Or the system presents the cashier with a picture of the numberplate it cannot read, and the cashier presses an override button when he recognises a foreign plate. Imposing a delay of maybe 15 seconds on foreigners.
Brilliant!
Then all uninsured motorists need do is find station attendant(s) that will press that "override" button for a couple quid!
Personally, I think Brits should just begin en-mass the burning down of government buildings. Starting with Parliament and Ten Downing. Maybe then we here in the US would find a set and burn down Congress and the WH, as should have happened ~60 years or more ago.
there is some merit in most theories of distributive justice
No, there is not. Never has been, and never will be. At least, as far as those that must suffer under such ideologies are concerned.
The Utopian schemes of re-distribution of the wealth...are as visionary and impractical as those which vest all property in the Crown. - Samuel Adams
I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. - Benjamin Franklin
The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not. - Thomas Jefferson
You'll excuse me if I take their opinions over yours. Opinions such as yours have resulted in things like the USSR and Mao's China, among just a few similar horrors of history, whereas theirs led to the freest, most advanced & powerful nation on the planet, and provided the highest standard of living for it's people ever dreamed possible, and even put the first human on the moon.
Anyone who is smart enough to do STEM is also smart enough to get an MBA for a lot less work, and have 10x the earnings potential.
The reason that is true is that manufacturing, energy production, and heavy industry in the US is nearly dead, and has been intentionally socially-engineered by the government over the last 60 years to reach this point. Progressive forces have been working to consistently move wealth-generation, in the form of manufacturing, energy production, and heavy industry, out of the US since the late-'60s.
They see wealth as a limited, zero-sum game. In order for someone to get rich, they feel that someone else must get poorer. This is complete bunk, as wealth can be created through Capitalism, which they perceive as a dirty word. Instead, they seek "financial justice" by moving the US's ability to generate wealth and jobs overseas to poorer countries that they see as having been "robbed" by the US's wealth. They see the world as one world-state, and with that concept, different areas of the world treated like different regions of a single nation...manufacturing in the China/Indonesia region, petroleum resources from the Middle East and Russia, "intellectual property" business in the US, and so on.
They know that such narrowing of Western nation's economic and industrial bases, and with such narrowing and limiting, the abilities to support themselves, will lead to economic turmoil and eventual collapses of Western nations' economies and their governments. This is when they step in to offer "rescue", if only that nation will give up it's sovereignty.
This is how they plan to bring about the "NWO".
STEM jobs aren't coming back to Western nations unless there is a large systemic political upheaval and a total discrediting of the Progressive ideology, as happened once in the early 1900s, and spurred the switch from calling their ideology "Progressive" to "Liberal" in order to escape righteous public ridicule of their already-tried-and-failed ideas. Now, they're trying to distance themselves from the term "Liberal" and attempting to re-brand themselves once again as "Progressives". You'd think they'd have enough imagination to think up a new term, but oh well.
Why would anyone spend resources and time to learn a dead & dying (in the Western world) trade/skill? It's not like steel plants or other heavy industry will ever be coming back.
So say I. On the other hand, the conservatard/Republican party and their Tea Party yokels seem to like to say so every day. So I was pointing out how un-christian those assholes really are.
Strange...Progressive Democrats have held power for significantly more of the post-WW2 era than Republicans have. Yet, it's all those dirty conservative Republicans that are un-Christian?
How about more accurately stating that many politicians are un-Christian?
By the way, if you believe in the ideas and concepts contained in the quotes below, *you* might be a conservative! And if you disagree with the quotes below, you may be living in the wrong country, or at least may be in for a miserable and frustrating life living in the US, as the overwhelming majority of Americans agree with/believe in those ideas and concepts expressed in the quotes below.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. - John Adams
The Utopian schemes of re-distribution of the wealth...are as visionary and impractical as those which vest all property in the Crown. - Samuel Adams
The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale. - Thomas Jefferson
The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases. - Thomas Jefferson
If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy. - Thomas Jefferson
Paramilitary police is not about arresting people, it is about keeping the population terrified of the government. The point is to show people that the government can send a tactical team into any home at any time, so that people will be afraid to take a stand against the government.
So, then, wouldn't it be every citizen's patriotic duty to make certain that, every once in a while, a couple of these SWAT teams never make it back to their van, just to make sure that the government remains in fear of We the People?
But this is how people came ot the new world and how slavery started in the south.
Actually, slavery was officially established in Virginia in 1654, when Anthony Johnson (a black man) convinced a court that his servant (also a black man), John Casor, was his for life.
I imagine eventual space colonization will proceed roughly following the same pattern other colonizations to distant lands has proceeded here on Earth. That is, the first explorations will be done by government and privately funded explorers/expeditions, then a mix of government-related (military, cartographers, etc) and large commercial interests to start mapping and searching for and starting to exploit natural resources.
Then, as the larger commercial interests reduce costs and make conditions safer, more and smaller business interests, ending with families and individuals, will make the journey to take advantage of the huge opportunities for wealth and freedom inherent to a new land or world.
Because joblessness at 4 year lows, Multiple dictators either killed or unseated, american buisinesses going from bankrupt to record profits, the stock market up higher than when he took office and taking a negetive GDP to positive clearly spells out his failures right?
Ah, the infamous "Ferris Bueller" political strategy!
Find a parade, jump up on the big lead float, and claim credit for the parade!
Oh, you mean we weren't supposed to understand that?
Going by your posts strat that radical goose stepping thing is exactly your position.
Sorry.
Tree.
Barking.
You're doing it up the wrong one.
I'm more small-"L" libertarian.
Just to demonstrate, I will now unilaterally impose my political will on you.
I shall FORCE you to...
Well...nothing at all.
Take THAT! Muaahahaha!
Did that make you feel...dirty?:P
As long as others respect my rights and don't infringe upon them or expect me to pay for things they want for themselves, they can do whatever they please.
And please note that having small-"L" libertarian views doesn't mean I favor lawless anarchy. Small government =/= NO government and/or anarchy.
Awfully hard to "goose step" without a big enough central government to support "goose-steppers". "Goose stepping" implies Fascism, which is "large government" (as are all authoritarian/totalitarian/communist/socialist governments) and which is anathema to libertarian views.
All totalitarian, police-state, tyrannical governments necessarily exhibit large and powerful central governments. I'm against large and powerful central governments.
[s] So yeah, other than all my posts being directly in opposition to tyranny and large central governments and in favor of the maximum amount of individual freedom possible while maintaining a functioning society, I'm a "goose-stepper" all right. [/s]
Do people like you just pull crap out of your ass like this ALL the time? Or is it just whenever politics comes up that your critical thinking ability zeroes-out?
More like firebombing the Library of Alexandria. Would you be OK with that?
If there's only 6 degrees or less of separation from anything at all to do with Rupert Murdoch, News Corp., or especially Fox News, I'm sure the answer for many would be "Where's the matches & gasoline?".
Fox News has it's brain washed followers. CNN has it's brain washed followers. Truly free and open minded people have the ability to watch both (and admit it), put the various pieces together and come up with their own opinion. I myself like and hate both Fox and CNN. You on the other hand, if I had to guess, you're in with the CNN followers, but that's just my guess.
Is this your coming out of the closet and declaring yourself a conservative?
[s]Yes, because obviously anyone who says they'd even consider comparing and assessing information from sources other than those who are biased solidly to the Left politically are obviously radical, goose-stepping, book-burning, racist neocons out to turn the USA and then the world into a White ultra-Christian Theocracy secretly controlled by the Jews.[/s]
You must either dismiss these people as inconsequential, or acknowledge that they impact the national debate.
You forgot the apparently most popular option;
"It influences elections and lawmaking in a direction I approve of so I don't care, even if it harms those poor people these policies and laws are supposedly designed to help. The ends justify the means"
The ends justify the means, just as mods abuse the system to mod-down that with which they disagree, but cannot argue against. It's more important to some people to punish those they disagree with and suppress opposing views, even if it damages things for everyone including themselves.
Destroying the fabric of their society in trying to assure that "the wrong lizard doesn't get in".
I get where you're coming from. We are rapidly approaching the reverse of the above where those whom are wholly reliant upon the government for their subsistence will continue to vote to retain (and in fact, increase) that subsidy without regard for the financial feesibility of such a vote.
What needs to be fixed is the income tax system. What is it up to now, 46%? 47%? 48%? More? That pay NO income tax, or even receive "refunds" that exceed what they've paid, effectively making it another entitlement payment. They must be made to understand and appreciate, in a very direct and effective way, that they cannot just vote themselves "free stuff" without cost or consequence.
Either the tax structure must change so that most of those people pay something in income taxes, or a system set up that allows people in that 48%(?) to choose whether to pay some minimum amount/rate and still vote, or choose to keep their tax-free status and give up voting until such time as they do contribute something. Participation in the system of government is not all one-way, citizens also have responsibilities as well as rights and privileges
"we've allowed the politicians to poison the well with too many policies, taxes, regulations, and laws"
actually we just moved manufacturing to places where there are no policies, taxes, regulations or laws, so you can, for example, produce poisoned baby food and kill a bunch of kids, and nobody gets in trouble for it.
if people want the US to become like China, well my question is this - why dont you just move to china? its 'adam smith on steroids' according to hedge fund manager Mitt Romney.
Strawman argument is strawman. Less government regulation/control/= NO government regulation/control. Stop with the partisan political demagoguery.
If I want to live in a China-like country all I have to do is wait, as that's the direction the US is going, while China is moving in the opposite direction. More and more government control moves the US closer and closer to total government control, if not ownership, of all property and wealth, which is what Communism (and Socialism) is all about. The US *is* becoming more like China each time government size, control, and power is increased.
China has been moving towards the direction of Capitalism because China's leadership is desperate to create higher living standards for their huge masses of citizens existing in abject poverty. China well knows that Capitalism has a proven history of working like no other system yet invented for raising masses of people out of poverty and raising everyone's standard and quality of life while increasing total wealth for everyone. No other system has raised as many people out of poverty as Capitalism, or even come close.
Not just because of the H1Bs. Read about recent IBM layoffs of US workers.
Face reality, tech companies are offshoring US jobs, and inshoring visa workers, and fast as they possibly can. There is no sign that US employers will ever let up.
Unemployment of US STEM workers is way up, and salaries are down.
For US workers, avoiding STEM careers should be a no brainer.
This.
This is what happens when the US Government encourages or even drives manufacturing, energy, and heavy industry to leave the US in favor of "intellectual property" businesses, "service" businesses, and the "media/content" industry.
Manufacturing, energy, and heavy industry which tend to employ large numbers of STEM workers, has been fleeing the US (or dying here) for decades because of the steadily-increasing amounts of hostile-to-business/energy/manufacturing government laws, taxes, and policies that have been enacted.
We've allowed the politicians to poison the well with too many policies, taxes, regulations, and laws based around unrealistic, impractical ideas and failed Keynesian economics, in an effort by those politicians to gain more personal power, wealth, and control over people and their private property & wealth, so industry, business, investment, and wealth flees, taking jobs, national resource security, and their wealth-creation abilities with them, thus leaving the US and it's citizens poorer and less secure as a sovereign nation as a result, not to mention the losses to individual freedoms and lowering of living standards for most.
I've been watching things since the '70s going downhill rapidly. That's when Nixon changed the US Dollar to a fiat currency from a gold-based currency. That's when the government really started expanding in size and scope with the ability to print money, and with it, corresponding increases to levels and blatancy of corruption in government.
I think government is very much like a game of "telephone", where a message is passed down a line of people, each whispering it into the ear of the next person. By the time the last person relays the message, it usually bears scant resemblance to the original. The citizens are the ones "sending" the message of what they want government to do, the people in the "line" are the various government departments, bureaucracies, etc.
The mangled, warped message that one receives at the "listening" end when playing "telephone", is the government doing something far different than what the citizens said they wanted. Politicians use this "telephone" effect to obfuscate and hide their corruption and ideological goals. The bigger they can make the government, the more cover they have to advance their agendas and increase their power and wealth, as well as increase government control over the citizens.
Secondly, are you not aware there's other news networks besides Fox News? Everyone knows their coverage is biased towards the Republicans. If you don't like that, go somewhere else, like MSNBC, CNN, etc.
[s] But we have a right not to be offended or have our views challenged by other people's views we don't agree with! [/s]
Arrested by who? Their peers who do not want to be videotaped either?
By metacops, naturally.
But who metas the metacops?
Citizens who start organizing multiple-person, coordinated, long range sniper rifle and IED attacks on complicit judges and top police/security officials, torching of police stations and infrastructure like police/SWAT armories, motor-pools, helicopters/helipads, aircraft and police vehicle refueling equipment & facilities, etc, as well as taking out individual off-duty cops and their families at home. They refuse to police themselves, so we are therefor forced to do it for them.
It used to be the case that if I were to see a cop in trouble (being beaten, shot, stabbed, etc), I'd do whatever I could to help. These days, I'll turn my back and walk away. They are no longer "protectors", they are now simply "enforcers", and I have no sympathy at all for the ill-fate of enforcers.
You know...we shouldn't be paying such high prices for this in the US.
We have not used that much oil this year for heating oil, due to the mild winter in the NE.
We also have lots of oil coming in domestically...trouble is, fucking oil companies are taking what should server as a bit of a surplus and selling it to China and everywhere else, for more profit, and hence raises OUR prices due to this artificially created shortage.
We should try to mandate that more domestically drawn oil is kept for domestic use!!
In the meantime in addition to looking to generate new resources for energy, for God's sake, start giving out leases for oil in the Gulf again....let the fscking pipeline from Canada go through...start drilling for more oil that is being discovered domestically in the US.
Hell, I've heard rumors that there is oil in the Dakotas and area enough to supply the US with oil for decades....
One of the biggest reasons for high oil, food, and other prices is that the value of the US Dollar is being systematically destroyed by the Progressives who have seized power over the Federal Reserve and are doing almost everything they can to cause the US Dollar to collapse. They need a national financial collapse and the chaos and violence it will create to seize power.
Back in the 1942, two dimes would buy a gallon of gas. The same two dimes (with 1940s levels of silver content) would still buy a gallon of gas today at current silver prices. The only thing that's changed is the value of the US Dollar. This has been one of the central pillars of the Progressive plan from almost the very beginning, along with the destruction and/or export of nearly all manufacturing and energy production to prevent as much wealth & value from being added to the US economy as possible.
This is how the US economy, followed shortly thereafter by the Republic, will be toppled.
The General Atomics MQ-1 Predator carries 2 Hellfire air to ground missiles and is much smaller than any figher plane in use today. Its maximum takeoff weight is only 1,020 kg compared to 19,200 kg for an F-16. It has a 115 HP engine and cruises at 81-103 MPH for 24 hours at a time. That means that it can wait for an ideal time to strike while a fighter would run out of fuel. It will also be far harder to detect for an ordinary observer due its small size, quiet engine and slow speed.
All true, except the MQ-1 is not *autonomous*. It requires a remote pilot. Autonomous drones were the topic of this thread's discussion.
Slashdot Mirror
Or the system presents the cashier with a picture of the numberplate it cannot read, and the cashier presses an override button when he recognises a foreign plate. Imposing a delay of maybe 15 seconds on foreigners.
Brilliant!
Then all uninsured motorists need do is find station attendant(s) that will press that "override" button for a couple quid!
Personally, I think Brits should just begin en-mass the burning down of government buildings. Starting with Parliament and Ten Downing. Maybe then we here in the US would find a set and burn down Congress and the WH, as should have happened ~60 years or more ago.
Strat
Holy shit. Glen Beck is on /.
There are two "n"'s in Glenn. :)
Strat
Opinions such as yours have resulted in things like the USSR and Mao's China, for just two examples among many similar horrors of history...
Oops.
there is some merit in most theories of distributive justice
No, there is not. Never has been, and never will be. At least, as far as those that must suffer under such ideologies are concerned.
The Utopian schemes of re-distribution of the wealth...are as visionary and impractical as those which vest all property in the Crown. - Samuel Adams
I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. - Benjamin Franklin
The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not. - Thomas Jefferson
You'll excuse me if I take their opinions over yours. Opinions such as yours have resulted in things like the USSR and Mao's China, among just a few similar horrors of history, whereas theirs led to the freest, most advanced & powerful nation on the planet, and provided the highest standard of living for it's people ever dreamed possible, and even put the first human on the moon.
Strat
It's simple supply and demand.
Anyone who is smart enough to do STEM is also smart enough to get an MBA for a lot less work, and have 10x the earnings potential.
The reason that is true is that manufacturing, energy production, and heavy industry in the US is nearly dead, and has been intentionally socially-engineered by the government over the last 60 years to reach this point. Progressive forces have been working to consistently move wealth-generation, in the form of manufacturing, energy production, and heavy industry, out of the US since the late-'60s.
They see wealth as a limited, zero-sum game. In order for someone to get rich, they feel that someone else must get poorer. This is complete bunk, as wealth can be created through Capitalism, which they perceive as a dirty word. Instead, they seek "financial justice" by moving the US's ability to generate wealth and jobs overseas to poorer countries that they see as having been "robbed" by the US's wealth. They see the world as one world-state, and with that concept, different areas of the world treated like different regions of a single nation...manufacturing in the China/Indonesia region, petroleum resources from the Middle East and Russia, "intellectual property" business in the US, and so on.
They know that such narrowing of Western nation's economic and industrial bases, and with such narrowing and limiting, the abilities to support themselves, will lead to economic turmoil and eventual collapses of Western nations' economies and their governments. This is when they step in to offer "rescue", if only that nation will give up it's sovereignty.
This is how they plan to bring about the "NWO".
STEM jobs aren't coming back to Western nations unless there is a large systemic political upheaval and a total discrediting of the Progressive ideology, as happened once in the early 1900s, and spurred the switch from calling their ideology "Progressive" to "Liberal" in order to escape righteous public ridicule of their already-tried-and-failed ideas. Now, they're trying to distance themselves from the term "Liberal" and attempting to re-brand themselves once again as "Progressives". You'd think they'd have enough imagination to think up a new term, but oh well.
Why would anyone spend resources and time to learn a dead & dying (in the Western world) trade/skill? It's not like steel plants or other heavy industry will ever be coming back.
Strat
neither does steve job's rectum, but that's never stopped an apple fan.
Rectum!?!? Damned near killed 'em!!!
Oh, wait...
(Sorry, couldn't resist.)
Strat
People that argue predominantly by quoting the words of people long dead do not have the vision necessary to reform a government - NoOnInParticular
People that counter a viewpoint with nothing more than attacks on the way the viewpoint was presented will never convince anyone of anything. - Strat
So say I. On the other hand, the conservatard/Republican party and their Tea Party yokels seem to like to say so every day. So I was pointing out how un-christian those assholes really are.
Strange...Progressive Democrats have held power for significantly more of the post-WW2 era than Republicans have. Yet, it's all those dirty conservative Republicans that are un-Christian?
How about more accurately stating that many politicians are un-Christian?
By the way, if you believe in the ideas and concepts contained in the quotes below, *you* might be a conservative! And if you disagree with the quotes below, you may be living in the wrong country, or at least may be in for a miserable and frustrating life living in the US, as the overwhelming majority of Americans agree with/believe in those ideas and concepts expressed in the quotes below.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. - John Adams
The Utopian schemes of re-distribution of the wealth...are as visionary and impractical as those which vest all property in the Crown. - Samuel Adams
The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale. - Thomas Jefferson
The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases. - Thomas Jefferson
If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of taking care of them, they must become happy. - Thomas Jefferson
Strat
Paramilitary police is not about arresting people, it is about keeping the population terrified of the government. The point is to show people that the government can send a tactical team into any home at any time, so that people will be afraid to take a stand against the government.
So, then, wouldn't it be every citizen's patriotic duty to make certain that, every once in a while, a couple of these SWAT teams never make it back to their van, just to make sure that the government remains in fear of We the People?
Strat
But this is how people came ot the new world and how slavery started in the south.
Actually, slavery was officially established in Virginia in 1654, when Anthony Johnson (a black man) convinced a court that his servant (also a black man), John Casor, was his for life.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Johnson_(American_Colonial)#Significance
I imagine eventual space colonization will proceed roughly following the same pattern other colonizations to distant lands has proceeded here on Earth. That is, the first explorations will be done by government and privately funded explorers/expeditions, then a mix of government-related (military, cartographers, etc) and large commercial interests to start mapping and searching for and starting to exploit natural resources.
Then, as the larger commercial interests reduce costs and make conditions safer, more and smaller business interests, ending with families and individuals, will make the journey to take advantage of the huge opportunities for wealth and freedom inherent to a new land or world.
Strat
Now-a-days it's used for stuff it really shouldn't be.
That's because loose lips sink dictatorships as well as the sea-going kind.
Strat
Because joblessness at 4 year lows, Multiple dictators either killed or unseated, american buisinesses going from bankrupt to record profits, the stock market up higher than when he took office and taking a negetive GDP to positive clearly spells out his failures right?
Ah, the infamous "Ferris Bueller" political strategy!
Find a parade, jump up on the big lead float, and claim credit for the parade!
Oh, you mean we weren't supposed to understand that?
My bad.
Strat
Going by your posts strat that radical goose stepping thing is exactly your position.
Sorry.
Tree.
Barking.
You're doing it up the wrong one.
I'm more small-"L" libertarian.
Just to demonstrate, I will now unilaterally impose my political will on you.
I shall FORCE you to...
Well...nothing at all.
Take THAT! Muaahahaha!
Did that make you feel...dirty? :P
As long as others respect my rights and don't infringe upon them or expect me to pay for things they want for themselves, they can do whatever they please.
And please note that having small-"L" libertarian views doesn't mean I favor lawless anarchy. Small government =/= NO government and/or anarchy.
Awfully hard to "goose step" without a big enough central government to support "goose-steppers". "Goose stepping" implies Fascism, which is "large government" (as are all authoritarian/totalitarian/communist/socialist governments) and which is anathema to libertarian views.
All totalitarian, police-state, tyrannical governments necessarily exhibit large and powerful central governments. I'm against large and powerful central governments.
[s] So yeah, other than all my posts being directly in opposition to tyranny and large central governments and in favor of the maximum amount of individual freedom possible while maintaining a functioning society, I'm a "goose-stepper" all right. [/s]
Do people like you just pull crap out of your ass like this ALL the time? Or is it just whenever politics comes up that your critical thinking ability zeroes-out?
Strat
More like firebombing the Library of Alexandria. Would you be OK with that?
If there's only 6 degrees or less of separation from anything at all to do with Rupert Murdoch, News Corp., or especially Fox News, I'm sure the answer for many would be "Where's the matches & gasoline?".
Strat
[s]Yes, because obviously anyone who says they'd even consider comparing and assessing information from sources other than those who are biased solidly to the Left politically are obviously radical, goose-stepping, book-burning, racist neocons out to turn the USA and then the world into a White ultra-Christian Theocracy secretly controlled by the Jews.[/s]
Strat
You must either dismiss these people as inconsequential, or acknowledge that they impact the national debate.
You forgot the apparently most popular option;
"It influences elections and lawmaking in a direction I approve of so I don't care, even if it harms those poor people these policies and laws are supposedly designed to help. The ends justify the means"
The ends justify the means, just as mods abuse the system to mod-down that with which they disagree, but cannot argue against. It's more important to some people to punish those they disagree with and suppress opposing views, even if it damages things for everyone including themselves.
Destroying the fabric of their society in trying to assure that "the wrong lizard doesn't get in".
Silly humans.
Strat
I get where you're coming from. We are rapidly approaching the reverse of the above where those whom are wholly reliant upon the government for their subsistence will continue to vote to retain (and in fact, increase) that subsidy without regard for the financial feesibility of such a vote.
What needs to be fixed is the income tax system. What is it up to now, 46%? 47%? 48%? More? That pay NO income tax, or even receive "refunds" that exceed what they've paid, effectively making it another entitlement payment. They must be made to understand and appreciate, in a very direct and effective way, that they cannot just vote themselves "free stuff" without cost or consequence.
Either the tax structure must change so that most of those people pay something in income taxes, or a system set up that allows people in that 48%(?) to choose whether to pay some minimum amount/rate and still vote, or choose to keep their tax-free status and give up voting until such time as they do contribute something. Participation in the system of government is not all one-way, citizens also have responsibilities as well as rights and privileges
TANSTAAFL
Strat
The Internet doesn't kill people. People kill people.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xC03hmS1Brk
Strat
Strawman argument is strawman. Less government regulation/control /= NO government regulation/control. Stop with the partisan political demagoguery.
If I want to live in a China-like country all I have to do is wait, as that's the direction the US is going, while China is moving in the opposite direction. More and more government control moves the US closer and closer to total government control, if not ownership, of all property and wealth, which is what Communism (and Socialism) is all about. The US *is* becoming more like China each time government size, control, and power is increased.
China has been moving towards the direction of Capitalism because China's leadership is desperate to create higher living standards for their huge masses of citizens existing in abject poverty. China well knows that Capitalism has a proven history of working like no other system yet invented for raising masses of people out of poverty and raising everyone's standard and quality of life while increasing total wealth for everyone. No other system has raised as many people out of poverty as Capitalism, or even come close.
Strat
Not just because of the H1Bs. Read about recent IBM layoffs of US workers.
Face reality, tech companies are offshoring US jobs, and inshoring visa workers, and fast as they possibly can. There is no sign that US employers will ever let up.
Unemployment of US STEM workers is way up, and salaries are down.
For US workers, avoiding STEM careers should be a no brainer.
This.
This is what happens when the US Government encourages or even drives manufacturing, energy, and heavy industry to leave the US in favor of "intellectual property" businesses, "service" businesses, and the "media/content" industry.
Manufacturing, energy, and heavy industry which tend to employ large numbers of STEM workers, has been fleeing the US (or dying here) for decades because of the steadily-increasing amounts of hostile-to-business/energy/manufacturing government laws, taxes, and policies that have been enacted.
We've allowed the politicians to poison the well with too many policies, taxes, regulations, and laws based around unrealistic, impractical ideas and failed Keynesian economics, in an effort by those politicians to gain more personal power, wealth, and control over people and their private property & wealth, so industry, business, investment, and wealth flees, taking jobs, national resource security, and their wealth-creation abilities with them, thus leaving the US and it's citizens poorer and less secure as a sovereign nation as a result, not to mention the losses to individual freedoms and lowering of living standards for most.
I've been watching things since the '70s going downhill rapidly. That's when Nixon changed the US Dollar to a fiat currency from a gold-based currency. That's when the government really started expanding in size and scope with the ability to print money, and with it, corresponding increases to levels and blatancy of corruption in government.
I think government is very much like a game of "telephone", where a message is passed down a line of people, each whispering it into the ear of the next person. By the time the last person relays the message, it usually bears scant resemblance to the original. The citizens are the ones "sending" the message of what they want government to do, the people in the "line" are the various government departments, bureaucracies, etc.
The mangled, warped message that one receives at the "listening" end when playing "telephone", is the government doing something far different than what the citizens said they wanted. Politicians use this "telephone" effect to obfuscate and hide their corruption and ideological goals. The bigger they can make the government, the more cover they have to advance their agendas and increase their power and wealth, as well as increase government control over the citizens.
Strat
Secondly, are you not aware there's other news networks besides Fox News? Everyone knows their coverage is biased towards the Republicans. If you don't like that, go somewhere else, like MSNBC, CNN, etc.
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But we have a right not to be offended or have our views challenged by other people's views we don't agree with!
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Strat
So, you used to fantasize that you're a superhero, but now you've an evil supervillian?
You're more than welcome to be a sheep and bend over if you like. Just keep your "baaa-ing" to yourself. You only annoy real people that way.
Strat
Citizens who start organizing multiple-person, coordinated, long range sniper rifle and IED attacks on complicit judges and top police/security officials, torching of police stations and infrastructure like police/SWAT armories, motor-pools, helicopters/helipads, aircraft and police vehicle refueling equipment & facilities, etc, as well as taking out individual off-duty cops and their families at home. They refuse to police themselves, so we are therefor forced to do it for them.
It used to be the case that if I were to see a cop in trouble (being beaten, shot, stabbed, etc), I'd do whatever I could to help. These days, I'll turn my back and walk away. They are no longer "protectors", they are now simply "enforcers", and I have no sympathy at all for the ill-fate of enforcers.
Strat
You know...we shouldn't be paying such high prices for this in the US.
We have not used that much oil this year for heating oil, due to the mild winter in the NE.
We also have lots of oil coming in domestically...trouble is, fucking oil companies are taking what should server as a bit of a surplus and selling it to China and everywhere else, for more profit, and hence raises OUR prices due to this artificially created shortage.
We should try to mandate that more domestically drawn oil is kept for domestic use!!
In the meantime in addition to looking to generate new resources for energy, for God's sake, start giving out leases for oil in the Gulf again....let the fscking pipeline from Canada go through...start drilling for more oil that is being discovered domestically in the US.
Hell, I've heard rumors that there is oil in the Dakotas and area enough to supply the US with oil for decades....
One of the biggest reasons for high oil, food, and other prices is that the value of the US Dollar is being systematically destroyed by the Progressives who have seized power over the Federal Reserve and are doing almost everything they can to cause the US Dollar to collapse. They need a national financial collapse and the chaos and violence it will create to seize power.
Back in the 1942, two dimes would buy a gallon of gas. The same two dimes (with 1940s levels of silver content) would still buy a gallon of gas today at current silver prices. The only thing that's changed is the value of the US Dollar. This has been one of the central pillars of the Progressive plan from almost the very beginning, along with the destruction and/or export of nearly all manufacturing and energy production to prevent as much wealth & value from being added to the US economy as possible.
This is how the US economy, followed shortly thereafter by the Republic, will be toppled.
Strat
The General Atomics MQ-1 Predator carries 2 Hellfire air to ground missiles and is much smaller than any figher plane in use today. Its maximum takeoff weight is only 1,020 kg compared to 19,200 kg for an F-16. It has a 115 HP engine and cruises at 81-103 MPH for 24 hours at a time. That means that it can wait for an ideal time to strike while a fighter would run out of fuel. It will also be far harder to detect for an ordinary observer due its small size, quiet engine and slow speed.
All true, except the MQ-1 is not *autonomous*. It requires a remote pilot. Autonomous drones were the topic of this thread's discussion.
Strat