2. The US is not the world police, nor should be. Somebody being a dictator isn't an automatic justification for invasion
Possibly. Then there is the analogy of watching a woman getting raped... I'm not the local police, but I'm going to step in. Doesn't that apply to larger situations as well?
Talk about false equivalency.
By that logic, that means we should go around and liberate all oppressed nations. There's is one hell of a difference between stepping in and helping someone individually in trouble and putting thousands of soldiers in harms way along with billions and trillions of dollars for the sake of bringing our version of "freedom" with the barrel of a tank.
We don't do ourselves or anyone else any favors by spending and bleeding ourselves into oblivion.
3. IMO, the right thing to do would have been to leave Saddam alone, and let the country have a revolution if the citizens decide to have one.
Well, see, they tried that several times. Each time it resulted in several thousand deaths. When one side has mustard gas, and the other side has AKs... who wins? google Chemical Ali if you need help there.
Pro tip: Read up on the history of Saddam's reign and who his puppet master was. Yes, that was Rumsfeld shaking Saddam's hand. Saddam got to power and stayed in power because we needed a proxy to fight against Iran when they overthrew OUR duly appointed dictator the Shah. Those fools, how dare they rebuke US power. Then we gave him weapons, including chemical weapons to fight Iran. Countless lives lost and lots of destruction.
So we put people like the Shah, and Saddam, and Noriega in power to further our interests, and act all surprised when these unstable megalomaniacs think they're big enough to bite the hand that feeds or finally push their people to the point of revolt.
Our hands are far from clean.
4. Regardless which one was the most evil, the Iraq war didn't result in anything positive, so starting it was a mistake.
How, exactly, are you measuring that? I'm just curious how you could so easily discount:
Saddam's 600,000+ kill streak
Free elections with 62% turnout with people literally dieing to vote.
I'm willing to bet that 62% of the population thinks a free election is a pretty big, good change.
You act as if that blood isn't on our hands as well.
Those free elections came after nearly 3 decades of war, destruction, oppression and chaos all thanks to our habit of installing and supporting dictators (even overthrowing democracies to do so) to further our goals.
I have seen no compelling reason to believe that "ghosts" (to use the colloquial, loaded word) have been falsified. Therefore I consider it an open question and I am willing to entertain scientific evidence of such.
Science: You're doing it wrong.
Start with Mr. Occam. Are ghosts, deities, and other claimed paranormal activity the result of some unexplained phenomena that can only be detected by our rather dull human senses rather than our high tech recording devices, or are they simply the product of over-active imaginations and fraudsters?
Now add in that every claim that has merited serious investigation has resulted in nothing, or at best hoaxes. Now also add in the insane amount of money that can be fleeced from the ignorant masses by claiming you're a psyschic or have the "world's most haunted house" or "proven spiritual healer". Then start mixing in convenient excuses like "the cat wasn't black enough" or "you're aura is conflicted" or "He may not want to reveal himself to you".
Let's also consider that life has been on this planet for a billion years or so, and yet we only see ghosts of humans or things closely related to humans (like pets). You never hear claims that someone saw a ghost of a brontosaur or a mammoth.
The concept of ghosts isn't falsifiable for the same reasons deities aren't falsifiable. You may as well try to come with and experiment to find God.
2012: Run away from disaster in a limo. Then run away from disaster in flying plane. Then run away from disaster in Winnebago. Then run away from disaster in flying plane. Then run away from disaster in a bigger flying plane. Then run away from disaster in sinking boat. Welcome to Africa.The end.
Cast: Disasters, Limo, Plane, Winnebago, Bigger Plane, Boat, Africa. Extras: Jon Cusack and anyone else with a pulse. Stunt Doubles: HAL200
My "homeschooled idiot" 5 year old is already reading at somewhere between the 7th and 9th grade levels and can use a computer better than most adults.
Do not confuse homeschooling with fanatical religious brainwashing.
I am not a scientist if I am being a skeptic? Hmm. That's news to me. Oh, you mean I cannot be skeptical of peer reviewed publications? Um, sorry that still does not make sense. Science is all about predictive power and scientific process is all about skepticism at every step.
Oh indeed. However, summarily dismissing an overwhelming amount of research and data just because you don't agree with it is idiocy. If your making the claim that the sum total of research in this area is entirely wrong and false, then you better have some damn good evidence and research to back that claim up. That evidence will also need to explain WHY the current scientific thinking wrong despite giving answers that appear to be correct.
The main problem with climate "science" is precisely what you mentioned: chaos. Or sensitive dependence on initial conditions if you will. Hence, to be scientific one needs to push initial conditions measurements and then one needs to push modeling tools until you can predict things on relevant time and energy (temperature) scales. If as you say I am "not going to get that kind of accuracy in climatology" then you'll pardon me while I discount everything written in climate research prognostications.
Then you should be discounting almost every other branch of science as well. The universe does not obey well ordered rules and you can only hope to get high accuracy estimates over short periods of time in relatively simple/stable conditions.
But we don't discredit every science and engineering discipline because of lack of accuracy. We take those errors and accept that whatever constructs we build will be "good enough". When something better comes along, we use that. But you're kidding yourself if you're expecting exact answers from science.
There's also a big difference between modeling something like weather and something climate. Weather is is small scale chaotic fluid dynamics more or less. Not only do we not have high resolution data most of the time, but the equations rapidly break down over time. The theoretical upper limit is 14 days.
Climate on the other hand is dealing with large scale behaviors which are a lot less chaotic. Climatology doesn't care about a particular day or month. It's more about averages. At the most trivial scale, you can't predict what the temperature may be on 12/12/2012 in Boston, but you can make a pretty solid bet that it will be cold. Making a model for predicting averages and large scale phenomena is much more reliable and accurate than trying to make a singular prediction at fine detail. It would be like using the gas law to figure out what the pressure in a balloon is as opposed to trying to figure out where a particular air molecule is within the balloon.
I am not arguing against climate modeling. Indeed, we are at an early stage of something interesting. But modeling "local" effects needs to be pushed several orders of magnitude farther before bringing anything to public attention. 10 m would be local in my book.
That isn't climatology, nor is that possible. Not even in 100 years. Not only are the computing requirements insane, but you'd need real-time data from the entire globe at that resolution. And even then you'd still be stuck with the error limits of computation formula, error limits of hardware, errors induced by limits in precision, etc. . Of course, if you studied climatology you would already know that this requirement is absurd and is not the goal.
0.1 degree is precise in my book.
Relative to what? Your particular branch of study? Climatological models aren't going to get that accuracy. Ever. As a comparison, look at something much simpler: Orbital dynamics. It is only accurate near term and incurs significant error bars the further out you go. But we don't throw out their models as not being useful even though they can't give an arbitrary precision. Are you going to specify to them that they
You're not a scientist if your asking this question. There's a metric assload of peer-reviewed articles, data, and research. Climatology is fairly cross-disciplined in the sciences.
Show me a model which can accurately predict climate over a couple of decades with 0.1 degree precision for all available weather stations and we would have an informed discussion.
Again, you're not a scientist. Or if you are, you're being disingenuous. You're not going to get that kind of accuracy in climatology. You're going to get a probability distribution, just like when modeling any other chaotic or quasi-chaotic system. I don't here you dismissing quantum mechanics because you can't exactly predict where a particle may be.
Right now all climate predictions and warnings and the like are made by a bunch of charlatans extrapolating wildly, both climate change advocates and deniers alike.
Bullshit. Scientists have been predicting temperature increases for decades. With the advent of more powerful computers, they are now beginning to get to the point where they can look into regional effects. This ranges anywhere from the effects of increased troposphere thickness in tropical regions to the effects of increased sea surface temperatures. You can read the research papers for other predictions if you like.
We do need more climate research but it will not produce believable results for decades if not centuries and we need to be OK with that because the grand vision is a comprehensive model of all processes on the planet and their interrelation and impact
Again, you demonstrate that you don't know what you are talking about. We already have comprehensive models that take into account everything from soil moisture to chemical transport and breakdown in the atmosphere. You will NEVER have an exact model. There will ALWAYS be error bars. And if you read the IPCC report they make this very clear.
You can create a simple 0 dimension energy balance climate model that can calculate a good estimate of the global temperature average. You can even make it have a tweak-able parameter for adding and removing the influence of CO2. And this is the simplest, dumbest climate model you can make.
Forecasting the global average temperature is relatively easy and can be done with decent accuracy. However, that doesn't tell you much. Where the bulk of the research is going now is refining HOW that temperature increase will affect regions of the globe. That's a harder question to answer and requires something significantly more complex than a simple 0 dimension model.
Instead of being an ignorant troll you could download and run a climate model yourself. Or better yet, since you apparently think there is a global climate science conspiracy, get a couple of books on climatology and related subjects and write your own model. If you can show that increased CO2 has no impact on climate, you could win a Nobel.
It was 50 degress in December in Greenland, the Northern Hemisphere's winter, making it warmer than a chunk of Europe, England, an a good portion of the US. In fact, a fair portion of the arctic has been anywhere from 10 to 20 degrees above normal. Both of these are related to weather patterns. There is a moderate-to-strong La Nina in the pacific while there is a strongly negative NAO in the Atlantic.
These are WEATHER events. It's climatological when it happens repeatedly over many years. Even weather events that last for a few weeks are just anomalies. However, when it happens repeatedly over a number of years, that's climatological. Hence, your snow event is just a weather anomaly while the warmer, melting arctic is a climate change.
Just to add to this, the average difference in solar irradiance between solar maximum and solar minimum is less than 2 watts/m^2. The additional CO2 and other greenhouse gases being added to the atmosphere more than make up for that difference, hence why we still have warming temperatures despite being stuck in a minimum.
There is a balance to everything. Every rule or restriction takes away freedom. For example, if I were totally free, I would be able to take an ax and bury it in the head of my neighbor. Now a sane rule is not to murder, and have harsh penalties for doing so. A stupid rule would be to require a mandatory overseer come to my house whenever I want to us my ax to ensure I don't kill anyone with it.
Along these lines, we issue licenses to drive to try and ensure that everyone driving a two ton chunk of metal around at high speed has demonstrated at least some level of competence. This is as much for the driver's safety as it is for everyone else. The equivalent for DUI story would be having an officer sitting in the car with you while you're driving, or mandatory GPS tracking to ensure you're not breaking any laws.
Total freedom is anarchy and that doesn't work so well.
All you are doing is giving reasons why the US Government should only exercise the powers *specifically* enumerated by its Constitutional Law. If the constitution was enforced the US Congress would not have the power to bailout AIG. Or power to give handouts to "stimulate" General Motors. Or give special favors to Microsoft by taxing all non-windows PCs/laptops/pads.
You're right. They also wouldn't have any influence over the financial system or businesses, which would have turned this country into a broke, polluted, husk by now. Companies are not interested in morality or doing the right thing, as has been demonstrated repeatedly.
Okay. Please cite an example of this where a corporation committed murder & was not punished by the law. ----- I can guarantee you the government has done it FAR more often.
Are you talking about outright gunning people down or directing, instigating, or influencing actions that lead to loss of life? Are you talking about this country or countries where the companies do business? Are you counting immediate deaths or deaths over time? Let's get specific here. For example, the Union Carbide incident in India was pretty nasty. Arguably tobacco companies have been helping people kill themselves for a few decades now. So on and so forth.
Gunning people down is too messy. Bad press. Companies are a bit more subtle, and given their resources and connections if they wanted to "suicide" someone you can be sure it would only be reported as a suicide.
Over 150 million people were murdered by their OWN governments during this past century. Have corporations ever mass-exterminated that many people?
Over the past century? No. Governments tend to kill quickly. Companies are out for profit. There's no profit in killing your slaves^H^H^H workers quickly.
Even the US Congress deprived approximately 10 million of their property, homes, money, and freedom simply because they had grandparents that were born in Japan. Name one corporation that has ever committed that level of atrocity as done by that ONE building of 535 men in Washington D.C.
Any companies using under-developed nations to get around environmental and safety regulations.
In the long run a Palin presidency would be a disaster...
You didn't need to go beyond this point. If you thought this country went to hell under the Bush presidency, a Palin presidency would be a non-stop flight to the seventh circle.
In almost every instance, if you're using a goto then you're doing it wrong. In all my years of programming in higher level languages, I've used goto at most a handful of times, and only because efficiency outweighed elegance.
What's wrong is this old dogma that tell young people to not think for themselves and instead just repeat what everyone else says.
It's not dogma. It's experience. There is nothing wrong with imparting wisdom to students in an effort to prevent them from making the same mistakes and errors that others before them made. Unless you're doing low level programming that requires the utmost in efficiency, then goto should not be used.
In addition, people seem to equate income tax with total tax burden, which is pure bullshit. The poor may get a break from paying income taxes but that doesn't have any effect on all the other taxes that they must pay. In fact, the income tax is not even the highest tax taken out of their paychecks.
In relative terms, the tax burden of the lower class has INCREASED due to inflation and wage stagnation the lower class has experienced. The burden has also increased on the middle. The only tax burdens that have decreased over time is the upper class (while at the same time their wealth has increased substantially).
Liberals usually work incrementally. It starts with simple net neutrality rules. Then later on, they add some more rules. And more. And more. A Killswitch and some hate-crimes legislation later and before you know the government is all up in your intarwebs.
How is this limited to just liberals? What about the DEA, or DHS? What about the systemic undermining of checks and balances? What about market deregulation? What about the attack on science? What about making things more cozy for the rich?
Those in power (either right (democrats) or far right (republicans)) know how to boil a frog. You can't take drastic measures unless you have a drastic event, and those don't happen all that often. During those lulls you grind away slowly and surreptitiously. You master the arts of misinformation and misdirection. You use tools like wedge issues to divert and distract. You get people to see the issues you want them to see, but not to understand them in any meaningful way. You want people to know the issues, but for $DIETY's sake you don't want them actually THINKING about them.
Truthfully, the far right (republicans) are leaps and bounds ahead of the democrats in these abilities, but make no mistake both parties do this.
Limbaugh ought to take a page from Glenn Beck and actually RESEARCH a topic before speaking...
WTF?
Glenn Beck is to research as a claymore mine is to curing cancer. The only difference between Limbaugh and Beck is that Beck is more mentally unstable (Christ complex anyone?). Or rather, he gets paid to act that way.
Actually, I don't think either one of them believes half of they say. They just make so much money making shit up that they can't stop.
He's just bitching because the people who pay 90% of the taxes get a few breaks here and there.
I really really wish people would stop confusing income tax rate to total tax burden. They are not the same thing. Not even close.
The total tax burden is higher on the lower end of the economic spectrum than the upper end. Why? Because the rich have whole set of tricks to keep their total burden lower (even though the rich control about 80% of the wealth in the country).
The people who keep this country running are those who ARE NOT millionaires. They're the ones actually providing services and producing goods (the ones that haven't been shipped off over seas that is). If the millionaires and billionaires didn't have everyone else's backs to stand on they'd come tumbling down pretty damn fast.
I do not need government regulation on what TV I choose to watch, what food I wish to eat, and how I wish to use the Internet.
So your happy with the companies doing it instead of the government? Make no mistake, it will happen one way or the other.
You've got a choice between corporate masters and government masters, and the line between those is getting ever thinner. The freedom you think you would have if the government were stripped down is a lie constructed by corporations for their own benefit. The government is only a hair better since hypothetically you still have a say, however you're also fighting against the fearful, under-educated, masses.
Slashdot Mirror
2. The US is not the world police, nor should be. Somebody being a dictator isn't an automatic justification for invasion
Possibly. Then there is the analogy of watching a woman getting raped... I'm not the local police, but I'm going to step in. Doesn't that apply to larger situations as well?
Talk about false equivalency.
By that logic, that means we should go around and liberate all oppressed nations. There's is one hell of a difference between stepping in and helping someone individually in trouble and putting thousands of soldiers in harms way along with billions and trillions of dollars for the sake of bringing our version of "freedom" with the barrel of a tank.
We don't do ourselves or anyone else any favors by spending and bleeding ourselves into oblivion.
3. IMO, the right thing to do would have been to leave Saddam alone, and let the country have a revolution if the citizens decide to have one.
Well, see, they tried that several times. Each time it resulted in several thousand deaths. When one side has mustard gas, and the other side has AKs... who wins? google Chemical Ali if you need help there.
Pro tip: Read up on the history of Saddam's reign and who his puppet master was. Yes, that was Rumsfeld shaking Saddam's hand. Saddam got to power and stayed in power because we needed a proxy to fight against Iran when they overthrew OUR duly appointed dictator the Shah. Those fools, how dare they rebuke US power. Then we gave him weapons, including chemical weapons to fight Iran. Countless lives lost and lots of destruction.
So we put people like the Shah, and Saddam, and Noriega in power to further our interests, and act all surprised when these unstable megalomaniacs think they're big enough to bite the hand that feeds or finally push their people to the point of revolt.
Our hands are far from clean.
4. Regardless which one was the most evil, the Iraq war didn't result in anything positive, so starting it was a mistake.
How, exactly, are you measuring that? I'm just curious how you could so easily discount:
I'm willing to bet that 62% of the population thinks a free election is a pretty big, good change.
You act as if that blood isn't on our hands as well.
Those free elections came after nearly 3 decades of war, destruction, oppression and chaos all thanks to our habit of installing and supporting dictators (even overthrowing democracies to do so) to further our goals.
Yeah, we're swell guys alright.
Perhaps if the Republican party looked in the mirror ...
One needs to have a reflection before a mirror will work.
I have seen no compelling reason to believe that "ghosts" (to use the colloquial, loaded word) have been falsified. Therefore I consider it an open question and I am willing to entertain scientific evidence of such.
Science: You're doing it wrong.
Start with Mr. Occam. Are ghosts, deities, and other claimed paranormal activity the result of some unexplained phenomena that can only be detected by our rather dull human senses rather than our high tech recording devices, or are they simply the product of over-active imaginations and fraudsters?
Now add in that every claim that has merited serious investigation has resulted in nothing, or at best hoaxes. Now also add in the insane amount of money that can be fleeced from the ignorant masses by claiming you're a psyschic or have the "world's most haunted house" or "proven spiritual healer". Then start mixing in convenient excuses like "the cat wasn't black enough" or "you're aura is conflicted" or "He may not want to reveal himself to you".
Let's also consider that life has been on this planet for a billion years or so, and yet we only see ghosts of humans or things closely related to humans (like pets). You never hear claims that someone saw a ghost of a brontosaur or a mammoth.
The concept of ghosts isn't falsifiable for the same reasons deities aren't falsifiable. You may as well try to come with and experiment to find God.
2012: Run away from disaster in a limo. Then run away from disaster in flying plane. Then run away from disaster in Winnebago. Then run away from disaster in flying plane. Then run away from disaster in a bigger flying plane. Then run away from disaster in sinking boat. Welcome to Africa.The end.
Cast: Disasters, Limo, Plane, Winnebago, Bigger Plane, Boat, Africa.
Extras: Jon Cusack and anyone else with a pulse.
Stunt Doubles: HAL200
Eat recycled food. It's good for the environment and it's okay for you.
My "homeschooled idiot" 5 year old is already reading at somewhere between the 7th and 9th grade levels and can use a computer better than most adults.
Do not confuse homeschooling with fanatical religious brainwashing.
I am not a scientist if I am being a skeptic? Hmm. That's news to me. Oh, you mean I cannot be skeptical of peer reviewed publications? Um, sorry that still does not make sense. Science is all about predictive power and scientific process is all about skepticism at every step.
Oh indeed. However, summarily dismissing an overwhelming amount of research and data just because you don't agree with it is idiocy. If your making the claim that the sum total of research in this area is entirely wrong and false, then you better have some damn good evidence and research to back that claim up. That evidence will also need to explain WHY the current scientific thinking wrong despite giving answers that appear to be correct.
The main problem with climate "science" is precisely what you mentioned: chaos. Or sensitive dependence on initial conditions if you will. Hence, to be scientific one needs to push initial conditions measurements and then one needs to push modeling tools until you can predict things on relevant time and energy (temperature) scales. If as you say I am "not going to get that kind of accuracy in climatology" then you'll pardon me while I discount everything written in climate research prognostications.
Then you should be discounting almost every other branch of science as well. The universe does not obey well ordered rules and you can only hope to get high accuracy estimates over short periods of time in relatively simple/stable conditions.
But we don't discredit every science and engineering discipline because of lack of accuracy. We take those errors and accept that whatever constructs we build will be "good enough". When something better comes along, we use that. But you're kidding yourself if you're expecting exact answers from science.
There's also a big difference between modeling something like weather and something climate. Weather is is small scale chaotic fluid dynamics more or less. Not only do we not have high resolution data most of the time, but the equations rapidly break down over time. The theoretical upper limit is 14 days.
Climate on the other hand is dealing with large scale behaviors which are a lot less chaotic. Climatology doesn't care about a particular day or month. It's more about averages. At the most trivial scale, you can't predict what the temperature may be on 12/12/2012 in Boston, but you can make a pretty solid bet that it will be cold. Making a model for predicting averages and large scale phenomena is much more reliable and accurate than trying to make a singular prediction at fine detail. It would be like using the gas law to figure out what the pressure in a balloon is as opposed to trying to figure out where a particular air molecule is within the balloon.
I am not arguing against climate modeling. Indeed, we are at an early stage of something interesting. But modeling "local" effects needs to be pushed several orders of magnitude farther before bringing anything to public attention. 10 m would be local in my book.
That isn't climatology, nor is that possible. Not even in 100 years. Not only are the computing requirements insane, but you'd need real-time data from the entire globe at that resolution. And even then you'd still be stuck with the error limits of computation formula, error limits of hardware, errors induced by limits in precision, etc. . Of course, if you studied climatology you would already know that this requirement is absurd and is not the goal.
0.1 degree is precise in my book.
Relative to what? Your particular branch of study? Climatological models aren't going to get that accuracy. Ever. As a comparison, look at something much simpler: Orbital dynamics. It is only accurate near term and incurs significant error bars the further out you go. But we don't throw out their models as not being useful even though they can't give an arbitrary precision. Are you going to specify to them that they
Speaking as a scientist... What science?
You're not a scientist if your asking this question. There's a metric assload of peer-reviewed articles, data, and research. Climatology is fairly cross-disciplined in the sciences.
Show me a model which can accurately predict climate over a couple of decades with 0.1 degree
precision for all available weather stations and we would have an informed discussion.
Again, you're not a scientist. Or if you are, you're being disingenuous. You're not going to get that kind of accuracy in climatology. You're going to get a probability distribution, just like when modeling any other chaotic or quasi-chaotic system. I don't here you dismissing quantum mechanics because you can't exactly predict where a particle may be.
Right now all climate predictions and warnings and the like are made by a bunch of charlatans extrapolating wildly, both climate change advocates and deniers alike.
Bullshit. Scientists have been predicting temperature increases for decades. With the advent of more powerful computers, they are now beginning to get to the point where they can look into regional effects. This ranges anywhere from the effects of increased troposphere thickness in tropical regions to the effects of increased sea surface temperatures. You can read the research papers for other predictions if you like.
We do need more climate research but it will not produce believable results for decades if not centuries
and we need to be OK with that because the grand vision is a comprehensive model of all processes
on the planet and their interrelation and impact
Again, you demonstrate that you don't know what you are talking about. We already have comprehensive models that take into account everything from soil moisture to chemical transport and breakdown in the atmosphere. You will NEVER have an exact model. There will ALWAYS be error bars. And if you read the IPCC report they make this very clear.
You can create a simple 0 dimension energy balance climate model that can calculate a good estimate of the global temperature average. You can even make it have a tweak-able parameter for adding and removing the influence of CO2. And this is the simplest, dumbest climate model you can make.
Forecasting the global average temperature is relatively easy and can be done with decent accuracy. However, that doesn't tell you much. Where the bulk of the research is going now is refining HOW that temperature increase will affect regions of the globe. That's a harder question to answer and requires something significantly more complex than a simple 0 dimension model.
Instead of being an ignorant troll you could download and run a climate model yourself. Or better yet, since you apparently think there is a global climate science conspiracy, get a couple of books on climatology and related subjects and write your own model. If you can show that increased CO2 has no impact on climate, you could win a Nobel.
It was 50 degress in December in Greenland, the Northern Hemisphere's winter, making it warmer than a chunk of Europe, England, an a good portion of the US. In fact, a fair portion of the arctic has been anywhere from 10 to 20 degrees above normal. Both of these are related to weather patterns. There is a moderate-to-strong La Nina in the pacific while there is a strongly negative NAO in the Atlantic.
These are WEATHER events. It's climatological when it happens repeatedly over many years. Even weather events that last for a few weeks are just anomalies. However, when it happens repeatedly over a number of years, that's climatological. Hence, your snow event is just a weather anomaly while the warmer, melting arctic is a climate change.
Just to add to this, the average difference in solar irradiance between solar maximum and solar minimum is less than 2 watts/m^2. The additional CO2 and other greenhouse gases being added to the atmosphere more than make up for that difference, hence why we still have warming temperatures despite being stuck in a minimum.
There is a balance to everything. Every rule or restriction takes away freedom. For example, if I were totally free, I would be able to take an ax and bury it in the head of my neighbor. Now a sane rule is not to murder, and have harsh penalties for doing so. A stupid rule would be to require a mandatory overseer come to my house whenever I want to us my ax to ensure I don't kill anyone with it.
Along these lines, we issue licenses to drive to try and ensure that everyone driving a two ton chunk of metal around at high speed has demonstrated at least some level of competence. This is as much for the driver's safety as it is for everyone else. The equivalent for DUI story would be having an officer sitting in the car with you while you're driving, or mandatory GPS tracking to ensure you're not breaking any laws.
Total freedom is anarchy and that doesn't work so well.
Moral: Exercise your rights regularly. Otherwise, they die that much quicker.
...but it would be nice to know it won't get any worse.
It can always get worse. The ocean of human depravity and evil has no bottom.
All you are doing is giving reasons why the US Government should only exercise the powers *specifically* enumerated by its Constitutional Law. If the constitution was enforced the US Congress would not have the power to bailout AIG. Or power to give handouts to "stimulate" General Motors. Or give special favors to Microsoft by taxing all non-windows PCs/laptops/pads.
You're right. They also wouldn't have any influence over the financial system or businesses, which would have turned this country into a broke, polluted, husk by now. Companies are not interested in morality or doing the right thing, as has been demonstrated repeatedly.
Okay. Please cite an example of this where a corporation committed murder & was not punished by the law. ----- I can guarantee you the government has done it FAR more often.
Are you talking about outright gunning people down or directing, instigating, or influencing actions that lead to loss of life? Are you talking about this country or countries where the companies do business? Are you counting immediate deaths or deaths over time? Let's get specific here. For example, the Union Carbide incident in India was pretty nasty. Arguably tobacco companies have been helping people kill themselves for a few decades now. So on and so forth.
Gunning people down is too messy. Bad press. Companies are a bit more subtle, and given their resources and connections if they wanted to "suicide" someone you can be sure it would only be reported as a suicide.
Over 150 million people were murdered by their OWN governments during this past century. Have corporations ever mass-exterminated that many people?
Over the past century? No. Governments tend to kill quickly. Companies are out for profit. There's no profit in killing your slaves^H^H^H workers quickly.
Even the US Congress deprived approximately 10 million of their property, homes, money, and freedom simply because they had grandparents that were born in Japan. Name one corporation that has ever committed that level of atrocity as done by that ONE building of 535 men in Washington D.C.
Any companies using under-developed nations to get around environmental and safety regulations.
In the long run a Palin presidency would be a disaster...
You didn't need to go beyond this point. If you thought this country went to hell under the Bush presidency, a Palin presidency would be a non-stop flight to the seventh circle.
Being a sociopath means never wanting to say you're sorry.
No, really, it would, how the fuck do these people sleep at night?
Hellspawn need no sleep. At best they need a little rest, usually in a warm bath of blood from babies, kittens, and puppies.
In almost every instance, if you're using a goto then you're doing it wrong. In all my years of programming in higher level languages, I've used goto at most a handful of times, and only because efficiency outweighed elegance.
What's wrong is this old dogma that tell young people to not think for themselves and instead just repeat what everyone else says.
It's not dogma. It's experience. There is nothing wrong with imparting wisdom to students in an effort to prevent them from making the same mistakes and errors that others before them made. Unless you're doing low level programming that requires the utmost in efficiency, then goto should not be used.
And that's just in the first 1000 or so. There are supposedly 249000 or so more to go.
In addition, people seem to equate income tax with total tax burden, which is pure bullshit. The poor may get a break from paying income taxes but that doesn't have any effect on all the other taxes that they must pay. In fact, the income tax is not even the highest tax taken out of their paychecks.
In relative terms, the tax burden of the lower class has INCREASED due to inflation and wage stagnation the lower class has experienced. The burden has also increased on the middle. The only tax burdens that have decreased over time is the upper class (while at the same time their wealth has increased substantially).
Liberals usually work incrementally. It starts with simple net neutrality rules. Then later on, they add some more rules. And more. And more. A Killswitch and some hate-crimes legislation later and before you know the government is all up in your intarwebs.
How is this limited to just liberals? What about the DEA, or DHS? What about the systemic undermining of checks and balances? What about market deregulation? What about the attack on science? What about making things more cozy for the rich?
Those in power (either right (democrats) or far right (republicans)) know how to boil a frog. You can't take drastic measures unless you have a drastic event, and those don't happen all that often. During those lulls you grind away slowly and surreptitiously. You master the arts of misinformation and misdirection. You use tools like wedge issues to divert and distract. You get people to see the issues you want them to see, but not to understand them in any meaningful way. You want people to know the issues, but for $DIETY's sake you don't want them actually THINKING about them.
Truthfully, the far right (republicans) are leaps and bounds ahead of the democrats in these abilities, but make no mistake both parties do this.
Limbaugh ought to take a page from Glenn Beck and actually RESEARCH a topic before speaking...
WTF?
Glenn Beck is to research as a claymore mine is to curing cancer. The only difference between Limbaugh and Beck is that Beck is more mentally unstable (Christ complex anyone?). Or rather, he gets paid to act that way.
Actually, I don't think either one of them believes half of they say. They just make so much money making shit up that they can't stop.
He's just bitching because the people who pay 90% of the taxes get a few breaks here and there.
I really really wish people would stop confusing income tax rate to total tax burden. They are not the same thing. Not even close.
The total tax burden is higher on the lower end of the economic spectrum than the upper end. Why? Because the rich have whole set of tricks to keep their total burden lower (even though the rich control about 80% of the wealth in the country).
The people who keep this country running are those who ARE NOT millionaires. They're the ones actually providing services and producing goods (the ones that haven't been shipped off over seas that is). If the millionaires and billionaires didn't have everyone else's backs to stand on they'd come tumbling down pretty damn fast.
I do not need government regulation on what TV I choose to watch, what food I wish to eat, and how I wish to use the Internet.
So your happy with the companies doing it instead of the government? Make no mistake, it will happen one way or the other.
You've got a choice between corporate masters and government masters, and the line between those is getting ever thinner. The freedom you think you would have if the government were stripped down is a lie constructed by corporations for their own benefit. The government is only a hair better since hypothetically you still have a say, however you're also fighting against the fearful, under-educated, masses.
It doesn't take much to shred a rocket really. You can even shred model rockets if you don't balance them correctly.