And your way of thinking is why most people who attempt to avoid alternative energies think your crazy.
The problem isn't a lack of consideration to the current disadvantages, the problem is with the costs associated with the level of mitigation to the current disadvantages. Take ethanol for instance, in order to be cost effective, it requires energy from oil and coal or it costs more to make then it's currently selling for. But, when you put it directly into a car designed for it, you lose about http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/ethanol.shtml >20-30 percent gas mileage and when run in vehicles not designed for it, you loose more gas mileage and engine power and end up losing most if not all advantages to it because you will be using way more then any savings.
With this CFL power factor issue alone, if everyone getting power from one generating station up and switched to those CFLs today, then the generating stations would end up losing money because they have to create more energy then they are billing for. This means your rates go up but more importantly, if they are actually 50% more efficient instead of the advertised 80% or whatever, then real tech which might be 65% efficient is locked out of the market because of somewhat deceptive advertising. So we could possibly be free to choose something that is even more effective at savings in both money and efficiency which translates to even less of the disadvantages of the current systems. Instead, the choice and potential is getting locked away by people like you who want to force their favorite crap on us because it does "something" even if that something isn't what is advertised.
If it is important, then it's important enough to get right and not half ass. Otherwise we will end up with tarp legislation with politicians claiming it doesn't have to be perfect just to get it passed only to later find that paying bonuses with the bailout money outrages them just to be shown that they specifically allowed it to happen in the not so perfect bill. And just like you, I'm not trying to change the topic, I'm just showing how half baked ideas not fully considered and thought through to completion does come back to bite people in the ass.
I had the same problems when I would buy my bulbs from oddlots or the dollar general store. Like you, my problems disappeared too when I replaced them with better bulbs but unlike you, I found that the more expensive incandescent bulbs were enough to do the trick.
There are literally so many details and reasons to why your bulbs could have been blowing outside of crappy power and old wiring that it really isn't a fair statement. Simple things like the stock boy at the stores you purchase from mishandling them can cause the same issues you were seeing. While CFCs don't have filaments so aren't subjective to the same types of abuses in handling, the power supply may not be the culprit.
If you do insist on it being the power, then you should work to correct the problem because spikes in constant power is enough to shorten the life of your electronics, AC and ventilation systems, refrigerator, and just about anything else you plug into it. And yes, electric motors while not showing direct stress to under voltage/over voltage, will cause the coils and control circuits in them more stress then they would have with a safe and clean source of proper power.
There was a supposed blood trail leading through the gate that wasn't there in which furman used as an excuse to enter the property without a warrant. A bloody glove found over a day later on a second trip to the property in a narrow passage between the house and a fence that wasn't used often and the blood on the glove was reported to have been wet when most accounts say the length of time should have dried it by then.
There was something else that was highly suspect at the time. Something about a receipt for a knife matching the murder weapon dating back several years found in the garbage even though the supposed knife was a gift from someone else.
Now all of that could have been real evidence but it sounds somewhat "manufactured" when viewed in the sequestered manner the jury was in.
You seem to have forgotten the chief definition of "immigrant":
Do you mean I should have used emigrant instead?
The word "immigrant" normally connotes no legality of movement. It is only you (and a small group of people) who pretend that "immigrant" means "legal migrant" rather than "in-migrant" like it actually means to the largest portion of the English-speaking world.
Ahh.. here is what your doing wrong. Your attempting to use an archaic definition that applies to the general geographical migration but doesn't suppose the legalities or restrictions to non citizens imposed by political entities. In other words, your failing to recognize the legal definitions and usages of the terms. We have went from "I hunt therefore I am" to systems where access is restricted to permission only through laws and procedures and when someone uses the term immigrant-emigrant and illegal alien, they are making legal references pertaining to the political jurisdiction in which they are discussing. If the political entity doesn't approve of you moving through or settling in the area under their control, you are an alien (outsider-noncitizen) who doesn't have the legal authority to be where they are, you are an "illegal alien".
Now immigrants, or those who immigrate, who do seek political and legal authority to migrate and/or settle even if it is temporary, are just that, immigrants. They are aliens permitted to immigrate or emigrate, and therefor are referred to as such. There is no legal-migrant as you want to infer to our usage, there are just legally approved "immigrants" and outsiders (aliens) with or without legal authority (illegal aliens). As the term immigration is used in most countries, it applies to people who legally- hence with the approval of the controlling political entity- enter and reside within the country's borders for whatever reasons defined by law.
But hay, you don't have to take my word for it, just look at how the common and legal interpretations majority of English speakers in the US use the terms. The legal definition of "alien" is any person not a citizen or national of the United States. Now if you read that last page, you will note that there can be legal aliens who are not immigrants and that immigrant is a term applied to specific aliens who meet specific legal definitions. The terms illegal (not in compliance with the law) and alien (non-citizen or non-national) are combined to denote someone who isn't legally entitled to be within the United States' borders and almost every country has laws to some extent that provide for the same.
There is a reason why the constitution expressly forbids corruption of blood. That is because each and every person is considered their own person and offspring doesn't indict parental units of wrong doing because of their own independent actions.
If a guy gets drunk, drives and gets into an accident that kills a family of four, you surely don't suggest that his wife and kids should be executed do you? I didn't think so but I'm wondering why you seem to think that the parents of Bin laden should be responsible for his actions when he was an adult living independent of them.
Or is this nothing more then one last attempt to grasp and evil to blame on bush? I mean after all, you failed to mention that Bin Laden's own family publicly disowned him years before 9/11. But you were explicit in implying something more to some irrelevant fact of family members of the then administration having relations with the parents of a disowned son.
I don't know what you have been smoking but the relationships between two insignificant players means nothing!
Actually, this entire thing is a misnomer. Neither carter nor Reagan created the Taliban or Bin Laden.
Both administrations funded the northern alliance and both administrations rejected bin laden's band of rebels. The Mujahideen or the later named northern aliance after the split is separate from the taliban. The Taliban didn't exist until after the soviet withdraw and their existence was dependent on our lack of support for creating a proper government. The Mujaheddin fractured into war lords with the majority becoming the northern alliance who created the Islamic State of Afghanistan. The taliban which was comprised of displaced mercenaries, some from bin ladens rejected group and some just exwarior in the battles agaomst the soviet union wasn't even in existence until 1996 which was well after the US stopped funding operations in Afghanistan.
So the blame rests nowhere unless you count the lack of funding as support which is sort of taking liberties of history to a new level.
I think we lost "automatically" when the judge blasted the prosecutor for his actions that at the very basic levels of his training knew was wrong before even contemplating taking them.
This isn't about everyone, it's about one person who acted so heinously that there really isn't another reasonable explanation. And the claim of the party in the executive as a counter doesn't hold water when you examine "these" facts.
How would they know that the prosecution was for political reasons and not because of the evidence they provided in court. I mean the prosecutor broke the law in refusing to provide evidence that it knew would help in the defense which also went contrary to all his training, do you actually think that he showed his superiors that evidence and cleared the withholding of it?
BTW, the political firings of those prosecutors are allegations. Little more then that anyways. Reasons were given and the supposed political ones offered as the accusations had to do with the prosecutor not prosecuting illegal aliens known to have broken the law (that's why their called illegal aliens, not immigrants), not because they were democrats. One of them happened to of been involved in some investigation that continues in his absence and the conclusion was scrutinized by the democrats but found no wrongs in it.
Why you ask, because they made it look legitimate and contrary to all the claims otherwise, Bush didn't/doesn't cover for other people who broke the law. Scooter Libby is a prime example of this, Bush commuted his sentence, he didn't give him a pardon, he didn't influence the trial, he didn't stop the trial, he waited until it was concluded and then commuted the sentence but left the fines and criminal record.
My point is whether they find him guilty or not, he failed his duties as a senator. It's a shame the prosecution botched this case and withheld that evidence from the court as he's still guilty of failing to disclose this information publicly on his financial disclosure form.
My understanding was that he was invoiced for the renovations, the invoices in which he was provided didn't contain everything as he expected them to though. From the get go, this was a situation where Stevens requested everything to be documented and above the board and someone took their own initiative to hide costs for whatever reasons. The way they found out about it was because Stevens did file his disclosures and all and something just didn't add up.
If you want to "seriously" look at this, you might want to consider the possibility that it was a setup from the beginning by a political rival in cohorts with the district prosecutor who knew that it would ruin his chances of winning the next election. I mean if Stevens did turn in all the invoices he was given and actually did believe there was a full accounting of the work done and supplies provided as his defense always claimed, then a prosecutor finding out about a mishap where someone told someone else to not forward an invoice just to have a very publicly discussed corruption trial in the year an election in which his office was up for grabs with a conviction just 8 days before election day- just to have the conviction overturned with that harsh of language from the judge toward the prosecution is more then a little "coincidental". Even judges on the take and under the influence of "money and power" don't berate the prosecutor when over turning cases. They quietly find a flaw and make it stick, not draw huge amounts of public attention to themselves.
It is quite possible that Stevens made every attempt at complying with the disclosure rules (which would have been handled in house, not a court of law) and was undermined by sabotage within the project itself.
So volcanoes are responsible for the caps melting in both the north and south pole at the same time when this has never been seen before (in human history) on either pole? That sounds very unlikely.
As unlikely as changes in the atmosphere of less then.28% (.0028) of the total green house gasses in the atmosphere is going to cause catastrophic issues when it doesn't even bring the air temp above freezing? You seem to be wanting to claim one is absurd when ignoring that absurdity of your prefered explaination. When you consider the water vapor which is a greenhouse gas, man made Co2 makes up a tiny fraction of the total.
But considering that the recorded history of man is short, considering the ability to seek these places and return alive is a recent feat in the history of man, considering that the discoveries of volcanic activity at both poles, including in the oceans surrounding the poles (Antarctica actually has volcanoes under the ice shelf on land that has melted the ice and we have measured the depths of the pools of water related to it), do you really think that idea is more absurd then Co2? Or is it at least worth investigating- even if it is blasphemy? You know, god forbid that something other then those bastard man made Co2 gasses being behind anything right?
It's true that the climate has changed in the past and the Earth itself will survive and I have no doubt that life itself will survive but drastic changes in ecosystems in a very short time has proven to cause mass extinctions. We should be very worried about this. It's extremely naive to think we'll survive just because of our resourcefulness as a species. This is a real challenge.
Now wait a minute, your getting a little presumptuous as well as alarmist here. Nothing has been shown to suggest that neither of us nor wildlife will_not_be able to adapt. From all the rational accounts I can find, the entire shift is going to take centuries if not more before it's all done. It will be a gradual experience, some life forms might not make it, but others will adapt and thrive. As for man, well, we can build levies, dams, bridges, we can irrigate fields, control the saline buildup of those fields, create compost, use chemicals to control diseases, pests, illnesses and many, many more things. Even without all that, we lived through the little ice age, watched the middle east move from a thriving garden to a wasted desert, survived plagues, drought, heat waves, cold snaps, diseases, and much more of what can be expected from the apocolyptic scenario you describe. We even have nuclear wastelands that are thriving nature troves with wildlife and plant life more then intact. To think man or nature can't or will not survive the polar caps melting is a little like ignoring the history of man, evolution, and everything else.
I already answering you question as to why humans will be endangered. A lack of diversity can have devastating consequences like a disease wiping out entire crops of food or animal species that are depended upon by another species in turn destroying that population. It is very likely that diversity will be diminished by global warming as it affects the Earth as a whole, altering virtually every ecosystem simultaneously. A good example of this is Nepal where some regions are seeing outbreaks of malaria where it never was warm enough for mosquitos to live before. Just think about how much disease a mosquito can spread and how much that can affect all mammals in that area. There are so many layers to the global warming problem that it's childishly simplistic to think that everything will stay the same except that your each front property in Maine is going to skyrocket in value because it's summer year round.
Genetically engineered crops, pesticides and the old fashioned mosquito netting, antibiotics, are all just a few high tech and low tech solutions. However
Any reasonable person would say that the addicts and mental health patients should probably be in some kind of controlled environment. Whether that would cost more than 3 million over 6 years if part of a larger program of some kind, I don't know. But the bottom line is that these people are not turned away because they have a "right" to health care and they are not institutionalized in one form or another because it would be a violation of their "rights".
There was a court case back when Reagan was governor of California in which said that the government had to prove harm when holding a mentally ill patient. This case went all the way to the supreme court which expanded on the ruling and said that they have to pose a risk of harm to themselves, someone else, or society in general. Well, I'm running from memory but society in general may be something else I construed into it.
Anyways, this caused the release of most all mentally ill patients around the country with some states already starting it before it went to the supreme court. The majority of the homeless problem is actually mentally ill patients who would/could have resided in a mental hospital back in 1975. Another downside of this is that states started underfunding mental health programs which allows even more people to slip through.
Anyways, the point is, your probably right in that taking care of them in the first place would likely have been cheaper but we lack the ability to force them into that position. In short, most efforts would be little more then what you mentioned above with the 8 patients creating such a high cost. Although I question the accuracy of that claim or the application of the ruling to that situation, it comes out to just over 1 visit per person per week over those six years. It would seem to me that a case of someone endangering themselves could be made if they went to the emergency room once or twice a week for 6 years strait.
I hope you're not seriously suggesting that ICE isn't melting at the caps. As for why...It's quite simple actually. It's the warm WATER not the air.
Lol.. No, I'm suggesting that it's not melting because Co2 is causing the atmosphere to warm up by 2 degrees F.
As for the warm water, there are many causes of that including the volcanic activity at the polar caps.
A lot of things. First if the caps were gone... I hope you don't live in a coastal city because that would be under water. Second, ICE refects sunlight much more efficiently than land and just the change in where the heat is will fuck up the entire world's current ecosystem.
First, the catastrophic floods would be covered by the other crap like the weather changes and stuff wouldn't it? Second, the entire worlds ecosystem isn't static, it's continually evolving and adapting and changing. The worlds ecosystem would be different but fucked up would only be a relative term to an arbitrary point in time. The earth's ecosystem is fucked right now compared to 20 million years ago. Finally, the point I was attempting to extract from you was what will be so catastrophic about the ice caps disappearing that the entire human race is endangered of mass extinction?
I'm willing to bet that a portion of what your not realizing is that even with the polar caps melted, it isn't likely that we would see a terribly huge increase in temp from it. Without the ice reflecting the sun back, the moisture content in the atmosphere will be higher, but the nature of the polar caps which is evidence with the air rarely reaching above freezing will be that of a state of constant cloud cover and snow/ice storms. This right there will reflect a lot of the heat back and prevent it from even reaching the ground in the first place.
I don't feel like responding to the rest of the post because it's the same old garbage about how it will take years to happen and it could be a good thing...blah blah blah. None of it is scientific. You people always claim climatotlogists are fear mongering but in the same breath you fear monger how going green will bankrupt our country with absolutely no evidence. Pot...meet kettle.
Well, if you payed attention to the rest of the post, you will see that it was about NOT FIXING THE PROBLEM in the first place while taking yours and mine as well as our children and their future generation's freedoms away. I don't have a problem with doing something, as long as something is at least as effective as the costs of implementing it are. I'm sorry that I'm not of the church of global warming and fall goo goo eyed in support of anything labeled green.
And yes, that's the only damn thing that can logically be deduced about people like you. Your more worried about implementing something at any costs just to say you did but you have no clue to if it will work at fixing global warming or not. I have heard all the hype that it will force people to invent new ways to create energy when the suffering is bad enough and historically, that has always lead to revolutions- not innovative solutions to perceived problems. But the bigger question is, why even wait? Why must we do all this loss of freedom in some maddening attempt to force the populous of the world (or should I say the rich nations of the world) to invent something that simply doesn't exist today when the proper solution is to have the governments of the world unite in the principle of finding less impacting energy sources by collecting teams of scientist and offering the results royalty free. Then we can skip all the bullshit about taking freedoms away, we can skip all the making the rich pay, we can skip all of the bullshit required to make people suffer enough to invent new processes for creating energy or improving existing processes and just get the damn job done in the first place.
This is where the government control comes in. Your
OK, here is a question, and seriously, I'm not sure how your implying it or if it is just a redundent setup that your not noticing.
If the ice caps melt the sun won't reflect off them anymore and the Earth will heat up at an even faster rate which has the ability to cause mass extinctions, lowering diversity, and leaving the possibility of endangering the entire human race.
Ok here is goes. The Co2 global warming model claims that the Co2 is absorbing the heat of sunlight instead of allowing it to reflect back to the sun. This is fine and all assuming that you believe the amount of gasses in the atmosphere is the problem and that such a minute amount can of atmospheric gases can have such a devastating impact. For the purpose of this question, we will assume it's close enough to be true.
So how is the ICE melting from global warming when the air temp rarely gets above freezing and the second part, if the Excess Co2 and carbon is already absorbing the heat. what is so different about the land absorbing a portion of it and reflecting it back? Granted, land warming will have an effect on ocean currents and weather patterns around the area and world, but at night, the heat reflects back anyways even if there are 6 months between day and night at the true poles, that isn't really the case in lower latitudes. It would seem that the heat from the land would make the night air warmer for a while but then all the stored heat would be lost/dissipated from time to time.
In sort, the possibilities for mass extinction seem no more then with the ICE but that doesn't even account for the existing land mass warmth around both poles (polar region) from volcanic activity that is present as we speak.
As for the rest of what you mentioned, well, global warming isn't supposed to collapse entire ecosystems for hundreds to thousands of years. In fact, the change is so slow that I'm not sure why the adapting new ecosystems aren't being considered. It isn't like we are going to wake up one day and find everything gone. If the theory of evolution is close to being correct, collapse isn't really the words we need, it would be more like shift/change/influence/positive/negative.
And for
We know that burning fossil fuels isn't good for the environment. Even if you aren't sure that we are emitting enough to cause a problem don't you think it would be a good idea in this case to err on the side of not potentially annihilating our habitat and species?
Isn't good and bad for are two entirely different statements. Now, here is the point of contention I have. The not good could actually refer to negligent amounts of ill effects. Me sitting on the porch watching the sunset is not good for the environment, but it isn't harming it any more then the porch being there and me being alive anyways. So if it's not good, or even if it is a little (or a lot) harmful, then why is the focus on doing something all about taking money in the forms of caps and making things more expensive. It is actually about making things more expensive or off shoring them to countries without caps like Europe has done. But Solar and wind are more expensive (about 3 times at current US prices), Electric vehicles and plug in electric hybrids require investment up front not considering the useful life of existing vehicles let alone the reduced life of the hybrids and electric vehicles.
The problem isn't so much as doing something to err on the safe side, it's the costs in $dollars plus the loss of convenience and freedoms that all the current political solutions are coming with. If carbon is capped in a country, how are you going to open a factory and exploit your ideas to make money on them when all the existing factories have all the credits? If your allotted so much petrol for your car, what happens when junior gets sick and you have to make extra trips "off schedule" to get him to the doctors office or to purchase medicine, will you then hav
The problem with carbon caps and all is that it hurts the people who need it the most and it is totally arbitrary to begin with.
Anyways, so what happens when you have to make a couple extra trips to the store or decide to go on vacation, the rich will just purchase more credits and live life like normal, the poor, well, they will have to go to work, is it all the sudden going to cost the entire weeks pay just to go to work? They will have to do without trips to the store for food or medical supplies, have to do without trips to the pool in 100 degree heat or the public library, and you nor anyone wanting the power to limit people in this way have the ability to say that won't happen. Public transportation is non-existent in most places, it will burn way more carbon if it is shoved into place. Where I live, there would be one person on a 6 ton bus floating down the country roads for 5 or 6 miles or am I supposed to only do things when the government schedule says I can?
I don't think people understand the amount of freedom they are/will be giving up. I know this is because you and everyone else thinks your part or emissions isn't the bad ones, these rules and laws will only effect those idiots ruining the planet and not you. If Carbon is the problem, then why would anyone attempting to correct the problem not attack all carbon and just that emitted by the people you think are bad. Almost every government uses any excuse possible to increase a tax and most government politicians who want to limit tax collections end up in the minorities. It's all about power and the government's control over it's subjects and you think some detached international regulation is going to care about the poor or anyone not rich in the process.
That's the worse part about it, the rich are immune from carbon caps and carbon taxes. They will get to live life any way they want to. So what we end up with is poor people trying to decide whether to go to the store out of routine to get Junior medicine or to see a doctor or leave him suffer so you can go to work, get paid, and keep food on the table for him. The rich on the other hand, they will just toss another million on the fire and use that as an excuse for needing more profits from the businesses they own which is why your not getting your next raise.
The answer is, either create something that leaves our dependency on carbon, or at least carbon that has been stored underground for 2 million years or start preparing for global warming and make adjustments when it happens. At least then, the most people who will be effected will be the rich who own all the beach front property. Every thing effecting humans can adapt and evolve. That's what the damn theory of evolution is about and why we are the dominant creature on the planet. People need to get off this religious love story in that earth has to stay the same way it always has and face the realities of what they are expecting.
No, I meant good luck getting that many people to have a will an exercise it, period. Voter turnout numbers in the U.S. are pretty sub-stellar.
Actually, it is pretty easy to convince people to stand for something, it's more dificult to get them to do anything about it though. Signing a petition would be taking the stand, going out and voting would be doing something.
However, I sort of see this as a situation where if you can't convince a small percentage of the people voting in the area your expecting the elected office to reside over, that you don't exactly represent them anyways. Signing a petition is no obligation to actually cast a vote or send money or work to support the campaign. But if you can't get your message out enough to convince people that you should be part of the process, that really falls onto you more then "them" or the government. When the requirement for 5-8 percent of the registered voters which is less then the amount of people who just don't show up on election day for whatever reason can sign any number of petitions (just not the same one twice), it doesn't seem like much of a road block.
Which is a major issue, in my opinion.
I think all it takes for a miner party to become a major party is participation in certain races with 10 percent or more of the vote in those races.
Anyways, third party candidates are pretty much useless outside of single issues but on a broader sense, they can actually direct the focus of the major parties by siphoning enough votes away to hurt them. Lets say the issue is jobs from a widget factory leave the country, if one party thinks that is a good idea and the other is indifferent or thinks it is bad and enough people vote away from the majority party, then they will need to figure out why that is important to them and a way to address it. The indifferent party will look at what just happenes and bend their policy to include those disgruntled voters.
Nothing tells the candidates what the people want more then almost losing an election they thought was in the bag and nothing get's the other candidates attention more then seeing that happen or even sneaking in a win because of it.
I think you might mean good luck getting that many people to have a will and exercise it outside of what the party they are aligned with already represents.
It is true that states have different requirements to get someone on the ballot. In most states, it is a percentage of the registered voters who actually showed up and/or either voted for the current person holding the office. So if there were 200 registered voters and 100 people casts votes who voted for the position last time, if the winner won with 51% of the vote, you would need enough registered voters to equal 30% of those 51 people. This becomes even less when compared to the number of registered voters as a whole instead of only the ones who showed up. On the down side, if the opposition only got one vote, you are looking at almost 30% of the voters who turned out. But that wouldn't be all of the voters who actually voted. In the scenario which require a percentage of the people who actually voted (which I believe Illinois is currently), the 100 people who voted would be half of the registered voters as I lined out.
From what I can tell though, none of the offices in Illinois requires 30% of the registered voters, of the registered voters who casts votes or voters who casts votes for previously winning candidates to sign a petition in 2008 to get on the ballot. It may have temporarily been that way when something was redistricted but that would have changed as soon as the next election happened. It is more like 5-8% of all those who cast a vote for the position (pfd) in the last election with the major parties getting a break on the requirements. The presidential election is/was a little more loose. (pdf)
I will agree that advantages are given to established parties but they aren't insurmountable. Once you are on the ballot, it is up to you to win or lose, no vote is automatically given to someone unless you live in Florida and can tell if you poked a hole in the ballot or not.
What do you mean "not open to the will of the people"?
All it take to get on the ballot is the signature of a certain amount of people. The higher the position, the higher the stakes and the more signatures needed. Not even the two dominant parties seem to be able to side step that. It's just easier for them to comply because of the number of supporters. Make no mistake, if the will of the people want them there, they will qualify.
US senators and representatives have job requirements that go way outside of Washington. They have to spend enough time to know how legislation effects their constituency and yes, it will be different in Omaha Nebraska then in Los Angeles California or even the circle surrounding Washington DC. Sometimes, events in their home states require their attention and they don't always follow a congressional schedule. But even more interesting is events surrounding their comity obligations or perhaps even their states that take them to places other then Washington DC. These places could be military bases in or outside the US, visits to foreign governments to negotiate investments like jobs and so on in the US and in their own state, it could be visits to company headquarters to attempt to keep jobs from leaving the states or districts, it could be to view disaster damage, to evaluate the performance of a government entity and so on.
A congressman's job doesn't keep them in DC or even the respected houses during all working hours. They are still working and doing their job when they miss votes and so on. Could you imagine visiting the troops and attempted to see if they are missing body armor or food or medical supplies when in combat just to have your not present vote turned into a no vote on a bill to increase funding for body armor for those same troops? Or how about getting an on site inspections of the deteriorating levies in New Orleans just to have your not present vote turned into a no vote on a bill that would have required an engineering review and fixes made to them.
No they don't. They leaders support certain candidates which gives them an advantage (some might say an unfair advantage) but in the US, it's all open to the will of the people.
The Voters wouldn't be the bosses telling them what to do in this situation. In fact, elected officials don't have any obligation to voters in most government. They have obligations to the office they represent and are selected by the voters. Judges are elected officials and they most certainly cannot ignore the law when adjudicating a case because the voters don't want it enforced. That's the job of the legislation. But this goes a little to a different point. Every senate/parliament/governing body as well as any meeting/event/trade show/whatever will have leaders who set the time tables and agendas. In this case, it was those people who where the boss not the voters.
It's sort of like a cop telling you to turn around and go back, the road is closed ahead. You are wanting to blame everything on a person for doing a U-turn because as soon as they did, the road opened and the cops started letting people through. This was a failure of the elected official doing the electorates business but it was because of the leaders of the elected officials.
Well, it sort of makes sense - subvert the democratic process and get shot is the sort of thing to give the next guy pause. Hell, even our founding fathers were in favor of that sort of thing.
When you say founding fathers, I'm assuming your speaking of the US.
I don't particularly think they were in favor of that sort of thing. They went to great lengths to protect political speech and actions resulting from it, to absolve political leaders from anything said in the congress. They specifically limited what can be done with impeachment to removal from office then required an indictment from a grand jury and due process as is the case with any accused criminal. They defined treason which carries a death penalty in such a way that "subverting the democratic process" cannot ever be determined to be treason unless the act specifically involves levying war against the US, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort, and there needs to be at least two witnesses.
But further more, the founding fathers provided ways to amend the constitution that has no limits on the preservation of democracy and fully allows for anything seen a democratic to be taken away.
The founding fathers were concerned with being the masters of their own fate, freedom, liberty, and the ability to live alongside their neighbors in a society united in the same goals, not killing people they disagreed with.
Well, sort of. That was one of the reasonings for wanting the federal government to control copyright. The others is that a state could put a 50 year limit on copyright and another has a 20 year limit. So who's copyright terms would need to be honored?
The constitution was set up as a permissive device in which is specifically listed what the states surrendered to the control of the US federal government. Copyright was listed because knowing what you said would create conflict among the different states, it was logical to have one unified set of laws concerning it. So when the states ratified the constitution, they surrendered their rights over copyright.
Unfortunately, now the constitution seems to be viewed as something that simply restricts the federal government instead or something that gives it permissions to operate in limited ways. This has lead congress from asking can we even constitutionally pass a law like this to what is to stop us from passing a law like this. I think that's a turn for the worse and a prime reason why people think the government lost that "of the people, for the people, and by the people" feeling.
Actually, there are a few different definitions of a patent troll. Your's is one, someone who submarines a patent into a spec or working process just to collect later when it is widely used is another, Someone who patents the ideas while in the same thing just to apply it later is another. Someone who patents something legitimate in an overly broad sense to include products and uses in existence or that would be the nest logical step for a product in existence but not even similar to the product patented by the company is yet another.
An example of the last one is where a company made a credit card sized device for the purpose of passing through toll booths and automatically identifying someone and charging their account. This patent was so broad that it also effect the secure chip RFID devices put in Visa and Master card credit cards so you could just swipe the card yourself and pay the bill at checkout.
Basically, what defines a troll can be the "intent" of the patent holder. Their actions can define their intent. If they are deceptive, less then honest, or just an attempt to profit from other people's works, they most likely would be considered a troll too.
You shouldn't which is why the review should focus on the as sold spec instead of what a team of monkeys with a cryogenic cooler and 10 years of experience can accomplish. The cards likely ship at the speeds they do because of some failure rates at higher speeds that the manufacturer decided was too much of a liability. It may shorten the lifespan to before the warranty expires or it may cause data corruption resulting in wired errors getting blamed on their equipment and they don't want the hit inreputation.
But they let you change the speeds because if your successful, you will convince others to do so and they will likely need a new video card sooner then later. Either way, the old warning which still seems true is "if you over clock and screw it up, it's your fault-not ours". And that's probably enough to get what they want from it- possible better performance showing this card/device is capable, but it's your problem not mine if it screws up or doesn't deliver.
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And your way of thinking is why most people who attempt to avoid alternative energies think your crazy.
The problem isn't a lack of consideration to the current disadvantages, the problem is with the costs associated with the level of mitigation to the current disadvantages. Take ethanol for instance, in order to be cost effective, it requires energy from oil and coal or it costs more to make then it's currently selling for. But, when you put it directly into a car designed for it, you lose about http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/ethanol.shtml >20-30 percent gas mileage and when run in vehicles not designed for it, you loose more gas mileage and engine power and end up losing most if not all advantages to it because you will be using way more then any savings.
With this CFL power factor issue alone, if everyone getting power from one generating station up and switched to those CFLs today, then the generating stations would end up losing money because they have to create more energy then they are billing for. This means your rates go up but more importantly, if they are actually 50% more efficient instead of the advertised 80% or whatever, then real tech which might be 65% efficient is locked out of the market because of somewhat deceptive advertising. So we could possibly be free to choose something that is even more effective at savings in both money and efficiency which translates to even less of the disadvantages of the current systems. Instead, the choice and potential is getting locked away by people like you who want to force their favorite crap on us because it does "something" even if that something isn't what is advertised.
If it is important, then it's important enough to get right and not half ass. Otherwise we will end up with tarp legislation with politicians claiming it doesn't have to be perfect just to get it passed only to later find that paying bonuses with the bailout money outrages them just to be shown that they specifically allowed it to happen in the not so perfect bill. And just like you, I'm not trying to change the topic, I'm just showing how half baked ideas not fully considered and thought through to completion does come back to bite people in the ass.
I had the same problems when I would buy my bulbs from oddlots or the dollar general store. Like you, my problems disappeared too when I replaced them with better bulbs but unlike you, I found that the more expensive incandescent bulbs were enough to do the trick.
There are literally so many details and reasons to why your bulbs could have been blowing outside of crappy power and old wiring that it really isn't a fair statement. Simple things like the stock boy at the stores you purchase from mishandling them can cause the same issues you were seeing. While CFCs don't have filaments so aren't subjective to the same types of abuses in handling, the power supply may not be the culprit.
If you do insist on it being the power, then you should work to correct the problem because spikes in constant power is enough to shorten the life of your electronics, AC and ventilation systems, refrigerator, and just about anything else you plug into it. And yes, electric motors while not showing direct stress to under voltage/over voltage, will cause the coils and control circuits in them more stress then they would have with a safe and clean source of proper power.
There was a supposed blood trail leading through the gate that wasn't there in which furman used as an excuse to enter the property without a warrant. A bloody glove found over a day later on a second trip to the property in a narrow passage between the house and a fence that wasn't used often and the blood on the glove was reported to have been wet when most accounts say the length of time should have dried it by then.
There was something else that was highly suspect at the time. Something about a receipt for a knife matching the murder weapon dating back several years found in the garbage even though the supposed knife was a gift from someone else.
Now all of that could have been real evidence but it sounds somewhat "manufactured" when viewed in the sequestered manner the jury was in.
Do you mean I should have used emigrant instead?
Ahh.. here is what your doing wrong. Your attempting to use an archaic definition that applies to the general geographical migration but doesn't suppose the legalities or restrictions to non citizens imposed by political entities. In other words, your failing to recognize the legal definitions and usages of the terms. We have went from "I hunt therefore I am" to systems where access is restricted to permission only through laws and procedures and when someone uses the term immigrant-emigrant and illegal alien, they are making legal references pertaining to the political jurisdiction in which they are discussing. If the political entity doesn't approve of you moving through or settling in the area under their control, you are an alien (outsider-noncitizen) who doesn't have the legal authority to be where they are, you are an "illegal alien".
Now immigrants, or those who immigrate, who do seek political and legal authority to migrate and/or settle even if it is temporary, are just that, immigrants. They are aliens permitted to immigrate or emigrate, and therefor are referred to as such. There is no legal-migrant as you want to infer to our usage, there are just legally approved "immigrants" and outsiders (aliens) with or without legal authority (illegal aliens). As the term immigration is used in most countries, it applies to people who legally- hence with the approval of the controlling political entity- enter and reside within the country's borders for whatever reasons defined by law.
But hay, you don't have to take my word for it, just look at how the common and legal interpretations majority of English speakers in the US use the terms. The legal definition of "alien" is any person not a citizen or national of the United States. Now if you read that last page, you will note that there can be legal aliens who are not immigrants and that immigrant is a term applied to specific aliens who meet specific legal definitions. The terms illegal (not in compliance with the law) and alien (non-citizen or non-national) are combined to denote someone who isn't legally entitled to be within the United States' borders and almost every country has laws to some extent that provide for the same.
There is a reason why the constitution expressly forbids corruption of blood. That is because each and every person is considered their own person and offspring doesn't indict parental units of wrong doing because of their own independent actions.
If a guy gets drunk, drives and gets into an accident that kills a family of four, you surely don't suggest that his wife and kids should be executed do you? I didn't think so but I'm wondering why you seem to think that the parents of Bin laden should be responsible for his actions when he was an adult living independent of them.
Or is this nothing more then one last attempt to grasp and evil to blame on bush? I mean after all, you failed to mention that Bin Laden's own family publicly disowned him years before 9/11. But you were explicit in implying something more to some irrelevant fact of family members of the then administration having relations with the parents of a disowned son.
I don't know what you have been smoking but the relationships between two insignificant players means nothing!
Actually, this entire thing is a misnomer. Neither carter nor Reagan created the Taliban or Bin Laden.
Both administrations funded the northern alliance and both administrations rejected bin laden's band of rebels. The Mujahideen or the later named northern aliance after the split is separate from the taliban. The Taliban didn't exist until after the soviet withdraw and their existence was dependent on our lack of support for creating a proper government. The Mujaheddin fractured into war lords with the majority becoming the northern alliance who created the Islamic State of Afghanistan. The taliban which was comprised of displaced mercenaries, some from bin ladens rejected group and some just exwarior in the battles agaomst the soviet union wasn't even in existence until 1996 which was well after the US stopped funding operations in Afghanistan.
So the blame rests nowhere unless you count the lack of funding as support which is sort of taking liberties of history to a new level.
I think we lost "automatically" when the judge blasted the prosecutor for his actions that at the very basic levels of his training knew was wrong before even contemplating taking them.
This isn't about everyone, it's about one person who acted so heinously that there really isn't another reasonable explanation. And the claim of the party in the executive as a counter doesn't hold water when you examine "these" facts.
How would they know that the prosecution was for political reasons and not because of the evidence they provided in court. I mean the prosecutor broke the law in refusing to provide evidence that it knew would help in the defense which also went contrary to all his training, do you actually think that he showed his superiors that evidence and cleared the withholding of it?
BTW, the political firings of those prosecutors are allegations. Little more then that anyways. Reasons were given and the supposed political ones offered as the accusations had to do with the prosecutor not prosecuting illegal aliens known to have broken the law (that's why their called illegal aliens, not immigrants), not because they were democrats. One of them happened to of been involved in some investigation that continues in his absence and the conclusion was scrutinized by the democrats but found no wrongs in it.
Why you ask, because they made it look legitimate and contrary to all the claims otherwise, Bush didn't/doesn't cover for other people who broke the law. Scooter Libby is a prime example of this, Bush commuted his sentence, he didn't give him a pardon, he didn't influence the trial, he didn't stop the trial, he waited until it was concluded and then commuted the sentence but left the fines and criminal record.
My understanding was that he was invoiced for the renovations, the invoices in which he was provided didn't contain everything as he expected them to though. From the get go, this was a situation where Stevens requested everything to be documented and above the board and someone took their own initiative to hide costs for whatever reasons. The way they found out about it was because Stevens did file his disclosures and all and something just didn't add up.
If you want to "seriously" look at this, you might want to consider the possibility that it was a setup from the beginning by a political rival in cohorts with the district prosecutor who knew that it would ruin his chances of winning the next election. I mean if Stevens did turn in all the invoices he was given and actually did believe there was a full accounting of the work done and supplies provided as his defense always claimed, then a prosecutor finding out about a mishap where someone told someone else to not forward an invoice just to have a very publicly discussed corruption trial in the year an election in which his office was up for grabs with a conviction just 8 days before election day- just to have the conviction overturned with that harsh of language from the judge toward the prosecution is more then a little "coincidental". Even judges on the take and under the influence of "money and power" don't berate the prosecutor when over turning cases. They quietly find a flaw and make it stick, not draw huge amounts of public attention to themselves.
It is quite possible that Stevens made every attempt at complying with the disclosure rules (which would have been handled in house, not a court of law) and was undermined by sabotage within the project itself.
As unlikely as changes in the atmosphere of less then .28% (.0028) of the total green house gasses in the atmosphere is going to cause catastrophic issues when it doesn't even bring the air temp above freezing? You seem to be wanting to claim one is absurd when ignoring that absurdity of your prefered explaination. When you consider the water vapor which is a greenhouse gas, man made Co2 makes up a tiny fraction of the total.
But considering that the recorded history of man is short, considering the ability to seek these places and return alive is a recent feat in the history of man, considering that the discoveries of volcanic activity at both poles, including in the oceans surrounding the poles (Antarctica actually has volcanoes under the ice shelf on land that has melted the ice and we have measured the depths of the pools of water related to it), do you really think that idea is more absurd then Co2? Or is it at least worth investigating- even if it is blasphemy? You know, god forbid that something other then those bastard man made Co2 gasses being behind anything right?
Now wait a minute, your getting a little presumptuous as well as alarmist here. Nothing has been shown to suggest that neither of us nor wildlife will_not_be able to adapt. From all the rational accounts I can find, the entire shift is going to take centuries if not more before it's all done. It will be a gradual experience, some life forms might not make it, but others will adapt and thrive. As for man, well, we can build levies, dams, bridges, we can irrigate fields, control the saline buildup of those fields, create compost, use chemicals to control diseases, pests, illnesses and many, many more things. Even without all that, we lived through the little ice age, watched the middle east move from a thriving garden to a wasted desert, survived plagues, drought, heat waves, cold snaps, diseases, and much more of what can be expected from the apocolyptic scenario you describe. We even have nuclear wastelands that are thriving nature troves with wildlife and plant life more then intact. To think man or nature can't or will not survive the polar caps melting is a little like ignoring the history of man, evolution, and everything else.
Genetically engineered crops, pesticides and the old fashioned mosquito netting, antibiotics, are all just a few high tech and low tech solutions. However
There was a court case back when Reagan was governor of California in which said that the government had to prove harm when holding a mentally ill patient. This case went all the way to the supreme court which expanded on the ruling and said that they have to pose a risk of harm to themselves, someone else, or society in general. Well, I'm running from memory but society in general may be something else I construed into it.
Anyways, this caused the release of most all mentally ill patients around the country with some states already starting it before it went to the supreme court. The majority of the homeless problem is actually mentally ill patients who would/could have resided in a mental hospital back in 1975. Another downside of this is that states started underfunding mental health programs which allows even more people to slip through.
Anyways, the point is, your probably right in that taking care of them in the first place would likely have been cheaper but we lack the ability to force them into that position. In short, most efforts would be little more then what you mentioned above with the 8 patients creating such a high cost. Although I question the accuracy of that claim or the application of the ruling to that situation, it comes out to just over 1 visit per person per week over those six years. It would seem to me that a case of someone endangering themselves could be made if they went to the emergency room once or twice a week for 6 years strait.
Lol.. No, I'm suggesting that it's not melting because Co2 is causing the atmosphere to warm up by 2 degrees F.
As for the warm water, there are many causes of that including the volcanic activity at the polar caps.
First, the catastrophic floods would be covered by the other crap like the weather changes and stuff wouldn't it? Second, the entire worlds ecosystem isn't static, it's continually evolving and adapting and changing. The worlds ecosystem would be different but fucked up would only be a relative term to an arbitrary point in time. The earth's ecosystem is fucked right now compared to 20 million years ago. Finally, the point I was attempting to extract from you was what will be so catastrophic about the ice caps disappearing that the entire human race is endangered of mass extinction?
I'm willing to bet that a portion of what your not realizing is that even with the polar caps melted, it isn't likely that we would see a terribly huge increase in temp from it. Without the ice reflecting the sun back, the moisture content in the atmosphere will be higher, but the nature of the polar caps which is evidence with the air rarely reaching above freezing will be that of a state of constant cloud cover and snow/ice storms. This right there will reflect a lot of the heat back and prevent it from even reaching the ground in the first place.
Well, if you payed attention to the rest of the post, you will see that it was about NOT FIXING THE PROBLEM in the first place while taking yours and mine as well as our children and their future generation's freedoms away. I don't have a problem with doing something, as long as something is at least as effective as the costs of implementing it are. I'm sorry that I'm not of the church of global warming and fall goo goo eyed in support of anything labeled green.
And yes, that's the only damn thing that can logically be deduced about people like you. Your more worried about implementing something at any costs just to say you did but you have no clue to if it will work at fixing global warming or not. I have heard all the hype that it will force people to invent new ways to create energy when the suffering is bad enough and historically, that has always lead to revolutions- not innovative solutions to perceived problems. But the bigger question is, why even wait? Why must we do all this loss of freedom in some maddening attempt to force the populous of the world (or should I say the rich nations of the world) to invent something that simply doesn't exist today when the proper solution is to have the governments of the world unite in the principle of finding less impacting energy sources by collecting teams of scientist and offering the results royalty free. Then we can skip all the bullshit about taking freedoms away, we can skip all the making the rich pay, we can skip all of the bullshit required to make people suffer enough to invent new processes for creating energy or improving existing processes and just get the damn job done in the first place.
This is where the government control comes in. Your
OK, here is a question, and seriously, I'm not sure how your implying it or if it is just a redundent setup that your not noticing.
Ok here is goes. The Co2 global warming model claims that the Co2 is absorbing the heat of sunlight instead of allowing it to reflect back to the sun. This is fine and all assuming that you believe the amount of gasses in the atmosphere is the problem and that such a minute amount can of atmospheric gases can have such a devastating impact. For the purpose of this question, we will assume it's close enough to be true.
So how is the ICE melting from global warming when the air temp rarely gets above freezing and the second part, if the Excess Co2 and carbon is already absorbing the heat. what is so different about the land absorbing a portion of it and reflecting it back? Granted, land warming will have an effect on ocean currents and weather patterns around the area and world, but at night, the heat reflects back anyways even if there are 6 months between day and night at the true poles, that isn't really the case in lower latitudes. It would seem that the heat from the land would make the night air warmer for a while but then all the stored heat would be lost/dissipated from time to time.
In sort, the possibilities for mass extinction seem no more then with the ICE but that doesn't even account for the existing land mass warmth around both poles (polar region) from volcanic activity that is present as we speak.
As for the rest of what you mentioned, well, global warming isn't supposed to collapse entire ecosystems for hundreds to thousands of years. In fact, the change is so slow that I'm not sure why the adapting new ecosystems aren't being considered. It isn't like we are going to wake up one day and find everything gone. If the theory of evolution is close to being correct, collapse isn't really the words we need, it would be more like shift/change/influence/positive/negative.
And for
Isn't good and bad for are two entirely different statements. Now, here is the point of contention I have. The not good could actually refer to negligent amounts of ill effects. Me sitting on the porch watching the sunset is not good for the environment, but it isn't harming it any more then the porch being there and me being alive anyways. So if it's not good, or even if it is a little (or a lot) harmful, then why is the focus on doing something all about taking money in the forms of caps and making things more expensive. It is actually about making things more expensive or off shoring them to countries without caps like Europe has done. But Solar and wind are more expensive (about 3 times at current US prices), Electric vehicles and plug in electric hybrids require investment up front not considering the useful life of existing vehicles let alone the reduced life of the hybrids and electric vehicles.
The problem isn't so much as doing something to err on the safe side, it's the costs in $dollars plus the loss of convenience and freedoms that all the current political solutions are coming with. If carbon is capped in a country, how are you going to open a factory and exploit your ideas to make money on them when all the existing factories have all the credits? If your allotted so much petrol for your car, what happens when junior gets sick and you have to make extra trips "off schedule" to get him to the doctors office or to purchase medicine, will you then hav
The problem with carbon caps and all is that it hurts the people who need it the most and it is totally arbitrary to begin with.
Anyways, so what happens when you have to make a couple extra trips to the store or decide to go on vacation, the rich will just purchase more credits and live life like normal, the poor, well, they will have to go to work, is it all the sudden going to cost the entire weeks pay just to go to work? They will have to do without trips to the store for food or medical supplies, have to do without trips to the pool in 100 degree heat or the public library, and you nor anyone wanting the power to limit people in this way have the ability to say that won't happen. Public transportation is non-existent in most places, it will burn way more carbon if it is shoved into place. Where I live, there would be one person on a 6 ton bus floating down the country roads for 5 or 6 miles or am I supposed to only do things when the government schedule says I can?
I don't think people understand the amount of freedom they are/will be giving up. I know this is because you and everyone else thinks your part or emissions isn't the bad ones, these rules and laws will only effect those idiots ruining the planet and not you. If Carbon is the problem, then why would anyone attempting to correct the problem not attack all carbon and just that emitted by the people you think are bad. Almost every government uses any excuse possible to increase a tax and most government politicians who want to limit tax collections end up in the minorities. It's all about power and the government's control over it's subjects and you think some detached international regulation is going to care about the poor or anyone not rich in the process.
That's the worse part about it, the rich are immune from carbon caps and carbon taxes. They will get to live life any way they want to. So what we end up with is poor people trying to decide whether to go to the store out of routine to get Junior medicine or to see a doctor or leave him suffer so you can go to work, get paid, and keep food on the table for him. The rich on the other hand, they will just toss another million on the fire and use that as an excuse for needing more profits from the businesses they own which is why your not getting your next raise.
The answer is, either create something that leaves our dependency on carbon, or at least carbon that has been stored underground for 2 million years or start preparing for global warming and make adjustments when it happens. At least then, the most people who will be effected will be the rich who own all the beach front property. Every thing effecting humans can adapt and evolve. That's what the damn theory of evolution is about and why we are the dominant creature on the planet. People need to get off this religious love story in that earth has to stay the same way it always has and face the realities of what they are expecting.
Actually, it is pretty easy to convince people to stand for something, it's more dificult to get them to do anything about it though. Signing a petition would be taking the stand, going out and voting would be doing something.
However, I sort of see this as a situation where if you can't convince a small percentage of the people voting in the area your expecting the elected office to reside over, that you don't exactly represent them anyways. Signing a petition is no obligation to actually cast a vote or send money or work to support the campaign. But if you can't get your message out enough to convince people that you should be part of the process, that really falls onto you more then "them" or the government. When the requirement for 5-8 percent of the registered voters which is less then the amount of people who just don't show up on election day for whatever reason can sign any number of petitions (just not the same one twice), it doesn't seem like much of a road block.
I think all it takes for a miner party to become a major party is participation in certain races with 10 percent or more of the vote in those races.
Anyways, third party candidates are pretty much useless outside of single issues but on a broader sense, they can actually direct the focus of the major parties by siphoning enough votes away to hurt them. Lets say the issue is jobs from a widget factory leave the country, if one party thinks that is a good idea and the other is indifferent or thinks it is bad and enough people vote away from the majority party, then they will need to figure out why that is important to them and a way to address it. The indifferent party will look at what just happenes and bend their policy to include those disgruntled voters.
Nothing tells the candidates what the people want more then almost losing an election they thought was in the bag and nothing get's the other candidates attention more then seeing that happen or even sneaking in a win because of it.
I think you might mean good luck getting that many people to have a will and exercise it outside of what the party they are aligned with already represents.
It is true that states have different requirements to get someone on the ballot. In most states, it is a percentage of the registered voters who actually showed up and/or either voted for the current person holding the office. So if there were 200 registered voters and 100 people casts votes who voted for the position last time, if the winner won with 51% of the vote, you would need enough registered voters to equal 30% of those 51 people. This becomes even less when compared to the number of registered voters as a whole instead of only the ones who showed up. On the down side, if the opposition only got one vote, you are looking at almost 30% of the voters who turned out. But that wouldn't be all of the voters who actually voted. In the scenario which require a percentage of the people who actually voted (which I believe Illinois is currently), the 100 people who voted would be half of the registered voters as I lined out.
From what I can tell though, none of the offices in Illinois requires 30% of the registered voters, of the registered voters who casts votes or voters who casts votes for previously winning candidates to sign a petition in 2008 to get on the ballot. It may have temporarily been that way when something was redistricted but that would have changed as soon as the next election happened. It is more like 5-8% of all those who cast a vote for the position (pfd) in the last election with the major parties getting a break on the requirements. The presidential election is/was a little more loose. (pdf)
I will agree that advantages are given to established parties but they aren't insurmountable. Once you are on the ballot, it is up to you to win or lose, no vote is automatically given to someone unless you live in Florida and can tell if you poked a hole in the ballot or not.
What do you mean "not open to the will of the people"?
All it take to get on the ballot is the signature of a certain amount of people. The higher the position, the higher the stakes and the more signatures needed. Not even the two dominant parties seem to be able to side step that. It's just easier for them to comply because of the number of supporters. Make no mistake, if the will of the people want them there, they will qualify.
US senators and representatives have job requirements that go way outside of Washington. They have to spend enough time to know how legislation effects their constituency and yes, it will be different in Omaha Nebraska then in Los Angeles California or even the circle surrounding Washington DC. Sometimes, events in their home states require their attention and they don't always follow a congressional schedule. But even more interesting is events surrounding their comity obligations or perhaps even their states that take them to places other then Washington DC. These places could be military bases in or outside the US, visits to foreign governments to negotiate investments like jobs and so on in the US and in their own state, it could be visits to company headquarters to attempt to keep jobs from leaving the states or districts, it could be to view disaster damage, to evaluate the performance of a government entity and so on.
A congressman's job doesn't keep them in DC or even the respected houses during all working hours. They are still working and doing their job when they miss votes and so on. Could you imagine visiting the troops and attempted to see if they are missing body armor or food or medical supplies when in combat just to have your not present vote turned into a no vote on a bill to increase funding for body armor for those same troops? Or how about getting an on site inspections of the deteriorating levies in New Orleans just to have your not present vote turned into a no vote on a bill that would have required an engineering review and fixes made to them.
No they don't. They leaders support certain candidates which gives them an advantage (some might say an unfair advantage) but in the US, it's all open to the will of the people.
The Voters wouldn't be the bosses telling them what to do in this situation. In fact, elected officials don't have any obligation to voters in most government. They have obligations to the office they represent and are selected by the voters. Judges are elected officials and they most certainly cannot ignore the law when adjudicating a case because the voters don't want it enforced. That's the job of the legislation. But this goes a little to a different point. Every senate/parliament/governing body as well as any meeting/event/trade show/whatever will have leaders who set the time tables and agendas. In this case, it was those people who where the boss not the voters.
It's sort of like a cop telling you to turn around and go back, the road is closed ahead. You are wanting to blame everything on a person for doing a U-turn because as soon as they did, the road opened and the cops started letting people through. This was a failure of the elected official doing the electorates business but it was because of the leaders of the elected officials.
When you say founding fathers, I'm assuming your speaking of the US.
I don't particularly think they were in favor of that sort of thing. They went to great lengths to protect political speech and actions resulting from it, to absolve political leaders from anything said in the congress. They specifically limited what can be done with impeachment to removal from office then required an indictment from a grand jury and due process as is the case with any accused criminal. They defined treason which carries a death penalty in such a way that "subverting the democratic process" cannot ever be determined to be treason unless the act specifically involves levying war against the US, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort, and there needs to be at least two witnesses.
But further more, the founding fathers provided ways to amend the constitution that has no limits on the preservation of democracy and fully allows for anything seen a democratic to be taken away.
The founding fathers were concerned with being the masters of their own fate, freedom, liberty, and the ability to live alongside their neighbors in a society united in the same goals, not killing people they disagreed with.
Well, sort of. That was one of the reasonings for wanting the federal government to control copyright. The others is that a state could put a 50 year limit on copyright and another has a 20 year limit. So who's copyright terms would need to be honored?
The constitution was set up as a permissive device in which is specifically listed what the states surrendered to the control of the US federal government. Copyright was listed because knowing what you said would create conflict among the different states, it was logical to have one unified set of laws concerning it. So when the states ratified the constitution, they surrendered their rights over copyright.
Unfortunately, now the constitution seems to be viewed as something that simply restricts the federal government instead or something that gives it permissions to operate in limited ways. This has lead congress from asking can we even constitutionally pass a law like this to what is to stop us from passing a law like this. I think that's a turn for the worse and a prime reason why people think the government lost that "of the people, for the people, and by the people" feeling.
Actually, there are a few different definitions of a patent troll. Your's is one, someone who submarines a patent into a spec or working process just to collect later when it is widely used is another, Someone who patents the ideas while in the same thing just to apply it later is another. Someone who patents something legitimate in an overly broad sense to include products and uses in existence or that would be the nest logical step for a product in existence but not even similar to the product patented by the company is yet another.
An example of the last one is where a company made a credit card sized device for the purpose of passing through toll booths and automatically identifying someone and charging their account. This patent was so broad that it also effect the secure chip RFID devices put in Visa and Master card credit cards so you could just swipe the card yourself and pay the bill at checkout.
Basically, what defines a troll can be the "intent" of the patent holder. Their actions can define their intent. If they are deceptive, less then honest, or just an attempt to profit from other people's works, they most likely would be considered a troll too.
You shouldn't which is why the review should focus on the as sold spec instead of what a team of monkeys with a cryogenic cooler and 10 years of experience can accomplish. The cards likely ship at the speeds they do because of some failure rates at higher speeds that the manufacturer decided was too much of a liability. It may shorten the lifespan to before the warranty expires or it may cause data corruption resulting in wired errors getting blamed on their equipment and they don't want the hit inreputation.
But they let you change the speeds because if your successful, you will convince others to do so and they will likely need a new video card sooner then later. Either way, the old warning which still seems true is "if you over clock and screw it up, it's your fault-not ours". And that's probably enough to get what they want from it- possible better performance showing this card/device is capable, but it's your problem not mine if it screws up or doesn't deliver.
I think your confused. The interview was with CBS that put all this into their heads.