests conducted in the 1950's and 1960's with a number of radioactive elements introduced into the atmosphere that weren't there before, but the overall radiation levels have been gradually dropping since then and are about half of the increase from before World War II (aka before the first bomb and reactors were built).
There is a reason for the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and there have been some dividends from that agreement that have been beneficial not just to the countries who signed the treaty but also to the other countries of the Earth as well.
There certainly are some components of those tests which have long-lived isotopes which are still around and are causing damage even today, so concern is certainly there, but don't go making up stuff either. Certainly the Castle Bravo and Tsar Bomba tests produced more radioactive contamination worldwide than all of the nuclear reactor accidents (and even deliberate meltdown tests) combined.
Radioactive elements decay. That is a wonderful thing because over time you can go back into these areas where there have been accidents or even deliberate contamination. Nagasaki and Hiroshima are still being used by Japanese citizens in spite of the fact that nuclear bombs were deployed in those cities. They have been rebuilt. Yes, there are monuments in those cities, but there aren't areas in them now which you can't enter due to excessively high levels of radiation. Slightly elevated levels of radiation? Perhaps, but not awful and over time it is still going down.
Evacuating large groups of people for months at a time, and killing and burying their livestock "WAY deep" constitutes a magnitude of liability no private company is prepared to take on. Your comment suggests you are in favor of large, coercive groups of quasi-governmental officials with the power to evacuate or temporarily relocate populations, organized and financed by the government, and all for the sake of continued profits for the power companies. Seriously.
What happened at Fukushima was a very rare event that had national consequences. The moving of people and killing livestock would also be a government function in any situation, including similar situations where something like an oil refinery blows up or some other similar significant industrial accident.
Just look at what BP had to do with their oil rig accident in the Gulf of Mexico. Even that involved government actions to deal with the general public.
This isn't just for the sake of profits of power companies, but a vital national resource where power from an energy plant is necessary for economic vitality. Without power being produced in some form, a country like Japan simply couldn't survive as a nation and millions would die due to starvation, disease, and simply being without shelter of any kind. In this regard, I dare say that nuclear power plants actually save lives and most definitely improve the standard of living for not just the shareholders of the power plant but for everybody that uses the power from those plants.
In fact it could be argued that a better gauge of poverty is to calculate how much energy is at the disposal of the person being measured instead of calculating monetary wealth. Certainly people in developing nations (or frankly "undeveloped nations") don't have access to nearly the same amounts of energy that people in developed countries have.
I have seen massive evacuations for wildfires (sometimes started by people and not natural), tornadoes, hurricanes, and many other kinds of disasters. A problem with a nuclear power plant is unfortunate and experience should try to improve the situation because it is a man-made device, but that doesn't mean you need to have a knee jerk reaction against the idea due to irrational fear of the technology like some sort of Luddite.
If something is living there, then by definition there's an ecosystem - it may not be a diverse one, but it would be there.
It would also be hugely significant. Mars is probably not the greatest target for finding interesting life in the solar system, but if Martian-evolved life of any type were discovered it would pretty drastically alter at least 1 of the variables of the Drake equation.
There is a pretty good reason to think that geological material (potentially harboring microbes) has been exchanged several times over the past few billion years, with the K-T event (that killed off the dinosaurs) being one of those events that sent material back to Mars again and likely seeded at least some sort of life almost everywhere in the Solar System where liquid water can be found.
If fact, a strong hypothesis suggests that life as we know it may have even originated on Mars and then came to the Earth many millions of years ago to see the Earth.
This isn't galactic scale panspermia but rather just something happening on a stellar system scale and certainly sounds reasonable with current scientific thought on the subject. When Apollo 12 landed next to the Surveyor lander and then found microbes which lived on the surface of the Moon for several years (from the Surveyor spacecraft), it seems reasonable that at least some microbes could cope with a multi-year journey through the solar system.
In other words, the Drake equation would not be altered here as it still is just a sample size of one, just on a larger scale.
On the other hand, if you could find some type of life on Mars that uses something other than DNA to pass genetic information, that would be incredible in so many ways. I would expect that any sort of life on Mars must have found ways to cope with the environment there that would make it quite different from life on the Earth, even different from the extremophiles that are often used by comparison, but there may still be common genes that indicate a shared ancestor. Curiosity is not going to be examining potential life forms to that level of detail, so that would need to be a follow-up experiment if anything resembling a life form is even found at all.
Interplanetary panspermia might give hints to interstellar panspermia though, or at least not rule it out as a mechanism for spreading life throughout the universe. It may even be hypothesized that after a planet, any planet at all in a galaxy, has been able to develop life forms that over a comparatively short period of time (when measured in billions of years) the entire galaxy is eventually "infected" with life to some degree at least where it might be remotely possible. Even though it is still just a sample size of one in terms of having life self-generate, in terms of calculating the number of planets in the Milky Way that could have life it might make that part of the Drake equation much closer to one than zero.
Right, and so was the war in Korea, Afghanisan, Czechoslovakia, Cuba, and elsewhere.
I'll also point out that almost all of the equipment that was used in the Vietnam war came from Russia (the bullets, the weapons, even the MIG fighters which flew against the USAF). The Chinese had almost nothing to do with that other than grudgingly allowing those supplies to be trans-shipped across China as a gesture of goodwill to their fellow communist brethren. The only reason the USA "lost" the Vietnam War was mainly because the U.S. Congress didn't have the balls to formally declare a state of war against North Vietnam, and thus have the U.S. Army occupy Hanoi... and because the U.S. government at the time (all three branches I might add) didn't want the U.S. military engaging in a bombing campaign against the factories which supplied the arms. That is something which was routinely done in World War II, so it really was a change in policy.
What kept Afghanistan going was the nearly constant supplies of arms coming from the USA, in particular Stinger missiles that proved very effective against helicopters and even Russian MiG fighters (compared to the cost of making those missiles). For some reason the USSR didn't want to go on a bombing run over Los Angeles County where those missiles were made... for largely the same reason that the USAF didn't go bombing the suburbs of Moscow.
Don't get high and mighty here, this was a blood and guts war that happened in Vietnam and it was a clash of two huge empires, mainly that of the Soviet Union and the USA. That the USSR found somebody else to take the bullets and "die for their country" is more of a stroke of strategic genius, and something the Vietnamese people unfortunately suffered disproportionally because of that sacrifice. It was the Vietnamese people that ultimately got the shaft in that war, and I blame the USSR for screwing it up and not America. It is still a screwed up nation with an incredibly oppressive government and a legacy from that war that yet has to be written.
BTW, China and Vietnam are hardly "allies" and in fact rather bitter enemies. One of the first things that happened after the USA finally left Vietnam was to engage in open warfare against China, and a very uneasy truce currently holds on the northern border of Vietnam that is in some ways worse than between North & South Korea. North Korean support is laughable at best, especially seeing how they were then and still are one of the most poverty stricken nations of the world (or did you mean South Korean support for Vietnam?) North Korea couldn't build a tractor today without killing a dozen of its citizens. I'll also note that China and Russia (even before the collapse of the USSR) barely get along and in fact the largest commitment that the "People's Liberation Army" has for national defense is against Russia. That was also true in the 1960's, but they kept a public face of goodwill towards the USSR in the interest of "International Communism". China still sees modern Russia as their most significant military opponent, even though they are trying to prepare to take on the USA if the need arises.
It's not that he misunderstands. It's that he disagrees. As far as he's concerned, an "orderly transition" means he rules until he dies, and then his picked successor rules until he dies, ad infinitum. It's worked for long periods of time, though usually in hereditary monarchies.
That worked out real well for the Romanov family. I suppose that they enjoy living in Paris with a death threat against them if they step back into their homeland. The "handpicked successor" didn't work out very well for Mikhail Gorbachev either.
The United Kingdom lost World War II?
I guess that could be a reasonable conclusion, seeing that their empire pretty much collapsed following that war. It just took a little longer for the USSR to have the same fate.
Then there was the massive Warsaw Pact tank armies poised to drive through Western Europe at a moment's notice.
You forgot 'so they could jump out of their tanks and apply for political asylum.' or perhaps 'Turn them around and start to fight'.
You also forget that those Soviet soldiers also had "political officers" who made sure those soldiers wouldn't jump out of their tanks to apply for political asylum, that there were massive defense barriers designed explicitly to keep people in (ever hear about the "Berlin Wall"?)
For the most part the people of the Soviet Union, particularly Russian nationals, were very patriotic and loved their country. They also didn't really worry about the politics so much other than wanting a warm house to sleep in, a bottle of vodka to drink, some bread in the belly, and perhaps making sweet love to somebody (usually the opposite sex) on a cold Russian night. That they might have thought the leaders of their country were a bunch of jerks, I think that could be said about most countries.
Russia and the USA engaged in open warfare against each other where over a hundred thousand U.S. and Russian soldiers (on each side) died in that warfare... sometimes in pitch battles and large scale engagements. There is a large monument to one aspect of that war in the middle of Washington DC listing the names of many of those U.S. soldiers who died in that warfare, and other monuments are found elsewhere. That sometimes "proxies" were put into play is also true, but when you cut through the BS, it was America vs. Russia.
To say that it was waiting for who was going to pull the trigger first is mainly to say it was a concern about which country was going to stop pretending this open warfare was done on behalf of proxy governments and instead just go all out and finish the war. That the casualties stayed at the hundred thousand (give or take a few) level instead of escalating to the millions is sort of fortunate, but there were still a great many people who died in that struggle.
The sad thing about Putin is that he sort of wants that "low threshold" warfare between Russia and America to start up again. I'm trying to say.... why?
I don't understand why this was labeled as a troll. While I might have said the same thing more eloquently and possibly with fewer insults, I happen to agree with this conviction.
America "won" the Cold War in part because Communism was a failed political philosophy where the people starved, millions were killed (far more people were killed in the USSR for political reasons than Nazi Germany killed in World War II, even counting the Jews in the concentration camps) and in general the philosophy failed to live up to its promise of bringing a better life to its citizens. Perhaps the Russians of 1980 were better off than the Russians of 1880, but in many cases it could be argued that serfs were still working the fields of Russia on the behest of the aristocracy, only the names changed and the coat of arms.
Putin is just a tyrant, of the kind that my ancestors (who lived in America) explicitly fought against and explicitly didn't want to see ever come to North America. I feel for the people in Russia, as they have so much promise and have an amazing cultural heritage that is also admirable as well. It just seems that as soon as one tyrant is deposed or even executed, that another one seems to pop up in their place like some cruel game of wack-a-mole that the Russian people can never quite get rid of.
I certainly admire Kasparov (somebody who openly ran against Putin for the Russian presidency I might add) and to me he is the kind of leadership that Russia desperately needs right now. The amazing thing is that the Russian people are fighting Putin, and that the world as a whole is becoming aware of the problems that the current Russian leadership is bringing to its own people.
Putin also seems to be misunderstanding the purpose of basic freedoms such as free speech, freedom to assemble peaceably, and the freedom for ordinary people to decide the next government leaders: By granting these freedoms, the society and the government in question can have an orderly transition from one governing philosophy to the next and "revolutions" take place at the ballot box instead of at gunpoint. By trying to suppress these kind of voices of opposition, Putin is insisting that he get assassinated and that his legacy will be seen as being a tyrant. Just as Stalin's legacy is now seen as being a petty tyrant, the same will be said about Putin. Perhaps not as evil as Stalin, but he will still not be remembered warmly.
I think in the long term (say over the next few centuries), Russia is going to become a major beacon of freedom and liberty, and Kasparov along with many others in Russia who are fighting for those liberties will be seen as inspirational heroes not just for Russia but throughout the world and the rest of humanity.