Double edged razors are hard to find in stores - I finally found one in a flea market. Blades are cheap and plentiful, though, and they are as good as Mach 3.
With the exception of the snake bite kit, yes, I have all that in my car's trunk. My flashlight is a Surefire 6P, which is probably a bit overkill.
Honestly, a big part of why I started carrying a handgun is because I could. It's a fundamental right that is denied most people. That said, since I've started a family, I see it as my duty to protect them, and to be prepared to do so if I need to. That means carrying a handgun when I'm with them, and being able to get home to them when I'm not. It's a responsibility that I take very seriously.
If you met me on the street, I guarantee you would never guess that I was armed. It's not a macho thing, like a big blued steel dick I whip out to impress people. In fact, it's a pain in the ass. Guns are heavy things to carry every day, and they've got sharp edges. It's uncomfortable to sit in most car seats, and you've got to wear a tight, sturdy belt to keep everything it in place. I can't recall who said it, but "carrying a gun is supposed to be comforting, not comfortable".
I can't imagine someone carrying a firearm because they thought it was cool doing it for very long.
Um.. Okay. I suggest you don't emigrate, then. Enjoy yourself wherever you happen to be.
And yes, I'm sitting at my desk right now, with a.45 ACP handgun on my belt. I don't expect to have to use it. I also carry a flashlight - does that you think that I expect the sun to go out?
Actually, the 2nd Amendment (sans archaic punctuation, which is inconsistent between copies) read "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed"
While this applied to external threats at the time of the founding, it also applies to internal order. This position is supported by the writing of the delegates at the convention.
Also, we do not technically have a standing army. Per the Constitution, the budget and authorization for our military is renewed every two years. If Congress does not approve the military, it is to be disbanded - that's one of the checks against the power of the executive.
Finally, your basing the value of the clause on the premise of the first has been rejected by the Supreme court - first in Heller v DC, and then incorporated against the several states in MacDonald v the City of Chicago. While you're perfectly capable of holding that opinion, it has no basis in fact.
While I completely respect your decision to do that, are you truly aware of how often the people around you carry a firearm?
Unless you live in a major city, Illinois, or Wisconsin, something like 3% of people can legally carry a firearm on a daily basis, outside of their job or other special consideration. In my state, Arkansas, there were about 2.85m people in 2008, of which about 62,000 had concealed carry permits. That alone is over 2% of the population. Add in police, federal employees, retired police officers, and all of the other various legal qualifies and you probably meet at least a couple of dozen people carrying firearms every day.
If the mere presence of firearms was dangerous, you are already in considerable danger walking out your door. IRS and EPA field agents can carry a concealed weapon, for God's sake. Or even indoors - everywhere in the entire country it is legal to keep firearms in your own home.
Besides all that, Starbucks doesn't even have a policy encouraging carry in their stores - only a lack of a prohibition and no will to create one.
Like I said, if that's your decision, awesome. I just fail to see how any rational justification can exist for it.
Laws have been crafted so that they are not held to an objective standard - and there are so many of them that an individual can't know them all. A cop doesn't have to make something up to stop, detain, or arrest you - there are enough laws on the books that *something* fits.
Meh - you don't shop at Wal-Mart, BestBuy, or a dozen other national chains either, do you? I've never had trouble carrying into any of their stores, openly or concealed.
It was a great PR move for the CIA, that's for sure. "Be a spy for us, and even if it takes a while, we won't forget about you and will bring you to the US as soon as we can."
Well, let's see. As of 2009, the US GDP was $14.2 trillion..5% of that would be $70 billion. I understand that's a drop in the bucket of our current budget, but that's OK.
Our current military budget is $533 billion, before "emergency" spending. First, all troops based outside the borders of the country are cut. Their affairs are none of ours.
Second, power projection. We do not need 10 active carrier battle groups to protect our immediate interests. Cut them. We do not need hundreds of thousands of active troops. Cut them. We do not need anything not directly related to ensuring the territorial integrity of the US.
The new military would be 1/20th the size of the existing one. A large portion of that budget would be spent on R&D - the rest would be spent on procurement of weapons systems and maintaining an active training and maintenance contingent.
Do away with the ability to draft troops. If war is necessary, then the populace should agree, and there should be no problem recruiting volunteers.
Defense would consist of two parts - an advanced, capable, and numerically superior nuclear division. This would consist (currently) of ICBMs fitted with high-yield, high accuracy MIRV warheads and SLBMs. The second part is the volunteer army. Volunteer periods would be two to six years, and during that time, troops would be trained and deployed along the land borders, acting as border guards.
Police could be similar to the military, with service commitments, or privatized with centralized standards and accountability. Courts are revenue neutral - if you lose a court case (civil, guaranteed by the.5% fee), you pay the court costs. If you can't afford to pay those costs, you are incarcerated and provided the basics of life until you work off the debt. The production of those incarcerated would then be sold as securities essentially, to businesses who believe they can get more work during their confinement than they paid. Again, central and transparent management and accountability - if you treat a debtor poorly and violate the contract, you're liable and can be held as such in court.
As for consumer protection - some of that would indeed be covered by "fraud". If someone sells a microwave oven that they know will burn down your house, then they're willfully misrepresenting - fraud.
That's about it. I've been accused of being an anarchist, but that's not true - I'm a minarchist. Government is a necessary evil, to be watched, contained, and kept to the minimum possible exercise of power.
First, I don't recognize that the government has any claim to the product of an individual's work. To be moral, all transactions must be voluntary, and mandatory taxation is by definition not.
95% of what the government does is outside the bounds of both morality and the Constitution. The only legitimate use of government is to prevent the use of physical force between individuals, and to punish fraud.
That leaves the government providing a military, a court system, and a police force - and that's it. To fund it, charge a nominal fee to guarantee a contract. If you pay the fee (say, 1/2% of the total value of the contract), then you may use the power of government to recover damages if the contract is broken. Payment is voluntary, and if you don't pay, you have no recourse with the government if your contract is broken.
This is philosophy, though. While I firmly believe what I say, I also realize that it is not practical to implement within my lifetime in the US. Instead, my goal is to advocate individual liberties wherever possible.
Sorry to once again dispute the generalizations in the thread, but I am opposed to all mandatory taxation, period.
If mandatory taxes must exist (which right now, they do), then the only equitable solution is an across-the-board flat tax. To compromise a further step, put a flat income exemption of 1.5x the poverty rate. I can't compromise further than that.
40% of my search hits on my main site come from queries over 4 words long. This number has been rising steadily ever since I began tracking it two years ago.
As someone learning internet marketing, that's for good reason - more people use Google. Bing, with Yahoo, now make up 30% of search, so you're about to see that change. Try finding out information on how to optimize your site for Bing: right now, it's *very* difficult to find. Compare that to Google, where I can download a tool that will give me 5 or 10,000 links back to my site in an hour or so, and I can be #1 in Google for a low-traffic keyword in days.
While I generally agree, I have to point out that the spies we traded them for were Russian citizens who spied for the US - so your argument doesn't really hold.
Citation, please? I help organize my local tea party group, and Giffords is a pro-gun legislator. Even if you take for granted that conservatives / tea partiers would cheer the death of a Congresswoman, this particular Congresswoman is somewhat aligned with our cause. Not perfect, of course (off the top of my head, I believe she voted for Obamacare), but she's no Pelosi.
Agreed. My two-year-old loves her Dr. Seuss apps, but I have to hover over her like a hawk, or she's taking video and uploading it to Facebook.
That's not hyperbole, either. We discovered this when she uploaded a video of my wife in her nightgown, sitting on the couch. That got a *lot* of likes.
Slashdot Mirror
As far as I can tell, Snipes was charged and convicted of failure to file, not of not paying some amount of income tax.
Double edged razors are hard to find in stores - I finally found one in a flea market. Blades are cheap and plentiful, though, and they are as good as Mach 3.
Do you think they'll accidentally the whole thing?
With the exception of the snake bite kit, yes, I have all that in my car's trunk. My flashlight is a Surefire 6P, which is probably a bit overkill.
Honestly, a big part of why I started carrying a handgun is because I could. It's a fundamental right that is denied most people. That said, since I've started a family, I see it as my duty to protect them, and to be prepared to do so if I need to. That means carrying a handgun when I'm with them, and being able to get home to them when I'm not. It's a responsibility that I take very seriously.
If you met me on the street, I guarantee you would never guess that I was armed. It's not a macho thing, like a big blued steel dick I whip out to impress people. In fact, it's a pain in the ass. Guns are heavy things to carry every day, and they've got sharp edges. It's uncomfortable to sit in most car seats, and you've got to wear a tight, sturdy belt to keep everything it in place. I can't recall who said it, but "carrying a gun is supposed to be comforting, not comfortable".
I can't imagine someone carrying a firearm because they thought it was cool doing it for very long.
Um.. Okay. I suggest you don't emigrate, then. Enjoy yourself wherever you happen to be.
And yes, I'm sitting at my desk right now, with a .45 ACP handgun on my belt. I don't expect to have to use it. I also carry a flashlight - does that you think that I expect the sun to go out?
The meanings of words change over time. In 1791, "well-regulated" was synonymous with today's "well-trained" or "well-practiced".
To my knowledge, no court has ever accepted the meaning of "well-regulated" to mean "subject to federal oversight".
Actually, the 2nd Amendment (sans archaic punctuation, which is inconsistent between copies) read "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed"
While this applied to external threats at the time of the founding, it also applies to internal order. This position is supported by the writing of the delegates at the convention.
Also, we do not technically have a standing army. Per the Constitution, the budget and authorization for our military is renewed every two years. If Congress does not approve the military, it is to be disbanded - that's one of the checks against the power of the executive.
Finally, your basing the value of the clause on the premise of the first has been rejected by the Supreme court - first in Heller v DC, and then incorporated against the several states in MacDonald v the City of Chicago. While you're perfectly capable of holding that opinion, it has no basis in fact.
While I completely respect your decision to do that, are you truly aware of how often the people around you carry a firearm?
Unless you live in a major city, Illinois, or Wisconsin, something like 3% of people can legally carry a firearm on a daily basis, outside of their job or other special consideration. In my state, Arkansas, there were about 2.85m people in 2008, of which about 62,000 had concealed carry permits. That alone is over 2% of the population. Add in police, federal employees, retired police officers, and all of the other various legal qualifies and you probably meet at least a couple of dozen people carrying firearms every day.
If the mere presence of firearms was dangerous, you are already in considerable danger walking out your door. IRS and EPA field agents can carry a concealed weapon, for God's sake. Or even indoors - everywhere in the entire country it is legal to keep firearms in your own home.
Besides all that, Starbucks doesn't even have a policy encouraging carry in their stores - only a lack of a prohibition and no will to create one.
Like I said, if that's your decision, awesome. I just fail to see how any rational justification can exist for it.
Laws have been crafted so that they are not held to an objective standard - and there are so many of them that an individual can't know them all. A cop doesn't have to make something up to stop, detain, or arrest you - there are enough laws on the books that *something* fits.
Meh - you don't shop at Wal-Mart, BestBuy, or a dozen other national chains either, do you? I've never had trouble carrying into any of their stores, openly or concealed.
Sly use of AC - I bet it was actually a grammar Nazi honeypot.
The Jesus guy died, too. Never thought about it that way, but from a Biblical standpoint, only Mary and Elisha have ascended without death.
It was a great PR move for the CIA, that's for sure. "Be a spy for us, and even if it takes a while, we won't forget about you and will bring you to the US as soon as we can."
Are the dongs really a surprise at this point, or are they the reason you go there?
Just sayin'.
Well, let's see. As of 2009, the US GDP was $14.2 trillion. .5% of that would be $70 billion. I understand that's a drop in the bucket of our current budget, but that's OK.
Our current military budget is $533 billion, before "emergency" spending. First, all troops based outside the borders of the country are cut. Their affairs are none of ours.
Second, power projection. We do not need 10 active carrier battle groups to protect our immediate interests. Cut them. We do not need hundreds of thousands of active troops. Cut them. We do not need anything not directly related to ensuring the territorial integrity of the US.
The new military would be 1/20th the size of the existing one. A large portion of that budget would be spent on R&D - the rest would be spent on procurement of weapons systems and maintaining an active training and maintenance contingent.
Do away with the ability to draft troops. If war is necessary, then the populace should agree, and there should be no problem recruiting volunteers.
Defense would consist of two parts - an advanced, capable, and numerically superior nuclear division. This would consist (currently) of ICBMs fitted with high-yield, high accuracy MIRV warheads and SLBMs. The second part is the volunteer army. Volunteer periods would be two to six years, and during that time, troops would be trained and deployed along the land borders, acting as border guards.
Police could be similar to the military, with service commitments, or privatized with centralized standards and accountability. Courts are revenue neutral - if you lose a court case (civil, guaranteed by the .5% fee), you pay the court costs. If you can't afford to pay those costs, you are incarcerated and provided the basics of life until you work off the debt. The production of those incarcerated would then be sold as securities essentially, to businesses who believe they can get more work during their confinement than they paid. Again, central and transparent management and accountability - if you treat a debtor poorly and violate the contract, you're liable and can be held as such in court.
As for consumer protection - some of that would indeed be covered by "fraud". If someone sells a microwave oven that they know will burn down your house, then they're willfully misrepresenting - fraud.
That's about it. I've been accused of being an anarchist, but that's not true - I'm a minarchist. Government is a necessary evil, to be watched, contained, and kept to the minimum possible exercise of power.
A good read for this point of view is "The dollar and the gun". It provides a clear view of the difference between economic (voluntary) power and coercive (involuntary) power. http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=arc_harry_binswanger_the_dollar_and_the_gun
First, I don't recognize that the government has any claim to the product of an individual's work. To be moral, all transactions must be voluntary, and mandatory taxation is by definition not.
95% of what the government does is outside the bounds of both morality and the Constitution. The only legitimate use of government is to prevent the use of physical force between individuals, and to punish fraud.
That leaves the government providing a military, a court system, and a police force - and that's it. To fund it, charge a nominal fee to guarantee a contract. If you pay the fee (say, 1/2% of the total value of the contract), then you may use the power of government to recover damages if the contract is broken. Payment is voluntary, and if you don't pay, you have no recourse with the government if your contract is broken.
This is philosophy, though. While I firmly believe what I say, I also realize that it is not practical to implement within my lifetime in the US. Instead, my goal is to advocate individual liberties wherever possible.
Sorry to once again dispute the generalizations in the thread, but I am opposed to all mandatory taxation, period.
If mandatory taxes must exist (which right now, they do), then the only equitable solution is an across-the-board flat tax. To compromise a further step, put a flat income exemption of 1.5x the poverty rate. I can't compromise further than that.
FWIW, I'm a lower middle class, white, Deist heterosexual male with a wife and a 2-year-old.
Just so you know, the "leaders of the tea party" got that way by saying "I'm a leader of the tea party". It's not like we all got together and voted.
Interesting. I switched my office Firefox toolbar over, we'll see how it fares. I know I like being able to use !bangs, though...
40% of my search hits on my main site come from queries over 4 words long. This number has been rising steadily ever since I began tracking it two years ago.
As someone learning internet marketing, that's for good reason - more people use Google. Bing, with Yahoo, now make up 30% of search, so you're about to see that change. Try finding out information on how to optimize your site for Bing: right now, it's *very* difficult to find. Compare that to Google, where I can download a tool that will give me 5 or 10,000 links back to my site in an hour or so, and I can be #1 in Google for a low-traffic keyword in days.
While I generally agree, I have to point out that the spies we traded them for were Russian citizens who spied for the US - so your argument doesn't really hold.
Citation, please? I help organize my local tea party group, and Giffords is a pro-gun legislator. Even if you take for granted that conservatives / tea partiers would cheer the death of a Congresswoman, this particular Congresswoman is somewhat aligned with our cause. Not perfect, of course (off the top of my head, I believe she voted for Obamacare), but she's no Pelosi.
Agreed. My two-year-old loves her Dr. Seuss apps, but I have to hover over her like a hawk, or she's taking video and uploading it to Facebook.
That's not hyperbole, either. We discovered this when she uploaded a video of my wife in her nightgown, sitting on the couch. That got a *lot* of likes.