whether you are complying with the unconstitutional mandate to carry health insurance.
Fixed that for you.
It sure is "Orwellian"
Doesn't that depend on how they are counting requests? If a 'request' is nothing more than a hit on their webpage then 8,000,000 might not be out of line. Imagine how often you would need to refresh such a tool in the process of tracking a particular suspect.
If 8,000,000 refers to the number of customers that law enforcement requested data on then that's another matter altogether.....
I think it's a fairly safe assumption that at least two of those countries (Somalia and Afghanistan) would still be shitholes even without weapons. Remember that correlation (i.e: lots of weapons) != causation (i.e: lots of violence).
Interestingly enough, there are now anti-Taliban militia's forming up in many parts of Afghanistan. They've seen what the Taliban is all about, they've seen how ineffective we've been at containing it and they don't intend to pushed around by them any longer.
How effective do you suppose those groups would be at resisting the Taliban and defending themselves if they didn't have access to weapons?
a fact that many people up in Central and Western NY generally resent.
Yeah, I live in Binghamton, so I know all about it.
I don't know as if you can claim it's only a blue state because of the city though. Schemer and Spitzer won virtually every county (the former all but one, the latter all but two) in the last statewide elections. It would definitely be a more moderate state without the city though.
My point is you can't open fire on a vessel without the criteria that YOU listed actually being met so it's not as black and white as slap some browning machine guns on there and light up any boat that comes close
At what point in this conversation have I claimed that it's as easy as slapping on some machine guns and lighting up boats?
If you want to take the armed route you have to invest in trained professionals
No you don't. Armed professionals are still a great idea but I'd be willing to bet that most American hicks have more experience handling firearms than these pirates. In any case the crew ought to have the ability to defend themselves, armed professionals or no armed professionals.
That's who you need defending ships, not some overweight sailor that's never seen combat scrambling to unlock a weapons case and fight off hardened Somalians who have grown up in a world of violence.
"Hardened Somalians"? These pirates are teenagers that are on the verge of starving to death. And who cares if they've grown up in a 'world of violence'? So have American criminals. That doesn't mean I should surrender to one without putting up a fight.
That's a recipe for getting people killed
Yes, people might get killed. That's generally how violence works.
it's better to lock yourself in the engine room and let the navy cap the pirates when they show up to help.
That didn't work for the crew of the Maersk Alabama. Fighting back did. Imagine that.
I don't think you understand his district. Most of his constituents would cheer any gun control measure. That doesn't excuse his violation of his oath of office though.
I don't care what your opinion is regarding the 2nd amendment but I should think that you'd be smart enough to see in the danger in the Government having the power to take away your rights merely by placing your name on a list. No due process, no burden of proof.
This kind of fucking hypocrisy makes my blood boil. Many of the supposed civil libertarians in Congress have spent the last eight years screaming as loudly as they can about the lack of due process afforded those held in Gitmo. Now many of those same legislators line up to support legislation that grants the Government the power to strip away the rights of American citizens without according them due process. I'll ask it again, WTF is wrong with this picture?
Advocating for gun control measures in New York State is anything but "political suicide" I'm afraid. He'll sell this crap to his constituents as being "tough on terror" and the morons will eat it up hook, line and sinker. In the end the only thing that will suffer is our Constitution and civil liberties.
As for the argument that this would have somehow tipped off the terrorists, does the NSA honestly think that terrorists (at least the smart ones, who are the real threat anyway) don't ALREADY realize their calls are being monitored?
Bin Ladin supposedly didn't realize that we were tracking him via his satellite phone until that fact was leaked by a member of the Clinton administration. He kept using it right up until the point that the story appeared in the press.
I consider myself a civil libertarian and think that it's folly to monitor our own citizens but it's also foolhardy to think that these types of disclosures don't have any real world implications.
Men like Peter King would gladly usher in fascism just for the warm and fuzzies it would give them.
He's already working on that. He recently introduced legislation that would grant the Attorney General the right to infringe on your constitutional rights without due process. He thinks the Federal Government should have the right to put your name on a list and take away your right to keep and bear arms without any burden of proof whatsoever.
I don't have a problem with less than lethal (that's the proper term for it, BTW) means of defense. I carry pepper spray in the real world. My problem is when anti-gun types start requiring that you use them exclusively. Expecting someone to have to rely on a net device while being shot at is asking too much.
The minute that the pirates open fire our crews should be allowed to respond in kind. We don't arm our police officers with pepper spray and tell them that they have to use it when faced with some dirtbag who is shooting at them. We arm them with pepper spray for the situations where deadly force isn't justified and allow them to carry a gun for the situations where it is.
If someone overcharges me then it's MY money at stake. If someone screws up with a credit card you aren't worried about not being able to pay your bills or having checks you've already written bounce.
There are consumer protections (chargeback rights) at play with a credit card that are non-existent with a debit card.
Some credit cards earn rewards. Very few debit cards do.
As for your credit score, stop worshiping FICO. You can be quite rich and have no credit score
Who said I was "worshipping" FICO? I don't even know what my current score is. I do know that it will go down if I have to close those accounts and that will have direct impacts on several non-credit related items, starting with my insurance premiums. I don't regard it as fair that my car insurance price is linked to my credit score but that's life.
If you have a point it's still lost on me. Even if they are hiding their arms they don't get to approach a merchant ship without communicating their intent. If they somehow manage to sneak aboard (particularly likely at night and in bad weather) then the crew still needs arms to be able to fight back.
I just can't comprehend this opposition to giving people who are threatened with violent acts the means to defend themselves against those acts. It's a fairly safe assumption that all of the armchair quarterbacks here have never found themselves in a situation where they were assaulted and/or violated and lacked the means to defend themselves.
I've love to see the merchant sailors of the world unite against this and stop doing their jobs until they are allowed to carry arms. The economy would grind to a halt and the hoplophobes would cave in short order. Unfortunately that will never happen because the majority of sailors are working under flags of convenience and have no rights. It's worth noting that most American flagged ships that have to ply those waters are now carrying arms to defend themselves. Funny how having the ability to fight back makes it harder for criminal thugs to operate with impunity, isn't it?
....and if the pirate brought his 10 year old son aboard?
Irrelevant. I don't forfeit my right to defend myself just because you are selfish enough to use your own children as a human shield. If you tried that on land and got your child killed it would be you who got charged with murder, not the person who was defending himself from your aggression.
Faced with a potentially violent kidnapper, who in most cases will have the upper hand (if the kidnapping is even slightly well planned), the fight option is likely to get you needlessly injured or killed.
Surrendering to them and leaving your fate in their hands is an even worse option. You are leaving yourself completely at the mercy of someone whose motives are unknown and whom has already demonstrated a willingness to use violence to achieve his ends. In the face of such violence I would fight to the death before I would leave myself at their mercy.
It simply offers the best chance of survival.
You are assuming facts not in evidence.
Of course something needs to be done, but shooting them all is just ridiculous.
Where did I say "shoot them all"? I simply want our crews to have the ability to defend themselves. They won't get shot if they don't try to attack our ships. I'm sorry but it's asking too much that people willingly leave themselves vulnerable and surrender to such an egregious violation of their person and dignity without a fight.
Slashdot Mirror
whether you are complying with the unconstitutional mandate to carry health insurance.
Fixed that for you.
It sure is "Orwellian"
Doesn't that depend on how they are counting requests? If a 'request' is nothing more than a hit on their webpage then 8,000,000 might not be out of line. Imagine how often you would need to refresh such a tool in the process of tracking a particular suspect.
If 8,000,000 refers to the number of customers that law enforcement requested data on then that's another matter altogether.....
Somalia. Iraq. Afghanistan. Much less nice.
I think it's a fairly safe assumption that at least two of those countries (Somalia and Afghanistan) would still be shitholes even without weapons. Remember that correlation (i.e: lots of weapons) != causation (i.e: lots of violence).
Interestingly enough, there are now anti-Taliban militia's forming up in many parts of Afghanistan. They've seen what the Taliban is all about, they've seen how ineffective we've been at containing it and they don't intend to pushed around by them any longer.
How effective do you suppose those groups would be at resisting the Taliban and defending themselves if they didn't have access to weapons?
I honestly don't detect sarcasm in his post. Neither did the mods, apparently.
If he was trying to be a wiseass then I guess I'm a jerk. Oh well, what can you do?
The militia today consists of all able-bodied males between 18 and 40 whom aren't members of the military or reserves.
Most of us simply cannot be trusted with freedom.
Fixed that for you.
a fact that many people up in Central and Western NY generally resent.
Yeah, I live in Binghamton, so I know all about it.
I don't know as if you can claim it's only a blue state because of the city though. Schemer and Spitzer won virtually every county (the former all but one, the latter all but two) in the last statewide elections. It would definitely be a more moderate state without the city though.
My point is you can't open fire on a vessel without the criteria that YOU listed actually being met so it's not as black and white as slap some browning machine guns on there and light up any boat that comes close
At what point in this conversation have I claimed that it's as easy as slapping on some machine guns and lighting up boats?
If you want to take the armed route you have to invest in trained professionals
No you don't. Armed professionals are still a great idea but I'd be willing to bet that most American hicks have more experience handling firearms than these pirates. In any case the crew ought to have the ability to defend themselves, armed professionals or no armed professionals.
That's who you need defending ships, not some overweight sailor that's never seen combat scrambling to unlock a weapons case and fight off hardened Somalians who have grown up in a world of violence.
"Hardened Somalians"? These pirates are teenagers that are on the verge of starving to death. And who cares if they've grown up in a 'world of violence'? So have American criminals. That doesn't mean I should surrender to one without putting up a fight.
That's a recipe for getting people killed
Yes, people might get killed. That's generally how violence works.
it's better to lock yourself in the engine room and let the navy cap the pirates when they show up to help.
That didn't work for the crew of the Maersk Alabama. Fighting back did. Imagine that.
I don't think you understand his district. Most of his constituents would cheer any gun control measure. That doesn't excuse his violation of his oath of office though.
I don't care what your opinion is regarding the 2nd amendment but I should think that you'd be smart enough to see in the danger in the Government having the power to take away your rights merely by placing your name on a list. No due process, no burden of proof.
This kind of fucking hypocrisy makes my blood boil. Many of the supposed civil libertarians in Congress have spent the last eight years screaming as loudly as they can about the lack of due process afforded those held in Gitmo. Now many of those same legislators line up to support legislation that grants the Government the power to strip away the rights of American citizens without according them due process. I'll ask it again, WTF is wrong with this picture?
Pot, kettle, black.
That might have had something to do with that giant hole in lower Manhattan. Just a thought.....
Advocating for gun control measures in New York State is anything but "political suicide" I'm afraid. He'll sell this crap to his constituents as being "tough on terror" and the morons will eat it up hook, line and sinker. In the end the only thing that will suffer is our Constitution and civil liberties.
Aren't blue-collar Irish Catholics generally union members (D)?
If you want to paint with a broad brush they are usually the so-called "Reagan Democrats", i.e: socially conservative democrats.
Why are we blaming him then? His voters put him in office.
You mean the 'voters that his political party picked to ensure that a Republican would win that seat' picked him, right?
Link for people who have no idea what I'm talking about.
you can bet we'll invade Finland to punish them.
That didn't work out real well when Stalin tried it......
As for the argument that this would have somehow tipped off the terrorists, does the NSA honestly think that terrorists (at least the smart ones, who are the real threat anyway) don't ALREADY realize their calls are being monitored?
Bin Ladin supposedly didn't realize that we were tracking him via his satellite phone until that fact was leaked by a member of the Clinton administration. He kept using it right up until the point that the story appeared in the press.
I consider myself a civil libertarian and think that it's folly to monitor our own citizens but it's also foolhardy to think that these types of disclosures don't have any real world implications.
Men like Peter King would gladly usher in fascism just for the warm and fuzzies it would give them.
He's already working on that. He recently introduced legislation that would grant the Attorney General the right to infringe on your constitutional rights without due process. He thinks the Federal Government should have the right to put your name on a list and take away your right to keep and bear arms without any burden of proof whatsoever.
What's wrong with that picture?
Actually, you can kill someone in self-defense, if threatened with death or serious bodily injury.
I don't have a problem with less than lethal (that's the proper term for it, BTW) means of defense. I carry pepper spray in the real world. My problem is when anti-gun types start requiring that you use them exclusively. Expecting someone to have to rely on a net device while being shot at is asking too much.
The minute that the pirates open fire our crews should be allowed to respond in kind. We don't arm our police officers with pepper spray and tell them that they have to use it when faced with some dirtbag who is shooting at them. We arm them with pepper spray for the situations where deadly force isn't justified and allow them to carry a gun for the situations where it is.
Why? The debit card has several disadvantages:
As for your credit score, stop worshiping FICO. You can be quite rich and have no credit score
Who said I was "worshipping" FICO? I don't even know what my current score is. I do know that it will go down if I have to close those accounts and that will have direct impacts on several non-credit related items, starting with my insurance premiums. I don't regard it as fair that my car insurance price is linked to my credit score but that's life.
So you'd be OK with a cargo ship containing a Middle Eastern crew docking in Los Angeles or Oakland with lockers full of AK47s?
Yes, I would. Next question?
If you have a point it's still lost on me. Even if they are hiding their arms they don't get to approach a merchant ship without communicating their intent. If they somehow manage to sneak aboard (particularly likely at night and in bad weather) then the crew still needs arms to be able to fight back.
I just can't comprehend this opposition to giving people who are threatened with violent acts the means to defend themselves against those acts. It's a fairly safe assumption that all of the armchair quarterbacks here have never found themselves in a situation where they were assaulted and/or violated and lacked the means to defend themselves.
I've love to see the merchant sailors of the world unite against this and stop doing their jobs until they are allowed to carry arms. The economy would grind to a halt and the hoplophobes would cave in short order. Unfortunately that will never happen because the majority of sailors are working under flags of convenience and have no rights. It's worth noting that most American flagged ships that have to ply those waters are now carrying arms to defend themselves. Funny how having the ability to fight back makes it harder for criminal thugs to operate with impunity, isn't it?
....and if the pirate brought his 10 year old son aboard?
Irrelevant. I don't forfeit my right to defend myself just because you are selfish enough to use your own children as a human shield. If you tried that on land and got your child killed it would be you who got charged with murder, not the person who was defending himself from your aggression.
The AK-47 is a little hard to conceal in a small speedboat manned by half-starved to death pirates.
Gun wounds tend to be more permanent.
So are the physiological and physical effects of being held captive against your will.
Faced with a potentially violent kidnapper, who in most cases will have the upper hand (if the kidnapping is even slightly well planned), the fight option is likely to get you needlessly injured or killed.
Surrendering to them and leaving your fate in their hands is an even worse option. You are leaving yourself completely at the mercy of someone whose motives are unknown and whom has already demonstrated a willingness to use violence to achieve his ends. In the face of such violence I would fight to the death before I would leave myself at their mercy.
It simply offers the best chance of survival.
You are assuming facts not in evidence.
Of course something needs to be done, but shooting them all is just ridiculous.
Where did I say "shoot them all"? I simply want our crews to have the ability to defend themselves. They won't get shot if they don't try to attack our ships. I'm sorry but it's asking too much that people willingly leave themselves vulnerable and surrender to such an egregious violation of their person and dignity without a fight.