You don't really "give up" your rights per say -- you typically give up your "right" to employment if you break the agreement that you made with your employer.
For one, this would violate the 4th Amendment rights of the people (excepting prisoners and guards, both of whom can be searched at will)
Umm, why would the guards have no 4th amendment rights? Perhaps they agree to be searched as a condition of employment but I don't think you lose your right to due process simply by virtue of working a correctional job. If they refused the search I'm sure they could be fired but I'd like to know why they can be searched at will.
Why not make it the law that all non-registered cellphones using the prinsons cell site coverage are automatically logged (phone details AND voice recorded..) - surely that would make the value of the phones almost nothing.
So when I drive past prisons my constitutional rights no longer apply and all my phone calls get recorded?
The idiots in this country who believe that hard work and long hours alone will make them 8 figures some day.
You got modded up for this? Few people think that hard work and long hours alone will make them rich. But how many people do you suppose get rich without hard work and long hours (Paris Hilton notwithstanding)? Do you think Warren Buffet or Bill Gates made their money without long hours and hard work?
The idiots who believe that their success is the result of their hardwork and their hardwork alone--that they don't owe anybody anything. "You're going to take away MY WEALTH!" When they have no wealth of their own.
Translation: Anybody who doesn't support my ideas for taxation is an idiot. Taxes are out of control and it's only going to get worse as we expand Federal spending. Take a look at the real guts of that "stimulus" bill sometime -- it's about 30% stimulus and 70% pork. Most of the spending won't even happen for several years. Who's paying for it? Between the various taxes I already pay out about 40% of my income -- and I don't even make $35k/yr. WTF is wrong with that picture?
Everybody in America dreams of winning the lottery or working hard and building a business which is going to make them millions. And when that happens they "sure as hell aren't going to pay to keep some lazy ass mexican to sit home and watch cable."
Not everybody who is opposed to higher taxes is opposed because of welfare. Nice way to work in an off-topic racist attack on those that disagree with you though. Many of us just have a fundamental problem with the concept of wealth redistribution. Case in point: I just helped a low-income friend of mine do her taxes. She qualifies for the earned income tax credit. Even though she only paid out about $2,500 in Federal/New York income taxes she's getting a refund of about $5,500. I'm glad it worked out for her individually (you play the system the way the system is configured) but I have a fundamental problem with that concept. It shouldn't be the job of the Government to redistribute wealth.
No. Our entire pay structure has gotten bent out of shape
No argument here. I just don't think it's the job of Uncle Sam to regulate what people get paid. If you want to impose salary limits on companies receiving Federal funds then I might agree in principle -- although that comes with it's own set of problems (flight of talent to firms not receiving bailouts which pay better -- which will undermine the firm that we are trying to save). Beyond that I don't know what you want to do. Tax the rich even more than they already are?
But that's the American dream. Someday "I too could be that super over priced executive." Someday "I too could be that movie star." Someday "I too could be that lottery winner." And when that day comes! I don't want to pay the government a million dollars a year in taxes!
Dude, I don't think I'm too likely to wind up as a millionaire and I still have a problem with the concept of taxing the rich more just because they are rich. I would prefer to see a flat tax of some sort -- why should someone have to pay a higher percentage of their income out in taxes just because some bean-counter in DC deems that they can afford to do so?
Government big enough to give you everything that you need is powerful enough to take away everything that you have.
Everybody wins (in the long run and not painlessly) except for the losers who ran their banks into the ground. Otherwise it's fire and brimstone etc. for much longer, and the fail gets spread around.
I think the point is that if you let the banks who are "too big to fail" (tm) fail then everybody loses. Hence why we need to save their sorry asses. Whether or not they should be allowed to get that big in the first place is for the reader to decide.....
Of course you can sneer at Finlandisation post war, but even that seems to me to be the least bad option for Finland.
I've always wondered if they would have picked a side (willingly or unwillingly) if the West had come to blows with the Soviet Union. I don't think they had any lost love for the Soviets it would have been another situation of two giant powers slugging it out. Finland is one of the few (the only?) small countries that ever happened to be between two such powers and managed to come out of it with their country (mostly) and sovereignty intact.
But the point stands, they were invaded, by a vastly larger neighbor, and repelled it
No, they were invaded by a handful of exiles who received a small amount of support from that vastly larger neighbor and not even much of that. The comparison is absurd.
And for the missile crisis, Castro's reasons for wanting the missiles were _of course_ to deter US invasion of Cuba
I'm sure that's why Castro wanted them but the reason why he wanted them really wasn't that important. The Soviets used him as a pawn to advance their own agenda and abandoned him as soon as they deemed it to be in their best interests.
What Cuba had, and Finland lacked, was a nuclear superpower as a direct ally
Sorry, you fail. The Soviet Union didn't get involved in the Bay of Pigs fiasco. In any case I'd love to hear how the Bay of Pigs (1,400 exiles) is a valid comparison with the Winter War (1,000,000 troops, 6,000 tanks, 3,800 aircraft).
I also get to say "Cuban Missile Crisis". Getting nuclear weapons stationed by allies also helps.
The missile crisis came sometime after the Bay of Pigs. It had less to do with protecting Cuba (although I'm sure that's how Castro saw it) and more to do counter-balancing our missiles in Turkey. Once we agreed (secretly) to give those up you'll note that the Soviets pulled their missiles out of Cuba.
I guess simply not folding before conquest noises from the USSR was pretty impressive given the times. Quite a few countries would have, and later on did.
Like I said, you managed to retain your sovereignty with little outside support. That's a pretty impressive accomplishment and shouldn't be dismissed.
I suppose in one way we ended up pioneering the concept of turning an "open and shut war, it'll be done before breakfast next monday" into a quagmire and a political embarrassment. That's the characteristic bloody-mindedness for you I guess.
The sad thing is that the main reason the Soviets eventually "won" the Winter War was because the Finns ran out of supplies. Towards the end the Finns were killing Soviet troops with captured Soviet equipment. The Soviets expected an easy victory (there were even concerns that troops would accidentally enter Sweden) and got bloodied for it. They never did manage to conquer Finland either. Even at the end when the Red Army was sweeping aside the Wehrmacht the Finns still managed to stand up to them and secure a negotiated peace.
It's always bothered me that Finland's involvement in WW2 doesn't receive much attention in the Western press. It's a pretty compelling story once you start researching it.
I guess that would be why I said "of the nations involved in the war". And you guys were bigger cowards than the Swiss. You didn't fight -- you just provided Nazi Germany with all the iron ore she needed to run her war machine and access to your rail network to move troops. Way to take a stand for freedom and liberty.
Iceland is considered an "European" country and it was not occupied by the enemy.
Actually, at the time Iceland was part of Denmark and you'll note that Denmark was occupied. Furthermore, Iceland itself was occupied by the British and later by the Americans.
Call it what you will; I like to call it "less than being conquered". Don't get me wrong -- it's vastly preferable to the other thing, but it's not a victory
I think it's the best a nation the size of Finland could expect against a nation the side of the Soviet Union. What would have been the better alternative?
Still, attacking Russia, even during the summer, was nothing short of madness brought on by jingoism and the belief that as allies of Nazi Germany we'd be invincible
I don't know what I'd call it exactly but I can't really say as I blame the Finns for wanting to retake the lands that were stolen by the Soviet Union. You'll note that the United States never declared war on Finland and even sent congratulations when the Finns initially liberated Karelia. It's a shame that geography and geopolitics didn't align a little bit differently, but given the hand Finland was dealt I still think you did pretty well.
It's mostly misplaced: the main reason why that war went so well was that Stalin set the invasion up as a PR operation first and foremost. His troops had no supplies, no supply lines, not even proper winter wear. And yet they managed to conquer significant areas of land, which for some reason is billed as a "defensive victory"
Well, like most Russian "victories" they were successful by drowning their opponent in Russian blood. The Russians took nearly half a million casualties to conquer 9% of a country that wasn't even a 50th of the size of the Soviet Union. One Russian general was quoted as saying "We've won just enough ground to bury our dead"
The finnish army subsequently went on, encouraged by the "victory", to get their arses kicked alongside the foremost military might of the time, Nazi Germany.
I don't know how you can say you got your asses kicked when you were the only non-western country to come out of the war with your sovereignty intact. You did better than the Baltic States, Poles or even the Germans. Have some national pride and don't be so dismissive of your accomplishments. You held onto your sovereignty against the most ruthless power of the day with little outside support despite overwhelming odds.
I'd love to get to come to Finland some day and see some of the memorials and museums related to the Winter and Continuation Wars. Where would you suggest I go?
And that is when they were allied with Hitler's Germany.
They weren't allied with anybody (though the Swedes did provide some logistical support and volunteers) during the Winter War. You are thinking of the Continuation War.
So the gov't nationalizes Nokia as part of a law they would draw up instead that states that Corps attempting extort the gov't should be nationalized.
and would certainly teach the CEO a thing or two about fucking with the people who grew his company up.
So your purposed method of teaching the CEO "a thing or two" is to punish a few million shareholders, including (in all likelihood if you have any mutual funds) yourself? What could possibly go wrong?
Cue endless stories about how the Finns beat the Soviets in the Winter war, even though they didn't actually win but rather lost 10% of their territory and a fifth of their industrial base.
Oh go fuck yourself. They did better than any other country (including Germany, I might add) did against the Soviet Union. Think you could do any better when fighting someone who has sixty times your landmass and fifty times your population?
The ongoing joke was that SF really stood for Soviet Finland due to our somewhat submissive relationship with the USSR.
Anyone calling the Finns "submissive" towards the USSR has never bothered to read a history book. If the Finns were submissive, Finland wouldn't even exist as a country today. The Finns stood up to Stalin and resisted his aggressive designs -- they managed to stalemate the Soviets for more than three months even though they were outnumbered 4 to 1 (in men, the disparity in tanks/aircraft/artillery was even worse) and kept their sovereignty.
Here's a tidbit for anyone that tells you the Finns were submissive: Of the European nations involved in WW2 only three managed to survive the war without having their capital occupied by the enemy: the UK, the Soviet Union and Finland.
Hmm, I wasn't aware that Ford had made it an indefinite suspension. I had thought he made the initial decision to suspend and that Carter then made it a permanent suspension. So I guess we can blame both of them.
Still, I'd beg the question: How does suspending reprocessing in our own country help to combat proliferation? That's like saying "OMG, India has developed the lightbulb! We must stop developing them ourselves to prevent them from obtaining this dangerous technology"
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You don't really "give up" your rights per say -- you typically give up your "right" to employment if you break the agreement that you made with your employer.
And naturally, as criminals, they would never ever do anything they were not allowed to do.
That's why gun laws have stopped gun violence.
For one, this would violate the 4th Amendment rights of the people (excepting prisoners and guards, both of whom can be searched at will)
Umm, why would the guards have no 4th amendment rights? Perhaps they agree to be searched as a condition of employment but I don't think you lose your right to due process simply by virtue of working a correctional job. If they refused the search I'm sure they could be fired but I'd like to know why they can be searched at will.
Why not make it the law that all non-registered cellphones using the prinsons cell site coverage are automatically logged (phone details AND voice recorded..) - surely that would make the value of the phones almost nothing.
So when I drive past prisons my constitutional rights no longer apply and all my phone calls get recorded?
Blame your government. What kind of idiot gives money away without oversight into how it is spent?
I think you answered your own question. But don't worry I'm sure there will be oversight of the money the Democrats are throwing at the problem......
The idiots in this country who believe that hard work and long hours alone will make them 8 figures some day.
You got modded up for this? Few people think that hard work and long hours alone will make them rich. But how many people do you suppose get rich without hard work and long hours (Paris Hilton notwithstanding)? Do you think Warren Buffet or Bill Gates made their money without long hours and hard work?
The idiots who believe that their success is the result of their hardwork and their hardwork alone--that they don't owe anybody anything. "You're going to take away MY WEALTH!" When they have no wealth of their own.
Translation: Anybody who doesn't support my ideas for taxation is an idiot. Taxes are out of control and it's only going to get worse as we expand Federal spending. Take a look at the real guts of that "stimulus" bill sometime -- it's about 30% stimulus and 70% pork. Most of the spending won't even happen for several years. Who's paying for it? Between the various taxes I already pay out about 40% of my income -- and I don't even make $35k/yr. WTF is wrong with that picture?
Everybody in America dreams of winning the lottery or working hard and building a business which is going to make them millions. And when that happens they "sure as hell aren't going to pay to keep some lazy ass mexican to sit home and watch cable."
Not everybody who is opposed to higher taxes is opposed because of welfare. Nice way to work in an off-topic racist attack on those that disagree with you though. Many of us just have a fundamental problem with the concept of wealth redistribution. Case in point: I just helped a low-income friend of mine do her taxes. She qualifies for the earned income tax credit. Even though she only paid out about $2,500 in Federal/New York income taxes she's getting a refund of about $5,500. I'm glad it worked out for her individually (you play the system the way the system is configured) but I have a fundamental problem with that concept. It shouldn't be the job of the Government to redistribute wealth.
No. Our entire pay structure has gotten bent out of shape
No argument here. I just don't think it's the job of Uncle Sam to regulate what people get paid. If you want to impose salary limits on companies receiving Federal funds then I might agree in principle -- although that comes with it's own set of problems (flight of talent to firms not receiving bailouts which pay better -- which will undermine the firm that we are trying to save). Beyond that I don't know what you want to do. Tax the rich even more than they already are?
But that's the American dream. Someday "I too could be that super over priced executive." Someday "I too could be that movie star." Someday "I too could be that lottery winner." And when that day comes! I don't want to pay the government a million dollars a year in taxes!
Dude, I don't think I'm too likely to wind up as a millionaire and I still have a problem with the concept of taxing the rich more just because they are rich. I would prefer to see a flat tax of some sort -- why should someone have to pay a higher percentage of their income out in taxes just because some bean-counter in DC deems that they can afford to do so?
Government big enough to give you everything that you need is powerful enough to take away everything that you have.
Everybody wins (in the long run and not painlessly) except for the losers who ran their banks into the ground. Otherwise it's fire and brimstone etc. for much longer, and the fail gets spread around.
I think the point is that if you let the banks who are "too big to fail" (tm) fail then everybody loses. Hence why we need to save their sorry asses. Whether or not they should be allowed to get that big in the first place is for the reader to decide.....
To ruin the computers, or to ruin the companies?
Fixed that for you.
Of course you can sneer at Finlandisation post war, but even that seems to me to be the least bad option for Finland.
I've always wondered if they would have picked a side (willingly or unwillingly) if the West had come to blows with the Soviet Union. I don't think they had any lost love for the Soviets it would have been another situation of two giant powers slugging it out. Finland is one of the few (the only?) small countries that ever happened to be between two such powers and managed to come out of it with their country (mostly) and sovereignty intact.
It's still an amazing achievement really.
But the point stands, they were invaded, by a vastly larger neighbor, and repelled it
No, they were invaded by a handful of exiles who received a small amount of support from that vastly larger neighbor and not even much of that. The comparison is absurd.
And for the missile crisis, Castro's reasons for wanting the missiles were _of course_ to deter US invasion of Cuba
I'm sure that's why Castro wanted them but the reason why he wanted them really wasn't that important. The Soviets used him as a pawn to advance their own agenda and abandoned him as soon as they deemed it to be in their best interests.
What Cuba had, and Finland lacked, was a nuclear superpower as a direct ally
Sorry, you fail. The Soviet Union didn't get involved in the Bay of Pigs fiasco. In any case I'd love to hear how the Bay of Pigs (1,400 exiles) is a valid comparison with the Winter War (1,000,000 troops, 6,000 tanks, 3,800 aircraft).
I also get to say "Cuban Missile Crisis". Getting nuclear weapons stationed by allies also helps.
The missile crisis came sometime after the Bay of Pigs. It had less to do with protecting Cuba (although I'm sure that's how Castro saw it) and more to do counter-balancing our missiles in Turkey. Once we agreed (secretly) to give those up you'll note that the Soviets pulled their missiles out of Cuba.
Let me know when Cuba is actually invaded by the US and how they do. And don't say Bay of Pigs either -- the Soviets sent a million men into Finland.
I guess simply not folding before conquest noises from the USSR was pretty impressive given the times. Quite a few countries would have, and later on did.
Like I said, you managed to retain your sovereignty with little outside support. That's a pretty impressive accomplishment and shouldn't be dismissed.
I suppose in one way we ended up pioneering the concept of turning an "open and shut war, it'll be done before breakfast next monday" into a quagmire and a political embarrassment. That's the characteristic bloody-mindedness for you I guess.
The sad thing is that the main reason the Soviets eventually "won" the Winter War was because the Finns ran out of supplies. Towards the end the Finns were killing Soviet troops with captured Soviet equipment. The Soviets expected an easy victory (there were even concerns that troops would accidentally enter Sweden) and got bloodied for it. They never did manage to conquer Finland either. Even at the end when the Red Army was sweeping aside the Wehrmacht the Finns still managed to stand up to them and secure a negotiated peace.
It's always bothered me that Finland's involvement in WW2 doesn't receive much attention in the Western press. It's a pretty compelling story once you start researching it.
I guess that would be why I said "of the nations involved in the war". And you guys were bigger cowards than the Swiss. You didn't fight -- you just provided Nazi Germany with all the iron ore she needed to run her war machine and access to your rail network to move troops. Way to take a stand for freedom and liberty.
Iceland is considered an "European" country and it was not occupied by the enemy.
Actually, at the time Iceland was part of Denmark and you'll note that Denmark was occupied. Furthermore, Iceland itself was occupied by the British and later by the Americans.
Call it what you will; I like to call it "less than being conquered". Don't get me wrong -- it's vastly preferable to the other thing, but it's not a victory
I think it's the best a nation the size of Finland could expect against a nation the side of the Soviet Union. What would have been the better alternative?
Still, attacking Russia, even during the summer, was nothing short of madness brought on by jingoism and the belief that as allies of Nazi Germany we'd be invincible
I don't know what I'd call it exactly but I can't really say as I blame the Finns for wanting to retake the lands that were stolen by the Soviet Union. You'll note that the United States never declared war on Finland and even sent congratulations when the Finns initially liberated Karelia. It's a shame that geography and geopolitics didn't align a little bit differently, but given the hand Finland was dealt I still think you did pretty well.
It's mostly misplaced: the main reason why that war went so well was that Stalin set the invasion up as a PR operation first and foremost. His troops had no supplies, no supply lines, not even proper winter wear. And yet they managed to conquer significant areas of land, which for some reason is billed as a "defensive victory"
Well, like most Russian "victories" they were successful by drowning their opponent in Russian blood. The Russians took nearly half a million casualties to conquer 9% of a country that wasn't even a 50th of the size of the Soviet Union. One Russian general was quoted as saying "We've won just enough ground to bury our dead"
The finnish army subsequently went on, encouraged by the "victory", to get their arses kicked alongside the foremost military might of the time, Nazi Germany.
I don't know how you can say you got your asses kicked when you were the only non-western country to come out of the war with your sovereignty intact. You did better than the Baltic States, Poles or even the Germans. Have some national pride and don't be so dismissive of your accomplishments. You held onto your sovereignty against the most ruthless power of the day with little outside support despite overwhelming odds.
I'd love to get to come to Finland some day and see some of the memorials and museums related to the Winter and Continuation Wars. Where would you suggest I go?
And that is when they were allied with Hitler's Germany.
They weren't allied with anybody (though the Swedes did provide some logistical support and volunteers) during the Winter War. You are thinking of the Continuation War.
So the gov't nationalizes Nokia as part of a law they would draw up instead that states that Corps attempting extort the gov't should be nationalized.
and would certainly teach the CEO a thing or two about fucking with the people who grew his company up.
So your purposed method of teaching the CEO "a thing or two" is to punish a few million shareholders, including (in all likelihood if you have any mutual funds) yourself? What could possibly go wrong?
Cue endless stories about how the Finns beat the Soviets in the Winter war, even though they didn't actually win but rather lost 10% of their territory and a fifth of their industrial base.
Oh go fuck yourself. They did better than any other country (including Germany, I might add) did against the Soviet Union. Think you could do any better when fighting someone who has sixty times your landmass and fifty times your population?
The ongoing joke was that SF really stood for Soviet Finland due to our somewhat submissive relationship with the USSR.
Anyone calling the Finns "submissive" towards the USSR has never bothered to read a history book. If the Finns were submissive, Finland wouldn't even exist as a country today. The Finns stood up to Stalin and resisted his aggressive designs -- they managed to stalemate the Soviets for more than three months even though they were outnumbered 4 to 1 (in men, the disparity in tanks/aircraft/artillery was even worse) and kept their sovereignty.
Here's a tidbit for anyone that tells you the Finns were submissive: Of the European nations involved in WW2 only three managed to survive the war without having their capital occupied by the enemy: the UK, the Soviet Union and Finland.
Only if Microsoft had bought them ;)
http://flickr.com/photos/tonyaustin/3241509252/ [flickr.com]
Maybe Google is just flagging itself as harmful because it knows that Google doesn't respect your privacy ;)
(Sad thing is I'm only half joking....)
Little did I know it was really skynet.
iptables -I INPUT 1 -p udp --dport skynet -j DROP
iptables -I INPUT 1 -p tcp --dport skynet -j DROP
There, I saved the human race. Do I get chicks now?
Hmm, I wasn't aware that Ford had made it an indefinite suspension. I had thought he made the initial decision to suspend and that Carter then made it a permanent suspension. So I guess we can blame both of them.
Still, I'd beg the question: How does suspending reprocessing in our own country help to combat proliferation? That's like saying "OMG, India has developed the lightbulb! We must stop developing them ourselves to prevent them from obtaining this dangerous technology"