I'm not sure there is a specific Gay Tax and I know it isn't discrimination at all. The problem seems to be that Gays who cannot marry want the same things that married people seem to get because they are pretending to be a family (by necessity of not being allowed to marry). However, this discrimination isn't pointed at the gays, it's not really discrimination at all. What it is- is favoritism to married people.
Really, if you are straight or gay, you pay the same. If you have a live in lover, again either straight or gay, you pay the same taxes. If you get married, the taxes change a bit and you get extended benefits like spousal coverage and family coverage on insurance. But just like the gay person, the straight person living with someone doesn't get those benefits either. Just like the Gay person, the straight person living by themselves do not get the benefits. So this isn't discrimination against gays at all, it's favoritism towards married people.
Now it's being presented as discrimination due to sexuality, but that's only a perversion of the facts to advance a cause. Otherwise the push would be to get these same benefits for live in girlfriends and so on as well. Th legal restriction does not create a situation of discrimination in other areas outside of the restriction. It simply creates a special advantage to those who are not subject to the restriction and take advantage of it. In other words, They are treating unmarried people like unmarried people and married people with extra benefits. It's not discrimination against gays, it's discrimination against unmarried people if any discrimination is going on.
SO are you saying that it's impossible for a spark to set off built up sewer gasses?
I'm not sure about sewer gasses itself, but we had a neighbor who would pore used motor oil down the sewer drain in the alleyway behind us then dump about half a gallon of gasoline in it to "break the oil up". Yea, I'm not saying he was intelligent or anything, just that he existed and did things. Anyways, had you been in my neighborhood, you could have set his concoction a blaze. In fact, this had happened once, the man hole covers for about two blocks shot close to 5 foot in the air. Cars ended up getting damaged as they either dodged the flying covers or fell into the open holes not noticing the missing covers.
But that isn't the interesting parts, the explosion ended up creating a crack in the sewer line which then turned into a sink hole down the road a bit which took someone's garage with it when it collapsed some 5 years later.
Of course this all happened when I was a kid so it was probably the late 70's or early 80's. I'm thinking the reason why the cop mentioned sparks and sewer gas is because there is a real threat that could cause harm to not just you, but others who are clueless of your actions. It may not have happened that time, but it doesn't mean it won't happen or never will. It's one thing to do something stupid that will only effect you, but it's another thing entirely to do something that has the potential of injuring or damaging someone or their property who is completely independent of your actions. Think of it this way, you could construct a race track with guardrails and fences all the way around it, blindfold yourself and drive a car on it. But do you think you would have just as much right to blind fold yourself and drive a car down I5 or I70 or something? How about down the street the high school is on when it's letting out? I guess what I'm saying is that if you were doing that in a squash culvert, it would be one thing as you would be the only people in range of it, but in a closed sewer system that connects to others, it's a little irresponsible given that something could happen. I'm sure you didn't drop any meters in to measure the air quality before setting them off.
I can see it now. The rent a cop or police tell you to delete your picture, you put both hands down your pants, and just point at him saying smell my finger first while pulling out the Photographer's Rights paper.
It is when the thought is just as controlled as any other regiment you see. And yes, I know the difference between the democrat party and liberal even though the one is often called the other.
If you do not believe me, just go to any self proclaimed liberal person, including yourself, and ask them why there can't be a god that created the world as we know it and science might explain how it could have happened independent but if it was possible that it was just made that way. You will find that there is no tolerance unless you think the exact way they want you to think.
And just to point out, you don't have to ask about a religious topic. Suggest that global warming may be wrong and that it needs further study or that you want proof that the known known's of it aren't manipulated fabrications of real or near real evidence designed to advance a political agenda, stand back because you will generally get a worse reaction then mentioning religion.
But those are just two suggestive topics. This problem is nothing new, the guy who discovered that most stomach ulcers were bacterial problems that could be cured instead of just treating the symptoms lived thought a decade or better of ridicule because the thinkers insisted they knew it was impossible for bacteria to set up shop in the acid environment of the stomach.
Or even take your own statement here in which you are pressing anti-thought because you believe that the accusation of anti-thought isn't compatible with liberal. It's a matter of semantics in reality, it's an expressed bias which is also hidden to the biased but the reality is that if you allow thought, then you allow the exploration of that which you do not agree with. If you reached a conclusion and insist on it being the only right answer, then you are what you were decrying. And that was the point, not that democrats are liberal or anything. It's that as soon as you limit it to your notion of what you know, you have become the very same thing you railed on "people who's power base relies on people not asking questions and just doing as they are told" and "poisoning the American spirit and sapping the will to learn from the people".
he war against American intellect is not affected by any outside foreign power as far as I can tell, unless of course you count the Vatican and they are at best a minor player. No, it waged internally be people who's power base relies on people not asking questions and just doing as they are told. It is domestic conservative and religious organizations that are poisoning the American spirit and sapping the will to learn from the people.
Hey, you forgot all the people who think it's just the "domestic conservative and religious organizations that are poisoning the American spirit and sapping the will to learn from the people."
Often the truth lies in between the two or more extremes. This is nothing but a raging example of that. The only reason you pick a single portion is because you are biased and don't see the other side. This makes you what you are decrying and the ability to learn seems to have stopped there too.
However, what my point was intending to say was that if they are going to go through the trouble of changing the elections systems from the ground up, it's just as easy, if not easier to simply campaign that way and the third party will become as strong as any of the dominant parties without ever needing to change the fundamental systems most areas use to vote.
As for moving to two parties, probably the biggest issue is participation in a single party rather then how we decide the winners of elections. I know democrats who would never support some of the crap going on in the party or governments controlled by them today. I know republicans who have the same problems presently and in the past. The two dominant parties are actually a conglomeration of several distinct parties with enough in common that they sort of merged and if a candidate or voter could participate solely on political position and become a democratic-republican-green-libertarian-man instead of a green party, a republican, or democrat, or libertarian, in the strict sense, maybe we could get away from voting for party members and start voting for the candidates again.
If you look at parliament or any other European style democratic government, you will see that they have to form a coalition of the parties in order to run the government and the other parties tend to form a coalition in order to present opposition. It's no different with the two parties in the US except we have an executive branch and that the coalition has been done outside of the government and it's generally lasting longer then the terms of the members. This is more obvious when you look at the parties and how their voting blocks are made up in which candidates attempt to appease certain factions like the religious rights without pissing the other members off.
Lol.. And your search mastery wouldn't have issues with the limited search abilities of the site or Google's reference to articles instead of threads like it used to be. Why don't you post a fool proof way to search this site for comments to back up your own statements and I can easily adapt it to do mine. I mean after all, you are making unsupported claims too. Except you are saying that because I'm not activly supporting mine means yours are right. Well, that may have worked in third grade, but most of us aren't in the third grade still. We don't see technical limitations or the lack of willingness of someone to do something you try to goad them into as proof of anything. Of course ignoring the facts and that is what I was posting about in the first place before you trolled on over. You know, where I was saying that in order to believe the Iraq war was about oil and that there was some massive conspiracy to cover that up, you would have to ignore the very real and factual history of the last ten years and you pop in saying I'm lieing and offering only my unwillingness or inability to participate in your bullshit as proof instead of actual proof that can stand on it's own.
Go troll elsewhere. It's obvious here. I guess that's just one more thing you can't do right. You might want to start looking for something you can do right before the lists get so lopsided, you think you are nothing but a failure when reviewing it.
State of emergencies issued by the executive carry a 1 year max term then need to be reauthorized every six months unless the congress issues the re-authorization and gives a future date. Of course the one year, six month rule is for executive declarations of emergencies and congress can end them at any time they see fit. Congressional declarations can carry any term they want and make the rules up in the process.
Lol.. Don't ask don't tell is not a law, it's an executive directive that the army has to follow. It's basically the commander in chief telling it's subordinated to not look for violations of the homosexual misconduct law in the same way his exuctive order told the federal prosecutors not to prosecute the law on Marijuana if it's in a medical state and there is a prescription or state allowance of it.
There is a law about homosexuals in the military though, and as the op suggested, he can simply tell the military not to pursue any actions against any homosexual for any reason. SO yes, an executive order can simple change the effectiveness of the law and end don't ask don't tell the same way his executive order ended prosecutions for pot possession and cultivation in medical marijuana states if there is a prescription.
Here is the problem with your comment. Well, not actually your comment but your concept for the comment.
There is nothing limiting the existing system to two parties. What has happened is that the dominant parties have absorbed a lot of the smaller parties that used to exist and formed more or less conglomerations. This always the case and doesn't have to be right now.
Now here is where the concept breaks.. You are claiming the problem is the type of elections and think the solution starts at the bottom. You can achieve the same exact goals of getting viable third parties elected by doing the exact same thing with the party. You see, people are inherently reluctantly cautious creatures on the large part. Sure you have bold and adventurous people but they aren't the masses as history has shown with a few people leading the way in exploring new territory and so on. They like to stick with what they know and if what they know is that the guy they like locally is associated with a political party, then that's the party they should vote for in the higher elections. It's amazing to see how different local candidates are from their same party members on higher stages.
Anyways, if the third parties worked at a grass roots level just the same as you are suggesting the election systems be changed, then they will be what the people know and trust and they will be dominant in the higher elections. There is a reason why the two parties are dominant, that is because they are who run and get elected on the local levels. Nothing is preventing other parties from doing the same. And the more local third party candidates serving, the more distance third party candidates will serve, when they become common at a state level, they will be common at a federal level. Instead, they take shortcuts, only want to participate in the big elections, and their answer seems to be change the system instead of changing their own actions.
As we all learned in Econ 101, if you decrease availability you push the price up. This is not to say that the higher price goes to the farmer, unless you are a large corporate owned farm where the corporation owns the distribution chain.
Sort of.
Here is how food markets, specifically in the US are different. You see, a lot of the surplus in the US gets used by the government in aid packages sent oversees. It's the entire subsidies issue where the government pays to have excess food produced in case a natural or other disaster kills a regions crops, the other 4 regions (*5 separate regions in the US) will fill in. It's part of the food security plan that was adapted after WWII where we saw the people living in the battlefields of Europe almost starve because crops couldn't be brought in or were destroyed and so on.
Your right in that eventually, surplus will overwhelm the market and cause a crash. Just look at oil in how the price of oil fell to a tiny fraction of what it was when the economy collapsed and all the speculators lost their asses (with banks being bailed out and the famous too big to fail, I know there was more to it but, you could see how much the costs of oil was speculation because usage and demand didn't change over night). But what is making this a tad bit different besides the entire aid disposal of excess food is that the money is not going to the producers of the crop who need a substantial investment in order to increase production. Instead, it's going to the speculators feeding on the system and middle men in the system and that in turn deprives the producer of the ability to increase production as redily to lead to that collapse.
Ok, if you don't follow me, then imagine this if you will. Lets say there are 4 people, person A who farms, Person B who buys the farmer's product and sells to person C who then makes something and sells it to the public which is person D. The speculation is happening between person B and C and C and D. What this does is trap the inflated values before they reach the producers who would use the increased money to increase production. So if person A has 200 acres and is getting the most crops possible from them, when the options contract is made, it is generally with person B and/or C. If C, then he offers B a reduced increase in order to secure a supply for D. C pockets the majority of the excess money, B has to pass some to the farmer in order to ensure they are going to get a supply to sell, so B pockets the majority and A gets a fraction of the difference in the original. But A has probably the most expense to increase production so he can't really do it without a larger cut of the inflated costs. Now person B and C can and often are the same person, as well as A and B being the same people. But it's rare that A is B or C and he is generally always D to some extent. So in the end, the farmer pays more of an increase in percentage for food then he receives, But has a larger percentage of costs to increase production (combines, tractors, and land aren't cheap, especially when you consider that in order for an increase in over all production, they have to use land not already being farmed).
While in the end, given enough time and the pace outperforming inflation adjustments (like increased salaries) which would negate a portion of the effect, the rules of Econ 101 will come true. It's just severely retarded in it's operation so it wouldn't be as obvious as you would think.
I guess they will have to take my word for it just the same as they have to take your word for what you said.
However, I should mention that it isn't just following Doc Ruby, You seem to troll on out for any topic where the facts presented break down your idea that Bush is an evil oil Barron plotting the destruction of freedom while pulling some massive oil war conspiracy, while at the same time too stupid to tie his own show even though he was able to defeat two democrat opponents in two elections. You also seem to troll when the science doesn't back the Church of global warming, or when someone attempts to claim science disproves religion when it does no such thing. I think I remember a thread in which you were attempting to claim all sorts of shit about the bible too which turned out to be the simple fact that you don't know your ass from a whole in the ground about it or the christian religion or the bible. It was like you read a website somewhere trashing the thing then repeated it without understanding what they were even saying.
I can understand your frustration and why you will not address the issues or facts presented. I mean if I was shot down as much as you have been, I would probably just stop posting online. You on the other hand seem to think the alternative to intelligent discourse isn't keeping your mouth shut, it's trolling and attempting to distract from the points being made in order to keep your geopolitical ideals real to yourself. I am pointing out that you only jumped in this because you disagreed with something I said, yet you offer nothing to what was said, just your blabbering about not listening to the truth because of something entirely unrelated which exists in your mind.
Did I write anything at all like the above words sumdumass is putting in my mouth?
What the hell are you talking about? That was the statement I was making when you finally found the thread and started claiming everything I said was a lie. Are you so daft that you can't even contain context? Oh yea, that right, your a fucking troll, Why would I expect anything more.
You see readers - there's a big pile of lies right there in front of you designed purely to get me angry as some sort of silly little game.
Yea, see above. You see readers, this is the type of bullshit those conspiracy theorists attempt to do. They chime in with Bullshit to discredit the people spreading the truth in order for their distortions of reality to prevail. You all are supposed to believe the Iraq war was because of oil, bush is evil and no matter what the facts are or the historical events are, they are wrong so believe the conspiracy, Oh yea and vote democrat or republocrap or whatever. and when things still don't go their way, they will blame Bush or Reagan, or some long lost democrat who wasn't socialist or communist enough for them. In short, they expect the reader to be useful idiots who have no capacity of checking the facts for themselves and instead just parody what their masters tell them on the other websites with no real understanding of the issues at all.
This isn't the first time dbill has trolled like this. He likes to follow me around and pretend he is saving his cause (whatever that may be) by distracting the poster from the points that were damaging the claim. I find that he usually pops up right after someone seriously contradicts Doc Ruby and a few other accounts. It may be as he claimed in the beginning a "the sockpuppet account he has for when he wants to annoy people with a fake parody persona" or it might just be some useful idiot following them around who thinks they are helping the cause or something. It's sort of one of those guilty conciseness like where people who are cheating on their spouse end up accusing them of cheating in order to justify their own behavior. It's typical where he will distract the thread and when someone attempts to get back on point he says "I didn't say that". Well, No shit Sherlock, I said it and more, and if you would have been following along instead of attempting to confuse everyone, you would have easily seen and comprehended that.
Yes there is. Competition is a better design. Smaller organizations without employee or investor indemnification and that are not treated as if they are human beings.
Yes, there is a certain scale required to produce something like an automobile but that scale is far below the scale of the major manufacturers we have now. There is easily enough demand for there to be a smaller organization being supported on two or three vehicles in every state.
OK, lets say there are 25 manufacturers that make accelerators for use in 25 different cars. Now lets say all of them have a resistor that has ceramic base because one manufacturer who has a patent on that one type of resister that the Accelerators use had a messup with their recipe. You now have 25 different manufacturers with the same results. Not only that, you likely will not even have 25 manufacturers because you are wanting to limit their ability to grow. Who is going to invest money into something that will be capped artificially when someone arbitrarily decides they are large enough and more competition is needed? I don't see how that is any better.
This is false. As a supervisor I have about 12 employees under me. They in turn make decisions that ultimate branch out to impact thousands of users across hundreds of organizations and those are almost all fortune 1000 organizations.
So you are saying that you have the power to intentionally force the use of something known to be unsafe that would kill thousands of customers. Any you can do that on your own without the input of anyone else. Interesting, I wasn't aware that there was a company in this country that fucked up. You see, you as a supervisor have a fiduciary responsibility (you will know what that is if you are in the position you claim) that pretty much prohibits you from making arbitrary and independent decisions like that. You may be able to make decisions like check the bathrooms for sanitary tissues at least twice a day without getting any flack over it, but if you change a component on the product line without getting the advice from the engineering department, you would pretty much be legally liable for any harm it does.
If I give my employees a directive they don't have a choice about it. The don't have the opportunity to employee the reasoning, ideals, and morals of a human being. They are functioning as a company x machine following the instructions I have programmed.
The hell they don't. Order an employee to rape the nearest women and see what happens. The employee has the choice of leaving the job or going over your head, even to regulatory officials if it's pertinent enough. They have the choice of making your orders public knowledge which is about the same as going over your head. They have the choice of filing a grievance with any applicable labor unions or state workers boards. They have the choice of just ignoring the directive and make you look like a shitty manager.
I in turn do not have the luxury of employing my values when making those decisions. I have to follow the directives of my superiors and company policy. At the end of the day if there is a mistake we are required to hide that mistake to increase profits. The only time it would be otherwise were if it were my company and I were personally liable for my actions... like I would be anywhere other than work.
Actually, you have an obligation to employ values in making those decisions. Mistakes are one thing, but making decisions that endanger the lives of others is illegal and you can and should be brought on criminal charges if you are doing that. A corporation is not immune from criminal liability in their acts, in fact, the CEOs and people who make the same decisions we are talking about have not only been charged for making the wrong decisions, but jailed in a federal pound me in the ass prison too. He
and I suggest you put some truth behind your statements and point out what was said that was a lie. If you could, you wouldn't be playing this little game of yours where you follow me around and attempt to claim I'm the troll every time I through a wrench in your little Geopolitical world view. The Iraq was was not about oil and it the case simply cannot be made that it is unless you ignore very real facts that exist. How pointing that out means I'm "playing a silly little game with your spare slashdot persona that you only use to annoy people, often via blatant lies." is beyond me but the conspiracy simply doesn't wash. You and the parent poster are idiots attempting to remain willfully ignorant in a mad attempt to believe the lies you know to be wrong.
Like I said before, get over it and get over yourself. You have nothing to back up your accusations and you are just trolling.
Oh, so it's a big conspiracy now is it. Nobody listen to what is being said- just ignore the words written which happen to be true because of some conspiracy being alleged that couldn't exist if anyone ever looked at the real facts.
Get over it and get over yourself. Your just pissed because almost anyone can open a third grade text book and prove you wrong the majority of the time. In fact, I just opened a newspaper and proved the person I was replying to wrong. Now instead of accepting that his conspiracy is dead in the water without any leg to stand on, you invent this other conspiracy thinking it will silence me. If you have a problem with what I say, then address what I say and where I am wrong, I will admit it. The problem is that I'm not wrong often which causes issues for the half backed loony geopolitical ideals you and Doc Ruby spout. There is more evidence of you conducting a conspiracy to silence me then there is of me participating in any conspiracy.
My credibility comes from the facts. If you choose to ignore them because of some Bush-era talking points you insist on clinging to, that's your problem. I'm not interested in convincing people like you who insisted we go into Iraq and stay there. You will just have to get dragged along with everyone else as we claw our way out of the hole you forced us to dig there.
Translation, he knows the truth so we will ignore him and move on to some useful idiot.
It's an oil war. What made Iraq unusual among all the targets for invasion was its oil. The UN controlled Iraq's oil when it was under Saddam Hussein's control; that hasn't been in the way for over 5 years now.
So you do not dispute what I said, the UN controlled Iraq's oil until it officially recognized the Iraqi government as a separate entity of Saddam's regime.
The possibility that the US might never get preferential access to it doesn't matter: the oil was the bait that already got us to spend the $TRILLION (that you people said would be negligible). The Oil War isn't necessarily for oil, but it's certainly about oil. Otherwise there's plenty of other countries where victory and democracy were actually achievable. But they wouldn't have been perfect places for Halliburton and its other oil ilk, topped by Bush/Cheney, to get US corporate welfare for a decade or more.
In order for you to believe that, you have to ignore the actual history of Iraq upto and including the takeover. I never could understand how people like you could insist that some conspiracy is at work while ignoring the very real facts in order to make the case. Plenty of other countries shouldn't have even been in your statement at all. Iraq wasn't about bringing democracy to Iraq until after Saddam was out of power. Saddam claimed to have WMDs and wouldn't let the UN inspection teams validate whether he did or didn't. This validation was mandatory as part of the cease fire agreements that stopped hostilities of the first gulf war.
Iraq became a big problem when the threat of terrorism was brought home to civilians instead of military targets abroad. Whether Saddam actually had WMDs or not, the world believed he did in some capacity before the 2003 invasion because Saddam was personally attempting to make them believe that. He said in an interview that he was afraid of invasion if the neighboring countries thought he was defenseless. Now with terrorism hitting home, Saddam having banned WMDs and publicly stating his design to inflict harm to the US, he became a very real threat that not only had the capacity, suspected capabilities, but the motivations to move these WMDs to terrorists for their use against American citizen at home. Bush has always said that after 9/11, we can no longer sit back and wait for something to develop- we need to be proactive when the threat is that real. We invaded Iraq for those reasons- because 9/11 changed everything for the administration.
Now I know you don't get it. You're probably one of those people who won't listen to the details long enough to understand any of them and say Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 when the reality of the situation is that 9/11 had to do with why we went into Iraq not the other way around. Only then can your wild conspiracies make sense outside of your own mind. It's about oil right, yea only if we conveniently forget about the entire 90's leading up to the 2003 invasion.
Well... yeah. If you ignore the externalities (like pollution, or dependence on foreign oil), then solar is not cost effective (and neither is wind or biodiesel or any other renewable source). That's the whole point of subsidies and the other stuff you mention; the free market doesn't account for externalities, that's why they're externalities.
You might as well make up externalities like purple dinosaur eggs of something. I love the way people just make crap up, assign a cost to it that suits their needs, and then point to something else and say "look, it's affordable now that we have made up an inflated costs for X and called it the real costs".
Anyways, in case you missed the point, if the US shifts from alternative energies to clean natural gas, then the desire to continue to subsidize the alternative sources of energy will be gone. And with that, so will the subsidies that have giving it the only fighting chance it's had to date. In other words, don't expect to see the same growth if the political will shifts to another source of energy (like I originally said).
I also think that a carbon tax would be a much better solution than subsidies for particular technologies, since it would encourage people to use the most effective emission-reducing measures, rather than the ones that happen to be in vogue with the regulators. But it doesn't look like we'll get that anytime soon.
A carbon tax is nothing but a crock of shit. Look at the tobacco tax, very little if any of the money from that went to the intended targets designed to get people to quit smoking. Almost every state that participated in the tobacco settlement uses the money for unrelated funding and rely on people smoking to continue those programs. The feds take the fuel taxes and use them for crap other then roads like they were intended for. And the idea of penalizing someone for doing what they would normally do just to encourage they use a more expensive energy source is a bit inhumane if you ask me. The housing market bubble failed not because of the sub prime mortgages or the credit swaps, but because the high costs of energy caused those vehicles to fail when people couldn't afford the mortgages and shit. Increasing the costs of energy will only have the same effect- something that's more evident in Greece and Europe which is suffering much more then the US in the current recession.
What is needed isn't accounting gimmicks from the government or artificial markets that only exist by artificially inflating the costs to other participants. What is needed is an international government board of research designated specifically to making solar, wind, and other forms of alternative energy viable and efficient without distorting markets. The same board can do research into making existing tech cleaner and more available in the midterms. And most importantly, they need to offer this tech royalty free so it can be widely adopted and implemented around the entire world. This is what Kyoto and the IPCC should have been, not some tax the rich nations and redistribute the wealth panel pushing a political agenda.
f we spent a $TRILLION on renewables for a decade, the way we will have spent a $TRILLION+ in Iraq on Oil War for a decade, we'd probably have at least 25% of our power coming from renewables.
And you just lost all credibility right there. I was with you until that one line which lets the entire world that you don't know what you are talking about and you have an agenda more then facts.
Iraq is not, never was, and it not going to be an oil war no matter how hard you close your eyes and wish just because it suits your agenda. The oil in Iraq was up until recently still governed by the UN which regulated how much oil Iraq could sell and what they could get in return for it. It wasn't until the UN- not the US- officially recognized the new Iraqi government as a separate entity from Saddam's Iraq did they start getting control back. The US is not getting oil from Iraq outside of paying for it through normal markets that every other country participates in. The Iraq war had nothing to do with oil at all and you have nothing to show that it was except innuendos and wild conspiracy theories that mostly exist in people's imagination.
Your somewhat there. It's not all that difficult to retrofit a coal plant to natural gas. The heat exchangers can be the same, the only difference would be the furnace to fire the fuel and a pipeline to bring the fuel in.
When I was working at the power stations in Aberdeen Ohio, One of the four generators was already set up for dual fuels with natural gas being the backup in case there was a problem getting the coal or JPL fuel on site (the coal is sprayed with a mist of jet fuel grade kerosene in order to promote even burning just before entering the furnace so they count as one fuel).
Anyways, one of the largest problems with upgrading the existing plants right now is that emissions regulations. They put a chemical dispersion devise on the exhaust scrubbers at the same power plant and had to get the entire emissions system re-certified to the newest emissions standards. And all this chemical was supposed to do was stop the fly-ash from creating an acid( or base, I don't remember) when it hardened in the corners of the heat exchangers. That stopped them from having to replace the exchangers as often (which oddly enough, didn't require any re-certification).
I doubt the costs of building new or retrofitting the existing facilities would drive up the market price of electricity and possibly make brownouts and price spikes more common unless regulation causes it in which case we haven't really gotten away from the subsidy and artificial problem.
You don't need Ayn Rand or anything descending from the heavens to know that cost effectiveness is what is the issue. To date, solar simply isn't cost effective without subsidies, artificial inflation of other energy sources and the threat of other technology being regulated out of the markets. This also needs no tax cuts or anything because it's a simple fact of life. If you bank all your money on solar power, you will be a broke mother'fsker if the country moves to natural gas for it's carbon sequestering plans as solar will wither away with your savings.
Look, it doesn't take a genius to see the outside forces at play here. But it does take a fool to ignore them in order to chastise your political enemies.
The growth you are seeing is a product of manufactured necessity.
In other words, the necessity simple isn't there at it's current state. If it wasn't for government subsidies in both the commercial and residential markets along with gigantic pushes for legislation mandating it, and the threat of regulation requiring it, the growth wouldn't otherwise exist.
Solar, just like most other alternative energy sources simple aren't otherwise cost effective. That may change, but typically, to see the same growth you are seeing with solar, it would have changed before the growth not after it. This push to move to natural gas (and I'm assuming liquefied petroleum gas which is very similar) could cause a massive halt to the solar industry. That's a problem when something is propped up by artificial means instead of an actual market necessity. We saw the growth slow when oil dropped in prices, if the other incentives are removes, it doesn't look good.
You say that as if the scale doesn't matter. It may not matter in a hypothetical happyland where results and not intentions matter scale is pretty damn important.
Yes, it doesn't matter. That is because you are failing to put it into perspective. According to the CDC (pdf) the number one cause of unintentional death is motor vehicle accidents. So lets keep in the meme of the antidote I presented earlier and assume each unintentional accident kills a family of 4.
You are not the only person driving and not the only person getting into accidents, especially in winter. In 2005, there were 6.4 million car accidents resulting in 42,600 some people dieing from those accidents. Now in the real world, a car manufacturer employs hundreds of thousands of people if not more. If none of those people knew that the car was dangerous, and none of the fatality accidents were caused by intention or reckless behavior, then more people are killed by accident with cars then by defects in cars.
But here is the rub, suppose a defect does work it's way into a car that makes it unsafe. What do you suppose should be done? Should No more cars be made? Should the car maker be sued into bankruptcy which would only hamper development and fixing of the problem? No, they issue a recall and fix the issue. If malice is shown to have existed, then whoever is responsible for that gets criminally charges just like you would if you caused a death. Something that you somehow do not seem to be understanding here is that a corporation can not act in any way, shape, or form, without a human making decisions. Often there are hundreds or thousands or more of humans doing this. In perspective, the bottom line is that the number of people who die per year due to safety defects in a car they purchased, is lower then the number of people who die each year from unintentional motor vehicle accidents.
If you are designing a network and ten thousand users go down are you going to argue that mistakes happen and it is no different having a single point of failure for four users versus having a single point of failure for ten thousand?
It's all relative and you are failing to see the real picture. Suppose this network is in one city and that city get nuked, a single point of failure right? Suppose that network was distributed across the world and an meteorite knocked out the satellite used to connect the backup stations as well as the main data center. Sure, it's like software as a service, host your apps on Google or set your servers up in the cloud at amazon- but what good does that do when a back hoe chops the fiber optics line leading from your production facility to the sales headquarters two states over. Sure, your local network is still working, your employees can play internet backgammon and print their scores out in the local building, but with no internet of communications access to the servers, everything else has stopped.
Or how about a more plausible point of failure. Suppose you have a tool that updates the routing in all the routers on the network. Now suppose this tool has the ability to do it all the routers at once so when you add a new node, you aren't updating 200 different routers individually. Now suppose one of the remote routers goes bad, you ask the tech to replace it with a backup and flash the configuration to the default so some diagnostics can be run. Now suppose this tech doesn't have the tools to do it, so you get a guy in another area to forward the tools and you will walk him through it. So you are off site, probably on the phone with this guy, he gets the tools that someone else left set in the update all mode, you walk the guy though flashing the router back to default which also flashes every other node back to default, and the single point of fai
Sega had to test the products in order to get data that was buried concerning children using the product.
I doubt it was buried because of the parents of the testers potential to sue, it was more likely shoved away in a file when they found they couldn't market the product and the children were likely compensated for their time. Lazy eye, when it isn't because of abnormality of the muscle or eye, can be treated in children. So it's likely that their needing the treatment is what alerted Sega.
No they have not. A single person can give the go ahead to ignore otherwise competent information that would indicate the car could kill thousands and isn't safe. However, if that information is non-existent and their actions are not legally reckless, then it's no different then you sneezing or sliding on ice, crossing the center line, and killing a family of 4 in a head on collision. Well, the scale is the difference but the cause/fault is no different. Sometimes accidents happen from unforeseen avenues. It doesn't matter if a corporation does it or if a single person does it, it's no worse except maybe for the scale.
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I'm not sure there is a specific Gay Tax and I know it isn't discrimination at all. The problem seems to be that Gays who cannot marry want the same things that married people seem to get because they are pretending to be a family (by necessity of not being allowed to marry). However, this discrimination isn't pointed at the gays, it's not really discrimination at all. What it is- is favoritism to married people.
Really, if you are straight or gay, you pay the same. If you have a live in lover, again either straight or gay, you pay the same taxes. If you get married, the taxes change a bit and you get extended benefits like spousal coverage and family coverage on insurance. But just like the gay person, the straight person living with someone doesn't get those benefits either. Just like the Gay person, the straight person living by themselves do not get the benefits. So this isn't discrimination against gays at all, it's favoritism towards married people.
Now it's being presented as discrimination due to sexuality, but that's only a perversion of the facts to advance a cause. Otherwise the push would be to get these same benefits for live in girlfriends and so on as well. Th legal restriction does not create a situation of discrimination in other areas outside of the restriction. It simply creates a special advantage to those who are not subject to the restriction and take advantage of it. In other words, They are treating unmarried people like unmarried people and married people with extra benefits. It's not discrimination against gays, it's discrimination against unmarried people if any discrimination is going on.
SO are you saying that it's impossible for a spark to set off built up sewer gasses?
I'm not sure about sewer gasses itself, but we had a neighbor who would pore used motor oil down the sewer drain in the alleyway behind us then dump about half a gallon of gasoline in it to "break the oil up". Yea, I'm not saying he was intelligent or anything, just that he existed and did things. Anyways, had you been in my neighborhood, you could have set his concoction a blaze. In fact, this had happened once, the man hole covers for about two blocks shot close to 5 foot in the air. Cars ended up getting damaged as they either dodged the flying covers or fell into the open holes not noticing the missing covers.
But that isn't the interesting parts, the explosion ended up creating a crack in the sewer line which then turned into a sink hole down the road a bit which took someone's garage with it when it collapsed some 5 years later.
Of course this all happened when I was a kid so it was probably the late 70's or early 80's. I'm thinking the reason why the cop mentioned sparks and sewer gas is because there is a real threat that could cause harm to not just you, but others who are clueless of your actions. It may not have happened that time, but it doesn't mean it won't happen or never will. It's one thing to do something stupid that will only effect you, but it's another thing entirely to do something that has the potential of injuring or damaging someone or their property who is completely independent of your actions. Think of it this way, you could construct a race track with guardrails and fences all the way around it, blindfold yourself and drive a car on it. But do you think you would have just as much right to blind fold yourself and drive a car down I5 or I70 or something? How about down the street the high school is on when it's letting out? I guess what I'm saying is that if you were doing that in a squash culvert, it would be one thing as you would be the only people in range of it, but in a closed sewer system that connects to others, it's a little irresponsible given that something could happen. I'm sure you didn't drop any meters in to measure the air quality before setting them off.
I can see it now. The rent a cop or police tell you to delete your picture, you put both hands down your pants, and just point at him saying smell my finger first while pulling out the Photographer's Rights paper.
It is when the thought is just as controlled as any other regiment you see. And yes, I know the difference between the democrat party and liberal even though the one is often called the other.
If you do not believe me, just go to any self proclaimed liberal person, including yourself, and ask them why there can't be a god that created the world as we know it and science might explain how it could have happened independent but if it was possible that it was just made that way. You will find that there is no tolerance unless you think the exact way they want you to think.
And just to point out, you don't have to ask about a religious topic. Suggest that global warming may be wrong and that it needs further study or that you want proof that the known known's of it aren't manipulated fabrications of real or near real evidence designed to advance a political agenda, stand back because you will generally get a worse reaction then mentioning religion.
But those are just two suggestive topics. This problem is nothing new, the guy who discovered that most stomach ulcers were bacterial problems that could be cured instead of just treating the symptoms lived thought a decade or better of ridicule because the thinkers insisted they knew it was impossible for bacteria to set up shop in the acid environment of the stomach.
Or even take your own statement here in which you are pressing anti-thought because you believe that the accusation of anti-thought isn't compatible with liberal. It's a matter of semantics in reality, it's an expressed bias which is also hidden to the biased but the reality is that if you allow thought, then you allow the exploration of that which you do not agree with. If you reached a conclusion and insist on it being the only right answer, then you are what you were decrying. And that was the point, not that democrats are liberal or anything. It's that as soon as you limit it to your notion of what you know, you have become the very same thing you railed on "people who's power base relies on people not asking questions and just doing as they are told" and "poisoning the American spirit and sapping the will to learn from the people".
Hey, you forgot all the people who think it's just the "domestic conservative and religious organizations that are poisoning the American spirit and sapping the will to learn from the people."
Often the truth lies in between the two or more extremes. This is nothing but a raging example of that. The only reason you pick a single portion is because you are biased and don't see the other side. This makes you what you are decrying and the ability to learn seems to have stopped there too.
Well, yea, I don't disagree.
However, what my point was intending to say was that if they are going to go through the trouble of changing the elections systems from the ground up, it's just as easy, if not easier to simply campaign that way and the third party will become as strong as any of the dominant parties without ever needing to change the fundamental systems most areas use to vote.
As for moving to two parties, probably the biggest issue is participation in a single party rather then how we decide the winners of elections. I know democrats who would never support some of the crap going on in the party or governments controlled by them today. I know republicans who have the same problems presently and in the past. The two dominant parties are actually a conglomeration of several distinct parties with enough in common that they sort of merged and if a candidate or voter could participate solely on political position and become a democratic-republican-green-libertarian-man instead of a green party, a republican, or democrat, or libertarian, in the strict sense, maybe we could get away from voting for party members and start voting for the candidates again.
If you look at parliament or any other European style democratic government, you will see that they have to form a coalition of the parties in order to run the government and the other parties tend to form a coalition in order to present opposition. It's no different with the two parties in the US except we have an executive branch and that the coalition has been done outside of the government and it's generally lasting longer then the terms of the members. This is more obvious when you look at the parties and how their voting blocks are made up in which candidates attempt to appease certain factions like the religious rights without pissing the other members off.
Lol.. And your search mastery wouldn't have issues with the limited search abilities of the site or Google's reference to articles instead of threads like it used to be. Why don't you post a fool proof way to search this site for comments to back up your own statements and I can easily adapt it to do mine. I mean after all, you are making unsupported claims too. Except you are saying that because I'm not activly supporting mine means yours are right. Well, that may have worked in third grade, but most of us aren't in the third grade still. We don't see technical limitations or the lack of willingness of someone to do something you try to goad them into as proof of anything. Of course ignoring the facts and that is what I was posting about in the first place before you trolled on over. You know, where I was saying that in order to believe the Iraq war was about oil and that there was some massive conspiracy to cover that up, you would have to ignore the very real and factual history of the last ten years and you pop in saying I'm lieing and offering only my unwillingness or inability to participate in your bullshit as proof instead of actual proof that can stand on it's own.
Go troll elsewhere. It's obvious here. I guess that's just one more thing you can't do right. You might want to start looking for something you can do right before the lists get so lopsided, you think you are nothing but a failure when reviewing it.
State of emergencies issued by the executive carry a 1 year max term then need to be reauthorized every six months unless the congress issues the re-authorization and gives a future date. Of course the one year, six month rule is for executive declarations of emergencies and congress can end them at any time they see fit. Congressional declarations can carry any term they want and make the rules up in the process.
Lol.. Don't ask don't tell is not a law, it's an executive directive that the army has to follow. It's basically the commander in chief telling it's subordinated to not look for violations of the homosexual misconduct law in the same way his exuctive order told the federal prosecutors not to prosecute the law on Marijuana if it's in a medical state and there is a prescription or state allowance of it.
There is a law about homosexuals in the military though, and as the op suggested, he can simply tell the military not to pursue any actions against any homosexual for any reason. SO yes, an executive order can simple change the effectiveness of the law and end don't ask don't tell the same way his executive order ended prosecutions for pot possession and cultivation in medical marijuana states if there is a prescription.
Here is the problem with your comment. Well, not actually your comment but your concept for the comment.
There is nothing limiting the existing system to two parties. What has happened is that the dominant parties have absorbed a lot of the smaller parties that used to exist and formed more or less conglomerations. This always the case and doesn't have to be right now.
Now here is where the concept breaks.. You are claiming the problem is the type of elections and think the solution starts at the bottom. You can achieve the same exact goals of getting viable third parties elected by doing the exact same thing with the party. You see, people are inherently reluctantly cautious creatures on the large part. Sure you have bold and adventurous people but they aren't the masses as history has shown with a few people leading the way in exploring new territory and so on. They like to stick with what they know and if what they know is that the guy they like locally is associated with a political party, then that's the party they should vote for in the higher elections. It's amazing to see how different local candidates are from their same party members on higher stages.
Anyways, if the third parties worked at a grass roots level just the same as you are suggesting the election systems be changed, then they will be what the people know and trust and they will be dominant in the higher elections. There is a reason why the two parties are dominant, that is because they are who run and get elected on the local levels. Nothing is preventing other parties from doing the same. And the more local third party candidates serving, the more distance third party candidates will serve, when they become common at a state level, they will be common at a federal level. Instead, they take shortcuts, only want to participate in the big elections, and their answer seems to be change the system instead of changing their own actions.
Sort of.
Here is how food markets, specifically in the US are different. You see, a lot of the surplus in the US gets used by the government in aid packages sent oversees. It's the entire subsidies issue where the government pays to have excess food produced in case a natural or other disaster kills a regions crops, the other 4 regions (*5 separate regions in the US) will fill in. It's part of the food security plan that was adapted after WWII where we saw the people living in the battlefields of Europe almost starve because crops couldn't be brought in or were destroyed and so on.
Your right in that eventually, surplus will overwhelm the market and cause a crash. Just look at oil in how the price of oil fell to a tiny fraction of what it was when the economy collapsed and all the speculators lost their asses (with banks being bailed out and the famous too big to fail, I know there was more to it but, you could see how much the costs of oil was speculation because usage and demand didn't change over night). But what is making this a tad bit different besides the entire aid disposal of excess food is that the money is not going to the producers of the crop who need a substantial investment in order to increase production. Instead, it's going to the speculators feeding on the system and middle men in the system and that in turn deprives the producer of the ability to increase production as redily to lead to that collapse.
Ok, if you don't follow me, then imagine this if you will. Lets say there are 4 people, person A who farms, Person B who buys the farmer's product and sells to person C who then makes something and sells it to the public which is person D. The speculation is happening between person B and C and C and D. What this does is trap the inflated values before they reach the producers who would use the increased money to increase production. So if person A has 200 acres and is getting the most crops possible from them, when the options contract is made, it is generally with person B and/or C. If C, then he offers B a reduced increase in order to secure a supply for D. C pockets the majority of the excess money, B has to pass some to the farmer in order to ensure they are going to get a supply to sell, so B pockets the majority and A gets a fraction of the difference in the original. But A has probably the most expense to increase production so he can't really do it without a larger cut of the inflated costs. Now person B and C can and often are the same person, as well as A and B being the same people. But it's rare that A is B or C and he is generally always D to some extent. So in the end, the farmer pays more of an increase in percentage for food then he receives, But has a larger percentage of costs to increase production (combines, tractors, and land aren't cheap, especially when you consider that in order for an increase in over all production, they have to use land not already being farmed).
While in the end, given enough time and the pace outperforming inflation adjustments (like increased salaries) which would negate a portion of the effect, the rules of Econ 101 will come true. It's just severely retarded in it's operation so it wouldn't be as obvious as you would think.
I guess they will have to take my word for it just the same as they have to take your word for what you said.
However, I should mention that it isn't just following Doc Ruby, You seem to troll on out for any topic where the facts presented break down your idea that Bush is an evil oil Barron plotting the destruction of freedom while pulling some massive oil war conspiracy, while at the same time too stupid to tie his own show even though he was able to defeat two democrat opponents in two elections. You also seem to troll when the science doesn't back the Church of global warming, or when someone attempts to claim science disproves religion when it does no such thing. I think I remember a thread in which you were attempting to claim all sorts of shit about the bible too which turned out to be the simple fact that you don't know your ass from a whole in the ground about it or the christian religion or the bible. It was like you read a website somewhere trashing the thing then repeated it without understanding what they were even saying.
I can understand your frustration and why you will not address the issues or facts presented. I mean if I was shot down as much as you have been, I would probably just stop posting online. You on the other hand seem to think the alternative to intelligent discourse isn't keeping your mouth shut, it's trolling and attempting to distract from the points being made in order to keep your geopolitical ideals real to yourself. I am pointing out that you only jumped in this because you disagreed with something I said, yet you offer nothing to what was said, just your blabbering about not listening to the truth because of something entirely unrelated which exists in your mind.
What the hell are you talking about? That was the statement I was making when you finally found the thread and started claiming everything I said was a lie. Are you so daft that you can't even contain context? Oh yea, that right, your a fucking troll, Why would I expect anything more.
Yea, see above. You see readers, this is the type of bullshit those conspiracy theorists attempt to do. They chime in with Bullshit to discredit the people spreading the truth in order for their distortions of reality to prevail. You all are supposed to believe the Iraq war was because of oil, bush is evil and no matter what the facts are or the historical events are, they are wrong so believe the conspiracy, Oh yea and vote democrat or republocrap or whatever. and when things still don't go their way, they will blame Bush or Reagan, or some long lost democrat who wasn't socialist or communist enough for them. In short, they expect the reader to be useful idiots who have no capacity of checking the facts for themselves and instead just parody what their masters tell them on the other websites with no real understanding of the issues at all.
This isn't the first time dbill has trolled like this. He likes to follow me around and pretend he is saving his cause (whatever that may be) by distracting the poster from the points that were damaging the claim. I find that he usually pops up right after someone seriously contradicts Doc Ruby and a few other accounts. It may be as he claimed in the beginning a "the sockpuppet account he has for when he wants to annoy people with a fake parody persona" or it might just be some useful idiot following them around who thinks they are helping the cause or something. It's sort of one of those guilty conciseness like where people who are cheating on their spouse end up accusing them of cheating in order to justify their own behavior. It's typical where he will distract the thread and when someone attempts to get back on point he says "I didn't say that". Well, No shit Sherlock, I said it and more, and if you would have been following along instead of attempting to confuse everyone, you would have easily seen and comprehended that.
OK, lets say there are 25 manufacturers that make accelerators for use in 25 different cars. Now lets say all of them have a resistor that has ceramic base because one manufacturer who has a patent on that one type of resister that the Accelerators use had a messup with their recipe. You now have 25 different manufacturers with the same results. Not only that, you likely will not even have 25 manufacturers because you are wanting to limit their ability to grow. Who is going to invest money into something that will be capped artificially when someone arbitrarily decides they are large enough and more competition is needed? I don't see how that is any better.
So you are saying that you have the power to intentionally force the use of something known to be unsafe that would kill thousands of customers. Any you can do that on your own without the input of anyone else. Interesting, I wasn't aware that there was a company in this country that fucked up. You see, you as a supervisor have a fiduciary responsibility (you will know what that is if you are in the position you claim) that pretty much prohibits you from making arbitrary and independent decisions like that. You may be able to make decisions like check the bathrooms for sanitary tissues at least twice a day without getting any flack over it, but if you change a component on the product line without getting the advice from the engineering department, you would pretty much be legally liable for any harm it does.
The hell they don't. Order an employee to rape the nearest women and see what happens. The employee has the choice of leaving the job or going over your head, even to regulatory officials if it's pertinent enough. They have the choice of making your orders public knowledge which is about the same as going over your head. They have the choice of filing a grievance with any applicable labor unions or state workers boards. They have the choice of just ignoring the directive and make you look like a shitty manager.
Actually, you have an obligation to employ values in making those decisions. Mistakes are one thing, but making decisions that endanger the lives of others is illegal and you can and should be brought on criminal charges if you are doing that. A corporation is not immune from criminal liability in their acts, in fact, the CEOs and people who make the same decisions we are talking about have not only been charged for making the wrong decisions, but jailed in a federal pound me in the ass prison too. He
and I suggest you put some truth behind your statements and point out what was said that was a lie. If you could, you wouldn't be playing this little game of yours where you follow me around and attempt to claim I'm the troll every time I through a wrench in your little Geopolitical world view. The Iraq was was not about oil and it the case simply cannot be made that it is unless you ignore very real facts that exist. How pointing that out means I'm "playing a silly little game with your spare slashdot persona that you only use to annoy people, often via blatant lies." is beyond me but the conspiracy simply doesn't wash. You and the parent poster are idiots attempting to remain willfully ignorant in a mad attempt to believe the lies you know to be wrong.
Like I said before, get over it and get over yourself. You have nothing to back up your accusations and you are just trolling.
Oh, so it's a big conspiracy now is it. Nobody listen to what is being said- just ignore the words written which happen to be true because of some conspiracy being alleged that couldn't exist if anyone ever looked at the real facts.
Get over it and get over yourself. Your just pissed because almost anyone can open a third grade text book and prove you wrong the majority of the time. In fact, I just opened a newspaper and proved the person I was replying to wrong. Now instead of accepting that his conspiracy is dead in the water without any leg to stand on, you invent this other conspiracy thinking it will silence me. If you have a problem with what I say, then address what I say and where I am wrong, I will admit it. The problem is that I'm not wrong often which causes issues for the half backed loony geopolitical ideals you and Doc Ruby spout. There is more evidence of you conducting a conspiracy to silence me then there is of me participating in any conspiracy.
Translation, he knows the truth so we will ignore him and move on to some useful idiot.
So you do not dispute what I said, the UN controlled Iraq's oil until it officially recognized the Iraqi government as a separate entity of Saddam's regime.
In order for you to believe that, you have to ignore the actual history of Iraq upto and including the takeover. I never could understand how people like you could insist that some conspiracy is at work while ignoring the very real facts in order to make the case. Plenty of other countries shouldn't have even been in your statement at all. Iraq wasn't about bringing democracy to Iraq until after Saddam was out of power. Saddam claimed to have WMDs and wouldn't let the UN inspection teams validate whether he did or didn't. This validation was mandatory as part of the cease fire agreements that stopped hostilities of the first gulf war.
Iraq became a big problem when the threat of terrorism was brought home to civilians instead of military targets abroad. Whether Saddam actually had WMDs or not, the world believed he did in some capacity before the 2003 invasion because Saddam was personally attempting to make them believe that. He said in an interview that he was afraid of invasion if the neighboring countries thought he was defenseless. Now with terrorism hitting home, Saddam having banned WMDs and publicly stating his design to inflict harm to the US, he became a very real threat that not only had the capacity, suspected capabilities, but the motivations to move these WMDs to terrorists for their use against American citizen at home. Bush has always said that after 9/11, we can no longer sit back and wait for something to develop- we need to be proactive when the threat is that real. We invaded Iraq for those reasons- because 9/11 changed everything for the administration.
Now I know you don't get it. You're probably one of those people who won't listen to the details long enough to understand any of them and say Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 when the reality of the situation is that 9/11 had to do with why we went into Iraq not the other way around. Only then can your wild conspiracies make sense outside of your own mind. It's about oil right, yea only if we conveniently forget about the entire 90's leading up to the 2003 invasion.
You might as well make up externalities like purple dinosaur eggs of something. I love the way people just make crap up, assign a cost to it that suits their needs, and then point to something else and say "look, it's affordable now that we have made up an inflated costs for X and called it the real costs".
Anyways, in case you missed the point, if the US shifts from alternative energies to clean natural gas, then the desire to continue to subsidize the alternative sources of energy will be gone. And with that, so will the subsidies that have giving it the only fighting chance it's had to date. In other words, don't expect to see the same growth if the political will shifts to another source of energy (like I originally said).
A carbon tax is nothing but a crock of shit. Look at the tobacco tax, very little if any of the money from that went to the intended targets designed to get people to quit smoking. Almost every state that participated in the tobacco settlement uses the money for unrelated funding and rely on people smoking to continue those programs. The feds take the fuel taxes and use them for crap other then roads like they were intended for. And the idea of penalizing someone for doing what they would normally do just to encourage they use a more expensive energy source is a bit inhumane if you ask me. The housing market bubble failed not because of the sub prime mortgages or the credit swaps, but because the high costs of energy caused those vehicles to fail when people couldn't afford the mortgages and shit. Increasing the costs of energy will only have the same effect- something that's more evident in Greece and Europe which is suffering much more then the US in the current recession.
What is needed isn't accounting gimmicks from the government or artificial markets that only exist by artificially inflating the costs to other participants. What is needed is an international government board of research designated specifically to making solar, wind, and other forms of alternative energy viable and efficient without distorting markets. The same board can do research into making existing tech cleaner and more available in the midterms. And most importantly, they need to offer this tech royalty free so it can be widely adopted and implemented around the entire world. This is what Kyoto and the IPCC should have been, not some tax the rich nations and redistribute the wealth panel pushing a political agenda.
And you just lost all credibility right there. I was with you until that one line which lets the entire world that you don't know what you are talking about and you have an agenda more then facts.
Iraq is not, never was, and it not going to be an oil war no matter how hard you close your eyes and wish just because it suits your agenda. The oil in Iraq was up until recently still governed by the UN which regulated how much oil Iraq could sell and what they could get in return for it. It wasn't until the UN- not the US- officially recognized the new Iraqi government as a separate entity from Saddam's Iraq did they start getting control back. The US is not getting oil from Iraq outside of paying for it through normal markets that every other country participates in. The Iraq war had nothing to do with oil at all and you have nothing to show that it was except innuendos and wild conspiracy theories that mostly exist in people's imagination.
Your somewhat there. It's not all that difficult to retrofit a coal plant to natural gas. The heat exchangers can be the same, the only difference would be the furnace to fire the fuel and a pipeline to bring the fuel in.
When I was working at the power stations in Aberdeen Ohio, One of the four generators was already set up for dual fuels with natural gas being the backup in case there was a problem getting the coal or JPL fuel on site (the coal is sprayed with a mist of jet fuel grade kerosene in order to promote even burning just before entering the furnace so they count as one fuel).
Anyways, one of the largest problems with upgrading the existing plants right now is that emissions regulations. They put a chemical dispersion devise on the exhaust scrubbers at the same power plant and had to get the entire emissions system re-certified to the newest emissions standards. And all this chemical was supposed to do was stop the fly-ash from creating an acid( or base, I don't remember) when it hardened in the corners of the heat exchangers. That stopped them from having to replace the exchangers as often (which oddly enough, didn't require any re-certification).
I doubt the costs of building new or retrofitting the existing facilities would drive up the market price of electricity and possibly make brownouts and price spikes more common unless regulation causes it in which case we haven't really gotten away from the subsidy and artificial problem.
You don't need Ayn Rand or anything descending from the heavens to know that cost effectiveness is what is the issue. To date, solar simply isn't cost effective without subsidies, artificial inflation of other energy sources and the threat of other technology being regulated out of the markets. This also needs no tax cuts or anything because it's a simple fact of life. If you bank all your money on solar power, you will be a broke mother'fsker if the country moves to natural gas for it's carbon sequestering plans as solar will wither away with your savings.
Look, it doesn't take a genius to see the outside forces at play here. But it does take a fool to ignore them in order to chastise your political enemies.
The growth you are seeing is a product of manufactured necessity.
In other words, the necessity simple isn't there at it's current state. If it wasn't for government subsidies in both the commercial and residential markets along with gigantic pushes for legislation mandating it, and the threat of regulation requiring it, the growth wouldn't otherwise exist.
Solar, just like most other alternative energy sources simple aren't otherwise cost effective. That may change, but typically, to see the same growth you are seeing with solar, it would have changed before the growth not after it. This push to move to natural gas (and I'm assuming liquefied petroleum gas which is very similar) could cause a massive halt to the solar industry. That's a problem when something is propped up by artificial means instead of an actual market necessity. We saw the growth slow when oil dropped in prices, if the other incentives are removes, it doesn't look good.
Yes, it doesn't matter. That is because you are failing to put it into perspective. According to the CDC (pdf) the number one cause of unintentional death is motor vehicle accidents. So lets keep in the meme of the antidote I presented earlier and assume each unintentional accident kills a family of 4.
You are not the only person driving and not the only person getting into accidents, especially in winter. In 2005, there were 6.4 million car accidents resulting in 42,600 some people dieing from those accidents. Now in the real world, a car manufacturer employs hundreds of thousands of people if not more. If none of those people knew that the car was dangerous, and none of the fatality accidents were caused by intention or reckless behavior, then more people are killed by accident with cars then by defects in cars.
But here is the rub, suppose a defect does work it's way into a car that makes it unsafe. What do you suppose should be done? Should No more cars be made? Should the car maker be sued into bankruptcy which would only hamper development and fixing of the problem? No, they issue a recall and fix the issue. If malice is shown to have existed, then whoever is responsible for that gets criminally charges just like you would if you caused a death. Something that you somehow do not seem to be understanding here is that a corporation can not act in any way, shape, or form, without a human making decisions. Often there are hundreds or thousands or more of humans doing this. In perspective, the bottom line is that the number of people who die per year due to safety defects in a car they purchased, is lower then the number of people who die each year from unintentional motor vehicle accidents.
It's all relative and you are failing to see the real picture. Suppose this network is in one city and that city get nuked, a single point of failure right? Suppose that network was distributed across the world and an meteorite knocked out the satellite used to connect the backup stations as well as the main data center. Sure, it's like software as a service, host your apps on Google or set your servers up in the cloud at amazon- but what good does that do when a back hoe chops the fiber optics line leading from your production facility to the sales headquarters two states over. Sure, your local network is still working, your employees can play internet backgammon and print their scores out in the local building, but with no internet of communications access to the servers, everything else has stopped.
Or how about a more plausible point of failure. Suppose you have a tool that updates the routing in all the routers on the network. Now suppose this tool has the ability to do it all the routers at once so when you add a new node, you aren't updating 200 different routers individually. Now suppose one of the remote routers goes bad, you ask the tech to replace it with a backup and flash the configuration to the default so some diagnostics can be run. Now suppose this tech doesn't have the tools to do it, so you get a guy in another area to forward the tools and you will walk him through it. So you are off site, probably on the phone with this guy, he gets the tools that someone else left set in the update all mode, you walk the guy though flashing the router back to default which also flashes every other node back to default, and the single point of fai
Sega had to test the products in order to get data that was buried concerning children using the product.
I doubt it was buried because of the parents of the testers potential to sue, it was more likely shoved away in a file when they found they couldn't market the product and the children were likely compensated for their time. Lazy eye, when it isn't because of abnormality of the muscle or eye, can be treated in children. So it's likely that their needing the treatment is what alerted Sega.
No they have not. A single person can give the go ahead to ignore otherwise competent information that would indicate the car could kill thousands and isn't safe. However, if that information is non-existent and their actions are not legally reckless, then it's no different then you sneezing or sliding on ice, crossing the center line, and killing a family of 4 in a head on collision. Well, the scale is the difference but the cause/fault is no different. Sometimes accidents happen from unforeseen avenues. It doesn't matter if a corporation does it or if a single person does it, it's no worse except maybe for the scale.