Seems obvious to me. I, like many others, live in an apartment. My parking spot doesn't have an electrical outlet anywhere nearby, and neither does my office parking lot.
In addition, how exactly does one bring a "can of electrons" to a car that's died along the road somewhere? I know they have meters for the amount of charge, but there will still be times when people end up having their electric car die along the highway.
If there's a storm and a power failure, possibly for days, what then? Tie up money and resources to have both a gasoline and an electric car? Tell your boss you can't come in because the electricity is out?
I can carry enough gasoline in one hand to fuel a car for 125-plus miles easily (5 gallons x 25mpg), and it only takes as long as it takes to pour the stuff into the tank to be on the way.
Energy density/portability is a serious issue with electric vehicles, particularly when charging infrastructure is almost non-existent, and charging turnaround times are also an issue.
Until those problems are addressed such that they can compare favorably with gasoline, electric cars will be a niche market restricted to mostly higher-income people living and working in urban metropolitan areas, and then mainly as an additional "commute-only" vehicle.
You get the "wow" for the thread. I'm guessing SAC?
Thanks. If you meant Strategic Air Command, no. I worked for an international commercial company that provides FBO/maintenance, repainting, and complete interior refurbishing/customization, and custom avionics suites and testing/recertification services for private & corporate aircraft, mostly small jets like Citations, Gulfstreams, Falcons, etc. I had the opportunity to get "stick time" on quite a wide variety of aircraft.
When that Tek 453A became too old to be able to be FAA-certified any longer, I snagged it on the way to the dumpster with full knowledge & approval/sign-off of management...they liked me because I made them tons of cash, made them look good, and made their jobs easier.
Glad to know there's some folks still wanting decent amps. Last place I knew, years back, was Marshall down in Lansing.
I don't sell through stores or even online. I build vacuum tube guitar amps by hand on an individual one-off basis for select local musicians and those in the pro music touring/recording biz long enough and seriously enough to have heard of me and know what I have to offer.
I don't advertise except by word of mouth. I have no need to. I already get more requests than I want to or could reasonably accept. I also play guitar professionally myself (over 40 years now) and do service/repair work for "backline" "house/club" amps at a number of venues from larger blues bars to theaters and larger venues.
Both amps are circuit-wise the same amp. Cathode-biased KT66s (6L6s, EL34s, 6550s, etc will work as well) with a unique cathode circuit that makes it feel more like a higher-powered fixed-bias design, in push-pull AB1 with a "plexi"-ish phase inverter and a parallel-triode preamp. Approximately 30 watts.
Experienced guitarists love them because they sound like and have the "presence" and fat sound of a huge amp stack without the crushing volume levels and the back strain. I also build lower-powered versions using 6V6s for home/studio.
What's on my workbench? A bunch of dead computers. The quality of name brand PC's has gone into the toilet. Commodity quality served up to the mass markets leaves very little quality to be found.
What you need is a good ol' Sun SparcStation with an old release of Red Hat Linux installed on it. No end of fun. Really cool little computers, too and greased lightning with a tiny kernel.:)
Heh. I've got an old SGI Octane running IRIX 6.5.30 UNIX. Great fun. With a buss that has ~3ms between any two I/O points and optical digital audio I/O, it's still quite useful for some audio recording/processing/storage tasks related to home recording studio work.
I also design and build vacuum tube guitar amplifiers, where my '70s-era two-channel analog 60mHz delayed-sweep Tektronix 453A 'scope still serves me well. It used to be used on avionics out on the tarmac in Nebraska and then Michigan, in winters & summers, baked and frozen, buried in snow and half-submerged in water, and has been blown hundreds of feet multiple times across the flightline tarmac from prop wash and jet exhaust and still functioned like a champ. Worst result was it lost some paint, gained some scuffs, and needed re-calibration. Not even the handle broke.
Many tens of thousands of years from now when humans are long gone and aliens are doing archaeological digs on Earth, they'll be shocked when they dig down, following a faint energy signal, only to find an old Tektronix 'scope still displaying a trace from when the tech left for the last time and forgot to turn it off.:)
(In a sense, though, this is all irrelevant to that specific case, since shooting at a DHS helicopter either involves it shooting back, or you winning, and getting to go on to the challenge mode, which involves substantially more cops, with substantially more guns, swarming you in APCs and either levelling the place or breaking out the trusty 'who would have guessed that tear gas and flashbangs cause suspects to burn alive horribly, along with any tedious evidence we would otherwise have to waste our time with?' technique, as seen in that 'rogue-cop' case in California some time back.)
Oh, absolutely. Engaging in such actions are strictly for when the wheels come completely off any pretensions of rule of law, and it's become open armed conflict between government and citizens.
What about you and a couple of your friends armed with AKs?
If I recall correctly that kind of shooting is effective up to 600 meters (concentrated firing).
It would be extremely effective.
*if* you concentrate the AK47 fire at the personnel in the portable trailer containing the drone-operator control stations, and/or their families in the case of a domestic conflict. It makes it very hard to concentrate on targeting/killing civilians with a drone if you're worried sick about your entire family being executed and your home being burned to the ground while you're busy.
There are no "rules" in a domestic civil war and military personnel's families would be high on the target list. Big problem when all your military personnel's families live in the same communities as the people they're being ordered to kill.
Now, given the number of aircraft downed (not necessarily with any fatalities, since this tends to happen at low altitude for obvious reasons) by wire strikes, I suspect that a suitably clever 'entangling' fiber payload could make a considerable nuisance of itself even with very low impact speed; but that isn't exactly a household object.
A rope-gun with Kevlar-based line would probably play hell with the tail or main rotors.
You can also improvise an RPG with a length of PVC pipe and and projectiles made with model rocket motors and a warhead filled with gunpowder or other explosive and some BBs or other fragmentation material.
Crude, short-ranged, and not very accurate, but if you can manage to put one through the side-door of a UH-60, effective none the less. One of those going off in a crowded passenger/cargo compartment of a UH-60 will seriously impact the combat effectiveness of any personnel inside. As in, if the helo makes it back at all, they'll need to hose-out the blood & gore, find themselves a replacement combat team, and send out official condolence letters to some families for their loss.
Here is a question... If you can't consent to sex while drunk, how can you consent to this research while drunk?
You consent to anything they want because
TASER!! TASER!! TASER!!
"~Officers, my Grandfather has a heart pacemaker!! Stop!!~"
Stop resisting!! Stop resisting!!
TASER!! TASER!! TASER!!
"~Officers, he's turning blue!! Stop!!~"
Stop turning blue!! Stop turning blue!!
TASER!! TASER!! TASER!!
Rinse & repeat until full and complete consent and compliance is achieved.
Sadly, these days with the way LE has increasingly been treating innocent people, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if something very similar has either already happened, or will be popping up in the news soon.
I know there are officers who many including themselves think of as "upstanding" and "heroic", and in many ways they are.
*However*, all of that good is rendered meaningless when these same officers say and do nothing when fellow officers abuse people and flaunt the law and civil rights.
What good is one officer going above & beyond to help get a young woman out of a dangerous/violent domestic situation, when a week later one of his/her fellow-officers puts her to work on the streets for one of "his" drug-dealing pimp "CI's", just to end up another dead junkie prostitute in some alley?
I'll start having more respect for LE when they stop the "blue wall of silence" BS and start cleaning out the bad/incompetent/criminal/bullying-thug officers instead of closing ranks.
Shooting cops tends to be...unproductive in the medium term. Their initial performance is likely to be underwhelming; but after that, you'll be lucky if they just empty a dozen magazines into your corpse, since that will at least keep you out of SuperMax Forever Fun Time.
The response will be rather reminiscent of MiB, when "Edgar" gave the alien "Bug", in the fresh impact crater on his farm, a similar response when told to drop his weapon.
"Your proposal is acceptable."
LE officers these days no longer accept nearly as much personal risk to avoid injuring/killing subjects. The amount of time, risk, and effort to try and defuse & deescalate situations before tasers and/or firearms are used against subjects has dramatically fallen over the last 25-35 years.
This is largely due to extreme militarization coupled with the "officer safety first" and "*I'm* going home tonight!" mentality culture and training. Also, it seems like the psych-screening and attitude/demeanor suitability culling processes have suffered greatly, judging by the tsunami of YT videos available recording a huge and ever-growing number of over-the-top LE behaviors and actions.
Besides, as long as they don't kill you, you can hurt them much worse and for far longer with paper than with bullets, as long as the court system and rule of law means anything at all. I'll leave that for you to judge.
Check out what DHS will do to one of their own who tries to do their duty. They used a freaking Blackhawk and a military style 27-man SRT to raid her and her husband's house. The 24-year-old neighbor who video-recorded the raid and Blackhawk was found dead in his house of unknown causes. If they'll do that to one of their own, what are they willing to do to you or I if we should happen to attract their anger over something we said, or something we have no clue would have any connection to anything government or cause any kind of reaction by anyone at all?
Why? Why does this specific issue get to jump the line?
Because only the SCOTUS has jurisdiction over the FISC. No other courts have jurisdiction, so cannot and will not hear such cases.
It's a judicial Catch-22.
SCOTUS says you must go to a Federal District court and/or a Federal Appeals court first.
Those courts have no jurisdiction over the FISC, so therefor cannot rule on the case.
Result: SCOTUS denial of certiorari = FISC is untouchable.
So then, since the whole thing was deliberately set up with no legal avenues to challenge FISC possible, I guess this leaves snipers, car-bombs, & IEDs as the only options left. As many nut-cases as there are running around loose in the US these days, I'm sure it won't be long. I'm actually surprised it hasn't happened yet.
Would setting up a betting pool based on which SCOTUS judges and/or other government officials and office-holders are killed in what order, in what manner, and on what dates be a crime? Is Vegas posting odds?
PRISM and most other programs Snowden has revealed were public!?!?
I guess this was all just a big misunderstanding then, and Mr. Snowden can safely return to the US anytime he wants and all is forgiven, right?
C'mon man, you're really reaching here.
You'd have to consider rumors and complete speculation as to the existence, numbers, natures, and scopes of such programs equal to them being "public".
It wasn't a conspiracy.
I never said it is or was a "conspiracy". It's simply corrupt, power-hungry people in government eager for more power and control using whatever tools they can get away with using to that end.
Looters gonna loot whether it's rioters grabbing a plasma TV or a group of politicians stripping away civil liberties because nobody stops them. Rioters looting aren't part of a conspiracy and neither are these politicians. They're simply criminals that need to be arrested, tried, and jailed.
You just can't give any form of government that kind of power no matter what sort of fear-mongering scare tactics and propaganda they employ, because it will *always" be turned to corruption and oppression every single time.
Surrendering liberty for temporary security will do far more damage than any terrorist group ever could, because those holding office will always be susceptible to corruption, blackmail, suborning, and pure lust for power and lust for ideology and/or religion.
Why? Because they are human, and apologies for Darwin's slow progress, but basic human nature and weaknesses and flaws haven't changed measurably since our ancestor picked up that first jawbone and had the leap of imagination to see it as a tool, and then promptly used it to smash in his enemy/rival's head with it and take what he desired.
The price of a free and open society with individual rights, including freedom from surveillance, is that sometimes crazies and bad guys are gonna kill some people or blow something up. There's no "right" to be "safe" because there is no, and can be no, single definition possible among hundreds of millions of people of wildly-diverse cultures, backgrounds, and beliefs, and spread across a fairly large chunk of continent.
Civil rights and freedoms are being trampled and the principles the nation was founded upon are being destroyed with secret courts and secret laws and secret surveillance and secret "kill" lists, all in the name of "protecting us" from the relatively tiny threat that terrorists present to the public.
How would you know if something was successfully suppressed, given that the definition of "successful" includes those who use bullshit assertions themselves while attempting to label others statements as such?
Why is it the government is incompetent at everything it does, but is still suspected of pulling off (or being able to pull off) the most fanciful of conspiracy theories?
You mean like all those years of fanciful tin-foil-hat conspiracy theory crap asserting the government is/was secretly mass-monitoring/storing/analyzing nearly all domestic voice & digital data communications that everyone dismissed for the very same reasons because we didn't have any real evidence to prove it conclusively until Snowden?
Besides, if you have to use "well, not that they wouldn't do it in a heartbeat, it's too hard/impractical" as an argument for it not being done, does that not indicate that the real problem is you having allowed the government to grab so much power that they care so little for the Rule of Law and fear the possibility of retribution from the people so little that they *would* do it if they only could?
If it became known that someone came up with some sort of "John Galt" type way to generate super-cheap and pollution-free energy anywhere with a relatively small lightweight device, they and everyone around them would be killed or otherwise silenced, and all their research, experimental data, and any experimental models confiscated and/or destroyed faster than one can say "drone".
A bullshit assertion because it has never come up.
How would you know if something was successfully suppressed, given that the definition of "successful" includes those who use bullshit assertions themselves while attempting to label others statements as such?
They want energy and energy distribution systems which they can control and use to confiscate even more of people's hard work better and thus control people better while enriching themselves, not better/cheaper/cleaner energy that empowers the individual and allows them the freedom to be less dependent and more self-reliant.
Note this didn't happen in the internet world with stuff like email or web pages.
Of course not. It was a government-funded research project, FFS. It also makes them money and allows them to more easily, cheaply, and completely identify, monitor, track, and perform data analysis on any individual or group as well as provide valuable feedback on propaganda effectiveness. The wet-dream of a tyranny, beyond even the "telescreen" of "1984" fame.
And once again, it's demonstrated that it's easier to make up shit than to actually come up with economic energy producing technology.
The "economic" part is easy if government reduced or eliminated artificial government-imposed restrictions that are more to do with ideology, politics, and social engineering than actual safety, cost, or environmental impact.
This will also help reduce the effects of "regulatory capture", revolving-door, etc we've seen for decades getting worse with every added regulatory agency, dept, and bureaucracy, and actually improve enforcement and effectiveness of those core regulations that actually work to improve safety, cost, and reduce environmental impact.
But again, that would disadvantage those in power. And I mean all of them, not one party or wing...or even one nation. The US isn't the only nation facing dire economic circumstances or experiencing loss of individual economic and civil freedom and increased government intrusion and control. All of them that have had controlling government power between them over the last 60-plus years that want to increase their control and grow their power even further.
This hasn't happened in the US or the world overnight.
The world right now, especially in the West, reminds me of Prohibition-era Chicago and the gangs that divided up Chicago into "turfs" and who all had corrupt politicians and officials in their pocket to make certain people kept drinking and making them money and giving them power, while they fought over turf, alcohol supplies, power, and money.
That's actually a pretty good analogy for the "NWO" as well. It isn't some shadpwy, tin-foil hat conspiracy. It's simply gangs of corrupt assholes in power in each country warily cooperating with other gangs in each helping to oppress the other's people (keep 'em drinking/consuming/monitored) while increasing their own power, control, and wealth.
If you're oppressing your people, you don't want some other more-free, less-oppressive country around to give hope and possibly asylum and other assistance to your dissidents. It's simply common self-interest among those in power in the West (and increasingly including the East/ME as well).
The *real* fun will begin when the US dollar crashes and the supermarket shelves become bare. That will either be the trigger for, or be triggered by, economic collapse in the EU. It's dominoes all the way down either way.
Nuclear energy reduces greenhouse emissions, according to Japan.
OK, so is the most important thing to be anti-nuclear, or to actually save the environment?
It should be pointed out that this depends on the energy source it's displacing.
Not quite.
It actually depends on what benefits the set of politicians and their propagandists with the most power and biggest bullhorn the most. It has nothing whatsoever to do with achieving objective, real-life, positive results for society and mankind, nor with accruing benefits or empowerment to anyone besides those who control the levers of power & law and their cronies.
If it became known that someone came up with some sort of "John Galt" type way to generate super-cheap and pollution-free energy anywhere with a relatively small lightweight device, they and everyone around them would be killed or otherwise silenced, and all their research, experimental data, and any experimental models confiscated and/or destroyed faster than one can say "drone".
They want energy and energy distribution systems which they can control and use to confiscate even more of people's hard work better and thus control people better while enriching themselves, not better/cheaper/cleaner energy that empowers the individual and allows them the freedom to be less dependent and more self-reliant.
Where I grew up, shooting a kid with a shotgun (loaded with rock salt) was considered an object lesson about property rights, and we'd have been shocked if anyone went to jail for it. How times have changed.
I remember at 12-13 yo in the mid-'70s, the family lived for a time (father in civil service-transfers were fast-track grade advancement) in south-central MS near the eastern MS/western AL border. There was this old farmer that raised huge patches of watermelons and strawberries that all the kids knew would shoot at you with this old break-action double-barrel 12ga loaded with rock-salt shells (though he couldn't see at distance worth beans) if he spotted you in his fields (and sometimes actually grazed the occasional slow/careless kid with a piece or two, usually one kid a season).
Everybody in the surrounding area knew this and him, including the police & sheriff. That was the way things had been for as long as many if not most who lived there could remember, even as they were kids.
Nobody even thought to call the police. They'd have simply told you that "...you ought-not to be a-trespassin' on no private prop-perty. Ev'rbody know the ol' man'll light bee-hines wit rocksalt if'n he catches ya in is fields! Ya'll'll get hurt ya keep it up, an' if we gotsta carry ya'll to the horsepital, we'd be 'bliged to charge ya'll wit trespass." (there *were* signs).
The old boy sat in a rocking chair on his porch and typically never even stood to shoot. The range was like anywhere from 60 to 100-plus yards. He also loaded these shells of his really light on powder charge. If you had on jeans all you'd get is a nice welt if you were closer.
The only two times I remember any blood having been drawn or any skin penetration or other injury (other than self-inflicted) occurring was when the two kids in question didn't pay attention, had gotten far too close, and were wearing shorts. Only one small piece barely penetrated skin both times, though from the way they'd each screamed at the time, I'm sure it burned like hell.
The first "strawberry-heart" medal-winner popped out the little salt fragment with his own thumbnails, wiped it hydrogen peroxide, stuck a band-aid on it, and carried on. Next season, the other medal-winner's piece of salt was so small it had dissolved before the kid had stopped running, and left but a single drop of blood, a welt, and a painful memory.
I was always careful to stay at the edge of his range, kept real low, and never stayed long or ate/took very much on the occasions I was pressured to join in. We didn't hurt the old man's harvest. He had these huge fields, but a lot of what grew he never picked and it rotted in the fields.
I do "distinctly* remember what the sound of rock salt sounds like whizzing around/past you from a 12ga, some making weird "ricochet"-type whining, moaning, or buzzing sounds, striking vegetation around you, etc.
Nothing like it to get those legs really moving!
It's downright motuh-VAY-shunul!:D
CoD!?!? Bah! Back in *my* day, we went out unarmed and deliberately got shot at with *real* guns just for *fun*!!!:D
I think it's probably true for tech branch. ATF should be shut down and it's duties moved to FBI and other places. Most govt is incompetent but ATF excels at it.
Just don't get caught with a semi-auto rifle that was witnessed to have experienced the common malfunction that causes two rounds to be fired with one trigger pull, typically in an erratic, unpredictable manner, and usually caused from firing continuously without cleaning/lubrication.
They also charged another person for possessing a machine gun because he had a semi-auto rifle and a shoelace (something they thankfully were finally forced to reverse themselves on). Google "ATF shoelaces" without the quotes.
The ATF has exhibited a rich history of carelessness, heavy-handedness, gross overreach, and thug-like/bullying behavior ("...and that's just towards their wives & kids!" bada-boom). They've got plenty of guns and muscle, but not much for brains. When all you have is a hammer...
I wouldn't put it past the ATF to be stupid enough to SWAT-raid some poor Slashdotter's basements and charge them with storing large quantities of materials for 3D firearms, conspiracy-related charges, maybe even RICO charges...all for the ABS plastic cases of all their old/spare/accumulated hardware and electronics they saved for years.
ATFE should be a store, not a taxpayer-funded, jackbooted, paramilitary government regulatory/enforcement bureau.
They'll make one sweep to get both, then they'll loiter in suspicious areas with wardriving equipment and armored personnel carriers filled with swat teams. Fire up either your guns or your wifi, they'll be on you like stink on shite.
That's why you set up wifi routers, etc, as bait with IEDs waiting for the entry team and other IEDs placed along the route where SWAT/police/military vehicles would have to travel/stop, and position sniper teams to take out survivors. Bonus points for employing a brute-force radio jammer so they can't call for backup or communicate with each other tactically besides screaming.
An MRAP may protect it's occupants from direct explosion effects, but it won't raise the front end of the vehicle out of a 15'-20' deep hole in the road where the road has deliberately been weakened from underneath via excavation from within the sewer system. How long would the occupants survive when the MRAP is sitting nose-down, ass-up in a hole filled with burning gasoline and snipers to take out anyone sticking their heads out of a hatch?
The other problem they'd face is force security. How do the police/military protect themselves and their families from retribution when they must live among the same population they're attacking?
The false positive problem is going to become a real nightmare for some unfortunate individuals accused of crimes based on incorrect identification by this system...
Actually, the larger problem will be non-false positives. Laws are designed, written, and passed based on an understanding that there are certain practical limits to enforcement due to the limited ability of the State to detect law breaking and to readily identify, track, and apprehend law breakers.
A great many laws which at current enforcement levels nobody has a problem with, suddenly become draconian, abusive, unrealistic, and arbitrary when enforcement nears 100%. Of course, with a system like this, selective enforcement for political/ideological/personal reasons is a certainty, particularly in light of all the recent revelations of current government abuses and criminal behavior surrounding the abuse of government power and the tools it has available.
A tool such as this is the wet-dream of a police state.
The argument "it worked for the ancient people it must be OK" is not a good one.
Oh? Has basic human nature taken a sudden radical evolutionary turn since the beginnings of modern human societies some 5,000 years ago?
Although it may have indeed been helpful, people of ancient times would also tell you that acupuncture works and that rhino horn will give you a bigger human horn. Some people still believe that today because it is ancient tradition, see the theme here?
I never said religion was not without faults, pitfalls, and dangers. Religions, like governments, are made up of people susceptible to all the faults that all people are susceptible to.
Hence why you're far more likely to be killed by your own government than any terrorist group However, as you noted and I also noted in my preceding post, there hasn't been any comparable belief system tried that could take it's place without horrific consequences.
In world history and human behavior, religion provided a common moral framework which allowed a society to retain some level of stability as it grew in size. A large society without any common moral framework will become increasingly domestically unstable, and ultimately become ungovernable as a single sovereign entity without a civil war & mass slaughter if nothing changes.
Of course, religion has also been used by tyrants to create fanatics and spark wars. But the fact remains that the beginnings of early civilization would never have succeeded in attaining any long term stability without religion. The Magna Carta and Western ideas of natural rights were based upon tenets taken from Christianity.
People in general in large societies need to have a spiritual faith in something larger than themselves and belief in a core set of moral standards to give them spiritual strength, sense of mercy and charity, and restraint in their negative animal impulses and temptations.
The more civil, kind, and peaceful the population is on it's own without coercion by force, the more individual freedom that can exist, and a common moral framework is essential. Technically, I suppose if there were some other *equally effective and voluntarily as attractive/popular* non-religious societal moral framework, it could take the place of religion, but I know of none that can adequately meet all those essential requirements.
So far, there has never been a society that had Atheism as one of it's tenets that didn't end up a totalitarian hellhole that killed millions and horrified the world at large. There has also been any number of horrible societies/nations that are/have been fanatically religious, or more realistically, have had a group of leaders who use/used certain selected parts of religions to create fanatical supporters/fighters, like Christian fanatics during the Crusades and the current attacks by religious-fanatic Islamic extremists.
The question here is whether this is because of CAFE standards or the price of gasoline?
Another variable to that is how many now-unemployed and/or those have left the workforce no longer use as much fuel because they have lost their vehicle or at least no longer drive to work and back daily.
Look at Detroit now. It used to be teaming with people going back and forth to work, both at car companies and at other businesses and industries that served the large and prosperous population and the world at large. Large swaths now resemble some bombed-out & abandoned areas of cities in Europe right after WW2. Gasoline use has got to have fallen dramatically in Detroit. Rinse & repeat for other economically-challenged cities and States.
Including similar labor-force-shrinkage-related fuel use reductions across the US, that's got to add up to some significant consumption reduction amounts. It could possibly even exceed the individual reduction amounts from either pump price increases or CAFE standards alone, but I have no hard data to hand.
High unemployment rates and large labor force size reductions are a hell of a way to curb fuel use.
It *is* effective, however. Sort of like an obese person losing body weight by lopping-off an appendage or two, in that they share the fact that the "subject" is left with a severely reduced standard of living, ability to function efficiently, and quality of life.
I think I heard Obama in a speech say "If you like your wood burning stove, you can keep it. Period"
How about:
"Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket."
He didn't get the C&T through, but by golly he managed to get the "...electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket." part done!
Why hasn't he or his people made a speech or something to celebrate the partial victory in getting his initiative partially implemented? He seems to like to do that a lot with other victories...partial, real, or imagined. Odd, that.
The EPA is un-Constitutional in that it exercises powers that the Constitution allows only Congress, and Congress alone, to exercise.
Only Congress may pass laws, period. It cannot loan, assign, or otherwise transfer the ability to pass laws. EPA-created regulation violations are felonies and have the force of Federal law and essentially treated judicially/enforcement-wise, identically to any other Federal law passed by Congress.
Congress alone does not have the power to legislatively change that, outside of the Amendment process within the Constitution. If one thing may be changed by regular Congressional legislation, then anything may, by extension, be changed. Goodbye individual rights and freedom, hello Orwellian, authoritarian, drone/military robot enforced, high-tech population surveillance data acquisition cross-referencing & analysis system controlled, police-state hellhole. Hell, we're getting closer to it every day.
The gubernatorial race in Virginia was lost because the Republicans ran a psychotic theocrat. Small government, my ass.
The spread was a point or two. That's next to nothing.
The reason the Republican lost was, firstly, because the Democrat Clinton machine bankrolled one of their major campaign contribution bundlers as a shill-candidate to run as a faux-Libertarian spoiler to suck votes away from the Republican candidate.
Secondly, the RINO-Progressive "establishment" Republican national party pulled the support rug out from under the Republican candidate at the beginning of October when they saw he might win, because the "establishment" Republicans are scared shitless of the TEA Party.
There is only one major national political party in the US and it has two wings, (R) and (D).
#DEFUNDTHEGOP
At the least, to clear the decks for an actual *opposition* Party, rather than a choice between Tweedle-dumb and Tweedle-dumber.
That's the general idea behind the US Constitution.
The US Constitution is not some random collection of rules, duties, etc that a bunch of old dudes decided sounded good at the time.
It's a network design.
It's a fucking brilliant network design. Especially for people living in the mid/late-1700s.
It shares a lot in common with modern computer networks.
Governments are force and the Constitution is the blueprint for a multi-layered distributed-node network of that force. It incorporates multiple redundant self-checking routines and multiple negative feedback control paths throughout.
It's a lot easier to capture and control a server/terminal network than a distributed network of boxes, each with it's own firewall and other security to defeat, and without triggering detection & response from the non-compromised boxes.
Of course, it doesn't matter a damn how good the design is if people choose to, and/or allow those they elect to, not follow it.
The gigantic metaphorical "server room" of the current US government would look like the syphilis-damged nightmare of an alcoholic, crack-smoking, brain-damaged, insane BOFH with a napoleon complex and nuclear-fucking-weapons-OK.
Almost impenetrable, it's a jungle of random cables and flex-ducting stretched, looped, and coiled everywhere, entire racks fallen over and on fire, piles of dead bodies, crashes of electrical sparks from random directions, typing monkeys with machine guns and flame throwers, and some guy who's had his face smashed under a jackboot since you got there, and a rooster that won't stop fucking crowing.
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Seems obvious to me. I, like many others, live in an apartment. My parking spot doesn't have an electrical outlet anywhere nearby, and neither does my office parking lot.
In addition, how exactly does one bring a "can of electrons" to a car that's died along the road somewhere? I know they have meters for the amount of charge, but there will still be times when people end up having their electric car die along the highway.
If there's a storm and a power failure, possibly for days, what then? Tie up money and resources to have both a gasoline and an electric car? Tell your boss you can't come in because the electricity is out?
I can carry enough gasoline in one hand to fuel a car for 125-plus miles easily (5 gallons x 25mpg), and it only takes as long as it takes to pour the stuff into the tank to be on the way.
Energy density/portability is a serious issue with electric vehicles, particularly when charging infrastructure is almost non-existent, and charging turnaround times are also an issue.
Until those problems are addressed such that they can compare favorably with gasoline, electric cars will be a niche market restricted to mostly higher-income people living and working in urban metropolitan areas, and then mainly as an additional "commute-only" vehicle.
Strat
You get the "wow" for the thread. I'm guessing SAC?
Thanks. If you meant Strategic Air Command, no. I worked for an international commercial company that provides FBO/maintenance, repainting, and complete interior refurbishing/customization, and custom avionics suites and testing/recertification services for private & corporate aircraft, mostly small jets like Citations, Gulfstreams, Falcons, etc. I had the opportunity to get "stick time" on quite a wide variety of aircraft.
When that Tek 453A became too old to be able to be FAA-certified any longer, I snagged it on the way to the dumpster with full knowledge & approval/sign-off of management...they liked me because I made them tons of cash, made them look good, and made their jobs easier.
Glad to know there's some folks still wanting decent amps. Last place I knew, years back, was Marshall down in Lansing.
I don't sell through stores or even online. I build vacuum tube guitar amps by hand on an individual one-off basis for select local musicians and those in the pro music touring/recording biz long enough and seriously enough to have heard of me and know what I have to offer.
I don't advertise except by word of mouth. I have no need to. I already get more requests than I want to or could reasonably accept. I also play guitar professionally myself (over 40 years now) and do service/repair work for "backline" "house/club" amps at a number of venues from larger blues bars to theaters and larger venues.
Here are a couple examples, the "gold-dust twins", one dressed in retro American tweed and one in British-style garb. http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h103/stratman_el84/Testament%2030/P8310004_zps0edfabdc.jpg
Gut shot. http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h103/stratman_el84/Testament%2030/P6180004_zps6e904118.jpg
Both amps are circuit-wise the same amp. Cathode-biased KT66s (6L6s, EL34s, 6550s, etc will work as well) with a unique cathode circuit that makes it feel more like a higher-powered fixed-bias design, in push-pull AB1 with a "plexi"-ish phase inverter and a parallel-triode preamp. Approximately 30 watts.
Experienced guitarists love them because they sound like and have the "presence" and fat sound of a huge amp stack without the crushing volume levels and the back strain. I also build lower-powered versions using 6V6s for home/studio.
Strat
Heh. I've got an old SGI Octane running IRIX 6.5.30 UNIX. Great fun. With a buss that has ~3ms between any two I/O points and optical digital audio I/O, it's still quite useful for some audio recording/processing/storage tasks related to home recording studio work.
I also design and build vacuum tube guitar amplifiers, where my '70s-era two-channel analog 60mHz delayed-sweep Tektronix 453A 'scope still serves me well. It used to be used on avionics out on the tarmac in Nebraska and then Michigan, in winters & summers, baked and frozen, buried in snow and half-submerged in water, and has been blown hundreds of feet multiple times across the flightline tarmac from prop wash and jet exhaust and still functioned like a champ. Worst result was it lost some paint, gained some scuffs, and needed re-calibration. Not even the handle broke.
Many tens of thousands of years from now when humans are long gone and aliens are doing archaeological digs on Earth, they'll be shocked when they dig down, following a faint energy signal, only to find an old Tektronix 'scope still displaying a trace from when the tech left for the last time and forgot to turn it off. :)
Strat
(In a sense, though, this is all irrelevant to that specific case, since shooting at a DHS helicopter either involves it shooting back, or you winning, and getting to go on to the challenge mode, which involves substantially more cops, with substantially more guns, swarming you in APCs and either levelling the place or breaking out the trusty 'who would have guessed that tear gas and flashbangs cause suspects to burn alive horribly, along with any tedious evidence we would otherwise have to waste our time with?' technique, as seen in that 'rogue-cop' case in California some time back.)
Oh, absolutely. Engaging in such actions are strictly for when the wheels come completely off any pretensions of rule of law, and it's become open armed conflict between government and citizens.
Strat
What about you and a couple of your friends armed with AKs?
If I recall correctly that kind of shooting is effective up to 600 meters (concentrated firing).
It would be extremely effective.
*if* you concentrate the AK47 fire at the personnel in the portable trailer containing the drone-operator control stations, and/or their families in the case of a domestic conflict. It makes it very hard to concentrate on targeting/killing civilians with a drone if you're worried sick about your entire family being executed and your home being burned to the ground while you're busy.
There are no "rules" in a domestic civil war and military personnel's families would be high on the target list. Big problem when all your military personnel's families live in the same communities as the people they're being ordered to kill.
Strat
Now, given the number of aircraft downed (not necessarily with any fatalities, since this tends to happen at low altitude for obvious reasons) by wire strikes, I suspect that a suitably clever 'entangling' fiber payload could make a considerable nuisance of itself even with very low impact speed; but that isn't exactly a household object.
A rope-gun with Kevlar-based line would probably play hell with the tail or main rotors.
You can also improvise an RPG with a length of PVC pipe and and projectiles made with model rocket motors and a warhead filled with gunpowder or other explosive and some BBs or other fragmentation material.
Crude, short-ranged, and not very accurate, but if you can manage to put one through the side-door of a UH-60, effective none the less. One of those going off in a crowded passenger/cargo compartment of a UH-60 will seriously impact the combat effectiveness of any personnel inside. As in, if the helo makes it back at all, they'll need to hose-out the blood & gore, find themselves a replacement combat team, and send out official condolence letters to some families for their loss.
Strat
Here is a question... If you can't consent to sex while drunk, how can you consent to this research while drunk?
You consent to anything they want because
TASER!! TASER!! TASER!!
"~Officers, my Grandfather has a heart pacemaker!! Stop!!~"
Stop resisting!! Stop resisting!!
TASER!! TASER!! TASER!!
"~Officers, he's turning blue!! Stop!!~"
Stop turning blue!! Stop turning blue!!
TASER!! TASER!! TASER!!
Rinse & repeat until full and complete consent and compliance is achieved.
Sadly, these days with the way LE has increasingly been treating innocent people, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if something very similar has either already happened, or will be popping up in the news soon.
I know there are officers who many including themselves think of as "upstanding" and "heroic", and in many ways they are.
*However*, all of that good is rendered meaningless when these same officers say and do nothing when fellow officers abuse people and flaunt the law and civil rights.
What good is one officer going above & beyond to help get a young woman out of a dangerous/violent domestic situation, when a week later one of his/her fellow-officers puts her to work on the streets for one of "his" drug-dealing pimp "CI's", just to end up another dead junkie prostitute in some alley?
I'll start having more respect for LE when they stop the "blue wall of silence" BS and start cleaning out the bad/incompetent/criminal/bullying-thug officers instead of closing ranks.
Strat
The response will be rather reminiscent of MiB, when "Edgar" gave the alien "Bug", in the fresh impact crater on his farm, a similar response when told to drop his weapon.
"Your proposal is acceptable."
LE officers these days no longer accept nearly as much personal risk to avoid injuring/killing subjects. The amount of time, risk, and effort to try and defuse & deescalate situations before tasers and/or firearms are used against subjects has dramatically fallen over the last 25-35 years.
This is largely due to extreme militarization coupled with the "officer safety first" and "*I'm* going home tonight!" mentality culture and training. Also, it seems like the psych-screening and attitude/demeanor suitability culling processes have suffered greatly, judging by the tsunami of YT videos available recording a huge and ever-growing number of over-the-top LE behaviors and actions.
Besides, as long as they don't kill you, you can hurt them much worse and for far longer with paper than with bullets, as long as the court system and rule of law means anything at all. I'll leave that for you to judge.
Check out what DHS will do to one of their own who tries to do their duty. They used a freaking Blackhawk and a military style 27-man SRT to raid her and her husband's house. The 24-year-old neighbor who video-recorded the raid and Blackhawk was found dead in his house of unknown causes. If they'll do that to one of their own, what are they willing to do to you or I if we should happen to attract their anger over something we said, or something we have no clue would have any connection to anything government or cause any kind of reaction by anyone at all?
http://www.whistleblowers.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1181
http://youtu.be/3LHC-C-ODO0
Strat
Why? Why does this specific issue get to jump the line?
Because only the SCOTUS has jurisdiction over the FISC. No other courts have jurisdiction, so cannot and will not hear such cases.
It's a judicial Catch-22.
SCOTUS says you must go to a Federal District court and/or a Federal Appeals court first.
Those courts have no jurisdiction over the FISC, so therefor cannot rule on the case.
Result: SCOTUS denial of certiorari = FISC is untouchable.
So then, since the whole thing was deliberately set up with no legal avenues to challenge FISC possible, I guess this leaves snipers, car-bombs, & IEDs as the only options left. As many nut-cases as there are running around loose in the US these days, I'm sure it won't be long. I'm actually surprised it hasn't happened yet.
Would setting up a betting pool based on which SCOTUS judges and/or other government officials and office-holders are killed in what order, in what manner, and on what dates be a crime? Is Vegas posting odds?
Strat
Most of those were public.
PRISM and most other programs Snowden has revealed were public!?!?
I guess this was all just a big misunderstanding then, and Mr. Snowden can safely return to the US anytime he wants and all is forgiven, right?
C'mon man, you're really reaching here.
You'd have to consider rumors and complete speculation as to the existence, numbers, natures, and scopes of such programs equal to them being "public".
It wasn't a conspiracy.
I never said it is or was a "conspiracy". It's simply corrupt, power-hungry people in government eager for more power and control using whatever tools they can get away with using to that end.
Looters gonna loot whether it's rioters grabbing a plasma TV or a group of politicians stripping away civil liberties because nobody stops them. Rioters looting aren't part of a conspiracy and neither are these politicians. They're simply criminals that need to be arrested, tried, and jailed.
You just can't give any form of government that kind of power no matter what sort of fear-mongering scare tactics and propaganda they employ, because it will *always" be turned to corruption and oppression every single time.
Surrendering liberty for temporary security will do far more damage than any terrorist group ever could, because those holding office will always be susceptible to corruption, blackmail, suborning, and pure lust for power and lust for ideology and/or religion.
Why? Because they are human, and apologies for Darwin's slow progress, but basic human nature and weaknesses and flaws haven't changed measurably since our ancestor picked up that first jawbone and had the leap of imagination to see it as a tool, and then promptly used it to smash in his enemy/rival's head with it and take what he desired.
The price of a free and open society with individual rights, including freedom from surveillance, is that sometimes crazies and bad guys are gonna kill some people or blow something up. There's no "right" to be "safe" because there is no, and can be no, single definition possible among hundreds of millions of people of wildly-diverse cultures, backgrounds, and beliefs, and spread across a fairly large chunk of continent.
Civil rights and freedoms are being trampled and the principles the nation was founded upon are being destroyed with secret courts and secret laws and secret surveillance and secret "kill" lists, all in the name of "protecting us" from the relatively tiny threat that terrorists present to the public.
Strat
You mean like all those years of fanciful tin-foil-hat conspiracy theory crap asserting the government is/was secretly mass-monitoring/storing/analyzing nearly all domestic voice & digital data communications that everyone dismissed for the very same reasons because we didn't have any real evidence to prove it conclusively until Snowden?
Besides, if you have to use "well, not that they wouldn't do it in a heartbeat, it's too hard/impractical" as an argument for it not being done, does that not indicate that the real problem is you having allowed the government to grab so much power that they care so little for the Rule of Law and fear the possibility of retribution from the people so little that they *would* do it if they only could?
Strat
How would you know if something was successfully suppressed, given that the definition of "successful" includes those who use bullshit assertions themselves while attempting to label others statements as such?
Of course not. It was a government-funded research project, FFS. It also makes them money and allows them to more easily, cheaply, and completely identify, monitor, track, and perform data analysis on any individual or group as well as provide valuable feedback on propaganda effectiveness. The wet-dream of a tyranny, beyond even the "telescreen" of "1984" fame.
And once again, it's demonstrated that it's easier to make up shit than to actually come up with economic energy producing technology.
The "economic" part is easy if government reduced or eliminated artificial government-imposed restrictions that are more to do with ideology, politics, and social engineering than actual safety, cost, or environmental impact.
This will also help reduce the effects of "regulatory capture", revolving-door, etc we've seen for decades getting worse with every added regulatory agency, dept, and bureaucracy, and actually improve enforcement and effectiveness of those core regulations that actually work to improve safety, cost, and reduce environmental impact.
But again, that would disadvantage those in power. And I mean all of them, not one party or wing...or even one nation. The US isn't the only nation facing dire economic circumstances or experiencing loss of individual economic and civil freedom and increased government intrusion and control. All of them that have had controlling government power between them over the last 60-plus years that want to increase their control and grow their power even further.
This hasn't happened in the US or the world overnight.
The world right now, especially in the West, reminds me of Prohibition-era Chicago and the gangs that divided up Chicago into "turfs" and who all had corrupt politicians and officials in their pocket to make certain people kept drinking and making them money and giving them power, while they fought over turf, alcohol supplies, power, and money.
That's actually a pretty good analogy for the "NWO" as well. It isn't some shadpwy, tin-foil hat conspiracy. It's simply gangs of corrupt assholes in power in each country warily cooperating with other gangs in each helping to oppress the other's people (keep 'em drinking/consuming/monitored) while increasing their own power, control, and wealth.
If you're oppressing your people, you don't want some other more-free, less-oppressive country around to give hope and possibly asylum and other assistance to your dissidents. It's simply common self-interest among those in power in the West (and increasingly including the East/ME as well).
The *real* fun will begin when the US dollar crashes and the supermarket shelves become bare. That will either be the trigger for, or be triggered by, economic collapse in the EU. It's dominoes all the way down either way.
This in turn w
Not quite.
It actually depends on what benefits the set of politicians and their propagandists with the most power and biggest bullhorn the most. It has nothing whatsoever to do with achieving objective, real-life, positive results for society and mankind, nor with accruing benefits or empowerment to anyone besides those who control the levers of power & law and their cronies.
If it became known that someone came up with some sort of "John Galt" type way to generate super-cheap and pollution-free energy anywhere with a relatively small lightweight device, they and everyone around them would be killed or otherwise silenced, and all their research, experimental data, and any experimental models confiscated and/or destroyed faster than one can say "drone".
They want energy and energy distribution systems which they can control and use to confiscate even more of people's hard work better and thus control people better while enriching themselves, not better/cheaper/cleaner energy that empowers the individual and allows them the freedom to be less dependent and more self-reliant.
Strat
Where I grew up, shooting a kid with a shotgun (loaded with rock salt) was considered an object lesson about property rights, and we'd have been shocked if anyone went to jail for it. How times have changed.
I remember at 12-13 yo in the mid-'70s, the family lived for a time (father in civil service-transfers were fast-track grade advancement) in south-central MS near the eastern MS/western AL border. There was this old farmer that raised huge patches of watermelons and strawberries that all the kids knew would shoot at you with this old break-action double-barrel 12ga loaded with rock-salt shells (though he couldn't see at distance worth beans) if he spotted you in his fields (and sometimes actually grazed the occasional slow/careless kid with a piece or two, usually one kid a season).
Everybody in the surrounding area knew this and him, including the police & sheriff. That was the way things had been for as long as many if not most who lived there could remember, even as they were kids.
Nobody even thought to call the police. They'd have simply told you that "...you ought-not to be a-trespassin' on no private prop-perty. Ev'rbody know the ol' man'll light bee-hines wit rocksalt if'n he catches ya in is fields! Ya'll'll get hurt ya keep it up, an' if we gotsta carry ya'll to the horsepital, we'd be 'bliged to charge ya'll wit trespass." (there *were* signs).
The old boy sat in a rocking chair on his porch and typically never even stood to shoot. The range was like anywhere from 60 to 100-plus yards. He also loaded these shells of his really light on powder charge. If you had on jeans all you'd get is a nice welt if you were closer.
The only two times I remember any blood having been drawn or any skin penetration or other injury (other than self-inflicted) occurring was when the two kids in question didn't pay attention, had gotten far too close, and were wearing shorts. Only one small piece barely penetrated skin both times, though from the way they'd each screamed at the time, I'm sure it burned like hell.
The first "strawberry-heart" medal-winner popped out the little salt fragment with his own thumbnails, wiped it hydrogen peroxide, stuck a band-aid on it, and carried on. Next season, the other medal-winner's piece of salt was so small it had dissolved before the kid had stopped running, and left but a single drop of blood, a welt, and a painful memory.
I was always careful to stay at the edge of his range, kept real low, and never stayed long or ate/took very much on the occasions I was pressured to join in. We didn't hurt the old man's harvest. He had these huge fields, but a lot of what grew he never picked and it rotted in the fields.
I do "distinctly* remember what the sound of rock salt sounds like whizzing around/past you from a 12ga, some making weird "ricochet"-type whining, moaning, or buzzing sounds, striking vegetation around you, etc.
Nothing like it to get those legs really moving!
It's downright motuh-VAY-shunul! :D
CoD!?!? Bah! Back in *my* day, we went out unarmed and deliberately got shot at with *real* guns just for *fun*!!! :D
Strat
I think it's probably true for tech branch. ATF should be shut down and it's duties moved to FBI and other places. Most govt is incompetent but ATF excels at it.
Just don't get caught with a semi-auto rifle that was witnessed to have experienced the common malfunction that causes two rounds to be fired with one trigger pull, typically in an erratic, unpredictable manner, and usually caused from firing continuously without cleaning/lubrication.
They also charged another person for possessing a machine gun because he had a semi-auto rifle and a shoelace (something they thankfully were finally forced to reverse themselves on). Google "ATF shoelaces" without the quotes.
The ATF has exhibited a rich history of carelessness, heavy-handedness, gross overreach, and thug-like/bullying behavior ("...and that's just towards their wives & kids!" bada-boom). They've got plenty of guns and muscle, but not much for brains. When all you have is a hammer...
I wouldn't put it past the ATF to be stupid enough to SWAT-raid some poor Slashdotter's basements and charge them with storing large quantities of materials for 3D firearms, conspiracy-related charges, maybe even RICO charges...all for the ABS plastic cases of all their old/spare/accumulated hardware and electronics they saved for years.
ATFE should be a store, not a taxpayer-funded, jackbooted, paramilitary government regulatory/enforcement bureau.
Strat
Oh, put a cork in it! :)
Strat
They'll make one sweep to get both, then they'll loiter in suspicious areas with wardriving equipment and armored personnel carriers filled with swat teams. Fire up either your guns or your wifi, they'll be on you like stink on shite.
That's why you set up wifi routers, etc, as bait with IEDs waiting for the entry team and other IEDs placed along the route where SWAT/police/military vehicles would have to travel/stop, and position sniper teams to take out survivors. Bonus points for employing a brute-force radio jammer so they can't call for backup or communicate with each other tactically besides screaming.
An MRAP may protect it's occupants from direct explosion effects, but it won't raise the front end of the vehicle out of a 15'-20' deep hole in the road where the road has deliberately been weakened from underneath via excavation from within the sewer system. How long would the occupants survive when the MRAP is sitting nose-down, ass-up in a hole filled with burning gasoline and snipers to take out anyone sticking their heads out of a hatch?
The other problem they'd face is force security. How do the police/military protect themselves and their families from retribution when they must live among the same population they're attacking?
Strat
The false positive problem is going to become a real nightmare for some unfortunate individuals accused of crimes based on incorrect identification by this system...
Actually, the larger problem will be non-false positives. Laws are designed, written, and passed based on an understanding that there are certain practical limits to enforcement due to the limited ability of the State to detect law breaking and to readily identify, track, and apprehend law breakers.
A great many laws which at current enforcement levels nobody has a problem with, suddenly become draconian, abusive, unrealistic, and arbitrary when enforcement nears 100%. Of course, with a system like this, selective enforcement for political/ideological/personal reasons is a certainty, particularly in light of all the recent revelations of current government abuses and criminal behavior surrounding the abuse of government power and the tools it has available.
A tool such as this is the wet-dream of a police state.
Strat
...I don't think they're allowed to be armed when used in America except maybe for live fire exercises over a practice range.
You mean like the government isn't allowed to be monitoring/storing/analyzing all domestic US civilian data and communications?
They'll do it anyways. Who's going to stop them?
Strat
The argument "it worked for the ancient people it must be OK" is not a good one.
Oh? Has basic human nature taken a sudden radical evolutionary turn since the beginnings of modern human societies some 5,000 years ago?
Although it may have indeed been helpful, people of ancient times would also tell you that acupuncture works and that rhino horn will give you a bigger human horn. Some people still believe that today because it is ancient tradition, see the theme here?
I never said religion was not without faults, pitfalls, and dangers. Religions, like governments, are made up of people susceptible to all the faults that all people are susceptible to.
Hence why you're far more likely to be killed by your own government than any terrorist group However, as you noted and I also noted in my preceding post, there hasn't been any comparable belief system tried that could take it's place without horrific consequences.
Strat
Religion is just one form of control.
In world history and human behavior, religion provided a common moral framework which allowed a society to retain some level of stability as it grew in size. A large society without any common moral framework will become increasingly domestically unstable, and ultimately become ungovernable as a single sovereign entity without a civil war & mass slaughter if nothing changes.
Of course, religion has also been used by tyrants to create fanatics and spark wars. But the fact remains that the beginnings of early civilization would never have succeeded in attaining any long term stability without religion. The Magna Carta and Western ideas of natural rights were based upon tenets taken from Christianity.
People in general in large societies need to have a spiritual faith in something larger than themselves and belief in a core set of moral standards to give them spiritual strength, sense of mercy and charity, and restraint in their negative animal impulses and temptations.
The more civil, kind, and peaceful the population is on it's own without coercion by force, the more individual freedom that can exist, and a common moral framework is essential. Technically, I suppose if there were some other *equally effective and voluntarily as attractive/popular* non-religious societal moral framework, it could take the place of religion, but I know of none that can adequately meet all those essential requirements.
So far, there has never been a society that had Atheism as one of it's tenets that didn't end up a totalitarian hellhole that killed millions and horrified the world at large. There has also been any number of horrible societies/nations that are/have been fanatically religious, or more realistically, have had a group of leaders who use/used certain selected parts of religions to create fanatical supporters/fighters, like Christian fanatics during the Crusades and the current attacks by religious-fanatic Islamic extremists.
Strat
The question here is whether this is because of CAFE standards or the price of gasoline?
Another variable to that is how many now-unemployed and/or those have left the workforce no longer use as much fuel because they have lost their vehicle or at least no longer drive to work and back daily.
Look at Detroit now. It used to be teaming with people going back and forth to work, both at car companies and at other businesses and industries that served the large and prosperous population and the world at large. Large swaths now resemble some bombed-out & abandoned areas of cities in Europe right after WW2. Gasoline use has got to have fallen dramatically in Detroit. Rinse & repeat for other economically-challenged cities and States.
Including similar labor-force-shrinkage-related fuel use reductions across the US, that's got to add up to some significant consumption reduction amounts. It could possibly even exceed the individual reduction amounts from either pump price increases or CAFE standards alone, but I have no hard data to hand.
High unemployment rates and large labor force size reductions are a hell of a way to curb fuel use.
It *is* effective, however. Sort of like an obese person losing body weight by lopping-off an appendage or two, in that they share the fact that the "subject" is left with a severely reduced standard of living, ability to function efficiently, and quality of life.
Strat
I think I heard Obama in a speech say "If you like your wood burning stove, you can keep it. Period"
How about:
"Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket."
He didn't get the C&T through, but by golly he managed to get the "...electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket." part done!
Why hasn't he or his people made a speech or something to celebrate the partial victory in getting his initiative partially implemented? He seems to like to do that a lot with other victories...partial, real, or imagined. Odd, that.
The EPA is un-Constitutional in that it exercises powers that the Constitution allows only Congress, and Congress alone, to exercise.
Only Congress may pass laws, period. It cannot loan, assign, or otherwise transfer the ability to pass laws. EPA-created regulation violations are felonies and have the force of Federal law and essentially treated judicially/enforcement-wise, identically to any other Federal law passed by Congress.
Congress alone does not have the power to legislatively change that, outside of the Amendment process within the Constitution. If one thing may be changed by regular Congressional legislation, then anything may, by extension, be changed. Goodbye individual rights and freedom, hello Orwellian, authoritarian, drone/military robot enforced, high-tech population surveillance data acquisition cross-referencing & analysis system controlled, police-state hellhole. Hell, we're getting closer to it every day.
Strat
The gubernatorial race in Virginia was lost because the Republicans ran a psychotic theocrat. Small government, my ass.
The spread was a point or two. That's next to nothing.
The reason the Republican lost was, firstly, because the Democrat Clinton machine bankrolled one of their major campaign contribution bundlers as a shill-candidate to run as a faux-Libertarian spoiler to suck votes away from the Republican candidate.
Secondly, the RINO-Progressive "establishment" Republican national party pulled the support rug out from under the Republican candidate at the beginning of October when they saw he might win, because the "establishment" Republicans are scared shitless of the TEA Party.
There is only one major national political party in the US and it has two wings, (R) and (D).
#DEFUNDTHEGOP
At the least, to clear the decks for an actual *opposition* Party, rather than a choice between Tweedle-dumb and Tweedle-dumber.
Strat
I agree with the points you've made.
Only one detail I would change.
That's the general idea behind the US Constitution.
The US Constitution is not some random collection of rules, duties, etc that a bunch of old dudes decided sounded good at the time.
It's a network design.
It's a fucking brilliant network design. Especially for people living in the mid/late-1700s.
It shares a lot in common with modern computer networks.
Governments are force and the Constitution is the blueprint for a multi-layered distributed-node network of that force. It incorporates multiple redundant self-checking routines and multiple negative feedback control paths throughout.
It's a lot easier to capture and control a server/terminal network than a distributed network of boxes, each with it's own firewall and other security to defeat, and without triggering detection & response from the non-compromised boxes.
Of course, it doesn't matter a damn how good the design is if people choose to, and/or allow those they elect to, not follow it.
The gigantic metaphorical "server room" of the current US government would look like the syphilis-damged nightmare of an alcoholic, crack-smoking, brain-damaged, insane BOFH with a napoleon complex and nuclear-fucking-weapons-OK.
Almost impenetrable, it's a jungle of random cables and flex-ducting stretched, looped, and coiled everywhere, entire racks fallen over and on fire, piles of dead bodies, crashes of electrical sparks from random directions, typing monkeys with machine guns and flame throwers, and some guy who's had his face smashed under a jackboot since you got there, and a rooster that won't stop fucking crowing.
Strat