Or just criminalize them? I really don't want to pay more for health care because of other people's stupidity.
People will never stop doing stupid things that get them injured/killed. The only way to not pay more for health care because of stupid people doing stupid things is to not have a system that forces you and others to pay for other peoples' health care.
The only way to minimize the cost in a shared-cost health care system is to restrict the freedom of the people to make individual choices. Every decision and choice affects health in some manner. It's like the interstate commerce clause. It can be stretched to cover pretty much anything those in power want it to cover. It's the government's "master key" to removing individual freedom and the ability to choose.
There will always be individual risk in a free and open society. Deal with it or move somewhere where individual freedom and choice don't exist.
Whatever civics classes you may have had in the course of your education, you obviously failed them because governments have always had powers not available to regular citizens.
And that's precisely what the authors of the US Constitution did with that document that was so radically different from every other nation and nation-state that ever existed. It started with the idea that *the people* were the ones in power, and they grudgingly agree to lend a small portion of that power to the government while retaining all other powers not specifically loaned to the government.
Today it seems like many US citizens can't be bothered with dealing with all these rights and responsibilities and just want Daddy Government to tell them what they can and can't do and give them free (other peoples') stuff/money.
They forge their own chains and wear them like rappers wear bling, and then are shocked when the government mistreats them.
Yeah, 'cause none of that happened under conservative regimes in the 2000s.
There were no "conservative regimes" in the 2000s. GWB was a Republican Progressive. There are Progressives both in the Republican party and the Democrat party, the Democrat party having been fully co-opted and the Republicans mostly so.
Retard
Back at ya, because unlike you apparently, I actually know what a Progressive is and understand how that's different and separate from Republican, Democrat, and conservative.
Many years ago, I'd fly to Tel Aviv on El Al. They also had a three hour wait. However, that was to allow enough time for each passenger to have a lengthy interview with the Shin Bet agents who manage security where they did the behavioural screening. That interview was never shorter than five minutes and could last up to 20 pretty easily. But no-one missed their flights.
Totally different security threat matrix than in the US. The US threat matrix is not anywhere even close to the level of the clear, present, and ongoing threat level in Israel, being surrounded as it is by many much larger and very hostile nations and nation-states.
The comparison is stark, as El Al security is actually about *true* security against a very real threat, whereas the TSA is about the *appearance* of security against a mostly (now that cockpit doors lock and passengers pile on to curb-stomp would-be hijackers/terrorists) imaginary.threat while making further inroads on civil rights, "normalizing" the appearance of security checkpoints and "Papieren, bitte! Schnell!" in public perception, and funneling more of your money to their private-sector crony accomplices who then help elect/re-elect them and kick money back through other mechanisms as well like private charities/funds, etc etc.
The role of the TSA in conditioning the public can be summed up with one game-meme.
That's your fault. The airlines here have said for more than a year now that you should arrive at the airport at least two hours early.
No.
It's the corrupt, authoritarian, and incompetent US governments' fault for instituting the corrupt, authoritarian, and incompetent TSA to begin with.
Arrival with time enough to check in any luggage at the airline, walk through a metal detector and an explosives sniffer at the gate, and that should be plenty. Call it 20 minutes, 30 tops for a busy hub.
A requirement for arrival 2 or 3 hours early is insanity.
Let's give the leftist Mathusians all of our money. That'll fix it.
Insufficient for the Leftists/Malthusians.
They want to control not just all the wealth by determining who should make how much, but they also demand total and absolute control over every aspect of your life...the food you eat, your medical care (or denial of care if treatment is determined to be too expensive), what political/ideological principles you must publicly make statements supporting if requested in the course of operating your business even if you do not agree, even the ideas, facts, and history you're exposed to (and which are 'verboten').
You may think I exaggerate, but just go read some of their blogs, websites, and papers yourself, don't take some professors', politicians', or other talking-heads' word. If anything, I've downplayed things. Many want the world depopulated of humans down to just a few hundred million (and personally, judging by their other statements and comments, I believe many of them actually prefer total human extinction but are afraid to make public statements to that effect).
This is where the "raise minimum wage" stuff came from: people who settled for a lower wage job found that a lower wage job was not enough to support a household.
You didn't finish that sentence. It should be "...not enough to support a household at their current standard of living.
One of the reasons it's so hard to get by is money is worth less and less thanks to the Federal Reserve/Treasury Dept. "printing" money by various methods of circular transferring and accounting of "money" like the Fed buying Treasury securities (IOUs) and calling it a net gain. It's like taking $1 and transferring it from one pocket to the other and calling the result a $1 gain and now you have $2.
There are Federal Penitentiaries filled with people convicted of various accounting and money/banking scams that didn't commit anywhere near this level of fraudulent accounting practices.
Check out "The Creature From Jekyll Island" -G. Edward Griffin for some startling history surrounding the who/where/when/why of how the Federal Reserve came to be and what it's purpose and goals were intended to be by those who created it
Another major factor is the labor market is becoming both more global and automated. This means fewer jobs being competed for by 1st-World, 2nd-World, and 3rd-World labor markets. Wages will eventually equalize under those conditions without other strong forces interfering. There's no practical way to raise all other workforce's wages and standards of living to those of the US, it's much easier to raise the poorest of the others just enough to secure cooperation, and lower the workforces in the upper and middle ranges as much as possible.
What this means is that 3rd-World workers will eventually earn a lot more in real terms and a much higher standard of living (though by no means approaching current 1st-World standards), 2nd-World workers will earn about the same, maybe less, probably more a reduction in standard of living, and 1st-World workers will see a large drop in real wages and a huge reduction in their standard of living. There will likely be many people starving to death in the US.
That's the path things are on barring some major world event or other massive change in the status quo. Neither raising the US minimum wage or instituting a UBI system will prevent or mitigate the effects of these things. On the contrary, they will accelerate them and increase the severity & duration of the consequences.
Get a helmet. It's gonna get rough everywhere. Soon.
And now that data gets to be datamined by the FBI looking for domestic crimes...
Suddenly an old Tennessee Ernie Ford song comes to mind.
You load sixteen tons What do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go I owe my soul to the Company store
Just going to say, it's not like we've never tried having places where everyone was carrying guns. It's called the Wild West.
The "Wild West" really wasn't as wild as the old movie Westerns make it seem. There weren't "showdowns" and gunfights on the streets every night. I might mention here that currently the largest US cities with the most restrictive gun laws and policies more closely resemble a movie Western "Wild West" of chaos & shootings than most actual 1860s-era cities/towns did then.
There is much truth to the saying "an armed society is a polite society".
It's not really a matter of guns or no guns. It's a matter of culture and morals. It's not the ability to get a gun that creates gangmembers that do drive-by shootings and the like. It's the culture and lack of a common moral framework in the society they're in. Western/US culture and morals, and as a consequence the society along with it, has slowly rotted from within.
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." - John Adams
This is one of the driving forces behind the increasingly-authoritarian trend of the US government. With the decline in culture and morals the people control their own behaviors and actions less and less, so more and more government control is needed to preserve order.
As you seem to acknowledge, it's practically impossible to prevent those with bad intent from getting guns. Laws only prevent the law-abiding from getting guns. There are more law-abiding/good people than criminals/bad guys, therefor more people with guns means more good people with guns vs the bad guys that would have guns regardless of any laws or bans. They'd just flow across the border unrestricted like drugs and immigrants do now The only reliable and proven way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
I don't understand this willingness to allow cops to carry guns but not licensed & trained law abiding citizens when cops are just your neighbor in a uniform with a few weeks of a community college law enforcement course and a couple weeks of basic police training in tactics, policies, and procedures.
Many if not most cops only go to the range the minimum they must to remain qualified. Most licensed gun owners go to the range for practice and get briefed on changes to, or new laws regarding, firearms far more often. Most of the cops I've seen at the range were terrible shots. My 14-yo niece can shoot circles around most of them with either a 9mm or.40. I'm talking either standing stationary or a tactical running scoot-and-shoot. She even out-shoots me with a rifle and I'm pretty darned good!
The economic correction of 2008 kept a lot of people out of full-wage work for far longer than "2 or 3 months at minimum".
No, there were a lot of people who would not seriously seek or accept work at lower wages, work multiple part-time jobs, and/or seek/accept work in a different/less prestigious field because they felt that they could sit back and depend on the government (i.e. taxpayers) to "fix it". The seemingly-endless unemployment benefit extensions were not dissuasive to this notion.
The "fixes" applied by the Federal Reserve and the administration in an attempt to "soften the landing" simply do more to add energy to the up-and-down cycles/bubbles and make the downturns increasingly worse and of longer duration, and if continued, will cause the cycles/bubbles to swing past the point of no return.
We are frighteningly-close to that tipping point now. No more than 10-15 years at the current rate if you're optimistic. It could happen before I finish clicking "submit". All it will take to trigger a collapse is a good financial/currency shock. US currency and financial markets are riding a razor edge.
When that happens and US currency and financial systems collapse, the entire world's markets and currency systems will crash and there will be a world-wide depression and financial/currency crisis. Only those nations with the strongest economies and currencies backed with actual tangible assets will avoid a crushing depression. Wars, both international/worldwide and civil, are quite likely in the aftermath.
Yes, we need more tired stressed-out teachers locked and loaded, carrying concealed or - better yet - using hip holsters. There is ~surely~ no way more deaths and injuries would have resulted, neither from misfires nor theft of guns by kids. The only calculus is guns = "fantasy solution".
Wonderful strawman you built there, and you knock it down so well!
Interesting how you immediately jump to the worst-case, most extreme scenario straight off. Is everything in your world an extreme dichotomy?
How about a couple trained and armed security staff and a modest security room with some decent basic video coverage and intrafacility communications ability and separate lines to the outside, basic building access controls, some alarm buttons in classrooms, and some planning for emergencies? We spend more on schools than almost any other nation, surely that wouldn't break the national budget.
But no.
Guns make badfeel, double-plus ungood! Guns badthink!
Goodness knows, we can't allow your precious little crotch-flowers to see guns serving a good and necessary purpose in protecting them! They might get the notion that it's people not inanimate objects that hurt and kill other people![Gasp!]
I lay the ultimate guilt for every shooting death that occurs in a "gun free zone" by some deadly nutcase and/or terrorist directly on the anti-gun extremists' heads. The same with every shooting death in cities where gun ownership/possession/carry is for the most part illegal and/or practically unattainable for most regular citizens like Chicago, NYC, and Washington D.C.
The anti-gun extremists should by all rights be rounded up and put on trial for crimes against humanity, if bodycount is the metric. They are ultimately responsible for more shooting deaths every year than 100 Sandy Hooks by preventing law abiding people from protecting themselves and their children as is their Constitutionally-protected right.
The city can be `covered' (monitored by automation) much much cheaper than doing the same with human cops.
Cameras are an "after the incident" item.
. Police interacting with, and being a part of, the community they serve is a "before the incident", i.e., a preventative, item.
Law enforcement officers are under no legal obligation whatsoever to protect anyone except themselves according to the SCOTUS.
They enforce the laws, investigate crimes, and arrest suspects. They are *law enforcement* officers. Many times it happens that some people are protected along the way and that is good. But that is not their obligation legally nor their primary purpose.
The tobacco settlements are over dear old Uncle Sam has wrung just about as much money out of them as was possible.
The government counts on State and Federal tobacco taxes. Then there is the government bureaucracy, infrastructure, and obligatory and attendant bureaucrat fiefdom/budget-protection as a result of tobacco regulation and taxation and the mechanisms/personnel required to implement it, make it function, and maintain it all. Nobody wants to lose power/control and especially the government doesn't want less revenue.
Arguing that government should encourage vaping is silly. Find me one medical professional that will say using the common vaping products is good for you.
Strawman argument. I never said vaping was good for you. I said that government should encourage vaping *versus* smoking for exactly the reason you state, that it's far healthier and easier to quit.
The sensible thing to do is neither. Certainly our lungs were not made to inhale mass quantities of glycerine, water, and nicotine at high frequency. Some water sure, but not the the other two and probably not in that frequency and amount with regard to the water. How damaging is it, likely not very but still you'd probably have fewer respitory issues over the course of your life time if you abstain.
There are many things people choose to do that incur risks to health as well as risks to others. Many sports and outdoor activities like boxing, football, motorsports, sport aviation, etc incur risks to health both short and long term. Even choosing to have that extra serving of dessert has health risks. All behaviors and activities pose risks to health. Since we all pay into the health system for others does that mean all behavior and activities can be regulated? How does that work in a free and open society?
These types of risks and the ability to choose to take them will exist in a free and open society. The only way to eliminate these risks is to eliminate the freedom of the individual to make choices.
That's a prison/police state.
Vaping is not a perfect system or solution and is not risk-free. *Nothing* ever is. Don't let an unreasonable requirement for the perfect and government-controlled be the enemy of the pragmatic and practical private sector solution society has developed and voluntarily chosen without government involvement.
Actually I think you will find that big tobacco does have a hand in this through lobbying. The problem that big tobacco has is that a vaping habit only costs five dollars a month instead of the $100 that they are used to from tobacco smokers. Any regulation of cheap stuff from China is to their advantage, so some home brew short circuited battery explosion is the best news they have had for ages. Banning them from checked luggage is just one step on the road to getting China out of the market and replaced with their own brand approved systems at joke prices. This is about making money out of the dumb-fuck customers just like all modern business is supposed to do.
Pretty much this.
Government and the tobacco industry are co-conspirators in keeping the public smoking tobacco. Like any drug dealer, the government and the tobacco companies are moving to crush anything that might threaten their income and reduce the numbers of people hooked on their poison. There's also a lot of money in the treatment and hospice care industries from smoking-related lung cancer and COPD patients that vaping/e-cigs threaten to reduce.
If those in government really gave a crap whether or not people die and was actually trying to encourage people to stop smoking they'd be promoting vaping vs tobacco smoking. But their priorities are for more power, control, and lobbyist/campaign contributions for reelection, and so what's a few 10s or 100s of thousands of unnecessary deaths every year compared to that?
The magistrate that can issue the warrant is the one in the district that the crime occurred in, aka the victim's district.
The Feds have been known to choose where to deem a computer/internet crime occurred to favor jurisdictions where they feel they have the best chance of a favorable outcome. This just turns it around so that they don't have to care where the crime occurred, any magistrate of their choosing can issue a warrant. It's a huge judicial/executive power-grab.
There are already judges that can give them the warrants they need. The only rational purpose of the rule change is to let them ask less experienced judges when they want to slip something past them.
This.
This makes judge-shopping so much easier! No more pesky jurisdictional issues! Simply pick the judge most in-line ideologically/politically with your prosecutorial/investigative agenda and goals, and bam! A done deal!
If allowed to stand this rule would permit some wack-job ideologue/extremist judge in some backwater hick jurisdiction to issue warrants to search computers anywhere including in Washington D.C., Alexandria VA, Hollywood CA...or Hong Kong.
If they allow this I say find a backwater-jurisdiction judge who leans hard libertarian and have him issue a warrant to search computers of those in Congress, the SCOTUS, and the DoJ/Executive branches in Washington, D.C. on suspicion of RICO/racketeering/criminal corruption violations.
Just as Margaret Thatcher said about socialism in general, this socialistic "Citizen's Dividend/UBI" is/are great until you run out of other people's money. It also falls into the "broken window fallacy" category.
Zorg: " Life, which you so nobly serve, comes from destruction, disorder and chaos. Now take this empty glass. Here it is: peaceful, serene, boring. But if it is destroyed
[Pushes the glass off the table. It shatters on the floor, and several small machines come out to clean it up]
Zorg: "Look at all these little things! So busy now! Notice how each one is useful. A lovely ballet ensues, so full of form and color. Now, think about all those people that created them. Technicians, engineers, hundreds of people, who will be able to feed their children tonight, so those children can grow up big and strong and have little teeny children of their own, and so on and so forth. Thus, adding to the great chain of life. You see, father, by causing a little destruction, I am in fact encouraging life. In reality, you and I are in the same business." - From the scifi movie "The Fifth Element"
.It isn't that 'nobody minds' it's more 'we can't do a bloody thing about it'. Big, big difference.
It's not a matter of "can't do anything about it" but "won't do anything about it".
There's always civil disobedience as in smashing these cameras and microphones. Sure, you might go to jail for a while if caught, but so what? The jail is being built around you. You're going to be there whether or not you fight. The thing is, if you fight, the jail time (if caught) will be temporary, if you don't fight, it will be permanent and inescapable.
"Did you exchange a walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?"
- Pink Floyd: Wish You Were Here
Freedom is not "free". Hashtags don't do crap but massage your conscience. Making it too costly and impractical to implement and maintain for little to no return works.
End the bullshit security theater. Do enough to keep serious explosives off (the crotch-bomber was no threat to the flight as a whole), basic metal detector.
People know now hot to cooperate with hijackers, and have started reacting appropriately (beating the fuck out of anyone attempting it). Cockpit doors are locked now. Those two changes alone were all that were really needed to improve airline security.
Taking away bottles of water and baby formula, stopping people with pocketknives, making everyone take off their shoes and gut half their luggage for the xrays are all a waste of time. They have caught NO THREATS yet. They have failed every single test to actually sneak stuff through.
End it.
The problem at the root is those in government no longer fear the people and feel safe in defying the will of those who elected them.
Make it socially unacceptable and physically dangerous to work for the TSA in any capacity and still live/shop/travel/school among regular folks. Make the experience of working for the TSA either as an hourly-wage worker or top administrator on par with wearing a swastika-emblazoned KKK hood/costume 24/7 while living in Harlem and being unarmed.
Put up a website with names, photos, addresses. and any other personal data of all the TSA employees and officials that can be identified. Have your kids regularly beat the shit out of their kids. Make it so that the TSA couldn't get applicants for a screener job even if they offered a $150K/yr salary + benefits to start.
That's when the innovation that allowed humanity to make a 5,000 year leap in progress in just around 200 years occurred.
When the idea that the people granted limited power/permission to their government instead of the reverse became a founding principle of a nation. After that occurred humanity went from sails, horses, and carriages to jets, computers, and moon landings in just over 200 years.
Slashdot Mirror
Or just criminalize them? I really don't want to pay more for health care because of other people's stupidity.
People will never stop doing stupid things that get them injured/killed. The only way to not pay more for health care because of stupid people doing stupid things is to not have a system that forces you and others to pay for other peoples' health care.
The only way to minimize the cost in a shared-cost health care system is to restrict the freedom of the people to make individual choices. Every decision and choice affects health in some manner. It's like the interstate commerce clause. It can be stretched to cover pretty much anything those in power want it to cover. It's the government's "master key" to removing individual freedom and the ability to choose.
There will always be individual risk in a free and open society. Deal with it or move somewhere where individual freedom and choice don't exist.
Strat
Whatever civics classes you may have had in the course of your education, you obviously failed them because governments have always had powers not available to regular citizens.
And that's precisely what the authors of the US Constitution did with that document that was so radically different from every other nation and nation-state that ever existed. It started with the idea that *the people* were the ones in power, and they grudgingly agree to lend a small portion of that power to the government while retaining all other powers not specifically loaned to the government.
Today it seems like many US citizens can't be bothered with dealing with all these rights and responsibilities and just want Daddy Government to tell them what they can and can't do and give them free (other peoples') stuff/money.
They forge their own chains and wear them like rappers wear bling, and then are shocked when the government mistreats them.
Strat
Yeah, 'cause none of that happened under conservative regimes in the 2000s.
There were no "conservative regimes" in the 2000s. GWB was a Republican Progressive. There are Progressives both in the Republican party and the Democrat party, the Democrat party having been fully co-opted and the Republicans mostly so.
Retard
Back at ya, because unlike you apparently, I actually know what a Progressive is and understand how that's different and separate from Republican, Democrat, and conservative.
Strat
Many years ago, I'd fly to Tel Aviv on El Al. They also had a three hour wait. However, that was to allow enough time for each passenger to have a lengthy interview with the Shin Bet agents who manage security where they did the behavioural screening. That interview was never shorter than five minutes and could last up to 20 pretty easily. But no-one missed their flights.
Totally different security threat matrix than in the US. The US threat matrix is not anywhere even close to the level of the clear, present, and ongoing threat level in Israel, being surrounded as it is by many much larger and very hostile nations and nation-states.
The comparison is stark, as El Al security is actually about *true* security against a very real threat, whereas the TSA is about the *appearance* of security against a mostly (now that cockpit doors lock and passengers pile on to curb-stomp would-be hijackers/terrorists) imaginary.threat while making further inroads on civil rights, "normalizing" the appearance of security checkpoints and "Papieren, bitte! Schnell!" in public perception, and funneling more of your money to their private-sector crony accomplices who then help elect/re-elect them and kick money back through other mechanisms as well like private charities/funds, etc etc.
The role of the TSA in conditioning the public can be summed up with one game-meme.
"Pick up that can!"
Strat
That's your fault. The airlines here have said for more than a year now that you should arrive at the airport at least two hours early.
No.
It's the corrupt, authoritarian, and incompetent US governments' fault for instituting the corrupt, authoritarian, and incompetent TSA to begin with.
Arrival with time enough to check in any luggage at the airline, walk through a metal detector and an explosives sniffer at the gate, and that should be plenty. Call it 20 minutes, 30 tops for a busy hub.
A requirement for arrival 2 or 3 hours early is insanity.
Strat
Let's give the leftist Mathusians all of our money. That'll fix it.
Insufficient for the Leftists/Malthusians.
They want to control not just all the wealth by determining who should make how much, but they also demand total and absolute control over every aspect of your life...the food you eat, your medical care (or denial of care if treatment is determined to be too expensive), what political/ideological principles you must publicly make statements supporting if requested in the course of operating your business even if you do not agree, even the ideas, facts, and history you're exposed to (and which are 'verboten').
You may think I exaggerate, but just go read some of their blogs, websites, and papers yourself, don't take some professors', politicians', or other talking-heads' word. If anything, I've downplayed things. Many want the world depopulated of humans down to just a few hundred million (and personally, judging by their other statements and comments, I believe many of them actually prefer total human extinction but are afraid to make public statements to that effect).
Strat
This is where the "raise minimum wage" stuff came from: people who settled for a lower wage job found that a lower wage job was not enough to support a household.
You didn't finish that sentence. It should be "...not enough to support a household at their current standard of living.
One of the reasons it's so hard to get by is money is worth less and less thanks to the Federal Reserve/Treasury Dept. "printing" money by various methods of circular transferring and accounting of "money" like the Fed buying Treasury securities (IOUs) and calling it a net gain. It's like taking $1 and transferring it from one pocket to the other and calling the result a $1 gain and now you have $2.
There are Federal Penitentiaries filled with people convicted of various accounting and money/banking scams that didn't commit anywhere near this level of fraudulent accounting practices.
Check out "The Creature From Jekyll Island" -G. Edward Griffin for some startling history surrounding the who/where/when/why of how the Federal Reserve came to be and what it's purpose and goals were intended to be by those who created it
Another major factor is the labor market is becoming both more global and automated. This means fewer jobs being competed for by 1st-World, 2nd-World, and 3rd-World labor markets. Wages will eventually equalize under those conditions without other strong forces interfering. There's no practical way to raise all other workforce's wages and standards of living to those of the US, it's much easier to raise the poorest of the others just enough to secure cooperation, and lower the workforces in the upper and middle ranges as much as possible.
What this means is that 3rd-World workers will eventually earn a lot more in real terms and a much higher standard of living (though by no means approaching current 1st-World standards), 2nd-World workers will earn about the same, maybe less, probably more a reduction in standard of living, and 1st-World workers will see a large drop in real wages and a huge reduction in their standard of living. There will likely be many people starving to death in the US.
That's the path things are on barring some major world event or other massive change in the status quo. Neither raising the US minimum wage or instituting a UBI system will prevent or mitigate the effects of these things. On the contrary, they will accelerate them and increase the severity & duration of the consequences.
Get a helmet. It's gonna get rough everywhere. Soon.
Strat
"requests for more information have been meeting heavy resistance from police departments since 2011"
What is it they tell us again about how okay it is to use the stingray?
"If you have nothing to hide..."?
Nah, it's:
"Pick up that can!"
Strat
And now that data gets to be datamined by the FBI looking for domestic crimes...
Suddenly an old Tennessee Ernie Ford song comes to mind.
You load sixteen tons
What do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the Company store
-"Sixteen Tons" by Tennessee Ernie Ford
Strat
What's a gallon?
About the same price here as downtown.
Strat
Just going to say, it's not like we've never tried having places where everyone was carrying guns. It's called the Wild West.
The "Wild West" really wasn't as wild as the old movie Westerns make it seem. There weren't "showdowns" and gunfights on the streets every night. I might mention here that currently the largest US cities with the most restrictive gun laws and policies more closely resemble a movie Western "Wild West" of chaos & shootings than most actual 1860s-era cities/towns did then.
There is much truth to the saying "an armed society is a polite society".
It's not really a matter of guns or no guns. It's a matter of culture and morals. It's not the ability to get a gun that creates gangmembers that do drive-by shootings and the like. It's the culture and lack of a common moral framework in the society they're in. Western/US culture and morals, and as a consequence the society along with it, has slowly rotted from within.
"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." - John Adams
This is one of the driving forces behind the increasingly-authoritarian trend of the US government. With the decline in culture and morals the people control their own behaviors and actions less and less, so more and more government control is needed to preserve order.
As you seem to acknowledge, it's practically impossible to prevent those with bad intent from getting guns. Laws only prevent the law-abiding from getting guns. There are more law-abiding/good people than criminals/bad guys, therefor more people with guns means more good people with guns vs the bad guys that would have guns regardless of any laws or bans. They'd just flow across the border unrestricted like drugs and immigrants do now The only reliable and proven way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
I don't understand this willingness to allow cops to carry guns but not licensed & trained law abiding citizens when cops are just your neighbor in a uniform with a few weeks of a community college law enforcement course and a couple weeks of basic police training in tactics, policies, and procedures.
Many if not most cops only go to the range the minimum they must to remain qualified. Most licensed gun owners go to the range for practice and get briefed on changes to, or new laws regarding, firearms far more often. Most of the cops I've seen at the range were terrible shots. My 14-yo niece can shoot circles around most of them with either a 9mm or .40. I'm talking either standing stationary or a tactical running scoot-and-shoot. She even out-shoots me with a rifle and I'm pretty darned good!
Strat
The economic correction of 2008 kept a lot of people out of full-wage work for far longer than "2 or 3 months at minimum".
No, there were a lot of people who would not seriously seek or accept work at lower wages, work multiple part-time jobs, and/or seek/accept work in a different/less prestigious field because they felt that they could sit back and depend on the government (i.e. taxpayers) to "fix it". The seemingly-endless unemployment benefit extensions were not dissuasive to this notion.
The "fixes" applied by the Federal Reserve and the administration in an attempt to "soften the landing" simply do more to add energy to the up-and-down cycles/bubbles and make the downturns increasingly worse and of longer duration, and if continued, will cause the cycles/bubbles to swing past the point of no return.
We are frighteningly-close to that tipping point now. No more than 10-15 years at the current rate if you're optimistic. It could happen before I finish clicking "submit". All it will take to trigger a collapse is a good financial/currency shock. US currency and financial markets are riding a razor edge.
When that happens and US currency and financial systems collapse, the entire world's markets and currency systems will crash and there will be a world-wide depression and financial/currency crisis. Only those nations with the strongest economies and currencies backed with actual tangible assets will avoid a crushing depression. Wars, both international/worldwide and civil, are quite likely in the aftermath.
Strat
Yes, we need more tired stressed-out teachers locked and loaded, carrying concealed or - better yet - using hip holsters. There is ~surely~ no way more deaths and injuries would have resulted, neither from misfires nor theft of guns by kids. The only calculus is guns = "fantasy solution".
Wonderful strawman you built there, and you knock it down so well!
Interesting how you immediately jump to the worst-case, most extreme scenario straight off. Is everything in your world an extreme dichotomy?
How about a couple trained and armed security staff and a modest security room with some decent basic video coverage and intrafacility communications ability and separate lines to the outside, basic building access controls, some alarm buttons in classrooms, and some planning for emergencies? We spend more on schools than almost any other nation, surely that wouldn't break the national budget.
But no.
Guns make badfeel, double-plus ungood! Guns badthink!
Goodness knows, we can't allow your precious little crotch-flowers to see guns serving a good and necessary purpose in protecting them! They might get the notion that it's people not inanimate objects that hurt and kill other people![Gasp!]
I lay the ultimate guilt for every shooting death that occurs in a "gun free zone" by some deadly nutcase and/or terrorist directly on the anti-gun extremists' heads. The same with every shooting death in cities where gun ownership/possession/carry is for the most part illegal and/or practically unattainable for most regular citizens like Chicago, NYC, and Washington D.C.
The anti-gun extremists should by all rights be rounded up and put on trial for crimes against humanity, if bodycount is the metric. They are ultimately responsible for more shooting deaths every year than 100 Sandy Hooks by preventing law abiding people from protecting themselves and their children as is their Constitutionally-protected right.
Strat
When seconds count the cops are minutes away. Good thing it was a gun free zone.......
Doesn't matter.
Guns make badfeel, double-plus ungood. Guns badthink.
Strat
Law enforcement officers are under no legal obligation whatsoever to protect anyone except themselves according to the SCOTUS.
They enforce the laws, investigate crimes, and arrest suspects. They are *law enforcement* officers. Many times it happens that some people are protected along the way and that is good. But that is not their obligation legally nor their primary purpose.
Strat
The tobacco settlements are over dear old Uncle Sam has wrung just about as much money out of them as was possible.
The government counts on State and Federal tobacco taxes. Then there is the government bureaucracy, infrastructure, and obligatory and attendant bureaucrat fiefdom/budget-protection as a result of tobacco regulation and taxation and the mechanisms/personnel required to implement it, make it function, and maintain it all. Nobody wants to lose power/control and especially the government doesn't want less revenue.
Arguing that government should encourage vaping is silly. Find me one medical professional that will say using the common vaping products is good for you.
Strawman argument. I never said vaping was good for you. I said that government should encourage vaping *versus* smoking for exactly the reason you state, that it's far healthier and easier to quit.
The sensible thing to do is neither. Certainly our lungs were not made to inhale mass quantities of glycerine, water, and nicotine at high frequency. Some water sure, but not the the other two and probably not in that frequency and amount with regard to the water. How damaging is it, likely not very but still you'd probably have fewer respitory issues over the course of your life time if you abstain.
There are many things people choose to do that incur risks to health as well as risks to others. Many sports and outdoor activities like boxing, football, motorsports, sport aviation, etc incur risks to health both short and long term. Even choosing to have that extra serving of dessert has health risks. All behaviors and activities pose risks to health. Since we all pay into the health system for others does that mean all behavior and activities can be regulated? How does that work in a free and open society?
These types of risks and the ability to choose to take them will exist in a free and open society. The only way to eliminate these risks is to eliminate the freedom of the individual to make choices.
That's a prison/police state.
Vaping is not a perfect system or solution and is not risk-free. *Nothing* ever is. Don't let an unreasonable requirement for the perfect and government-controlled be the enemy of the pragmatic and practical private sector solution society has developed and voluntarily chosen without government involvement.
Strat
Actually I think you will find that big tobacco does have a hand in this through lobbying. The problem that big tobacco has is that a vaping habit only costs five dollars a month instead of the $100 that they are used to from tobacco smokers. Any regulation of cheap stuff from China is to their advantage, so some home brew short circuited battery explosion is the best news they have had for ages. Banning them from checked luggage is just one step on the road to getting China out of the market and replaced with their own brand approved systems at joke prices. This is about making money out of the dumb-fuck customers just like all modern business is supposed to do.
Pretty much this.
Government and the tobacco industry are co-conspirators in keeping the public smoking tobacco. Like any drug dealer, the government and the tobacco companies are moving to crush anything that might threaten their income and reduce the numbers of people hooked on their poison. There's also a lot of money in the treatment and hospice care industries from smoking-related lung cancer and COPD patients that vaping/e-cigs threaten to reduce.
If those in government really gave a crap whether or not people die and was actually trying to encourage people to stop smoking they'd be promoting vaping vs tobacco smoking. But their priorities are for more power, control, and lobbyist/campaign contributions for reelection, and so what's a few 10s or 100s of thousands of unnecessary deaths every year compared to that?
Strat
The magistrate that can issue the warrant is the one in the district that the crime occurred in, aka the victim's district.
The Feds have been known to choose where to deem a computer/internet crime occurred to favor jurisdictions where they feel they have the best chance of a favorable outcome. This just turns it around so that they don't have to care where the crime occurred, any magistrate of their choosing can issue a warrant. It's a huge judicial/executive power-grab.
Strat
There are already judges that can give them the warrants they need. The only rational purpose of the rule change is to let them ask less experienced judges when they want to slip something past them.
This.
This makes judge-shopping so much easier! No more pesky jurisdictional issues! Simply pick the judge most in-line ideologically/politically with your prosecutorial/investigative agenda and goals, and bam! A done deal!
If allowed to stand this rule would permit some wack-job ideologue/extremist judge in some backwater hick jurisdiction to issue warrants to search computers anywhere including in Washington D.C., Alexandria VA, Hollywood CA...or Hong Kong.
If they allow this I say find a backwater-jurisdiction judge who leans hard libertarian and have him issue a warrant to search computers of those in Congress, the SCOTUS, and the DoJ/Executive branches in Washington, D.C. on suspicion of RICO/racketeering/criminal corruption violations.
Strat
Allahu Ackbar!!
(BOOM)
EOF
Strat
It's a fact no matter how you try to weasel out of it: "enhanced interrogation" is actually torture.
It is "enhanced interrogation" just like tractor-trailers full of Semtex detonated at the various TLA HQs' would be "enhanced objection".
Strat
Just as Margaret Thatcher said about socialism in general, this socialistic "Citizen's Dividend/UBI" is/are great until you run out of other people's money. It also falls into the "broken window fallacy" category.
Zorg: " Life, which you so nobly serve, comes from destruction, disorder and chaos. Now take this empty glass. Here it is: peaceful, serene, boring. But if it is destroyed
[Pushes the glass off the table. It shatters on the floor, and several small machines come out to clean it up]
Zorg: "Look at all these little things! So busy now! Notice how each one is useful. A lovely ballet ensues, so full of form and color. Now, think about all those people that created them. Technicians, engineers, hundreds of people, who will be able to feed their children tonight, so those children can grow up big and strong and have little teeny children of their own, and so on and so forth. Thus, adding to the great chain of life. You see, father, by causing a little destruction, I am in fact encouraging life. In reality, you and I are in the same business." - From the scifi movie "The Fifth Element"
Strat
.It isn't that 'nobody minds' it's more 'we can't do a bloody thing about it'. Big, big difference.
It's not a matter of "can't do anything about it" but "won't do anything about it".
There's always civil disobedience as in smashing these cameras and microphones. Sure, you might go to jail for a while if caught, but so what? The jail is being built around you. You're going to be there whether or not you fight. The thing is, if you fight, the jail time (if caught) will be temporary, if you don't fight, it will be permanent and inescapable.
"Did you exchange a walk-on part in the war
for a lead role in a cage?"
- Pink Floyd: Wish You Were Here
Freedom is not "free". Hashtags don't do crap but massage your conscience. Making it too costly and impractical to implement and maintain for little to no return works.
Strat
End the bullshit security theater. Do enough to keep serious explosives off (the crotch-bomber was no threat to the flight as a whole), basic metal detector.
People know now hot to cooperate with hijackers, and have started reacting appropriately (beating the fuck out of anyone attempting it). Cockpit doors are locked now. Those two changes alone were all that were really needed to improve airline security.
Taking away bottles of water and baby formula, stopping people with pocketknives, making everyone take off their shoes and gut half their luggage for the xrays are all a waste of time. They have caught NO THREATS yet. They have failed every single test to actually sneak stuff through.
End it.
The problem at the root is those in government no longer fear the people and feel safe in defying the will of those who elected them.
Make it socially unacceptable and physically dangerous to work for the TSA in any capacity and still live/shop/travel/school among regular folks. Make the experience of working for the TSA either as an hourly-wage worker or top administrator on par with wearing a swastika-emblazoned KKK hood/costume 24/7 while living in Harlem and being unarmed.
Put up a website with names, photos, addresses. and any other personal data of all the TSA employees and officials that can be identified. Have your kids regularly beat the shit out of their kids. Make it so that the TSA couldn't get applicants for a screener job even if they offered a $150K/yr salary + benefits to start.
Strat
That's when the innovation that allowed humanity to make a 5,000 year leap in progress in just around 200 years occurred.
When the idea that the people granted limited power/permission to their government instead of the reverse became a founding principle of a nation. After that occurred humanity went from sails, horses, and carriages to jets, computers, and moon landings in just over 200 years.
Strat