[sigh...]
And you would accomplish this magic of increasing competition, in a marketplace that is by it's very nature a monopoly..., how? Exactly?
I'll save you some time. You can't do it without regulation. Expensive, complicated, and inefficient regulation. Yes, all of those, which you'd know if you'd ever once read transcripts from public utility commission hearings on things like rate increases for regulated service (think dial tone).
What you can do, and without the burden of enforcing regulation like that, is socialize the operation of the infrastructure (that portion of the whole thing that defines the monopoly) and then open up that infrastructure to all qualified comers.
Man, you must live in some upscale neighborhood. Around here (Houston) the coffee and pastry sold at gas stations is more of the Kwik-E-Mart class than Starbucks or Cinnabon.
Yes, the jokes will continue.
Yes, the RCC has no one but themselves to blame for the PR mess they find themselves in, so they and all their apologists can STFU, as far as I am concerned.
I'd be happy to explain why my religion has a higher level of sexual abuse, if it had one. That's one of the nicest things about my religion. The "clergy" aren't semi-cloistered males whose normal libido's have been repressed to the point that they must turn to victimizing innocent children because that seems to be the safest outlet for their now twisted urges. It also does not have a "church" hierarchy that could attempt to systematically hide such crimes from it's "congregation" and worse, expose ever more children to the abuses perpetrated by it's priests.
Boy, are you a rube, or what? Lobbyists, by definition, buy influence. With enough money (or other "currency") one can buy anything at all in Washington.
As for sexuality, I see truly monogamous relationships as the only way to truly respect a spouse and one's own sexuality. I also see sexuality as intended for the complementary sexes. They're intended for each other, whether you believe it was designed or if it evolved that way. To do otherwise is to disrespect one's own body.
"Intended"? By whom?
Oh, right - God. That's your set of beliefs. You are welcome to them, of course, but you are not welcome to compel others to adopt them. When, oh when, will otherwise bright and reasonable people grasp this important point?
Where? By saying that an adult male is unfit to be a leader purely because of his sexual orientation? WTF has one got to do with the other? Unless, of course, you're stupid and afraid.
No. I am saying that homosexuality has nothing to do with morality. The whole "homosexuality is wrong - it says so in the Bible" argument is what is behind all this. If the BSA wants to sack up and admit that they're the youth wing of the Christian Dominionist movement and adopt Biblical law as their "code", that's fine with me. Really. But they're not about to do that. They desperately want to believe that their still the ideal "All-American" youth organization when they are clearly not. Bigotry is not something the BSA will admit to, but it is very clearly a part of their "values", and what the values they hold are taught to the boys, and that is a problem in this case.
I knew that the Boy Scouts were in decline when they decided to formalize their policy of fear and ignorance when it came to homosexuality. This latest move is stunning in it's lameness, but not really surprising, given their increasingly desperate attempt to remain relevant. And that's too bad, really, because much of what Scouting has to offer is good and noble. Alas, it is being ruined by dipshits.
Oh, my. Where to start with addressing your ignorance? Might as well be at the beginning, I guess...
It is pretty damned obvious by now to anyone with a brain that the feds aren't gonna do jack shit about illegals, and as anyone who has lived in one of the border states can tell you illegals are turning the towns into war zones!
Hyperbole much? Jeezuz, you make it sound like lead is flying down every street in every border town. Not that there isn't a serious problem going on, but it's the "war on drugs" that's failing here, and BTW, it's not "immigrants" who are doing the shooting. It's smugglers and organized crime. AZ's new "show uz ze papers" law is going to do exactly dick to solve that problem.
Lets be honest here folks...having a wide open border is the biggest clusterfuck of our century!
Can't argue with that, other than to point out the practical impossibility of shutting down thousands of miles of border. Or did you have some heretofore unheard suggestion on how to do that? Nah, didn't think so.
... anyone who has been in one lately can tell you the ERs are looking at 12+ hour waiting lines thanks to illegals using them as clinics (and of course never paying so YOU get to pick up the bill on your insurance),
Though it's been a few years since I retired, as a paramedic I spent a fair amount of time in ER's, certainly far more than you have, and I'm fairly certain most of the people sitting in the waiting room with non-emergent complaints (those who are using the ER as a "clinic") are U.S. citizens who have been kicked to the curb by the rest of our fucked up health care system. You're right about one thing though, the rest of us have to pick up the tab for every runny nose that get's treated in an ER instead of a more appropriate venue (that would have cost a tiny fraction of that ER visit).
just look at the crime rates for places like Phoenix, the towns are becoming warzones!
No points for repeating yourself. Besides Phoenix isn't a border town. Neither are L.A., Detroit, N.Y.C, Boston, Atlanta, etc., but those towns damn sure have places where it isn't safe to be unarmed and alone. I suppose now you'll tell us that it's just a different color of hoodlum in those cities and that they're all the problem and we should get rid of them next.
So until the fed gets off their pandering asses and actually does something about the borders the states are gonna have to step up. If you don't like it, don't go there! That is one of the nice things about having 50 experiments in democracy, if you don't like one state's laws you are free to move. As someone whose state (AR)...
The Catholic church, as far as I know, doesn't have a monopoly on abuses...
True, but without a doubt, they have perfected the institutionalization of greed and corruption, wrapped in a yummy cloak of "doing the work of the Lord". The RCC has, for centuries, used every dirty trick in the book to gain influence and spread it's power. While The Reformation saw to it that the Church's influence would never again be what it once was, the Church certainly has not given up on those ways. We hear a lot about the pedophile priests and how their crimes have been systematically hidden by the Church, but their other crimes and moral transgressions are just as foul, if nowhere near as extensive, as they ever were. The RCC's pronouncements in Africa alone, on the "sinfulness" of condoms, may be realistically attributed to the loss of thousands of lives.
The question is: will they simply pay a fine, or will someone actually get to face a criminal charge? All too often (in the US) people get off free because the offense is blamed on the Corporation® and not the individual acting on behalf of the corporation. If this is knowingly purchasing stolen goods, then it should be treated like any other case of the same.
You don't understand. The Supreme Court of the United States has determined that corporations (e.g. "big business") get to enjoy all the benefits of citizenship with none of those annoying responsibilities (paying taxes, obeying the law, etc.). If you think that''s wrong, you must be some kind of socialist.
I sincerely hope that US people are less dickheaded than you. In civil law countries (like Italy too) the judges have little choice in applying the law.
If I yell in the streets something libelous I am responsible, even if someone else told me first. The same applies to Google...
Well, no. It does not. Not even close. By your logic, the owner of the pavement upon which the "yeller of libelous words" was standing would be as culpable as the yeller himself. This is, of course, absurd, just as it is absurd to suggest the Google should, or even could, exercise editorial control over anything uttered in any portion of it's formidable "street corner".
This doesn't look good on the surface... and reeks of Google's Buzz privacy blunders all over again.
Why can't Google (and everyone else for that matter) just stick to the personal data people are foolish enough to hand over to the web? This type of action puts them on the edge of WiFi hackers who are "just seeing if it could be done"... except for that they're doing it for tens of thousands of personal and business WiFi networks.
My first reaction was the same - "How dare they play so fast and loose with 'private information' like that...", but on reflection, I'm not sure it's a bad thing. My house has wifi. It is secured well enough that I don't need to worry about he neighbors borrowing my bandwidth or a drive-by spam cannon causing me grief. Several of my neighbors..., not so much. It's 2010, folks. The risk of running an open wifi is well-known, as are the means to secure it, and still, most wifi routers/access points come out of the box with little or no security enabled.
Maybe it is time to "raise awareness" of this reality. Of course, it's not Google's job to do this, and I doubt that they had anything so altruistic in mind when they decided to collect and publish this information, but I do hope that it will have that effect to some small degree, at least.
Comedy Central for letting terrorists win.
And while we're at it, piss on The Prophet Mohamed, Jesus, Yaweh, The Flying Spaghetti Monster and any other deity who needs his human followers to do his wet work for him. If those "supreme beings" have an issue with what I say about them, they know where I live. We can sort it out in person. The rest of you, STFU and relax already. I mean, they're gods. Right? Do you really think they need your help?
Please note that I did not say, "Piss on Christians, Muslims, Jews, Pastafarians, etc." Believe it or not, I am a very religious person and I am offended when someone insults my choice of beliefs. But fight about it? Kill them over it? That's just stupid. My spiritual beliefs are my business. Your faith is your business. Why can't we leave it at that?
Not to downplay the harm that Christianity causes.... but for every one of your dozen Christian terrorist attacks, I can point to a hundred that were conducted by Muslims...
Erm...., no. You can't.
Flip the scorebook back a few centuries there, sparky. It's still early in Islam's "at bat", and they have a lot of catching up to do.
I'm pretty sure I can depict the vatican burning to the ground in a cartoon and get no more serious reaction than angry letters. Desecrating a grave might get you a picket line and some verbal insults.
Historical perspective much?
In this century, yeah, but try those tricks when the RCC still had some clout, boy. You'd be watching your entrails being roasted before you so fast your head would be spinning.
Timothy McVeigh
David Koresh et al
David McMenemy
Paul Hill
Michael Griffin
James Kopp
Rev. Michael Bray
Clayton Waagner
(you get the idea...)...those peace loving Christians, eh?
While it is true that the Rev. John Hagee hasn't yet called for the execution of Matt and Trey, there's plenty of religious hatred to go around. How 'bout we stop singling out this or that religion and admit that the whole lot of them, at least the ones that insist on enforcing their "faith" on the rest of us, are full of shit?
Slashdot Mirror
You'd think that someone fabricating an alien abduction tale would at least get the basics right.
[sigh...] And you would accomplish this magic of increasing competition, in a marketplace that is by it's very nature a monopoly..., how? Exactly?
I'll save you some time. You can't do it without regulation. Expensive, complicated, and inefficient regulation. Yes, all of those, which you'd know if you'd ever once read transcripts from public utility commission hearings on things like rate increases for regulated service (think dial tone).
What you can do, and without the burden of enforcing regulation like that, is socialize the operation of the infrastructure (that portion of the whole thing that defines the monopoly) and then open up that infrastructure to all qualified comers.
Man, you must live in some upscale neighborhood. Around here (Houston) the coffee and pastry sold at gas stations is more of the Kwik-E-Mart class than Starbucks or Cinnabon.
You need to charge the insurance company at least five to six times the full retail price or it's not a "real" medical device.
Yes, the jokes will continue.
Yes, the RCC has no one but themselves to blame for the PR mess they find themselves in, so they and all their apologists can STFU, as far as I am concerned.
I'd be happy to explain why my religion has a higher level of sexual abuse, if it had one. That's one of the nicest things about my religion. The "clergy" aren't semi-cloistered males whose normal libido's have been repressed to the point that they must turn to victimizing innocent children because that seems to be the safest outlet for their now twisted urges. It also does not have a "church" hierarchy that could attempt to systematically hide such crimes from it's "congregation" and worse, expose ever more children to the abuses perpetrated by it's priests.
Boy, are you a rube, or what? Lobbyists, by definition, buy influence. With enough money (or other "currency") one can buy anything at all in Washington.
You are the one who invoked Divine "intent", pal. Defend your position or change it.
As for sexuality, I see truly monogamous relationships as the only way to truly respect a spouse and one's own sexuality. I also see sexuality as intended for the complementary sexes. They're intended for each other, whether you believe it was designed or if it evolved that way. To do otherwise is to disrespect one's own body.
"Intended"? By whom?
Oh, right - God. That's your set of beliefs. You are welcome to them, of course, but you are not welcome to compel others to adopt them. When, oh when, will otherwise bright and reasonable people grasp this important point?
Where? By saying that an adult male is unfit to be a leader purely because of his sexual orientation? WTF has one got to do with the other? Unless, of course, you're stupid and afraid.
No. I am saying that homosexuality has nothing to do with morality. The whole "homosexuality is wrong - it says so in the Bible" argument is what is behind all this. If the BSA wants to sack up and admit that they're the youth wing of the Christian Dominionist movement and adopt Biblical law as their "code", that's fine with me. Really. But they're not about to do that. They desperately want to believe that their still the ideal "All-American" youth organization when they are clearly not. Bigotry is not something the BSA will admit to, but it is very clearly a part of their "values", and what the values they hold are taught to the boys, and that is a problem in this case.
Yes, but you can then buy "Genyooine Cisko Router" for only $199 American dollar, so is good deal for everybody.
I knew that the Boy Scouts were in decline when they decided to formalize their policy of fear and ignorance when it came to homosexuality. This latest move is stunning in it's lameness, but not really surprising, given their increasingly desperate attempt to remain relevant. And that's too bad, really, because much of what Scouting has to offer is good and noble. Alas, it is being ruined by dipshits.
It is pretty damned obvious by now to anyone with a brain that the feds aren't gonna do jack shit about illegals, and as anyone who has lived in one of the border states can tell you illegals are turning the towns into war zones!
Hyperbole much? Jeezuz, you make it sound like lead is flying down every street in every border town. Not that there isn't a serious problem going on, but it's the "war on drugs" that's failing here, and BTW, it's not "immigrants" who are doing the shooting. It's smugglers and organized crime. AZ's new "show uz ze papers" law is going to do exactly dick to solve that problem.
Lets be honest here folks...having a wide open border is the biggest clusterfuck of our century!
Can't argue with that, other than to point out the practical impossibility of shutting down thousands of miles of border. Or did you have some heretofore unheard suggestion on how to do that? Nah, didn't think so.
... anyone who has been in one lately can tell you the ERs are looking at 12+ hour waiting lines thanks to illegals using them as clinics (and of course never paying so YOU get to pick up the bill on your insurance),
Though it's been a few years since I retired, as a paramedic I spent a fair amount of time in ER's, certainly far more than you have, and I'm fairly certain most of the people sitting in the waiting room with non-emergent complaints (those who are using the ER as a "clinic") are U.S. citizens who have been kicked to the curb by the rest of our fucked up health care system. You're right about one thing though, the rest of us have to pick up the tab for every runny nose that get's treated in an ER instead of a more appropriate venue (that would have cost a tiny fraction of that ER visit).
just look at the crime rates for places like Phoenix, the towns are becoming warzones!
No points for repeating yourself. Besides Phoenix isn't a border town. Neither are L.A., Detroit, N.Y.C, Boston, Atlanta, etc., but those towns damn sure have places where it isn't safe to be unarmed and alone. I suppose now you'll tell us that it's just a different color of hoodlum in those cities and that they're all the problem and we should get rid of them next.
So until the fed gets off their pandering asses and actually does something about the borders the states are gonna have to step up. If you don't like it, don't go there! That is one of the nice things about having 50 experiments in democracy, if you don't like one state's laws you are free to move. As someone whose state (AR)...
Why am I not surprised.
The Catholic church, as far as I know, doesn't have a monopoly on abuses...
True, but without a doubt, they have perfected the institutionalization of greed and corruption, wrapped in a yummy cloak of "doing the work of the Lord". The RCC has, for centuries, used every dirty trick in the book to gain influence and spread it's power. While The Reformation saw to it that the Church's influence would never again be what it once was, the Church certainly has not given up on those ways. We hear a lot about the pedophile priests and how their crimes have been systematically hidden by the Church, but their other crimes and moral transgressions are just as foul, if nowhere near as extensive, as they ever were. The RCC's pronouncements in Africa alone, on the "sinfulness" of condoms, may be realistically attributed to the loss of thousands of lives.
Halfway done the page before I got to the obvious HHGTTG bit? What is the world coming to?
Better late than never, I guess.
The question is: will they simply pay a fine, or will someone actually get to face a criminal charge? All too often (in the US) people get off free because the offense is blamed on the Corporation® and not the individual acting on behalf of the corporation. If this is knowingly purchasing stolen goods, then it should be treated like any other case of the same.
You don't understand. The Supreme Court of the United States has determined that corporations (e.g. "big business") get to enjoy all the benefits of citizenship with none of those annoying responsibilities (paying taxes, obeying the law, etc.). If you think that''s wrong, you must be some kind of socialist.
I sincerely hope that US people are less dickheaded than you. In civil law countries (like Italy too) the judges have little choice in applying the law.
If I yell in the streets something libelous I am responsible, even if someone else told me first. The same applies to Google...
Well, no. It does not. Not even close. By your logic, the owner of the pavement upon which the "yeller of libelous words" was standing would be as culpable as the yeller himself. This is, of course, absurd, just as it is absurd to suggest the Google should, or even could, exercise editorial control over anything uttered in any portion of it's formidable "street corner".
We've still got Jeff Goldblum, after all.
He tried to detonate his tighty-whiteys, this time. That's progress, I guess.
Dude! Because it's so kewl, and besides, all your friends are there too.
/lawn
This doesn't look good on the surface ... and reeks of Google's Buzz privacy blunders all over again.
Why can't Google (and everyone else for that matter) just stick to the personal data people are foolish enough to hand over to the web? This type of action puts them on the edge of WiFi hackers who are "just seeing if it could be done" ... except for that they're doing it for tens of thousands of personal and business WiFi networks.
My first reaction was the same - "How dare they play so fast and loose with 'private information' like that...", but on reflection, I'm not sure it's a bad thing. My house has wifi. It is secured well enough that I don't need to worry about he neighbors borrowing my bandwidth or a drive-by spam cannon causing me grief. Several of my neighbors..., not so much. It's 2010, folks. The risk of running an open wifi is well-known, as are the means to secure it, and still, most wifi routers/access points come out of the box with little or no security enabled.
Maybe it is time to "raise awareness" of this reality. Of course, it's not Google's job to do this, and I doubt that they had anything so altruistic in mind when they decided to collect and publish this information, but I do hope that it will have that effect to some small degree, at least.
Comedy Central for letting terrorists win.
And while we're at it, piss on The Prophet Mohamed, Jesus, Yaweh, The Flying Spaghetti Monster and any other deity who needs his human followers to do his wet work for him. If those "supreme beings" have an issue with what I say about them, they know where I live. We can sort it out in person. The rest of you, STFU and relax already. I mean, they're gods. Right? Do you really think they need your help?
Please note that I did not say, "Piss on Christians, Muslims, Jews, Pastafarians, etc." Believe it or not, I am a very religious person and I am offended when someone insults my choice of beliefs. But fight about it? Kill them over it? That's just stupid. My spiritual beliefs are my business. Your faith is your business. Why can't we leave it at that?
Not to downplay the harm that Christianity causes .... but for every one of your dozen Christian terrorist attacks, I can point to a hundred that were conducted by Muslims...
Erm...., no. You can't.
Flip the scorebook back a few centuries there, sparky. It's still early in Islam's "at bat", and they have a lot of catching up to do.
I'm pretty sure I can depict the vatican burning to the ground in a cartoon and get no more serious reaction than angry letters. Desecrating a grave might get you a picket line and some verbal insults.
Historical perspective much?
In this century, yeah, but try those tricks when the RCC still had some clout, boy. You'd be watching your entrails being roasted before you so fast your head would be spinning.
Timothy McVeigh David Koresh et al David McMenemy Paul Hill Michael Griffin James Kopp Rev. Michael Bray Clayton Waagner (you get the idea...) ...those peace loving Christians, eh?
While it is true that the Rev. John Hagee hasn't yet called for the execution of Matt and Trey, there's plenty of religious hatred to go around. How 'bout we stop singling out this or that religion and admit that the whole lot of them, at least the ones that insist on enforcing their "faith" on the rest of us, are full of shit?