The problem with tablets is carrying them with you everywhere you go, particularly for the fitness/exercise app functionality. It's kind of hard to put even a small tablet into an armband and take it out for a run.
I overlooked one more element of functionality that I missed when playing with my old flip phone: Pandora. Pandora was the reason why I finally made the leap from dumbphone to smartphone; took a road-trip with a friend who had a Blackberry (remember those?) and was able to stream Pandora the whole way. I was a late adopter to smartphones, never saw the need, but as a music lover that was the "killer app" for me which finally convinced me to switch.
The point that I was trying to make is that BHO's hands are tied. The military option is not on the table, despite all public bluster to the contrary. BHO could not secure Congressional approval for military intervention against Assad, what makes you think he can secure it against Iran? There's no appetite in the American body politic for another sustained military adventure in the Middle East and by all accounts the Iranian nuclear infrastructure is too diversified to destroy with a short term aerial campaign.
If you've remove the military option you're left with two choices:
1. Get a deal all sides can live with at the negotiating table.
2. Failing #1, continue economic sanctions in the hopes of compelling a change in Iranian policy.
#2 is dependent on at making a good faith effort at negotiating, otherwise you'll lose the support of the global community, and unilateral American sanctions (or even American + EU) aren't likely to hurt Iran enough to influence their policy choices. It's not like we have a significant amount of trade with them. One need only look 90 miles off the coast of Florida to see how effective unilateral American sanctions are at compelling change.
I also dispute the notion that a second term President is removed from political pressure and/or repercussions for unpopular decisions. In the extreme example Congress can impeach his ass and remove him from office. That's not likely to occur of course, but there are all sorts of things that the body politic can do to make his life difficult if he steps too far outside the mainstream of public opinion.
I experimented with my old flip phone for a few days just to see if I could really go back and discovered that I found myself missing basic smartphone functionality, like threaded SMS conversations. It took all of five minutes for that to annoy the piss out of me. Then there's the smartphone functionality that has become a key part of my daily routine, like my exercise diary, the Wegmans app, my food diary, Google Maps, weather, and so forth. These are all apps that have value for productivity and/or health, not time sinks like Facebook or Angry Birds. They're worth the $30/mo premium, IMHO anyway.
And in my experience it usually leaks sooner or later.
If only someone could invent an easy to carry container that was purpose designed to transport ethanol on one's person.:)
Of course, if you're going for ease of carrying while hiking there are much better bets than booze. Of course, cannabis has one purpose; ethanol has first aid value and can be used for fuel if the need arises.
You do realize that American beer doesn't begin and end with Budweiser and Coors, right? There are about a dozen different microbreweries within a half hour of my house. The same story is repeated all across the United States. Oh, and guess what? Budweiser and Coors aren't even American owned these days. The largest American brewery left is probably Sam Adams and they have a fairly good selection of brews.
Have you read the 21st Amendment? You don't have to make some theoretical "States rights" argument when it comes to alcohol; the control of "intoxicating liquors" is very clearly delegated to the States.
I love Churchill but his history of the second world war was tainted by domestic politics. The French alone could have whipped Germany in 1936. Hitler didn't get away with seizing the Rhineland because the West lacked the military means to resist, he got away with it because the West lacked the political will to resist. Military capability is irrelevant if you don't have the stomach to use it. The West refused to march even after the shooting started.
It's quite simple really. Congress controls the purse-strings, has the sole power to declare war, and is beholden to public opinion regardless of whether or not the President is running for re-election.
Maybe you can suggest a path to an AUMF against Iran in the current political climate? Where are your 218/51 yea votes coming from? Recall that two years ago BHO withdrew his request for Congressional approval to intervene in Syria rather than see it defeated, as it was destined to be.
Which doesn't matter, because the world dithers for a few years accusing Iran of providing the material, Iran denying this, right up until Iran has what they feel like are enough nuclear weapons.
With very few (Saddam's Iraq) exceptions nearly every nation-state lined up behind the United States after 9/11, an event that claimed a paltry (in the historical sense) 3,000 lives. The notion that the World would "dither" for years after a nuclear attack on any country (never mind one of the Big Five) is laughable on the surface. Such an occurrence would bring global condemnation and unite the civilized world against whomever was responsible.
Ok, not quite ready but basically ready by the time Iran wants to use them.
You'll forgive me if I take your "source" with a healthy dose of skepticism. Which is it though? Is Iran going to attack us like a conventional nation-state or sell the bomb to terrorists? Here's a thought exercise for you: Fire up Google Earth and use the line tool to see which large nuclear armed power an Iranian missile would have to overfly to reach CONUS. Spoiler alert: It's Russia. Iran is going to wage nuclear war against both the United States and Russia? Good luck with that.
I'm highly dubious we'd actually do so. Crossing that nuclear line is too high a bar now, even in response to a nuclear attack.
You can't have it both ways, simultaneously worrying about Iranian nukes raining down on us while claiming that the nuclear line is "too high a bar." Iran is not immune to geopolitical forces.
I said they wanted the same thing
You're misinformed. ISIS has an end times ideology and mindset. Iran is driven by an entirely different ideology and set of motivations. They're a radical regime, nobody disputes that, but neither their actions nor their rhetoric suggest that they're ready to commit mass suicide. If a glorious death for Allah was the driving force behind Iranian policy why did they end the Iran-Iraq War? Why limit their actions against Israel to proxy warfare? You don't understand the Persian mindset nearly as well as you think you do.
Fine, but that won't work if the victim lives in a state that has revenge-porn laws, and the perpetrator lives in a state that does not.
If the video was shot in the victim's state that state may well be able to claim jurisdiction. Of course, unless you're arguing that the ends justify the means I really don't see how you've responded to or refuted the point made by the GP....
I find it disgusting that the author wouldn't stop revenge porn because it's an immoral or criminal act, but only because most of the affected audience happens to be women
Playing identity politics is what Democrats do best. Step into your time machine and review the coverage of NYPD's so-called stop and frisk policy. The chief argument made against it was that it "disproportionally affects minorities." Very few people in power on the left argued against it on the basis of the 4th Amendment, or could even acknowledge the basic fact that it's humiliating to treat people as criminals merely for walking down the street. The legal and political arguments made against it lead one to conclude that that they would be perfectly okay with the policy if whites were stopped in equal numbers.
The reasons why he couldn't convince his people are irrelevant. I was simply stating a fact, not analyzing the underlying reasons for it. Democracies have a built in disadvantage in the game of geopolitics, because it's very difficult to convince the people to accept pain in the short term in order to forestall theoretically greater pain in the long term. This problem isn't limited to the geopolitical/diplomatic/military realm, see "anthropological climate change" for a current example.
The smart thing to do would have been to engage Germany in 1936, it would have saved millions of lives, but the political will simply wasn't there. It's a leap to equate 2015 Iran to 1936 Germany (the latter was a scientific and economic force to be reckoned with, the former not so much), but even if you believe them to be an existential threat you've still got to acknowledge the political reality of the situation. Two years ago the American Congress and British House of Commons soundly rejected military intervention in Syria, a tiny and divided country with a fraction of Iran's population and military capability. The people who are railing against this deal should start by explaining how they propose to change that political reality.
Even if Iran does not use weapons directly, they can provide small nuclear devices to terrorist groups.
They can but they won't. Fissile material has an isotopic signature that's as unique as your DNA. Any nuclear weapon detonated by a non-state actor would immediately be traced back to its source by the global community.
So lets say Iran fires a nuclear missile as Israel, or the US (they have ICBMs that can reach the easter coast)
Citation needed.
But why WOULD the U.S. send a nuclear strike back, against cities full of innocent people.
The United States maintains the capability to launch a counterforce attack in response to any nuclear aggression. That's quite probably what would happen; in WW2 when we firebombed enemy cities we were ostensibly aiming at targets of military value. Civilians would die, just as they do in conventional conflicts, but they would not be the direct targets of our response. All those allegedly "bomb proof" bunkers that the Iranians have? They're not proof against precision nuclear strikes, nothing is, and that's exactly the type of attack the United States would be most apt to launch in response to a nuclear attack.
But that (over the long term) is exactly what Iran (and a number of other Islamic forces like ISIS)
You betray your ignorance by lumping ISIS in with the Iranians; they're actually mortal enemies. I don't trust the Iranians one damned bit but I've followed this issue long enough to know that their policymakers are not driven by the same armageddon mentality as ISIS. Persia has been a historical great power since the days of Ancient Greece. They seek to regain that glory. A nuclear war with the West will not achieve that objective.
The Cold War saying "trust, but verify" applies here.
MAD only worked because both sides of the conflict were rational and relatively sane. Iran has no such encumbrance.
MAD worked against the likes of Joesph Stalin and Mao Zedong, the latter of whom actually believed that he could fight and win a nuclear war. The Iranians have nothing on that level of crazy paranoia. Nor do they possess the Soviet Union's technological skill or the Chinese demographic advantage. In the hierarchy of current and historical threats to Western Civilization they fall somewhere between "annoyance" and "existential". We can't casually dismiss them but we don't need to be kept awake all night worrying about them either.
No it wasn't. BHO isn't that stupid. He said what he needed (or thought he needed) to say to get his bill passed. Anybody who followed the issue at even a casual level immediately knew that he made a promise that he couldn't keep.
Because they hope to become a regional superpower and that's a lot easier as a member of the community of nations than a pariah that nobody will trade with?
I'm just speculating. I don't trust them one damned bit, it's just that I don't see a better alternative. At least they don't have a delivery system that can reach CONUS. And MAD still applies....
Neville Chamberlain's hands were tied by the unwillingness of his people to go to war for Czechoslovakia. Condemn the man all you want; as the leader of a democracy his policy choices were constrained by public opinion, just as BHO's are. Do you think you could have done better in Chamberlain's hands? British and French policymakers couldn't sell their peoples on a war in 1936, when Hitler first telegraphed his intentions, despite the fact that Germany had no army worthy of the name and would have been curb stomped by the Franco-British Alliance.
This may turn out to be a bad deal, I'm skeptical that Iran can be trusted, but the political reality of the situation is there's no appetite in the United States (let alone the rest of the West) to go to war over what the Iranians might do. Check back in 20 years to find out if BHO managed to thread the needle better than Chamberlain.
Slashdot Mirror
Fuck Apple.
The problem with tablets is carrying them with you everywhere you go, particularly for the fitness/exercise app functionality. It's kind of hard to put even a small tablet into an armband and take it out for a run.
I overlooked one more element of functionality that I missed when playing with my old flip phone: Pandora. Pandora was the reason why I finally made the leap from dumbphone to smartphone; took a road-trip with a friend who had a Blackberry (remember those?) and was able to stream Pandora the whole way. I was a late adopter to smartphones, never saw the need, but as a music lover that was the "killer app" for me which finally convinced me to switch.
The point that I was trying to make is that BHO's hands are tied. The military option is not on the table, despite all public bluster to the contrary. BHO could not secure Congressional approval for military intervention against Assad, what makes you think he can secure it against Iran? There's no appetite in the American body politic for another sustained military adventure in the Middle East and by all accounts the Iranian nuclear infrastructure is too diversified to destroy with a short term aerial campaign.
If you've remove the military option you're left with two choices:
1. Get a deal all sides can live with at the negotiating table.
2. Failing #1, continue economic sanctions in the hopes of compelling a change in Iranian policy.
#2 is dependent on at making a good faith effort at negotiating, otherwise you'll lose the support of the global community, and unilateral American sanctions (or even American + EU) aren't likely to hurt Iran enough to influence their policy choices. It's not like we have a significant amount of trade with them. One need only look 90 miles off the coast of Florida to see how effective unilateral American sanctions are at compelling change.
I also dispute the notion that a second term President is removed from political pressure and/or repercussions for unpopular decisions. In the extreme example Congress can impeach his ass and remove him from office. That's not likely to occur of course, but there are all sorts of things that the body politic can do to make his life difficult if he steps too far outside the mainstream of public opinion.
I experimented with my old flip phone for a few days just to see if I could really go back and discovered that I found myself missing basic smartphone functionality, like threaded SMS conversations. It took all of five minutes for that to annoy the piss out of me. Then there's the smartphone functionality that has become a key part of my daily routine, like my exercise diary, the Wegmans app, my food diary, Google Maps, weather, and so forth. These are all apps that have value for productivity and/or health, not time sinks like Facebook or Angry Birds. They're worth the $30/mo premium, IMHO anyway.
And in my experience it usually leaks sooner or later.
If only someone could invent an easy to carry container that was purpose designed to transport ethanol on one's person. :)
Of course, if you're going for ease of carrying while hiking there are much better bets than booze. Of course, cannabis has one purpose; ethanol has first aid value and can be used for fuel if the need arises.
sorry the freezing point of pure alcohol is apparently -114C...that's even cold by Canadian standards!
That's the approximate temperature of my ex-wife's heart and she wasn't Canadian, Russian, or Finnish. ;)
You do realize that American beer doesn't begin and end with Budweiser and Coors, right? There are about a dozen different microbreweries within a half hour of my house. The same story is repeated all across the United States. Oh, and guess what? Budweiser and Coors aren't even American owned these days. The largest American brewery left is probably Sam Adams and they have a fairly good selection of brews.
Have you read the 21st Amendment? You don't have to make some theoretical "States rights" argument when it comes to alcohol; the control of "intoxicating liquors" is very clearly delegated to the States.
I love Churchill but his history of the second world war was tainted by domestic politics. The French alone could have whipped Germany in 1936. Hitler didn't get away with seizing the Rhineland because the West lacked the military means to resist, he got away with it because the West lacked the political will to resist. Military capability is irrelevant if you don't have the stomach to use it. The West refused to march even after the shooting started.
It's quite simple really. Congress controls the purse-strings, has the sole power to declare war, and is beholden to public opinion regardless of whether or not the President is running for re-election.
Maybe you can suggest a path to an AUMF against Iran in the current political climate? Where are your 218/51 yea votes coming from? Recall that two years ago BHO withdrew his request for Congressional approval to intervene in Syria rather than see it defeated, as it was destined to be.
Which doesn't matter, because the world dithers for a few years accusing Iran of providing the material, Iran denying this, right up until Iran has what they feel like are enough nuclear weapons.
With very few (Saddam's Iraq) exceptions nearly every nation-state lined up behind the United States after 9/11, an event that claimed a paltry (in the historical sense) 3,000 lives. The notion that the World would "dither" for years after a nuclear attack on any country (never mind one of the Big Five) is laughable on the surface. Such an occurrence would bring global condemnation and unite the civilized world against whomever was responsible.
Ok, not quite ready but basically ready by the time Iran wants to use them.
You'll forgive me if I take your "source" with a healthy dose of skepticism. Which is it though? Is Iran going to attack us like a conventional nation-state or sell the bomb to terrorists? Here's a thought exercise for you: Fire up Google Earth and use the line tool to see which large nuclear armed power an Iranian missile would have to overfly to reach CONUS. Spoiler alert: It's Russia. Iran is going to wage nuclear war against both the United States and Russia? Good luck with that.
I'm highly dubious we'd actually do so. Crossing that nuclear line is too high a bar now, even in response to a nuclear attack.
You can't have it both ways, simultaneously worrying about Iranian nukes raining down on us while claiming that the nuclear line is "too high a bar." Iran is not immune to geopolitical forces.
I said they wanted the same thing
You're misinformed. ISIS has an end times ideology and mindset. Iran is driven by an entirely different ideology and set of motivations. They're a radical regime, nobody disputes that, but neither their actions nor their rhetoric suggest that they're ready to commit mass suicide. If a glorious death for Allah was the driving force behind Iranian policy why did they end the Iran-Iraq War? Why limit their actions against Israel to proxy warfare? You don't understand the Persian mindset nearly as well as you think you do.
Fine, but that won't work if the victim lives in a state that has revenge-porn laws, and the perpetrator lives in a state that does not.
If the video was shot in the victim's state that state may well be able to claim jurisdiction. Of course, unless you're arguing that the ends justify the means I really don't see how you've responded to or refuted the point made by the GP....
I find it disgusting that the author wouldn't stop revenge porn because it's an immoral or criminal act, but only because most of the affected audience happens to be women
Playing identity politics is what Democrats do best. Step into your time machine and review the coverage of NYPD's so-called stop and frisk policy. The chief argument made against it was that it "disproportionally affects minorities." Very few people in power on the left argued against it on the basis of the 4th Amendment, or could even acknowledge the basic fact that it's humiliating to treat people as criminals merely for walking down the street. The legal and political arguments made against it lead one to conclude that that they would be perfectly okay with the policy if whites were stopped in equal numbers.
Because an egregious violation of someone's privacy that's can be traumatizing as a sexual assault is a minor thing.
Revenge porn is a sexual assault? Seriously? Do you also regard the iCloud compromise as a sexual assault?
Public opinion cannot influence his fate over the next 2 years.
You might want to familiarize yourself with the United States Constitution, specifically the revenue and war powers portions of Article I.
The reasons why he couldn't convince his people are irrelevant. I was simply stating a fact, not analyzing the underlying reasons for it. Democracies have a built in disadvantage in the game of geopolitics, because it's very difficult to convince the people to accept pain in the short term in order to forestall theoretically greater pain in the long term. This problem isn't limited to the geopolitical/diplomatic/military realm, see "anthropological climate change" for a current example.
The smart thing to do would have been to engage Germany in 1936, it would have saved millions of lives, but the political will simply wasn't there. It's a leap to equate 2015 Iran to 1936 Germany (the latter was a scientific and economic force to be reckoned with, the former not so much), but even if you believe them to be an existential threat you've still got to acknowledge the political reality of the situation. Two years ago the American Congress and British House of Commons soundly rejected military intervention in Syria, a tiny and divided country with a fraction of Iran's population and military capability. The people who are railing against this deal should start by explaining how they propose to change that political reality.
Even if Iran does not use weapons directly, they can provide small nuclear devices to terrorist groups.
They can but they won't. Fissile material has an isotopic signature that's as unique as your DNA. Any nuclear weapon detonated by a non-state actor would immediately be traced back to its source by the global community.
So lets say Iran fires a nuclear missile as Israel, or the US (they have ICBMs that can reach the easter coast)
Citation needed.
But why WOULD the U.S. send a nuclear strike back, against cities full of innocent people.
The United States maintains the capability to launch a counterforce attack in response to any nuclear aggression. That's quite probably what would happen; in WW2 when we firebombed enemy cities we were ostensibly aiming at targets of military value. Civilians would die, just as they do in conventional conflicts, but they would not be the direct targets of our response. All those allegedly "bomb proof" bunkers that the Iranians have? They're not proof against precision nuclear strikes, nothing is, and that's exactly the type of attack the United States would be most apt to launch in response to a nuclear attack.
But that (over the long term) is exactly what Iran (and a number of other Islamic forces like ISIS)
You betray your ignorance by lumping ISIS in with the Iranians; they're actually mortal enemies. I don't trust the Iranians one damned bit but I've followed this issue long enough to know that their policymakers are not driven by the same armageddon mentality as ISIS. Persia has been a historical great power since the days of Ancient Greece. They seek to regain that glory. A nuclear war with the West will not achieve that objective.
The Cold War saying "trust, but verify" applies here.
MAD only worked because both sides of the conflict were rational and relatively sane. Iran has no such encumbrance.
MAD worked against the likes of Joesph Stalin and Mao Zedong, the latter of whom actually believed that he could fight and win a nuclear war. The Iranians have nothing on that level of crazy paranoia. Nor do they possess the Soviet Union's technological skill or the Chinese demographic advantage. In the hierarchy of current and historical threats to Western Civilization they fall somewhere between "annoyance" and "existential". We can't casually dismiss them but we don't need to be kept awake all night worrying about them either.
It was an honest mistake.
No it wasn't. BHO isn't that stupid. He said what he needed (or thought he needed) to say to get his bill passed. Anybody who followed the issue at even a casual level immediately knew that he made a promise that he couldn't keep.
Which won't change the underlying fact that there's no appetite in the United States for sustained military conflict.
Why should they start now?
Because they hope to become a regional superpower and that's a lot easier as a member of the community of nations than a pariah that nobody will trade with?
I'm just speculating. I don't trust them one damned bit, it's just that I don't see a better alternative. At least they don't have a delivery system that can reach CONUS. And MAD still applies....
It's click/trollbait.
Neville Chamberlain's hands were tied by the unwillingness of his people to go to war for Czechoslovakia. Condemn the man all you want; as the leader of a democracy his policy choices were constrained by public opinion, just as BHO's are. Do you think you could have done better in Chamberlain's hands? British and French policymakers couldn't sell their peoples on a war in 1936, when Hitler first telegraphed his intentions, despite the fact that Germany had no army worthy of the name and would have been curb stomped by the Franco-British Alliance.
This may turn out to be a bad deal, I'm skeptical that Iran can be trusted, but the political reality of the situation is there's no appetite in the United States (let alone the rest of the West) to go to war over what the Iranians might do. Check back in 20 years to find out if BHO managed to thread the needle better than Chamberlain.
"I'm armed with Google and have a Masters Degree in speed reading." <--- Every internet know it all
Feeding the troll.