I live in Chicago and recently we surpassed 250 murders; an increase of 38% from last year. In fact, there are more murders in Chicago then LA and NY. There needs to be armed troops patrolling the streets in S. Chicago to ensure the safety of the AVERAGE American of any ethnicity.
No, the Fascists in Chicago should allow citizens to legally own and carry a firearm for self-defense as is their Constitutional right. Obviously, by the very stats you cite, the only people that anti-gun laws are preventing from carrying a gun in Chicago are the law abiding citizens that are currently forced by the government to be defenseless sheep for the slaughter for any armed Chicago thug.
As one of the pocket-protector wearing R&S equip toting "nerds" who also happens to be a licensed radio amateur myself, let me ask where this inherent hostility towards the FCC comes from? Where I work (not the US) our activity is largely welcomed and serves the purpose of making sure harmful interference is kept to a minimum which is something everyone is interested in.
Is it just the tired old religious Govt-can't-do-anything-right mantra or has the FCC really been that much of a tyrant?
No hostility here. At least, not towards field personnel that are, as you say, just out there trying to make sure things work. I thought I was quite clear. If anything, I think the field-operations side is woefully under-funded and under-staffed. Nice furniture and a fat budget in the FCC head's offices though, I'm sure.
Any hostility I have is toward the political side of the Commission and for Congress for involving the FCC in such nonsense as "wardrobe malfunctions" and "Fairness Doctrines" and the like.
Although I believe that government has grown too large, there are certain functions that need to be served, and keeping order in the airwaves is one of them. Sadly however these days, far too often essential parts and functions of government go wanting while parts and functions of government not authorized under the Constitution find themselves awash in funds and staff in order to further political and "crony-capitalism" goals and agendas.
>A Raspberry Pi would likely be overkill, and could likely handle both the frequency-hopping and encryption.
How sad; you don't even understand what a SDR is and how it differs from a conventional radio. Oh well.
How sad; *you* don't understand that a hardware card just wants certain data and voltages on certain pins to perform a certain task and doesn't care if a Raspberry Pi, Big Blue, or an infinite number of monkeys throwing switches on the head of a pin provides it. It's just the card's chips handshaking with your hardware's chips and transferring data and instructions.
I guarantee you that the test jig at the end of this card's factory production line is *not* a full PC running gnuradio, but a logic board with PROMs loaded with the necessary data commands and the I/O hardware to put the card through it's paces. You simply don't need all the fancy GUI software and PC OS to have a hardware card like that perform certain limited, fixed functions. Especially since this card's full specs will be open.
Of course, if you fuck with a cellular network or a broadcast operators ST links, they WILL jump in their van/helicopter and track down your transmitter, and when they do, they will file all the documentation with the FCC, then all the FCC agent has to do is serve the warrant.
At least that is how things work in my third-world country (New Zealand). The big networks police their own spectrum, and the MED receive notice of interference and intervene. It would greatly surprise me if the FCC ignored an interference report with complete field testing data.
I was an active US Amateur Radio Service operator ("Ham") for many years as well as being a professional RF/radio communications/avionics/military systems and general electronics technician for about four decades, so I have some idea of which I speak.
There's an FCC monitoring station about 20 minutes away that has three guys and two vans, because one van is usually being fixed. At least, that's how it has been for many, many years, unless DHS, FCC, or somebody gave them a much bigger budget in recent years and I hadn't heard. They cover this state and portions of three others. This state alone is only about ~6,000 sq. miles less area than all of New Zealand. For "three men and a truck". You have to be quite a "sore thumb" to attract their attentions.
Ask US CB'ers (yes, there are still some left) how much of a real threat the FCC is. I'd wager more than half of CB'ers are operating in violation with things like transmitter linear power amplifiers ("footwarmers" or "kickers") boosting the CB transmitter from 4 watts to hundreds, even thousands of watts, "out-of-band" frequency transmission capability, etc. Take-downs are extremely rare, and were even at the height of the "CB craze".
Unless multiple serious complaints of interference with public and commercial services are received, not much if anything will be done outside of possibly receiving a warning letter. If continued complaints are received and you've failed to respond to the warnings, then, your case may get put into the hopper for a mobile monitoring visit. Which, naturally, may easily be three or more months, depending. Unless the violation is of a nature that doesn't require a mobile unit dispatched, where you'll likely receive a summons and/or a warrant delivered by a Federal Marshall, with possibility of arrest and equipment seizure.
Of course, if you're interfering with aircraft/police/fire/military/cell services creating a public safety hazard and endangering lives, resources will be "reallocated" to find and shut you down ASAP. Interfering with AM/FM broadcast stations and OTA TV (like running a pirate station) will also get you on an enhanced-priority list.
They've got a LOT on their plate for the manpower they've got, to put it mildly, so as long as you're not being a complete ass, not causing good people problems and endangering lives, and not attracting attention to yourself, they've got bigger fish to fry.
Now, let me qualify my statements about US FCC attitudes, in that my comments were based upon ~15+ yr-old conversations I've had with field personnel, not FCC Administration officials, and do not reflect (I'm sure) the Administration's attitudes, policies, or official practices and procedures.
But of course the one saving grace is that most of those types of field personnel at the monitoring stations and in the vans are geeks and nerds as well, and probably ham operators too. Most of these guys (not all, sadly) "get it". As usual, it's the suits that are the problem, not the guy wearing a pocket-protector with a field-strength meter in his hand.
Since it requires strapping a workstation-class PC to your back to run the SDR, which is just a teeny tiny bit non-tactical, I doubt the law enforcement agencies really give a shit, tinfoil hat boy.
Says who, anonymous-coward boy?
Only if you plan on doing development work while at the protest/demonstration.
Once you've got a fixed task like frequency-hopping then it's simply a matter of providing just enough computing power to keep the SDR on-task. A Raspberry Pi would likely be overkill, and could likely handle both the frequency-hopping and encryption.
One thing to note that I haven't seen mentioned yet is that this goes a long way towards making secure & encrypted tactical radio communications much, much more do-able and affordable for private citizens. A capability that's up till now largely been restricted to LEAs and the military.
This unit's flexibility make setting up frequency/band-hopping and encryption relatively easy. This capability in civilian hands is sure to be disliked by US TLAs and police.
It makes me wonder whether the government will attempt to outlaw certain programs and/or regulate what software is "legal" to have loaded in such a device, and/or require device capabilities be hardware-crippled/restricted to be legally sold.
After all, according to the government, it's right and proper that the government conceal it's communications and activities from the citizens, but citizens may certainly not be allowed to communicate securely without the government being able to monitor if they wish.
"The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them." - Patrick Henry
Yes, yes it will. You cause issues, FCC gets complaints, it sends in the goon squad to shut you down.
No, the FCC field operations are a joke. They have been for many years. Budget cuts have all but neutered what little FCC field-monitoring & enforcement that did exist. Many of the monitoring facilities have been shut down or turned into unmanned remote-operated stations.
They've typically got two or three men and one or two tracking vans for a multi-State-wide area. They're kept so busy tracking things like interference to first-responder/aircraft/military/commercial broadcast that most stuff gets a report filed and that's about it.
Nice to see that the Jim Taylor machine is still running and just as capable as ever to report "facts".
Of course it is! The WH holds regular briefings still, yes?
The "James Taylor political machine" in the movie was modeled after Chicago's infamous political machines after all, and Obama is a Chicago politician, a product of the ground-zero for Progressive-Democrat political machinery.
To see this for yourself, just look on CL. There are tons of ads for *paid* activists and community organizers for the left, mostly for organizations funded in whole or part through one of George Soro's network of organizations, but none for groups like the TEA Party that Pelosi claims are simply paid "astroturf".
Using the military as lab rats for social-engineering experiments is bad defense policy.
Gee, looks like someone forgot to tell Harry Truman 'bout that...
Why, yes they must have, along with the rest of the Progressives.
Unless, of course, he was simply another Progressive Democrat doing what they did then and still do now. Mainly, fail to learn from (or just ignore) history, but that's another topic.
You'll be happy to know that, while you took that long nap, laws and regulations were passed back in the '60s and '70s, and now examples of discrimination are few and far between, not least of which is because women can sue for very large amounts of money.
enabling bio/stem-cell research
That was never illegal. There has been plenty of research going on.
Ohhh, you mean the government didn't use our hard-earned money to pay for research done on human embryo stem cells, not that it was illegal or not occurring. Sorry.
cash for clunkers
Seriously? By almost any metric that program was a miserable and costly failure. And all that to try to increase the minimum cost of a car, which only makes it harder on the struggling working-poor families to survive.
a lot of military reform (openly gay is a-ok
Using the military as lab rats for social-engineering experiments is bad defense policy.
addressing the body armor neglect controversy, the walter reed controversy
So, "addressing" to you means "covered his ass, avoided responsibility and took credit where he could"?
and ending iraq
Oh yeah, that was quite the move. The US generals, strategic military planners and commanders, and many in Congress on both sides of the aisle thought it foolish to pull out completely so soon and remove the American military presence with Iraq's government so weak, Iran stirring up trouble, and the intelligence datapoints about the coming "Arab Spring" were mounting.
So, he just has a talk with Hillary at the State Dept, and all of a sudden US relations with the Iraqi government officials plummets until they refuse to re-authorize the US to stay in Iraq. Effectively bypassing Congress and the objections coming from the military, and putting his political/ideological goals and agendas ahead of the best interests of the US.
Also there's the whole Somali pirates and Bin Laden thing..
Yeah, that was so great the way he didn't get in the way of the military and intelligence communities doing their jobs, at least in those two instances. Huzzah.
Why hasn't someone punched "Made on Earth" on any product yet...
Why so colloquial?
The stamp should read:
"Made By Hairless Apes Of Questionable Intelligence On A Primitive Planet Circling An Unremarkable Star In A Backwater Arm Of The Milky-Way Galaxy On The Fringes Of An Unremarkable Local Cluster Of Completely Average Galaxies - With Pride!"
A rightwing and a nutcase rightwing (and a growing lunatic fringe out of their heads rightwing).
This is incorrect. The US has a fundamentally different system of government based on totally different principles than European nations.
This is comparing apples to oranges.
Other governments generally start from the position that the government allows people certain amounts of freedom. The US starts from the position that people are naturally free, and we agree as a majority to consent to allow the government certain limited powers which can be altered or abolished as the people see fit.
It's the whole turning-away in the US from this basic principle of who grants who power and the understanding of why the difference from other systems means so much for human freedom that has been a major factor in what has caused increasing amounts of societal, economic, and foreign-relations problems for the US over the last 80 years or so.
It's pretty obvious Assange collaborated with Manning to steal secret documents.
That's a crime for sure.
For Manning, who was under US jurisdiction, sure. For Assange, who wasn't, which law, exactly did he break in this instance, under which jurisdiction?
I know it's a right-wing American dream that US law applies to non-Americans outside the US, while US citizens are not subject to any other country's laws. It's time to wake up, because that is just a dream. In the real world, if the US wants its laws to be recognized, the US has to also recognize the law of other countries. Even when it lets people walk free.
I have to check you there on the "right-wing" appellation, as if it's only one political party that's responsible for this blatant bit of dirty work by the US. You *are* aware of who holds power over the State Dept, the WH, the military, US intelligence agencies, etc, right?
It's the Progressives in both political parties, the ones who believe in ever-more government size, scope,and power, and in case you thought otherwise, that increased size and power of government isn't and was never meant to be wielded strictly domestically, but globally as well.
Increasing loss of freedoms, blatant violations of rights and laws by agents of government from top to bottom that go largely unchecked, increasingly-militarized police who respond to the slightest provocation with massive overkill, and much, much more domestically, matches perfectly with an increasing brutality and callousness in US behaviors and policies, and an increasing involvement with retaliatory actions against individuals of both foreign and domestic origins (both overt and covert) abroad and at home.
The entire world should be cheering efforts by US grassroots organizations and popular movements to rein-in the US government precisely because of this kind of shit and a thousand other examples of US government infamy both domestically & abroad. I would think it in the entire world's best interests.
Our government was written with the assumption that men are inherently flawed and will seek to increase power at the expense of others.
Checks and balances.
Absolutely true.
However, I believe the quote refers more to the general attitudes of self-respect, honesty, respect for others property, and general respect & tolerance for other's speech and views, and limits to generally-acceptable behaviors demonstrated by the people as a culture, rather than referring to the government.
In other words, people need a general common code of morals to moderate personal behavior in order to have a stable, productive, and relatively free & open society and nation.
No man-made structure of government or law can make people good to each other. That's simply human nature and will be true until humans are no longer what we'd call human anymore. That narrows the available options down quite a bit. We can look to past examples of what did not work. Some, however, would rather ignore or dismiss such examples for ideological-warfare purposes.
...the real issues of social and economic justice.
"Social Justice(tm)" and "Economic Justice(tm)" are simply different facets of redistributionist/collectivist Marxist-type ideology, a type of ideology and set of principles that have failed miserably every time they've been tried. Usually with a cost measured in tens of millions of lives.
Not big selling points. Yet, people keep thinking it "just hasn't been done quite right yet" and/or "it hasn't been marketed right".
Sorry, but power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and a powerful central government places incredible power in the hands of a very few corruptible, imperfect people susceptible to every bit and type of human weakness and capacity for evil that any random person may have. It simply never turns out well.
This geeky shit is not how real criminals operate.
Depends on your definition of "real criminals", doesn't it?
I would count many of those in the upper echelons of the Federal government and TLAs involved with illegal, quasi-legal, and mostly unconstitutional domestic surveillance and intelligence operations as far, far more criminal than three guys that ransack your place for dope money while you're at work.
The USA was founded by religious and political lunatics that were expelled from Europe as being bat shit crazy (Look up Puritans, Quakers, Shakers etc).
Yeah, the USA was founded by the very first people to arrive and try to form settlements and colonies the same way that Germany and France were founded by primitive tribesmen that migrated up from Mesopotamia and killed off/bred-out the Neanderthals. If you try to tell me that the famously-lecherous Ben Franklin was some kind of Puritan nutcase, I'll laugh in your face.
But who needs facts and stuff when there's a good America-bashing to be had?
You need to get out more, stop watching Hollywood.
*You* need to get out more and read some actual history, and stop listening to and believing everything Liberal/Progressive nutcases tell you about their "revised" history.
I agree with most of your argument, but OWS? Seriously? I am very interested where you got the impression that OWS was dedicated to individual freedom. OWS primary message is focused on class warfare, in direct contradiction to individual freedom.
Yeah, well, you've got a point.
I guess I was trying to point out something contemporary young people today are familiar with protest-wise, and make a case that the founders were the "radicals" of their day.
These days you're called radical if you simply advocate for the government to stick to the deal that's in writing (the US Constitution) and for more individual freedom, instead of some type of collectivist view that has government making choices for you.
While the modern conservatives believe that a central government should be given enough power to carry out only the bare functions of a national government... except for where drugs are concerned. And banning gay marriage. And regulation of pornography. And broadcast indecency. And funding of abstinance-only programs. And endorsing Christian religion through large taxpayer-funded displays and monuments. And restricting abortion. And about a thousand other things. The social conservatives started drowning out the political conservatives a long time ago.
That sounds more like the mainstream Republicans and.or the "compassionate Conservatism"/neocon crowd, which are really just less radical Progressives, but Progressives nonetheless, as they're attempting to promote their own social-engineering goals through force of government just as Progressives are. I've always viewed Conservatives as more of a practical, real-world version of small-"L" libertarians.
I never did understand the reasons why so many young people these days rally behind the Progressives, rather than a more libertarian view. Progressives stand for a big, authoritarian government to control everyone and everything. It's like going; "Yay for 'The Man', Less Freedom, More Government Control, and Jackboots!". I can identify more with the anarchists than I can those types.
The OP was right: the Democrat is right wing in most of the rest of the world, the Republican are Extreme Right wing.
That's because the US was formed by the "radicals" of the 1700's-1800's. The Founders were the OWS of their time. They deliberately chose to avoid the type of central-authority-heavy types of government they were familiar with in Europe that severely restricted individual freedom and kept people mostly restricted to their own socio-economic class, and came at the idea of a central government as simply a necessary evil that should be given only those powers and control over only enough wealth to carry out the bare functions of a national government, and leaving most all other governing to the States and local authorities in order to promote a diverse system where one can find a place that generally governs in a way to suit a particular individual or group.
This totally different outlook caused America to be the place and the culture that so many people around the world wanted to be like and/or immigrate to and become part of for so many decades.
So, of course, Europeans would see the US political landscape as extremist. It is. Or, at least, it was.
Again, none of the above is a subsidy. Handing half a billion dollars to a company to make solar panels, or ethanol, or windmills, or anything else that cannot possibly pay for itself, is a subsidy. Taking less of someone's money at the point of a gun (i.e., taxation) is not a subsidy.
You don't understand.
We need convenient scapegoats and enemies to set up the whole "proletariat vs bourgeois" class-warfare meme used by Socialists and Communists to such great effect in Europe and Asia, to generate enough popular anger and envy to enable a societal destabilization, eventually leading, hopefully, to an overthrow of Western Capitalism.
Making poor people poorer while demonizing the wealthy helps further this Marxist narrative while making poor people more desperate, and therefor more easily prodded into an uprising and more ready to accept a sudden change in leadership, guiding ideology, and social structure.
Wait...were we for or against Marxism this week?. I can never seem to keep it straight from week to week. We cheer on private companies like Space X and others one week, and tear down all corporations and the very concept of capitalism as a whole the next. It's quite confusing.
As to the extra rail capacity talked about in TFS, they should just form a new railroad company and lay new track.
They can call it "Taggart Transcontinental Railroad" and have the steel for the rails made by "Reardon Metals". I hear they have a nifty new alloy.
I just hope they have a plan for retaining key valuable people on the payroll. I hear there's a mysterious headhunting organization very quietly scooping up talented and experienced people.
I didn't mod your post but I can see why someone would have flagged it troll. It's a bit snarky.;-)
I just don't see any "snark" there. Maybe my "snark-ometer" needs recalibration. The only thing I see that someone could get their panties in a twist over is the mention of government-run healthcare as the vehicle for universal mandatory adoption. I simply thought it current, topical, and relevant in keeping with the recent SCOTUS decision.
If that's the case, someone needs to learn to be a little less thin-skinned. It wasn't a political bash. Trust me. Anyone familiar with my past posts would know that, when I DO come down on something, there's no doubt about it. I don't mince words, and I don't mind calling a spade a spade regardless of BS PC etiquette or delicate Liberal/Progressive sensibilities.
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I live in Chicago and recently we surpassed 250 murders; an increase of 38% from last year. In fact, there are more murders in Chicago then LA and NY. There needs to be armed troops patrolling the streets in S. Chicago to ensure the safety of the AVERAGE American of any ethnicity.
No, the Fascists in Chicago should allow citizens to legally own and carry a firearm for self-defense as is their Constitutional right. Obviously, by the very stats you cite, the only people that anti-gun laws are preventing from carrying a gun in Chicago are the law abiding citizens that are currently forced by the government to be defenseless sheep for the slaughter for any armed Chicago thug.
Strat
As one of the pocket-protector wearing R&S equip toting "nerds" who also happens to be a licensed radio amateur myself, let me ask where this inherent hostility towards the FCC comes from? Where I work (not the US) our activity is largely welcomed and serves the purpose of making sure harmful interference is kept to a minimum which is something everyone is interested in.
Is it just the tired old religious Govt-can't-do-anything-right mantra or has the FCC really been that much of a tyrant?
No hostility here. At least, not towards field personnel that are, as you say, just out there trying to make sure things work. I thought I was quite clear. If anything, I think the field-operations side is woefully under-funded and under-staffed. Nice furniture and a fat budget in the FCC head's offices though, I'm sure.
Any hostility I have is toward the political side of the Commission and for Congress for involving the FCC in such nonsense as "wardrobe malfunctions" and "Fairness Doctrines" and the like.
Although I believe that government has grown too large, there are certain functions that need to be served, and keeping order in the airwaves is one of them. Sadly however these days, far too often essential parts and functions of government go wanting while parts and functions of government not authorized under the Constitution find themselves awash in funds and staff in order to further political and "crony-capitalism" goals and agendas.
Strat
How sad; *you* don't understand that a hardware card just wants certain data and voltages on certain pins to perform a certain task and doesn't care if a Raspberry Pi, Big Blue, or an infinite number of monkeys throwing switches on the head of a pin provides it. It's just the card's chips handshaking with your hardware's chips and transferring data and instructions.
I guarantee you that the test jig at the end of this card's factory production line is *not* a full PC running gnuradio, but a logic board with PROMs loaded with the necessary data commands and the I/O hardware to put the card through it's paces. You simply don't need all the fancy GUI software and PC OS to have a hardware card like that perform certain limited, fixed functions. Especially since this card's full specs will be open.
Strat
Of course, if you fuck with a cellular network or a broadcast operators ST links, they WILL jump in their van/helicopter and track down your transmitter, and when they do, they will file all the documentation with the FCC, then all the FCC agent has to do is serve the warrant.
At least that is how things work in my third-world country (New Zealand). The big networks police their own spectrum, and the MED receive notice of interference and intervene. It would greatly surprise me if the FCC ignored an interference report with complete field testing data.
I was an active US Amateur Radio Service operator ("Ham") for many years as well as being a professional RF/radio communications/avionics/military systems and general electronics technician for about four decades, so I have some idea of which I speak.
There's an FCC monitoring station about 20 minutes away that has three guys and two vans, because one van is usually being fixed. At least, that's how it has been for many, many years, unless DHS, FCC, or somebody gave them a much bigger budget in recent years and I hadn't heard. They cover this state and portions of three others. This state alone is only about ~6,000 sq. miles less area than all of New Zealand. For "three men and a truck". You have to be quite a "sore thumb" to attract their attentions.
Ask US CB'ers (yes, there are still some left) how much of a real threat the FCC is. I'd wager more than half of CB'ers are operating in violation with things like transmitter linear power amplifiers ("footwarmers" or "kickers") boosting the CB transmitter from 4 watts to hundreds, even thousands of watts, "out-of-band" frequency transmission capability, etc. Take-downs are extremely rare, and were even at the height of the "CB craze".
Unless multiple serious complaints of interference with public and commercial services are received, not much if anything will be done outside of possibly receiving a warning letter. If continued complaints are received and you've failed to respond to the warnings, then, your case may get put into the hopper for a mobile monitoring visit. Which, naturally, may easily be three or more months, depending. Unless the violation is of a nature that doesn't require a mobile unit dispatched, where you'll likely receive a summons and/or a warrant delivered by a Federal Marshall, with possibility of arrest and equipment seizure.
Of course, if you're interfering with aircraft/police/fire/military/cell services creating a public safety hazard and endangering lives, resources will be "reallocated" to find and shut you down ASAP. Interfering with AM/FM broadcast stations and OTA TV (like running a pirate station) will also get you on an enhanced-priority list.
They've got a LOT on their plate for the manpower they've got, to put it mildly, so as long as you're not being a complete ass, not causing good people problems and endangering lives, and not attracting attention to yourself, they've got bigger fish to fry.
Now, let me qualify my statements about US FCC attitudes, in that my comments were based upon ~15+ yr-old conversations I've had with field personnel, not FCC Administration officials, and do not reflect (I'm sure) the Administration's attitudes, policies, or official practices and procedures.
But of course the one saving grace is that most of those types of field personnel at the monitoring stations and in the vans are geeks and nerds as well, and probably ham operators too. Most of these guys (not all, sadly) "get it". As usual, it's the suits that are the problem, not the guy wearing a pocket-protector with a field-strength meter in his hand.
Strat
Since it requires strapping a workstation-class PC to your back to run the SDR, which is just a teeny tiny bit non-tactical, I doubt the law enforcement agencies really give a shit, tinfoil hat boy.
Says who, anonymous-coward boy?
Only if you plan on doing development work while at the protest/demonstration.
Once you've got a fixed task like frequency-hopping then it's simply a matter of providing just enough computing power to keep the SDR on-task. A Raspberry Pi would likely be overkill, and could likely handle both the frequency-hopping and encryption.
Strat
One thing to note that I haven't seen mentioned yet is that this goes a long way towards making secure & encrypted tactical radio communications much, much more do-able and affordable for private citizens. A capability that's up till now largely been restricted to LEAs and the military.
This unit's flexibility make setting up frequency/band-hopping and encryption relatively easy. This capability in civilian hands is sure to be disliked by US TLAs and police.
It makes me wonder whether the government will attempt to outlaw certain programs and/or regulate what software is "legal" to have loaded in such a device, and/or require device capabilities be hardware-crippled/restricted to be legally sold.
After all, according to the government, it's right and proper that the government conceal it's communications and activities from the citizens, but citizens may certainly not be allowed to communicate securely without the government being able to monitor if they wish.
"The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them." - Patrick Henry
Strat
Yes, yes it will. You cause issues, FCC gets complaints, it sends in the goon squad to shut you down.
No, the FCC field operations are a joke. They have been for many years. Budget cuts have all but neutered what little FCC field-monitoring & enforcement that did exist. Many of the monitoring facilities have been shut down or turned into unmanned remote-operated stations.
They've typically got two or three men and one or two tracking vans for a multi-State-wide area. They're kept so busy tracking things like interference to first-responder/aircraft/military/commercial broadcast that most stuff gets a report filed and that's about it.
Strat
Nice to see that the Jim Taylor machine is still running and just as capable as ever to report "facts".
Of course it is! The WH holds regular briefings still, yes?
The "James Taylor political machine" in the movie was modeled after Chicago's infamous political machines after all, and Obama is a Chicago politician, a product of the ground-zero for Progressive-Democrat political machinery.
To see this for yourself, just look on CL. There are tons of ads for *paid* activists and community organizers for the left, mostly for organizations funded in whole or part through one of George Soro's network of organizations, but none for groups like the TEA Party that Pelosi claims are simply paid "astroturf".
Strat
Why, yes they must have, along with the rest of the Progressives.
Unless, of course, he was simply another Progressive Democrat doing what they did then and still do now. Mainly, fail to learn from (or just ignore) history, but that's another topic.
What was your point?
Strat
Equal pay for women
Well, good morning Mr. Van Winkle!
You'll be happy to know that, while you took that long nap, laws and regulations were passed back in the '60s and '70s, and now examples of discrimination are few and far between, not least of which is because women can sue for very large amounts of money.
enabling bio/stem-cell research
That was never illegal. There has been plenty of research going on.
Ohhh, you mean the government didn't use our hard-earned money to pay for research done on human embryo stem cells, not that it was illegal or not occurring. Sorry.
cash for clunkers
Seriously? By almost any metric that program was a miserable and costly failure. And all that to try to increase the minimum cost of a car, which only makes it harder on the struggling working-poor families to survive.
a lot of military reform (openly gay is a-ok
Using the military as lab rats for social-engineering experiments is bad defense policy.
addressing the body armor neglect controversy, the walter reed controversy
So, "addressing" to you means "covered his ass, avoided responsibility and took credit where he could"?
and ending iraq
Oh yeah, that was quite the move. The US generals, strategic military planners and commanders, and many in Congress on both sides of the aisle thought it foolish to pull out completely so soon and remove the American military presence with Iraq's government so weak, Iran stirring up trouble, and the intelligence datapoints about the coming "Arab Spring" were mounting.
So, he just has a talk with Hillary at the State Dept, and all of a sudden US relations with the Iraqi government officials plummets until they refuse to re-authorize the US to stay in Iraq. Effectively bypassing Congress and the objections coming from the military, and putting his political/ideological goals and agendas ahead of the best interests of the US.
Also there's the whole Somali pirates and Bin Laden thing..
Yeah, that was so great the way he didn't get in the way of the military and intelligence communities doing their jobs, at least in those two instances. Huzzah.
Strat
Why hasn't someone punched "Made on Earth" on any product yet...
Why so colloquial?
The stamp should read:
"Made By Hairless Apes Of Questionable Intelligence On A Primitive Planet Circling An Unremarkable Star In A Backwater Arm Of The Milky-Way Galaxy On The Fringes Of An Unremarkable Local Cluster Of Completely Average Galaxies - With Pride!"
Strat
A rightwing and a nutcase rightwing (and a growing lunatic fringe out of their heads rightwing).
This is incorrect. The US has a fundamentally different system of government based on totally different principles than European nations.
This is comparing apples to oranges.
Other governments generally start from the position that the government allows people certain amounts of freedom. The US starts from the position that people are naturally free, and we agree as a majority to consent to allow the government certain limited powers which can be altered or abolished as the people see fit.
It's the whole turning-away in the US from this basic principle of who grants who power and the understanding of why the difference from other systems means so much for human freedom that has been a major factor in what has caused increasing amounts of societal, economic, and foreign-relations problems for the US over the last 80 years or so.
Strat
I have to check you there on the "right-wing" appellation, as if it's only one political party that's responsible for this blatant bit of dirty work by the US. You *are* aware of who holds power over the State Dept, the WH, the military, US intelligence agencies, etc, right?
It's the Progressives in both political parties, the ones who believe in ever-more government size, scope,and power, and in case you thought otherwise, that increased size and power of government isn't and was never meant to be wielded strictly domestically, but globally as well.
Increasing loss of freedoms, blatant violations of rights and laws by agents of government from top to bottom that go largely unchecked, increasingly-militarized police who respond to the slightest provocation with massive overkill, and much, much more domestically, matches perfectly with an increasing brutality and callousness in US behaviors and policies, and an increasing involvement with retaliatory actions against individuals of both foreign and domestic origins (both overt and covert) abroad and at home.
The entire world should be cheering efforts by US grassroots organizations and popular movements to rein-in the US government precisely because of this kind of shit and a thousand other examples of US government infamy both domestically & abroad. I would think it in the entire world's best interests.
Strat
Our government was written with the assumption that men are inherently flawed and will seek to increase power at the expense of others.
Checks and balances.
Absolutely true.
However, I believe the quote refers more to the general attitudes of self-respect, honesty, respect for others property, and general respect & tolerance for other's speech and views, and limits to generally-acceptable behaviors demonstrated by the people as a culture, rather than referring to the government.
In other words, people need a general common code of morals to moderate personal behavior in order to have a stable, productive, and relatively free & open society and nation.
No man-made structure of government or law can make people good to each other. That's simply human nature and will be true until humans are no longer what we'd call human anymore. That narrows the available options down quite a bit. We can look to past examples of what did not work. Some, however, would rather ignore or dismiss such examples for ideological-warfare purposes.
Strat
The only workable solution is for you to be a better person.
I'll just leave this here.
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." - John Adams
Strat
...the real issues of social and economic justice.
"Social Justice(tm)" and "Economic Justice(tm)" are simply different facets of redistributionist/collectivist Marxist-type ideology, a type of ideology and set of principles that have failed miserably every time they've been tried. Usually with a cost measured in tens of millions of lives.
Not big selling points. Yet, people keep thinking it "just hasn't been done quite right yet" and/or "it hasn't been marketed right".
Sorry, but power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and a powerful central government places incredible power in the hands of a very few corruptible, imperfect people susceptible to every bit and type of human weakness and capacity for evil that any random person may have. It simply never turns out well.
Strat
This geeky shit is not how real criminals operate.
Depends on your definition of "real criminals", doesn't it?
I would count many of those in the upper echelons of the Federal government and TLAs involved with illegal, quasi-legal, and mostly unconstitutional domestic surveillance and intelligence operations as far, far more criminal than three guys that ransack your place for dope money while you're at work.
But, that's just me.
Strat
Actually, no.
The USA was founded by religious and political lunatics that were expelled from Europe as being bat shit crazy (Look up Puritans, Quakers, Shakers etc).
Yeah, the USA was founded by the very first people to arrive and try to form settlements and colonies the same way that Germany and France were founded by primitive tribesmen that migrated up from Mesopotamia and killed off/bred-out the Neanderthals. If you try to tell me that the famously-lecherous Ben Franklin was some kind of Puritan nutcase, I'll laugh in your face.
But who needs facts and stuff when there's a good America-bashing to be had?
You need to get out more, stop watching Hollywood.
*You* need to get out more and read some actual history, and stop listening to and believing everything Liberal/Progressive nutcases tell you about their "revised" history.
Strat
I agree with most of your argument, but OWS? Seriously? I am very interested where you got the impression that OWS was dedicated to individual freedom. OWS primary message is focused on class warfare, in direct contradiction to individual freedom.
Yeah, well, you've got a point.
I guess I was trying to point out something contemporary young people today are familiar with protest-wise, and make a case that the founders were the "radicals" of their day.
These days you're called radical if you simply advocate for the government to stick to the deal that's in writing (the US Constitution) and for more individual freedom, instead of some type of collectivist view that has government making choices for you.
Strat
While the modern conservatives believe that a central government should be given enough power to carry out only the bare functions of a national government... except for where drugs are concerned. And banning gay marriage. And regulation of pornography. And broadcast indecency. And funding of abstinance-only programs. And endorsing Christian religion through large taxpayer-funded displays and monuments. And restricting abortion. And about a thousand other things. The social conservatives started drowning out the political conservatives a long time ago.
That sounds more like the mainstream Republicans and.or the "compassionate Conservatism"/neocon crowd, which are really just less radical Progressives, but Progressives nonetheless, as they're attempting to promote their own social-engineering goals through force of government just as Progressives are. I've always viewed Conservatives as more of a practical, real-world version of small-"L" libertarians.
I never did understand the reasons why so many young people these days rally behind the Progressives, rather than a more libertarian view. Progressives stand for a big, authoritarian government to control everyone and everything. It's like going; "Yay for 'The Man', Less Freedom, More Government Control, and Jackboots!". I can identify more with the anarchists than I can those types.
Strat
The OP was right: the Democrat is right wing in most of the rest of the world, the Republican are Extreme Right wing.
That's because the US was formed by the "radicals" of the 1700's-1800's. The Founders were the OWS of their time. They deliberately chose to avoid the type of central-authority-heavy types of government they were familiar with in Europe that severely restricted individual freedom and kept people mostly restricted to their own socio-economic class, and came at the idea of a central government as simply a necessary evil that should be given only those powers and control over only enough wealth to carry out the bare functions of a national government, and leaving most all other governing to the States and local authorities in order to promote a diverse system where one can find a place that generally governs in a way to suit a particular individual or group.
This totally different outlook caused America to be the place and the culture that so many people around the world wanted to be like and/or immigrate to and become part of for so many decades.
So, of course, Europeans would see the US political landscape as extremist. It is. Or, at least, it was.
Not so much anymore.
More's the pity, too.
Strat
Again, none of the above is a subsidy. Handing half a billion dollars to a company to make solar panels, or ethanol, or windmills, or anything else that cannot possibly pay for itself, is a subsidy. Taking less of someone's money at the point of a gun (i.e., taxation) is not a subsidy.
You don't understand.
We need convenient scapegoats and enemies to set up the whole "proletariat vs bourgeois" class-warfare meme used by Socialists and Communists to such great effect in Europe and Asia, to generate enough popular anger and envy to enable a societal destabilization, eventually leading, hopefully, to an overthrow of Western Capitalism.
Making poor people poorer while demonizing the wealthy helps further this Marxist narrative while making poor people more desperate, and therefor more easily prodded into an uprising and more ready to accept a sudden change in leadership, guiding ideology, and social structure.
Wait...were we for or against Marxism this week?. I can never seem to keep it straight from week to week. We cheer on private companies like Space X and others one week, and tear down all corporations and the very concept of capitalism as a whole the next. It's quite confusing.
As to the extra rail capacity talked about in TFS, they should just form a new railroad company and lay new track.
They can call it "Taggart Transcontinental Railroad" and have the steel for the rails made by "Reardon Metals". I hear they have a nifty new alloy.
I just hope they have a plan for retaining key valuable people on the payroll. I hear there's a mysterious headhunting organization very quietly scooping up talented and experienced people.
Who is John Galt?
Strat
I didn't mod your post but I can see why someone would have flagged it troll. It's a bit snarky. ;-)
I just don't see any "snark" there. Maybe my "snark-ometer" needs recalibration. The only thing I see that someone could get their panties in a twist over is the mention of government-run healthcare as the vehicle for universal mandatory adoption. I simply thought it current, topical, and relevant in keeping with the recent SCOTUS decision.
If that's the case, someone needs to learn to be a little less thin-skinned. It wasn't a political bash. Trust me. Anyone familiar with my past posts would know that, when I DO come down on something, there's no doubt about it. I don't mince words, and I don't mind calling a spade a spade regardless of BS PC etiquette or delicate Liberal/Progressive sensibilities.
This ain't that.
Strat
This NAVSOP system + Raspberry PI + Quadrotor + Semtex = Autonomous Flying Bomb! On a budget!
Fun for all rages!
FTFY
Strat
t will be fine once we figure out how to Jailbreak ourselves.
Just beware of that "early termination" clause for unauthorized access!! I'd hate for my body chemistry to "get bricked", as it were. ;)
Strat