You are missing the point. The reason government here can't fix potholes is because conservative business leaders have consistently pushed just the idea you expressed and managed to successfully disguise it as a populist, libertarian movement. Over time this becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Blah blah blah
That's not the point in reality at all. The people who use the roads pay taxes on their gasoline in exchange for using the roads, this gas tax money has been used for so many different things then for the roads that it's pathetic. And each time it's done this way, it is done by a democrat, not some conservative business leader. I mean hell, in my area, they just spent millions from the road fund purchasing land and building a bike path on it. This bike path doesn't even go near the industrial sites, businesses, or anything, they made a fucking scenic route around town.
In fact, the so called conservative business people that you are talking about have little to do with anything you or the previous poster has said. It's incompetence from all sides in government that cause these problems. It's Unions that protect crappy unproductive workers while demanding extra pay and benefits. It's unnecessary regulation and in some cases over regulation aligned with poor regulation that causes projects to cost more to accomplish. It's politicians squandering money for things that people do not want. In my state, they just had to do a bunch of budget cuts and stop a tax break from taking effect in order to pass a balances fiscal budget, In two years, they expect the budget to be deficient at least 12 billion dollars and some have estimated it up to 24 billion or more.
And do I see the state legislature curbing spending or attempting to streamline government? Hell no, they are talking about taking a 200 million dollar per year liability onto the budget just to get low speed rail connecting one side of the state to another that wouldn't even be scheduled properly for anything productive. It's idiots like that which cause potholes in roads not to be patched promptly. Hell, we were going to chip seal a couple roads in the township using volunteer labor and the state refused to place them under the townships insurance policy because they weren't paid a full wage. The only way you can volunteer for a government project in my state is to become part of the state program which means you have to approve all project through the state, the volunteers could be called into work for other areas and could be required to get specialized training in areas they do no want to work in. That's really efficient there isn't it. I mean hell, we had trucks lined up, a spreader, a tar sprayer and everything all donated from the community for use in repairing these roads and the democrat controlled state house shut it down because it doesn't give the unions another employee.
The fact that this was discovered by the GAO, also a government agency, shows that regulation and oversight can and does have beneficial results. Now just imagine what a new Consumer Protection Agency as envisioned by the Democrats could do.
So there was oversight from a separate government agency after 15 year? The energy star program started in 1992 and you think this is some major accomplishment that we should expand the power government has because of some party line crap spouted to you? You need to wake up and stop drinking the cool-aid. And do not even attempt to claim that conservatives were in charge since then because that's factually incorrect.
How about starting with oversight within the actual department that is issuing fraudulent certifications or getting rid of the certifications altogether? I mean this is the entire reasoning of the report and why the EPA submitted bogus claims to be certified. In the GAO report, it said that the EPA didn't even verify the certifications it requested when the GAO submitted it's a certification supposedly from one
Actually, I can't think of a single seal of approval, or certification, that means anything.
I'll expand your mind then. Try the UL and the NFPA seals and listings.
Of course if something is not up to spec (lets say a manufacturer certified with one material and used another in production), then most people have a right to sue the manufacturers for not following the standards they were certified under as well as it being known that the problem wasn't the certification but the production afterward.
And here is a problem with circumventing those yearly caps. Last I heard with the immigration debate was that there is something like 12 million illegals in the USA according to some and closer to 20 million according to others. Remeber, if they pop a baby out while over here, their baby is a natural citizen so kids who didn't cross the border do not count as illegals.
Right now, unemployment in the US is around 10.4 percent according to Google's search answer and 9.4 percent according to the government BLS. With that in mind, and the last population estimates coming in around 303 million people in the US, then unemployment can be dropped by anywhere from 3.9 percent to 6.6 percent just by removing all the illegals.
In other words, between almost 4% to almost 7% of the unemployment is caused by people entering the country by circumventing the normal mechanisms. Actually, it will most likely be less then that because not all illegals will be employed but you should be able to get the drift. Now I'm not sure if this is the case in other nations, but in the US at least, businesses that hire illegals like to do so because they can pay them less. Sometimes this pay is even less then the minimum wage which displaces employment for others. The travesty of this is that the illegals do not have an effective remedy against this because reporting the violations of labor laws would also disclose their status. They are held basically in bondage by fear of deportation or imprisonment and exploited because of their unique situations. If you ask me, this is far more harmful to the illegals then waiting in line for a visa or whatever to come up. And for every illegal employed, it displaces at least one legal employee from a job so even though someone might make the claim that they add to the system by paying sales taxes and such, they are taking more away because of the unemployment benefits and welfare created for others. Another problem is that this also inflates the work pool and causes wages to stay down which in turn causes legal employees to earn less and sometimes take two or more jobs just to get a decent standard of living for their families.
IF they want to come in, they need to get in line and wait just like every other legal immigrant does. There is a limit for a reason or several reasons and if all the illegals were not in the country right now, more legal immigrants would be allowed in. All they are doing by jumping the lines and coming in illegally is making it harder for others to come in and causing government resources to be diverted making taxes go up even more while wages go down.
Actually, you are both right. Immigrants is what they are illegally. Aliens refers to their citizenship. You can have illegal immigrants that are aliens but not all aliens are immigrants. Therefor the term aliens would include more people.
They are two separate concepts as immigration is moving to a new country to establish a home and citizenship is whether you belong to that country or not. The legal and illegal status is just that, whether they are legal or not in their actions.
To add to the mix, emigration which is different from immigration can be included to the same.
That terrible whooshing noise your hearing can be treated with the government health care too.
DO you seriously think that the patient is the most important person in government health? I mean when you are responding to a point that asks why the UK government altered well established criteria to save a few bucks on buying new ambulances, do you come out and complain about insurance companies trying to save money?
If anything, his comment just shows that nothing is or will be different in the private verses government health policies. They (the UK government) made a decisions to alter the parameters in order to reduce the demand on their ambulance services and save from buying more ambulances. And they did it in error causing the potential lives of patients to be put at risk. At least a private ambulatory care service or private health care, you would have the ability to sue them for damages and in some cases see criminal charges filed if a company decided go against well established criteria to save money avoid expenses that caused or increased injury or death to a person.
I'm not too sure about Canadian laws, but in the states and a few European countries I know of, any tool used to commit a crime can be considered a criminal tool and confiscated without return on conviction.
A computer used to access child porn or commit fraud or whatever would be considered a criminal tool in that extent. So if he is convicted, it most likely wouldn't be theft if the state disposed of the computer.
If you think that is weird, then equate it with robbing a bank at gunpoint. The state or government doesn't give the gun back to the convicted criminal nor do they compensate the criminal for the replacement of the gun. The state destroys and disposes of the gun instead of using it for their own gains. This avoids malicious prosecutions based around self enrichment which is why vehicles and buildings forfeited in drug seizures is such a controversy. If the city needs new cars for it's employees, they bust the lowly pot smoker and claim their $20k Ford was paid for in drug dealing money because the guy lost his job a year ago and hadn't had the car repo'd yet.
The general welfare clause is not the same welfare as your making it out to be. It's the welfare of the state in state affairs not for the citizens of the state.
While Jefferson and Hamilton argued over whether or not this welfare was confined to the specific legislative powers granted by the constitution or not, there is one common denominator in that they were arguing the powers go to the welfare of the state and not the people. Hamilton argued the more liberal approach suggesting that the general welfare allows congress to step outside the legislative authority specifically mentioned within the constitution. Here is an except of something he said
"No legislative act... contrary to the Constitution can be valid. To deny this would be to affirm that the deputy is greater than his principal; that the servant is above his master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people themselves; that men acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid." - Alexander Hamilton, Federalist 78 "
Other president and framers have chimed in on the issue too.
"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents." - James Madison criticizing an attempt to grant public monies for charitable means, 1794
"[I must question] the constitutionality and propriety of the Federal Government assuming to enter into a novel and vast field of legislation, namely, that of providing for the care and support of all those... who by any form of calamity become fit objects of public philanthropy... I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for making the Federal Government the great almoner of public charity throughout the United States. To do so would, in my judgment, be contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution and subversive of the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded." - President Franklin Pierce, 1854
"I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit." - President Grover Cleveland, 1887
"As a matter of fact and law, the governing rights of the States are all of those which have not been surrendered to the National Government by the Constitution or its amendments. Wisely or unwisely, people know that under the Eighteenth Amendment Congress has been given the right to legislate on this particular subject1, but this is not the case in the matter of a great number of other vital problems of government, such as the conduct of public utilities, of banks, of insurance, of business, of agriculture, of education, of social welfare and of a dozen other important features. In these, Washington must not be encouraged to interfere." - Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1930
Please note that in this last statement by FDR (Father of the New Deal), it was made 2 years before he became president and instituted the new deal which he knew to be unconstitutional at the time. He basically told the Supreme Court to make him stop when they rules most of the New Deal legislation unconstitutional and to avoid a meltdown, the Supreme Court came up with the expansion of the commerce clause to make most of sit within the constitution.
I will leave you with the words of James Madison
"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions." - James Madison, 1792
I recently had excellent karma (as of the end of last year) and then got mass down modded a couple of times. This happended right after taking a few weeks vacation with no Internet access. When that happens, slashdot won't let you post for 2 weeks or so and I got hit with another round of down mods. After the fourth or fifth round of down mods and not being able to post, well, you can see that my karma is at Terrible now.
The posts were not all that controversial either. One thread was about Microsoft being a separate company entirely from their Nevada licensing corporation, one thread was about people being able to separate the differences between science and religion in much the same way as they can separate the differences between the controls when playing a game on the X-Box verses the same game on a PC without losing any intelligence. It doesn't need to be "either or" and no one is less intelligent for considering both in their respective fields.
Hell, I got modded overrated for thanking a guy that corrected a spelling error in a post where I was using the right sounding word but the wrong spelling giving the wrong meaning to the statement.
Your karma is tied to how much you post in addition to the modding of your posts. IF something happens to the amount of posts you can make (like right now, I can only post 2 times in 24 hours under this account and have to switch IP's and use another account which isn't a problem for me but might be for others), your karma starts deteriorating faster then you would expect. Get a few moderating trolls against you, and it's even worse. I used to have Karma to burn on this account too. It appears that their are bands of trolls with mod points on slashdot now who do nothing but mod down point they cannot argue against. We have seen the secret editing and crap with Wikipedia- it's here too.
I think some people either do not understand or do not know that before 9/11, the US was diplomatically attempting to deal with the Taliban. We gave them 40 some million dollars in may of 2001 (4 months before 9/11) in aid in 2001 and was attempting to work with the Taliban government on curbing the heroine trade and human rights issue coming from Afghanistan.
Our repayment on this diplomacy was the harboring and safe haven given to a terrorist organization operating with complete knowledge of the Taliban government within their jurisdictional borders of Afghanistan.
I'm not sure that talking to the Taliban outside of them ceasing political aspirations as a group by means of violence and terror and denouncing terrorist ties could accomplish anything productive. I doubt that any US government would turn Afghanistan back over to them as that country has already created a new government that doesn't rely on violence and intimidation for rule.
A line in the sand was drawn when the trade towers were bombed. The Taliban ignored it and gave us the middle finger when running across it. It would take some serious back peddling in US policy to ignore that and accept more of the old and same. In fact, it would probably be so damaging to the image of the US around the world, that any organization wanting something would think that using terrorism tactics while hiding near a sympathetic government would be permissible. I don't even think the current administration would think that is acceptable.
If you, "as a US citizen", did walk into an American embassy and start killing people, then it would probably end with you getting killed in the process of being detained unless you gave yourself up.
As so is the case with any American citizen operating in the war zones. If they do not want shot or killed when doing their dirty deeds or aiding the enemy, then they can either not do it or give up and surrender before their life is taken in attempts to stop them.
Seriously, how many situations of gunmen shooting people in the US end up with the cops shooting or killing the suspects in attempts to capture them? I don't see the ACLU fighting against the government for every situation this happens in and in some cases, they are silent on people wielding nothing more then phones or some other metallic object in which a cop thought was a gun while attempting to apprehend them. I mean in the US, the same land that you think you would get a trial from, if you "had walked into a US embassy somewhere in Africa and started shooting everyone", it is perfectly reasonable for the police or even regular citizens to take your life in the attempts to stop you from taking more lives. Hell, even in hostage situations in the US when you haven't even killed anyone yet, there is a good chance that you could be killed by a sharp shooter before surrendering if it appears that you will cause serious injury or death to an innocent person.
SO if your going to attempt to put this into perspective, lets keep it in perspective and not cite straw man arguments in attempts to distort the outlook on life.
Also, as long as we are keeping this in a real perspective, the war is not on an ideology, it's on a group of people who have taken specific action against or supported other groups that have taken actions against the US, it's citizens, and cause the loss of life on our side. The war on terror isn't some ideological war as some have attempted to paint it, it's about a government that at one time supported and aided a criminal group that took terrorist actions against the US: IE, the Taliban supporting and offering refuge to Al Qeada before and after 9/11.
And as long as we are in this, even though the Taliban is a group revolving around religion, it is not a religious group per se. That is to say that there is not a religion mandating it's existence nor their actions. They instead use religion to justify their existence and actions which is quite a different beast altogether.
It seems like it was only yesterday when people were complaining that the black box data was there in the first place. Then came along the complaints on how it was being used against people in courts and in accident investigations. Then the complaint was that only certain people could get the information and you couldn't get it to clear your name or anything- even in one case where I believe the prosecutor got the information and decided it was worthless and tossed it (may be wrong on that).
Now, it seems that everything happening that would have caused a complaint is good and those not allowing it to happen is bad. Go figure.
It's going to be interesting to see how that law plays out.
If the company doesn't have any substantial interest/nexus inside the state of Colorado, then the law wouldn't likely apply to them. They would be viewed as a mail order house and US law would prevail creating a jurisdictional question for any company outside of CO. For any business inside CO, it would apply, but if I opened some internet site in Ohio or India and sold goods that where shipped from outside CO, then this new law wouldn't apply to me. This is because currently under US/postal laws, even though something may have been advertised inside a state, if that company doesn't have a substantial presence inside the state, it's treated as if the citizen of that state went to another location outside of the state to make the purchase.
I hope you weren't counting on a Funny mod because Google was a victim of this attack. IF you were, then I'm sorry that I walked around it. I do not think cloud computing would be the solution to something like this.
You see, they infiltrated the regular network before infiltrating the servers. Even cloud computing services wouldn't be looking for attacks from inside as it would appear once the workstations were compromised. They basically tricked users into giving them access or visiting a site that took advantage of an exploit to get access on the workstations. From there, it was almost like sitting in the offices that were supposed to be accessing the servers. This would work with or without cloud computing.
I had that happen once at a financial site I administrate.
It ended with me asking the manager/owner to sign a paper specifically assuming all the liability from any breaches or security incidents stemming from his use of unapproved software. He then asked me to clarify what I was wanting and I told him about the different requirements placed on financial institutions and places that process credit card information (some by law and some by credit card companies and such). His accounting firm hit on both areas and after speaking with his corporate attorney, he decided not to indulge himself in anything not directly related to his work.
This could have ended with me losing my contract, however it showed that there was more of a reason then just being a dick for all the rules and restrictions. If someone else is having this problem, it might be an approach that could work with them. Just don't be a dick when asking for the release, instead say something like "I sure would feel better about this if I knew I wouldn't be held accountable for regulatory or liability problems created by the use of the software". Peak his interest before dropping the hammer so he knows something is at stake.
I'm not sure there is a situation of a Linux web browser vulnerability that allow malicious websites to install software that will allow the attacker to gain access and escalate privileges.
Sure, rootkits are a real threat but the ease of this operation wouldn't have been there would it? I mean if all I have to do to get a foot in the door is to create a malicious website and provoke someone into visiting it, it's a little more easier then gaining access to the machines in the first place and installing software undetected.
Of course all this goes out the window if they tricked someone into opening an Email attachment saying "I love you" or something. Well, MS has even fixed that problem but you get the general idea, trick the user into running a program of some sort. However, most Linux servers do not run users in the traditional sense... Maybe I'm just naive or something, but it doesn't seem as easy with Linux and the Futile part would not have been mentioned without windows server being part of the mix.
Even without situations like yours, it still doesn't indicate apathy automatically. I know people who do not like certain party platforms but felt that the candidate for the platform they did like was just as bad. Certainly there was no apathy in that decision to not vote. They simply couldn't endorse any choice presented to them and refused to do so.
Not voting does send somewhat of a message though. It indicates that you will not support certain people or people with certain positions. This should cause parties that are paying attention to elect candidates that aren't in that league. However, with being able to lie being a prerequisite for holding office nowadays, it's pretty much impossible to find someone you can stand behind without there being parts you will disagree with.
Actually, it's more of a Shoot the messenger type thing.
It's ingrained in with recent American politics. Imagine a bill being introduced to law that would require every working person to pay one unemployed person $20 a week of their salary to help them feed their families. Now imagine the opposition to this bill claiming that it would be more beneficial to create job opportunities for the unemployed and allow them to feed their families with their own money instead of relying on weekly handouts. Those supporting the bill would immediately claim that the opposition means they are for starving families and their children. If it gets repeated enough time, then no one takes the opposition point seriously and eventually, they lose credibility even though it probably would be more beneficial to have jobs for everyone willing to work.
Back in the mid 1990's or so, we had a few incidents in my state where school children clothing or backpacks were tangles on the bus when they got off and one or two was dragged in a blind spot sustaining minor injuries. One of the purposed solutions was to hirer a second bus driver who's job was to walk around the bus and make sure all children were safely away from it before it resumed transportation. A competing solution was to retrofit all the buses to make sure lose clothing would easily catch on anything, place addition mirrors or CCTV cameras so the driver could view the blind spots more readily, and with some models, place a removable locking mechanism on the parking brake which would allow the existing driver to leave the controls of the bus without fear of the students operating the bus in their absence. The unions supported the hiring of extra personnel and quickly started claiming anyone who didn't agree didn't care for the safety of the children.
OF course the Unions lost the battle because the cost of fixing the problem for 10 years was less then the cost of one salary of the extra bus driver for 1 year. We are talking about basically $5,000 per bus in retrofiring (which became even cheaper by requiring them as standard safety equipment on new purchases) verses $20-30,000 a year salary plus benefits and all for every bus per year. But it took something like 2 years for the laws to be changed because of how demonized the opposition became. It's the same with calling someone who doesn't like Obama a Bush lover, it's mean to somehow dismiss them out of hand without dealing with the substance or quality of their argument. It's not because anyone is a moron.
If you simply said that you do not believe God or any gods exist, you would be stating your position and he would have to prove it does to counter your opinion. However, you went past that and claimed God doesn't exist and it's reference is nothing more then a fairy tale. You do have to prove you positive affirmation in the context it was made else you will be doing the exact same thing he was doing.
You see, not being convinced is one thing. It means the other person hasn't provided enough proof to satisfy you. But you are going from not being convinced to making assertive claims of your own in the same way as the original assertion. So in reality, you do need to offer proof of your claim. It appears that the only proof being offered is opinion about what someone was told which is identical to both arguments.
As for Aliens stealing your lunch money, I can "not believe" you when you say it happened. But when I claim you are making that up, I need to offer proof to that effect. Simply saying there are no aliens because I have never seen one or creditable evidence of their existence is not proof that they do not exist, it's only proof that you have not seen one or found evidence of their existence that you trust. It's like that false dichotomy statement where a guy gets on a train and only sees sheep of a certain color and then attempts to make the claim that all sheep are only white or black or whatever when we know they are either or more. What you do not know does not make something not true.
The biggest problems with wind is that the segments to create the mills that produce any sort of impacting energy are all over-sized and generally costs more to transport to the site and install then to manufacture in the first place. Another problem is the transmissions lines needed to take the energy to market typically isn't available in these isolated sites.
Sure, you can find rinky dink home units that will barely cover the usage of one home that can be transported by normal freight means and installed without special equipment, but these are all more expensive and less costs effective then the large scale windmills. Economics of scale will mean the more cost effective solutions will be the larger kilo/megawatt installations at sites with several of them.
I think you might be confusing conservation with conservative with conservationist. They are not and do not mean the same things and even conservative will have different meaning depending on the context in which it is use or even within the geo-global political climates being discussed.
As for conservative within the US political process, it's a meaning of little change or activity outside the constitutionally required or allowed involvement not conservation. I know this is somewhat startling to you considering that traditionally, the conservatives or the often confused republican party, has been one of the leaders in conservation and wild life protection in America. But where your analogy fails miserably is that you are attempting to impose an ideologue created by a political opponent as your basis for the conservation without an understanding of the positions actually taken or the reasoning why.
Some conservationist policies might make sense while others do not. Some might be beneficial business practices while others may not. What distinguishes them is not the political will of those implementing them, but the amount of return on the practices implemented. If they cannot pay for themselves, then it will only add to the costs of the items or services which in turn makes Chinese or India outsourcing even more attractive because people will purchase those cheaper products over the more expensive domestic products. This is even true when the imports are only slightly less expensive and the profit margins are extremely steep on them.
In reality, it's a balancing act between increased costs verses benefit and the amount of perceived benefit or perceived necessity of the benefit available. Currently, the perceived benefit in a lot of the so called green tech is more of a niche market instead of a real benefit which is why you see people attempting to co-opt governments into implementing policies instead of improving the tech and ability to go green profitably.
I'm not sure that placing the car into neutral would have the effect you are thinking it would. One of the people who testified to the senate hearing against Toyota claimed she placed the gear shift lever in all positions including neutral, reverse, and park to no avail. She said after noticing that all that failed to slow the car, she called her husband on the cell phone as the car was racing down the highway.
This may be because the shifting linkage isn't an actual linkage in some cars anymore. It's an electric solenoid that's operated by the shifter. It may stop the transmissions from going into gears that could cause damage like neutral or reverse or even lower gears if the RPMs are too high or the vehicle's speed it too great.
Currently, the key-start circuit cuts power to a significant portion of the engine controls. There is no way the engine can run, unless the ignition switch fails shorted.
Actually, your only partly right. In older cars, a shorted alternator wire could back feed the ignition system and cause the engine to remain running after the car was started and the ignition switch was turned off. This was also the easiest way to hot wire a car before lock steering colums became the norm. You would just run a hot wire from the battery to the ignition coil's hot side, then cross the starter relay to cause the engine to turn over. With HEI and other pointless ignition systems, it was just as easy except you needed to know the color of the wire for the make of car leading into the distributor housing to add power too. It isn't always red.
With the ECM, computer controlled engines, and stuff, this is still possible but more rare as the shorted alternator wire would also need to keep power to the ECM and the power feed to it is more isolated then the older ignition systems. Everything after the ECM is on relays controlled by the ECM or a subset component. With GM cars (I'm not sure on others), even the fuel pump is controlled to some degree by the ECM. It's still possible to happen. I know of several cars where the owner purposely did it in order to add a control panel under the hood that would allow them to start the car, rev the engine and turn it off, plus read all the gauges without a key or opening the car door. The cars I seen this done on were street/strip racers. I think you can even purchase kits to make this happen but the principle is the same as would be if a hot wire shorted to the power feed to the EMC.
This is truly fascinating. Tell me again - is it a different God, or did God change his mind about what morality is?
Lol.. I guess you really do not understand anything do you? It's the same God, and no, morality has not changed, just what he required from people following him. Surely you do not think morality only exists within the context of religion do you? I'm puzzled to why you are so stuck on morality when you are arguing that because someone did something under one set of commands that everyone else related to those people are somehow responsible or obligated to that action. This doesn't exist anywhere else in life, why should it exist here?
Christians, as you consider them, weren't fully realized until the Roman empire codified the faith. After Jesus you still have Paul interpreting everything that Christ said, and after that you still have followers fighting over which books were true and not true, and after that, since it doesn't seem like you're a Catholic, Christianity wasn't realized until the 16th or 17th centuries, when dogmas and bibles were re-interpreted again. What is important is that YHVH (or Yahweh, or Jehovah, or God, or Lord, depending on your translation) either has a universal value system or he does not.
First, I'm not catholic, I don't even believe in organized religion. Second, I know all of which you have mentioned about except the apostolic Christians existed within the same century as Jesus did. You do not have to wait centuries or hundreds of years to see the term in existence. The romans coined the term when Jesus was alive and it exists in roman writings. As for the value system God would have, it's both universal and not. You see, God can change it because it is his and his will. I'm not sure why you would think he couldn't change his values or where you are attempting to go with this.
If you believe the whole bible is true, then he does not have a universal value system, and he could decide tomorrow that all Hindus should be put to death, and as long you believed he said so, you'd consider it a moral action, because God said so.
Your somewhat correct, but the evidence in his commanding the hindus to death would have to overwhelmingly be supportive of God actually ordering it. It isn't like you can walk down the street claiming God Spoke to you and we need to kill all hindus now. Maybe in the past when the covenant was places with leaders of people and God spread his word through them, but that is one thing Christianity and Jesus changed. And yes, I do know that history hasn't shown that people have learned this well. But that all goes to the distinction between the man doing something in someone's name verses someone making something happen. I could say that you ordered me to kill all the hindus, when the reality is that you only used their deaths as an extreme example. You see, me claiming to be doing something in your name doesn't make it true.
If you don't believe the whole bible is true, and you want to cherry pick the parts you like (such as the New Testament), then by your own definition it holds no higher ground than any other man made philosophy. It just contains additional fantastic assertions, like water can be turned into wine, or people regularly rise from the dead, or virgins can give birth. And all of these are base and unimpressive miracles, common to many ancient myths, but probably seemed totally awesome to the illiterate goat herders of the 1st century.
I do not want to cherry pick anything. I simply want it to be presented in context- something you have had an extremely difficult time with. I'm sorry that everything you believed turned out to be completely out of context, but hey, that's your fault, not mine. As for it holding higher ground or not, I never said it did. That is something that you somehow imposed here.
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That's not the point in reality at all. The people who use the roads pay taxes on their gasoline in exchange for using the roads, this gas tax money has been used for so many different things then for the roads that it's pathetic. And each time it's done this way, it is done by a democrat, not some conservative business leader. I mean hell, in my area, they just spent millions from the road fund purchasing land and building a bike path on it. This bike path doesn't even go near the industrial sites, businesses, or anything, they made a fucking scenic route around town.
In fact, the so called conservative business people that you are talking about have little to do with anything you or the previous poster has said. It's incompetence from all sides in government that cause these problems. It's Unions that protect crappy unproductive workers while demanding extra pay and benefits. It's unnecessary regulation and in some cases over regulation aligned with poor regulation that causes projects to cost more to accomplish. It's politicians squandering money for things that people do not want. In my state, they just had to do a bunch of budget cuts and stop a tax break from taking effect in order to pass a balances fiscal budget, In two years, they expect the budget to be deficient at least 12 billion dollars and some have estimated it up to 24 billion or more.
And do I see the state legislature curbing spending or attempting to streamline government? Hell no, they are talking about taking a 200 million dollar per year liability onto the budget just to get low speed rail connecting one side of the state to another that wouldn't even be scheduled properly for anything productive. It's idiots like that which cause potholes in roads not to be patched promptly. Hell, we were going to chip seal a couple roads in the township using volunteer labor and the state refused to place them under the townships insurance policy because they weren't paid a full wage. The only way you can volunteer for a government project in my state is to become part of the state program which means you have to approve all project through the state, the volunteers could be called into work for other areas and could be required to get specialized training in areas they do no want to work in. That's really efficient there isn't it. I mean hell, we had trucks lined up, a spreader, a tar sprayer and everything all donated from the community for use in repairing these roads and the democrat controlled state house shut it down because it doesn't give the unions another employee.
So there was oversight from a separate government agency after 15 year? The energy star program started in 1992 and you think this is some major accomplishment that we should expand the power government has because of some party line crap spouted to you? You need to wake up and stop drinking the cool-aid. And do not even attempt to claim that conservatives were in charge since then because that's factually incorrect.
How about starting with oversight within the actual department that is issuing fraudulent certifications or getting rid of the certifications altogether? I mean this is the entire reasoning of the report and why the EPA submitted bogus claims to be certified. In the GAO report, it said that the EPA didn't even verify the certifications it requested when the GAO submitted it's a certification supposedly from one
I'll expand your mind then. Try the UL and the NFPA seals and listings.
Of course if something is not up to spec (lets say a manufacturer certified with one material and used another in production), then most people have a right to sue the manufacturers for not following the standards they were certified under as well as it being known that the problem wasn't the certification but the production afterward.
And here is a problem with circumventing those yearly caps. Last I heard with the immigration debate was that there is something like 12 million illegals in the USA according to some and closer to 20 million according to others. Remeber, if they pop a baby out while over here, their baby is a natural citizen so kids who didn't cross the border do not count as illegals.
Right now, unemployment in the US is around 10.4 percent according to Google's search answer and 9.4 percent according to the government BLS. With that in mind, and the last population estimates coming in around 303 million people in the US, then unemployment can be dropped by anywhere from 3.9 percent to 6.6 percent just by removing all the illegals.
In other words, between almost 4% to almost 7% of the unemployment is caused by people entering the country by circumventing the normal mechanisms. Actually, it will most likely be less then that because not all illegals will be employed but you should be able to get the drift. Now I'm not sure if this is the case in other nations, but in the US at least, businesses that hire illegals like to do so because they can pay them less. Sometimes this pay is even less then the minimum wage which displaces employment for others. The travesty of this is that the illegals do not have an effective remedy against this because reporting the violations of labor laws would also disclose their status. They are held basically in bondage by fear of deportation or imprisonment and exploited because of their unique situations. If you ask me, this is far more harmful to the illegals then waiting in line for a visa or whatever to come up. And for every illegal employed, it displaces at least one legal employee from a job so even though someone might make the claim that they add to the system by paying sales taxes and such, they are taking more away because of the unemployment benefits and welfare created for others. Another problem is that this also inflates the work pool and causes wages to stay down which in turn causes legal employees to earn less and sometimes take two or more jobs just to get a decent standard of living for their families.
IF they want to come in, they need to get in line and wait just like every other legal immigrant does. There is a limit for a reason or several reasons and if all the illegals were not in the country right now, more legal immigrants would be allowed in. All they are doing by jumping the lines and coming in illegally is making it harder for others to come in and causing government resources to be diverted making taxes go up even more while wages go down.
Actually, you are both right. Immigrants is what they are illegally. Aliens refers to their citizenship. You can have illegal immigrants that are aliens but not all aliens are immigrants. Therefor the term aliens would include more people.
They are two separate concepts as immigration is moving to a new country to establish a home and citizenship is whether you belong to that country or not. The legal and illegal status is just that, whether they are legal or not in their actions.
To add to the mix, emigration which is different from immigration can be included to the same.
That terrible whooshing noise your hearing can be treated with the government health care too.
DO you seriously think that the patient is the most important person in government health? I mean when you are responding to a point that asks why the UK government altered well established criteria to save a few bucks on buying new ambulances, do you come out and complain about insurance companies trying to save money?
If anything, his comment just shows that nothing is or will be different in the private verses government health policies. They (the UK government) made a decisions to alter the parameters in order to reduce the demand on their ambulance services and save from buying more ambulances. And they did it in error causing the potential lives of patients to be put at risk. At least a private ambulatory care service or private health care, you would have the ability to sue them for damages and in some cases see criminal charges filed if a company decided go against well established criteria to save money avoid expenses that caused or increased injury or death to a person.
Not really.
I'm not too sure about Canadian laws, but in the states and a few European countries I know of, any tool used to commit a crime can be considered a criminal tool and confiscated without return on conviction.
A computer used to access child porn or commit fraud or whatever would be considered a criminal tool in that extent. So if he is convicted, it most likely wouldn't be theft if the state disposed of the computer.
If you think that is weird, then equate it with robbing a bank at gunpoint. The state or government doesn't give the gun back to the convicted criminal nor do they compensate the criminal for the replacement of the gun. The state destroys and disposes of the gun instead of using it for their own gains. This avoids malicious prosecutions based around self enrichment which is why vehicles and buildings forfeited in drug seizures is such a controversy. If the city needs new cars for it's employees, they bust the lowly pot smoker and claim their $20k Ford was paid for in drug dealing money because the guy lost his job a year ago and hadn't had the car repo'd yet.
The general welfare clause is not the same welfare as your making it out to be. It's the welfare of the state in state affairs not for the citizens of the state.
While Jefferson and Hamilton argued over whether or not this welfare was confined to the specific legislative powers granted by the constitution or not, there is one common denominator in that they were arguing the powers go to the welfare of the state and not the people. Hamilton argued the more liberal approach suggesting that the general welfare allows congress to step outside the legislative authority specifically mentioned within the constitution. Here is an except of something he said
Other president and framers have chimed in on the issue too.
Please note that in this last statement by FDR (Father of the New Deal), it was made 2 years before he became president and instituted the new deal which he knew to be unconstitutional at the time. He basically told the Supreme Court to make him stop when they rules most of the New Deal legislation unconstitutional and to avoid a meltdown, the Supreme Court came up with the expansion of the commerce clause to make most of sit within the constitution.
I will leave you with the words of James Madison
I would be cautious about karma to burn.
I recently had excellent karma (as of the end of last year) and then got mass down modded a couple of times. This happended right after taking a few weeks vacation with no Internet access. When that happens, slashdot won't let you post for 2 weeks or so and I got hit with another round of down mods. After the fourth or fifth round of down mods and not being able to post, well, you can see that my karma is at Terrible now.
The posts were not all that controversial either. One thread was about Microsoft being a separate company entirely from their Nevada licensing corporation, one thread was about people being able to separate the differences between science and religion in much the same way as they can separate the differences between the controls when playing a game on the X-Box verses the same game on a PC without losing any intelligence. It doesn't need to be "either or" and no one is less intelligent for considering both in their respective fields.
Hell, I got modded overrated for thanking a guy that corrected a spelling error in a post where I was using the right sounding word but the wrong spelling giving the wrong meaning to the statement.
Your karma is tied to how much you post in addition to the modding of your posts. IF something happens to the amount of posts you can make (like right now, I can only post 2 times in 24 hours under this account and have to switch IP's and use another account which isn't a problem for me but might be for others), your karma starts deteriorating faster then you would expect. Get a few moderating trolls against you, and it's even worse. I used to have Karma to burn on this account too. It appears that their are bands of trolls with mod points on slashdot now who do nothing but mod down point they cannot argue against. We have seen the secret editing and crap with Wikipedia- it's here too.
I think some people either do not understand or do not know that before 9/11, the US was diplomatically attempting to deal with the Taliban. We gave them 40 some million dollars in may of 2001 (4 months before 9/11) in aid in 2001 and was attempting to work with the Taliban government on curbing the heroine trade and human rights issue coming from Afghanistan.
Our repayment on this diplomacy was the harboring and safe haven given to a terrorist organization operating with complete knowledge of the Taliban government within their jurisdictional borders of Afghanistan.
I'm not sure that talking to the Taliban outside of them ceasing political aspirations as a group by means of violence and terror and denouncing terrorist ties could accomplish anything productive. I doubt that any US government would turn Afghanistan back over to them as that country has already created a new government that doesn't rely on violence and intimidation for rule.
A line in the sand was drawn when the trade towers were bombed. The Taliban ignored it and gave us the middle finger when running across it. It would take some serious back peddling in US policy to ignore that and accept more of the old and same. In fact, it would probably be so damaging to the image of the US around the world, that any organization wanting something would think that using terrorism tactics while hiding near a sympathetic government would be permissible. I don't even think the current administration would think that is acceptable.
If you, "as a US citizen", did walk into an American embassy and start killing people, then it would probably end with you getting killed in the process of being detained unless you gave yourself up.
As so is the case with any American citizen operating in the war zones. If they do not want shot or killed when doing their dirty deeds or aiding the enemy, then they can either not do it or give up and surrender before their life is taken in attempts to stop them.
Seriously, how many situations of gunmen shooting people in the US end up with the cops shooting or killing the suspects in attempts to capture them? I don't see the ACLU fighting against the government for every situation this happens in and in some cases, they are silent on people wielding nothing more then phones or some other metallic object in which a cop thought was a gun while attempting to apprehend them. I mean in the US, the same land that you think you would get a trial from, if you "had walked into a US embassy somewhere in Africa and started shooting everyone", it is perfectly reasonable for the police or even regular citizens to take your life in the attempts to stop you from taking more lives. Hell, even in hostage situations in the US when you haven't even killed anyone yet, there is a good chance that you could be killed by a sharp shooter before surrendering if it appears that you will cause serious injury or death to an innocent person.
SO if your going to attempt to put this into perspective, lets keep it in perspective and not cite straw man arguments in attempts to distort the outlook on life.
Also, as long as we are keeping this in a real perspective, the war is not on an ideology, it's on a group of people who have taken specific action against or supported other groups that have taken actions against the US, it's citizens, and cause the loss of life on our side. The war on terror isn't some ideological war as some have attempted to paint it, it's about a government that at one time supported and aided a criminal group that took terrorist actions against the US: IE, the Taliban supporting and offering refuge to Al Qeada before and after 9/11.
And as long as we are in this, even though the Taliban is a group revolving around religion, it is not a religious group per se. That is to say that there is not a religion mandating it's existence nor their actions. They instead use religion to justify their existence and actions which is quite a different beast altogether.
Don't you mean "If Eric Holder's Justice Dept"?
I mean Gonzales has been gone for a while now.
It seems like it was only yesterday when people were complaining that the black box data was there in the first place. Then came along the complaints on how it was being used against people in courts and in accident investigations. Then the complaint was that only certain people could get the information and you couldn't get it to clear your name or anything- even in one case where I believe the prosecutor got the information and decided it was worthless and tossed it (may be wrong on that).
Now, it seems that everything happening that would have caused a complaint is good and those not allowing it to happen is bad. Go figure.
It's going to be interesting to see how that law plays out.
If the company doesn't have any substantial interest/nexus inside the state of Colorado, then the law wouldn't likely apply to them. They would be viewed as a mail order house and US law would prevail creating a jurisdictional question for any company outside of CO. For any business inside CO, it would apply, but if I opened some internet site in Ohio or India and sold goods that where shipped from outside CO, then this new law wouldn't apply to me. This is because currently under US/postal laws, even though something may have been advertised inside a state, if that company doesn't have a substantial presence inside the state, it's treated as if the citizen of that state went to another location outside of the state to make the purchase.
Thanks.
I thought something looked wrong with using "Peak" but I couldn't for the life of me figure out why. Now I know.
I hope you weren't counting on a Funny mod because Google was a victim of this attack. IF you were, then I'm sorry that I walked around it. I do not think cloud computing would be the solution to something like this.
You see, they infiltrated the regular network before infiltrating the servers. Even cloud computing services wouldn't be looking for attacks from inside as it would appear once the workstations were compromised. They basically tricked users into giving them access or visiting a site that took advantage of an exploit to get access on the workstations. From there, it was almost like sitting in the offices that were supposed to be accessing the servers. This would work with or without cloud computing.
I had that happen once at a financial site I administrate.
It ended with me asking the manager/owner to sign a paper specifically assuming all the liability from any breaches or security incidents stemming from his use of unapproved software. He then asked me to clarify what I was wanting and I told him about the different requirements placed on financial institutions and places that process credit card information (some by law and some by credit card companies and such). His accounting firm hit on both areas and after speaking with his corporate attorney, he decided not to indulge himself in anything not directly related to his work.
This could have ended with me losing my contract, however it showed that there was more of a reason then just being a dick for all the rules and restrictions. If someone else is having this problem, it might be an approach that could work with them. Just don't be a dick when asking for the release, instead say something like "I sure would feel better about this if I knew I wouldn't be held accountable for regulatory or liability problems created by the use of the software". Peak his interest before dropping the hammer so he knows something is at stake.
I'm not sure there is a situation of a Linux web browser vulnerability that allow malicious websites to install software that will allow the attacker to gain access and escalate privileges.
Sure, rootkits are a real threat but the ease of this operation wouldn't have been there would it? I mean if all I have to do to get a foot in the door is to create a malicious website and provoke someone into visiting it, it's a little more easier then gaining access to the machines in the first place and installing software undetected.
Of course all this goes out the window if they tricked someone into opening an Email attachment saying "I love you" or something. Well, MS has even fixed that problem but you get the general idea, trick the user into running a program of some sort. However, most Linux servers do not run users in the traditional sense... Maybe I'm just naive or something, but it doesn't seem as easy with Linux and the Futile part would not have been mentioned without windows server being part of the mix.
Even without situations like yours, it still doesn't indicate apathy automatically. I know people who do not like certain party platforms but felt that the candidate for the platform they did like was just as bad. Certainly there was no apathy in that decision to not vote. They simply couldn't endorse any choice presented to them and refused to do so.
Not voting does send somewhat of a message though. It indicates that you will not support certain people or people with certain positions. This should cause parties that are paying attention to elect candidates that aren't in that league. However, with being able to lie being a prerequisite for holding office nowadays, it's pretty much impossible to find someone you can stand behind without there being parts you will disagree with.
Actually, it's more of a Shoot the messenger type thing.
It's ingrained in with recent American politics. Imagine a bill being introduced to law that would require every working person to pay one unemployed person $20 a week of their salary to help them feed their families. Now imagine the opposition to this bill claiming that it would be more beneficial to create job opportunities for the unemployed and allow them to feed their families with their own money instead of relying on weekly handouts. Those supporting the bill would immediately claim that the opposition means they are for starving families and their children. If it gets repeated enough time, then no one takes the opposition point seriously and eventually, they lose credibility even though it probably would be more beneficial to have jobs for everyone willing to work.
Back in the mid 1990's or so, we had a few incidents in my state where school children clothing or backpacks were tangles on the bus when they got off and one or two was dragged in a blind spot sustaining minor injuries. One of the purposed solutions was to hirer a second bus driver who's job was to walk around the bus and make sure all children were safely away from it before it resumed transportation. A competing solution was to retrofit all the buses to make sure lose clothing would easily catch on anything, place addition mirrors or CCTV cameras so the driver could view the blind spots more readily, and with some models, place a removable locking mechanism on the parking brake which would allow the existing driver to leave the controls of the bus without fear of the students operating the bus in their absence. The unions supported the hiring of extra personnel and quickly started claiming anyone who didn't agree didn't care for the safety of the children.
OF course the Unions lost the battle because the cost of fixing the problem for 10 years was less then the cost of one salary of the extra bus driver for 1 year. We are talking about basically $5,000 per bus in retrofiring (which became even cheaper by requiring them as standard safety equipment on new purchases) verses $20-30,000 a year salary plus benefits and all for every bus per year. But it took something like 2 years for the laws to be changed because of how demonized the opposition became. It's the same with calling someone who doesn't like Obama a Bush lover, it's mean to somehow dismiss them out of hand without dealing with the substance or quality of their argument. It's not because anyone is a moron.
Actually, you are claiming an affirmative also.
If you simply said that you do not believe God or any gods exist, you would be stating your position and he would have to prove it does to counter your opinion. However, you went past that and claimed God doesn't exist and it's reference is nothing more then a fairy tale. You do have to prove you positive affirmation in the context it was made else you will be doing the exact same thing he was doing.
You see, not being convinced is one thing. It means the other person hasn't provided enough proof to satisfy you. But you are going from not being convinced to making assertive claims of your own in the same way as the original assertion. So in reality, you do need to offer proof of your claim. It appears that the only proof being offered is opinion about what someone was told which is identical to both arguments.
As for Aliens stealing your lunch money, I can "not believe" you when you say it happened. But when I claim you are making that up, I need to offer proof to that effect. Simply saying there are no aliens because I have never seen one or creditable evidence of their existence is not proof that they do not exist, it's only proof that you have not seen one or found evidence of their existence that you trust. It's like that false dichotomy statement where a guy gets on a train and only sees sheep of a certain color and then attempts to make the claim that all sheep are only white or black or whatever when we know they are either or more. What you do not know does not make something not true.
The biggest problems with wind is that the segments to create the mills that produce any sort of impacting energy are all over-sized and generally costs more to transport to the site and install then to manufacture in the first place. Another problem is the transmissions lines needed to take the energy to market typically isn't available in these isolated sites.
Sure, you can find rinky dink home units that will barely cover the usage of one home that can be transported by normal freight means and installed without special equipment, but these are all more expensive and less costs effective then the large scale windmills. Economics of scale will mean the more cost effective solutions will be the larger kilo/megawatt installations at sites with several of them.
I think you might be confusing conservation with conservative with conservationist. They are not and do not mean the same things and even conservative will have different meaning depending on the context in which it is use or even within the geo-global political climates being discussed.
As for conservative within the US political process, it's a meaning of little change or activity outside the constitutionally required or allowed involvement not conservation. I know this is somewhat startling to you considering that traditionally, the conservatives or the often confused republican party, has been one of the leaders in conservation and wild life protection in America. But where your analogy fails miserably is that you are attempting to impose an ideologue created by a political opponent as your basis for the conservation without an understanding of the positions actually taken or the reasoning why.
Some conservationist policies might make sense while others do not. Some might be beneficial business practices while others may not. What distinguishes them is not the political will of those implementing them, but the amount of return on the practices implemented. If they cannot pay for themselves, then it will only add to the costs of the items or services which in turn makes Chinese or India outsourcing even more attractive because people will purchase those cheaper products over the more expensive domestic products. This is even true when the imports are only slightly less expensive and the profit margins are extremely steep on them.
In reality, it's a balancing act between increased costs verses benefit and the amount of perceived benefit or perceived necessity of the benefit available. Currently, the perceived benefit in a lot of the so called green tech is more of a niche market instead of a real benefit which is why you see people attempting to co-opt governments into implementing policies instead of improving the tech and ability to go green profitably.
I'm not sure that placing the car into neutral would have the effect you are thinking it would. One of the people who testified to the senate hearing against Toyota claimed she placed the gear shift lever in all positions including neutral, reverse, and park to no avail. She said after noticing that all that failed to slow the car, she called her husband on the cell phone as the car was racing down the highway.
This may be because the shifting linkage isn't an actual linkage in some cars anymore. It's an electric solenoid that's operated by the shifter. It may stop the transmissions from going into gears that could cause damage like neutral or reverse or even lower gears if the RPMs are too high or the vehicle's speed it too great.
Actually, your only partly right. In older cars, a shorted alternator wire could back feed the ignition system and cause the engine to remain running after the car was started and the ignition switch was turned off. This was also the easiest way to hot wire a car before lock steering colums became the norm. You would just run a hot wire from the battery to the ignition coil's hot side, then cross the starter relay to cause the engine to turn over. With HEI and other pointless ignition systems, it was just as easy except you needed to know the color of the wire for the make of car leading into the distributor housing to add power too. It isn't always red.
With the ECM, computer controlled engines, and stuff, this is still possible but more rare as the shorted alternator wire would also need to keep power to the ECM and the power feed to it is more isolated then the older ignition systems. Everything after the ECM is on relays controlled by the ECM or a subset component. With GM cars (I'm not sure on others), even the fuel pump is controlled to some degree by the ECM. It's still possible to happen. I know of several cars where the owner purposely did it in order to add a control panel under the hood that would allow them to start the car, rev the engine and turn it off, plus read all the gauges without a key or opening the car door. The cars I seen this done on were street/strip racers. I think you can even purchase kits to make this happen but the principle is the same as would be if a hot wire shorted to the power feed to the EMC.
Lol.. I guess you really do not understand anything do you? It's the same God, and no, morality has not changed, just what he required from people following him. Surely you do not think morality only exists within the context of religion do you? I'm puzzled to why you are so stuck on morality when you are arguing that because someone did something under one set of commands that everyone else related to those people are somehow responsible or obligated to that action. This doesn't exist anywhere else in life, why should it exist here?
First, I'm not catholic, I don't even believe in organized religion. Second, I know all of which you have mentioned about except the apostolic Christians existed within the same century as Jesus did. You do not have to wait centuries or hundreds of years to see the term in existence. The romans coined the term when Jesus was alive and it exists in roman writings. As for the value system God would have, it's both universal and not. You see, God can change it because it is his and his will. I'm not sure why you would think he couldn't change his values or where you are attempting to go with this.
Your somewhat correct, but the evidence in his commanding the hindus to death would have to overwhelmingly be supportive of God actually ordering it. It isn't like you can walk down the street claiming God Spoke to you and we need to kill all hindus now. Maybe in the past when the covenant was places with leaders of people and God spread his word through them, but that is one thing Christianity and Jesus changed. And yes, I do know that history hasn't shown that people have learned this well. But that all goes to the distinction between the man doing something in someone's name verses someone making something happen. I could say that you ordered me to kill all the hindus, when the reality is that you only used their deaths as an extreme example. You see, me claiming to be doing something in your name doesn't make it true.
I do not want to cherry pick anything. I simply want it to be presented in context- something you have had an extremely difficult time with. I'm sorry that everything you believed turned out to be completely out of context, but hey, that's your fault, not mine. As for it holding higher ground or not, I never said it did. That is something that you somehow imposed here.
Somehow though, you