Far better to overturn Citizen's United than repeal the 17th Amendment
Wait, so you want to prevent citizens from organizing and pooling their resources to fight politicians and policies they oppose and support those they agree with? When said politicians and policies have megacorps and other political lobbying and campaign-contributors/organizations allowed to back them?
I think maybe you need to re-read the Citizens United decision and research the background of the case more thoroughly. There's been a lot of propaganda that the CU decision somehow elevates corporations over citizens in the political arena, but the opposite is actually true.
As far as GOP/DNC goes, they're both corrupt as hell, agree with 99% of the liberty-destroying laws, acts, policies, etc, and haven't represented the citizens in decades. They simply put on a Kabuki theater to distract the public and gradually increase their own power & wealth at the citizens' expense.
They simply dare not do that. The public is fed up with them as it is. They really would be putting themselves in a very bad position if they were to make yet another decision that was both unpopular and obviously incorrect.
I'll bet an internet that this goes first to the Federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that will most likely reverse the decision of Judge Leon, and then the SCOTUS will simply not grant certiorari and not comment on the reason, effectively deciding without deciding by allowing the lower court reversal decision to stand.
It should be done by Congress - they're the assholes in charge of lawmaking and it was the Patriot Act that made all this shit possible. Ruling by executive order is short-term & short-sighted; fix the damn law or repeal it. If Obama vetoes that, then his true colors will be known.
I agree. Congress has nearly become irrelevant due to both their own actions/inactions and allowing the POTUS to rule by executive order much like a king.
The Senate also needs to be returned to being appointed by the State legislatures instead of being just another popularity contest where he gives away the most stuff wins. There needs to be another Constitutional Amendment enacted to effectively repeal the 17th Amendment.
The Senate was meant to be a check against the electorate deciding to vote themselves money or voting to unfairly target a specific group and other populist trend-of-the-moment bad ideas. It protects the Republic from devolving into a tyranny-by-majority and protects the States from bullying by the Federal government.
I live in Wisconsin, seriously, that "waste" heat is NOT wasted! It's freaking cold outside!! I'm an American, I want to be free to choose!
No problem. You can still get all the cheap incandescent bulbs you want.
They're bringing in banned incandescent bulbs daily by the tractor-trailer load from Mexico. Just visit your local bodega and ask. The ones around here are selling standard 100W white-frosted bulbs for $25/case, $20 for 75W.
They never learn. When they ban something people want/need, they create a black market and then they lose all control over that product that they once had, along with any tax revenue.
This goes back a lot further than the Obama administration.
So what? Who started it or how long it's gone on means precisely zip, zero, nada, aside from identifying additional guilty parties for the exercise of justice.
He's the asshole supposedly in charge NOW, with the power to stop it NOW.
That excuse is a tactic used by a 6-yo to escape the consequences of and blame for bad behaviors, actions, & decisions.
None of the google results for me were anything that a standard food service permit wouldn't cover. You may not have noticed but most Starbucks stores aren't only open a maximum of twice a year because those permits aren't in fact restricted to a maximum of twice a year.
So what's the reference for your case and the paranoid rantings that followed?
The part about the "twice a year" restriction is referring to the permit needed to do this outdoors at a public location like a park, which is separate from a food service (restaurant) permit.
The government is insisting that those trying to feed the homeless secure a building for food preparation and service and otherwise invest the same large amounts of money and pay the same costs and obey all the same rules that a commercial "for-profit" sit-down restaurant would, without the ability to earn money from the free food to ameliorate costs, making it so extremely costly that it's impractical to do.
It's a practical proscription-in-all-but-name by thousands of regulations, codes, fees, permits, inspections, ordnances, and laws enforced to the letter.
If you can't see any problems with government behavior and laws/regs/ordnances/policies here, then there's really nothing I or anyone else can say to you.
Which doesn't make it illegal to feed the poor, that just means you need a permit to do so. As long as those permits aren't ridiculous then why is that a problem? Silly sure...
I need a permit to drive on a public road, does that mean it is illegal to drive?
What if they would only issue you a one-day driving permit a maximum of twice a year?
See the problem now?
The government doesn't want private citizens, churches, or other non-government-affiliated/controlled independent charitable organizations to come forward to help the poor.
They insist that the poor effectively become wards of the State by being forced to sign up for government-approved programs for help instead of receiving help from those in their communities outside of any government-run/sponsored/funded programs.
Gotta keep their folded faces to the floor.
The milk of human kindness is a Schedule-1 illegal substance in the USSA.
Guns didn't win that battle. Without the freedom of speech and the right to assembly there wouldn't even have been a battle, just a lone gun-nut.
Sorry, but you're the one missing (intentionally?) the point.
The sheriff and his armed deputies illegally took the ballot boxes containing the people's votes...their speech...by armed force, threatening to shoot anyone who tried to stop them.
Votes = speech.
Guns in the hands of citizens willing to use them against those armed & threatening men acting illegally and un-Constitutionally "under color of law" as agents of the State prevented that speech from being suppressed/altered/corrupted by those agents of the State.
This is not rocket surgery.
The fact that they weren't just gunned down has more to do with the Sheriff not wanting to kill the opposition than with superior firepower.
Might try reading what went on. There was a gun battle in which the sheriff and his deputies were holed-up in a courthouse and certainly tried to "shoot the opposition". The citizens, thankfully, had superior firepower. After a hail of return-fire from the citizens, they were then able to approach and dynamite the door and take control of the ballot boxes and take the deputies into custody.
Here's a couple of videos you should watch for your edification.
Please exercise caution, as facts are known to the State of California to cause extreme mental anguish in those suffering from politically/ideologically-driven voluntary ignorance.
He's talking about the people who use a $300 printrbot to try to print a zip gun, which then proceeds to blow up in their hand like a cheap firework.
These are the same geniuses that kill/injure/maim themselves and others and destroy homes and property every single day doing things like putting a frozen turkey into a gas burner heated deep-fryer full of hot cooking oil, and uncountable numbers of other equally idiotic and extremely dangerous actions and worse.
You can't fix stupid by trying to idiot-proof the world. It's not possible, it cannot work, and it unfairly curtails everyone else's choices and freedoms.
I can't remember one event in the history of the U.S. where guns in the hand of little people made the U.S. government rethink their policies and withdraw some legislation, measures or orders. Care to elaborate?
"The Battle of Athens (sometimes called the McMinn County War) was a rebellion led by citizens in Athens and Etowah, Tennessee, United States, against the local government in August 1946. The citizens, including some World War II veterans, accused the local officials of political corruption and voter intimidation."
If you knew anything about guns, you'd know it only takes a few basic tools and materials to make a functional gun that goes bang without killing its user. You don't need a 3D printer. There's no way to disarm anybody in any circumstances.
I do know something about guns and about metal machining and fabrication work. Making a Sten is dead-simple. Heck, I've got the plans.
You're correct that between the staggering number of guns that already exist in the US (and the majority of rifles & shotguns never having been registered) combined with the ease with which a gun that's at least good enough to get an enemy's gun is to make conventionally, it seems pretty impractical in the short term.
However, there's "simple" for some people and then there's "simple" for everybody else. It's dead-simple *IF* you have a lathe, drill press, sheet metal brake, and maybe a mill depending, along with multiple other ancillary tools and pieces of equipment like an arbor press.
*AND* you *also* have the requisite training, skills, & experience to operate that fabricating equipment well enough to produce more than a modern-art piece or a way to assure that you never need worry if you lose one of your mittens and/or your sunglasses. It's not a trivial skill set in the least.
The difference here is that you basically only need the printer instead of a pole-barn full of expensive machine tools, plus you don't need any advanced machining & metal fabrication skills or training to fabricate high-quality components.
The printer/software and the plan file supplies the majority of the training, experience, and skills otherwise necessary, while replacing multiple expensive pieces of metal working & fabrication equipment while also requiring less space. More like residential garage/shed/basement-size instead of pole-barn size.
A metal printer would also be a much more practical solution in the city. The printer is also far more portable than a bunch of machine shop equipment. It can be relatively quickly moved between locations and concealed compared to normal tooling.
Wishful thinking... It's not the lack of guns that keeps your tyrannical government in place, it's the lack of courage in a population that has turned bovine, uneducated, and more interested in shopping and watching reality shows on TV than in fighting for liberty and moral principles.
I agree. However, I'm hopeful that people are beginning to wake the hell up. I haven't seen the current levels and breadth of dissatisfaction and anger with government since the '60s/'70s, nor anywhere near the current numbers of people who seriously think the government needs to spend less and have fewer powers, and are actively getting involved and doing something about it.
When was the last time you remember *this* happening?
There may yet still be hope. Especially if you consider it was only about 10% of the colonists at the time who were actively for the US Revolutionary War and independence from England.
Can we scrape up 10% with a brain and a spine these days? Who knows. We'll find out, I guess.
Maybe the concept of free men governing themselves by common agreement dies here forever, technology guaranteeing the jackboot continues forever grinding the human face underfoot.
Maybe humans need another few 10, 20, or 100s of thousands...maybe even millions...of years of evolutionary advancement before mankind is ready to leave kings, dictators, tyranny, and authoritarianism behind us.
Either the US government rapidly steps in to quash or severely-restrict this technology in the US or their plans to disarm the US population will die stillborn.
I love the smell of dying government tyranny in the morning.
I wonder if the firmware/plans they're offering for free will see a Defense Distributed-style clamp down?
I'm pretty sure I remember US military personnel detonating bombs among civilians including inncen women and children, to "protect" the United States and the Constitution...
Be sure to let me know when the US military employs suicide bombs/vests in places of worship, malls, schools, etc, throws acid in schoolgirls' faces for daring to learn to read, or publicly stones gays/lesbians to death.
Then you might have a point.
False equivalency is not a point. It's intellectual dishonesty and disingenuous in the extreme. Hitler had ovens and so did/do we. That did/does not make us equally as evil as Hitler or equally guilty of committing or planning to commit mass genocide.
Because I definitely do not want the.gov overstepping their boundaries and ignoring my right to personal privacy. They have no reason to peek in and look at my personal life when I've done nothing wrong.
The problem is needing to protect oneself from un-Constitutional violations of the BoR by an obviously power-mad ruling elite in the first place.
With the immense resources of the US government available and few if any restrictions to methods, if the TLAs want in, they'll get in.
Until the size & power of government and the bureaucracy are massively rolled back and accountability plus term limits enacted and enforced, it's a losing game. They'll get to whomever they need to get to to make sure their abilities to un-Constitutionally spy and gather/analyze masses of data on anyone and everyone without consequence are retained. They already have enough data to blackmail just about anyone in or with power and lots more. Congress won't and can't fix this because of this reason.
We are forced to play by *their* arbitrary, constantly shifting, often counter-intuitive, sometimes retroactive laws, acts, and regulations which they are not constrained by because "national security" "that's classified" "redacted" and "fuck you".
I'm watching this move for a Convention of States (Article V).
It's not without it's risks, but something has to rein in this "Imperial Federal Government" and it's myriads of agencies, departments, "czars", the corruption, the blatant, damaging, and heinous violations of basic civil rights, militarized police terrorizing the citizenry, the crushing spending/debt, etc etc etc, or else living in the US will really begin to resemble living in the old USSR under Stalin.
Maybe that old meme that the US will eventually become socialist/communist/fascist/authoritarian and Russia/China become the new havens of capitalism and individual freedom has some validity.
Ah, the sweet, sweet irony if in 20-30 years, Russian (or Chinese) travelers are smuggling blue-jeans into the US.
I'd think that there was a similar morale drop in the 1970's, but the NSA has managed to survive that decade unscathed. Once Snowden is finally stopped (not an if, but when), the morale will eventually go back up like it did in the 1980s.
Some people aren't fit to have a security clearance. For some people, they learn that when they learn that they can't get a clearance. Others learn that when they break the rules and lose their clearance. Snowden was one of the latter and thinks that he's more special than anyone else than releases secrets - just because he contains PR-friendly ones.
Sorry Seth, it just doesn't work text-only without the "Darth Vader" lung-ventilator audio FX track.
We're talking religious zealot nut cases that think dying for their deity is glorious and expected.
ooohh... Sounds scary, until you realize it is basically the same thing as patriotic nutcases that think dying for their country is glorious and expected.
"Basically the same thing"?
Really?
So then, can you remember the last time a US soldier screamed "Praise Jesus!" before detonating a suicide vest among civilians including innocent women and children?
Yeah, me either.
You seem to have reached your fecal-matter capacity limits on that one.
The US could turn virtually every major urban area of Iran into radioactive craters, could wipe out most of its navy and air force in 48 hours and likely most of its anti aircraft capacity in pretty short order as well.
Which won't stop or deter them at all.
When I think of major threats I think of Japan in WWII or the USSR during the Cold War.
Which tells me you haven't learned enough history or enough about the people we're talking about that control Iran, and their history & beliefs.
We're talking religious zealot nut cases that think dying for their deity is glorious and expected.
They don't have to strike the US. Just Israel.
Israel will launch a retaliatory nuke strike. The Persian Gulf will likely become blocked/blockaded or simply too dangerous along with the Suez Canal. Then, the whole region falls into chaos and anarchy, followed by the major powers going to war for power, ideology, and resources while the world economy and the US Dollar/US economy collapses.
Couldn't the FBI just ask Yahoo! for the IP address of the account that sent those messages?
I have one question (well, OK, lots of them, but meh).
Why the *hell* are we asking a domestic LE agency, the FBI , about this instead of the foreign data/signals intelligence agency, the damned NSA that supposedly exercises all this surveillance apparatus abusing everyone's 4A rights just for such foreign threats?
Really, WTF?
It seems like the FBI is chasing foreign enemies while the NSA is data-mining the shit out of the domestic population.
Some kind of kinky "role-reversal play' among government agencies?
Or a clear indication of who they believe is the real threat to their goals of more power, control, and wealth?
I guess people started to forget that Iran is the arch-nemesis of the entire free world.
If Iran is the kind of arch nemesis the Free World gets nowadays, why is everyone so worried?
Right, like what has Iran ever done to the US and the West, anyway?
I mean, besides supplying training, logistical and intelligence support, safe refuge, and munitions to jihadists that kill US troops in Iraq & Afghanistan, and launch terror attacks and suicide bombings there and elsewhere against civilians including women and children, as well as military.
Oh, and grab Western tourists and hold them hostage.
Oh, and that little US embassy kerfluffle back in Jimmy Carter's administration that he handled so deftly.
But really, that's all ancient history. Has no bearing whatsoever. Why wouldn't we trust any diplomatic agreements or treaties made with them? Never mind there are Iranian officials openly mocking the idea of Iran actually obeying any meaningful restrictions to their nuclear ambitions in the recent "agreement" touted in the news and mocking the West for our stupidity to believe they would honor any such agreements.
That at the very least will cause Saudi Arabia and any others that possibly can to acquire nukes, and if the 13-Imam nut-cases in leadership positions in Iran like Ahmadinejad attempt or actually do nuke Israel, the entire world will explode in conflict, as I'm sure Israel will launch at least one wave of nukes in retaliation before the Iranian nukes clear their launch-towers.
But they didn't imprison the German Americans or the Italian Americans.
Sorry, guy. That's incorrect.
Well, the Italians were treated with a bit more discretion, but many innocent Italians were interned.
"The laws regarding "enemy aliens" did not make ideological distinctionsâ"treating as legally the same pro-Fascist Italian businessmen living for a short time in the U.S. and trapped there when war broke out, anti-Fascist refugees from Italy who arrived a few years earlier intending to become U.S. citizens but who had not completed the process of naturalization, and those who had emigrated from Italy at the turn of the 20th century and raised entire families of native-born Italian Americans but who were not naturalized themselves. They were all considered enemy aliens."
The proposed federal legislation backed by Amazon actually fixed this the right way. It established a central federal database.
Will this live up to the same high standards for Federal projects exemplified by the Obamacare website and back-end infrastructure?
I have no confidence in them pulling it off even to the extent the Obamacare website/back-end is working without multi-year delays, staggering cost over-runs and increases in national debt, scandals, massive political corruption, etc. etc.
In the end, it will still unfairly burden smaller businesses over the large players. But hey, apparently a lot of people wouldn't mind it if alternatives to the big-box, big-chain stores disappeared at an even more alarming rate along with the jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities, not to mention the charm of mom-&-pop shops and stores to visit, and the variety to the world that they provide.
So I tend to think of things going the other way. It actually wouldn't be that hard to build such a drone with the hardware & tech available these days compared to the 1970s.
I wonder how the Navy would feel about swarms of civilian flying-submersible drones shadowing & recording their submarine fleet?
Slashdot Mirror
Far better to overturn Citizen's United than repeal the 17th Amendment
Wait, so you want to prevent citizens from organizing and pooling their resources to fight politicians and policies they oppose and support those they agree with? When said politicians and policies have megacorps and other political lobbying and campaign-contributors/organizations allowed to back them?
I think maybe you need to re-read the Citizens United decision and research the background of the case more thoroughly. There's been a lot of propaganda that the CU decision somehow elevates corporations over citizens in the political arena, but the opposite is actually true.
As far as GOP/DNC goes, they're both corrupt as hell, agree with 99% of the liberty-destroying laws, acts, policies, etc, and haven't represented the citizens in decades. They simply put on a Kabuki theater to distract the public and gradually increase their own power & wealth at the citizens' expense.
Strat
They simply dare not do that. The public is fed up with them as it is. They really would be putting themselves in a very bad position if they were to make yet another decision that was both unpopular and obviously incorrect.
I'll bet an internet that this goes first to the Federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that will most likely reverse the decision of Judge Leon, and then the SCOTUS will simply not grant certiorari and not comment on the reason, effectively deciding without deciding by allowing the lower court reversal decision to stand.
Strat
...where he who gives away the most stuff wins.
Oops.
It should be done by Congress - they're the assholes in charge of lawmaking and it was the Patriot Act that made all this shit possible.
Ruling by executive order is short-term & short-sighted; fix the damn law or repeal it. If Obama vetoes that, then his true colors will be known.
I agree. Congress has nearly become irrelevant due to both their own actions/inactions and allowing the POTUS to rule by executive order much like a king.
The Senate also needs to be returned to being appointed by the State legislatures instead of being just another popularity contest where he gives away the most stuff wins. There needs to be another Constitutional Amendment enacted to effectively repeal the 17th Amendment.
The Senate was meant to be a check against the electorate deciding to vote themselves money or voting to unfairly target a specific group and other populist trend-of-the-moment bad ideas. It protects the Republic from devolving into a tyranny-by-majority and protects the States from bullying by the Federal government.
Strat
I live in Wisconsin, seriously, that "waste" heat is NOT wasted! It's freaking cold outside!! I'm an American, I want to be free to choose!
No problem. You can still get all the cheap incandescent bulbs you want.
They're bringing in banned incandescent bulbs daily by the tractor-trailer load from Mexico. Just visit your local bodega and ask. The ones around here are selling standard 100W white-frosted bulbs for $25/case, $20 for 75W.
They never learn. When they ban something people want/need, they create a black market and then they lose all control over that product that they once had, along with any tax revenue.
Government sure loves it's footguns.
Strat
This goes back a lot further than the Obama administration.
So what? Who started it or how long it's gone on means precisely zip, zero, nada, aside from identifying additional guilty parties for the exercise of justice.
He's the asshole supposedly in charge NOW, with the power to stop it NOW.
That excuse is a tactic used by a 6-yo to escape the consequences of and blame for bad behaviors, actions, & decisions.
Strat
None of the google results for me were anything that a standard food service permit wouldn't cover. You may not have noticed but most Starbucks stores aren't only open a maximum of twice a year because those permits aren't in fact restricted to a maximum of twice a year.
So what's the reference for your case and the paranoid rantings that followed?
The part about the "twice a year" restriction is referring to the permit needed to do this outdoors at a public location like a park, which is separate from a food service (restaurant) permit.
The government is insisting that those trying to feed the homeless secure a building for food preparation and service and otherwise invest the same large amounts of money and pay the same costs and obey all the same rules that a commercial "for-profit" sit-down restaurant would, without the ability to earn money from the free food to ameliorate costs, making it so extremely costly that it's impractical to do.
It's a practical proscription-in-all-but-name by thousands of regulations, codes, fees, permits, inspections, ordnances, and laws enforced to the letter.
Here's a few links to related information.
http://rt.com/usa/north-carolina-police-arrest-homeless-019/
http://www.foodnotbombs.net/fnb_resists.html
http://www.npr.org/2013/09/05/218891324/more-cities-sweeping-homeless-into-less-prominent-areas
http://dailycaller.com/2013/07/19/bloomberg-strikes-again-nyc-bans-food-donations-to-the-homeless/
If you can't see any problems with government behavior and laws/regs/ordnances/policies here, then there's really nothing I or anyone else can say to you.
Strat
Which doesn't make it illegal to feed the poor, that just means you need a permit to do so. As long as those permits aren't ridiculous then why is that a problem? Silly sure...
I need a permit to drive on a public road, does that mean it is illegal to drive?
What if they would only issue you a one-day driving permit a maximum of twice a year?
See the problem now?
The government doesn't want private citizens, churches, or other non-government-affiliated/controlled independent charitable organizations to come forward to help the poor.
They insist that the poor effectively become wards of the State by being forced to sign up for government-approved programs for help instead of receiving help from those in their communities outside of any government-run/sponsored/funded programs.
Gotta keep their folded faces to the floor.
The milk of human kindness is a Schedule-1 illegal substance in the USSA.
Strat
Way to miss the point.
Guns didn't win that battle. Without the freedom of speech and the right to assembly there wouldn't even have been a battle, just a lone gun-nut.
Sorry, but you're the one missing (intentionally?) the point.
The sheriff and his armed deputies illegally took the ballot boxes containing the people's votes...their speech...by armed force, threatening to shoot anyone who tried to stop them.
Votes = speech.
Guns in the hands of citizens willing to use them against those armed & threatening men acting illegally and un-Constitutionally "under color of law" as agents of the State prevented that speech from being suppressed/altered/corrupted by those agents of the State.
This is not rocket surgery.
The fact that they weren't just gunned down has more to do with the Sheriff not wanting to kill the opposition than with superior firepower.
Might try reading what went on. There was a gun battle in which the sheriff and his deputies were holed-up in a courthouse and certainly tried to "shoot the opposition". The citizens, thankfully, had superior firepower. After a hail of return-fire from the citizens, they were then able to approach and dynamite the door and take control of the ballot boxes and take the deputies into custody.
Here's a couple of videos you should watch for your edification.
Battle of Athens: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgspMlPP7bA
Innocents Betrayed: The History Of Gun Control: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUmKT43j4Tc
Strat
Guns have never protected freedom of speech.
Warning! History lesson ahead.
Please exercise caution, as facts are known to the State of California to cause extreme mental anguish in those suffering from politically/ideologically-driven voluntary ignorance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_(1946)
Strat
He's talking about the people who use a $300 printrbot to try to print a zip gun, which then proceeds to blow up in their hand like a cheap firework.
These are the same geniuses that kill/injure/maim themselves and others and destroy homes and property every single day doing things like putting a frozen turkey into a gas burner heated deep-fryer full of hot cooking oil, and uncountable numbers of other equally idiotic and extremely dangerous actions and worse.
You can't fix stupid by trying to idiot-proof the world. It's not possible, it cannot work, and it unfairly curtails everyone else's choices and freedoms.
Darwin gots' to get paid, yo.
Strat
I can't remember one event in the history of the U.S. where guns in the hand of little people made the U.S. government rethink their policies and withdraw some legislation, measures or orders. Care to elaborate?
Here you go.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Athens_(1946)
"The Battle of Athens (sometimes called the McMinn County War) was a rebellion led by citizens in Athens and Etowah, Tennessee, United States, against the local government in August 1946. The citizens, including some World War II veterans, accused the local officials of political corruption and voter intimidation."
You're welcome.
Strat
If you knew anything about guns, you'd know it only takes a few basic tools and materials to make a functional gun that goes bang without killing its user. You don't need a 3D printer. There's no way to disarm anybody in any circumstances.
I do know something about guns and about metal machining and fabrication work. Making a Sten is dead-simple. Heck, I've got the plans.
You're correct that between the staggering number of guns that already exist in the US (and the majority of rifles & shotguns never having been registered) combined with the ease with which a gun that's at least good enough to get an enemy's gun is to make conventionally, it seems pretty impractical in the short term.
However, there's "simple" for some people and then there's "simple" for everybody else. It's dead-simple *IF* you have a lathe, drill press, sheet metal brake, and maybe a mill depending, along with multiple other ancillary tools and pieces of equipment like an arbor press.
*AND* you *also* have the requisite training, skills, & experience to operate that fabricating equipment well enough to produce more than a modern-art piece or a way to assure that you never need worry if you lose one of your mittens and/or your sunglasses. It's not a trivial skill set in the least.
The difference here is that you basically only need the printer instead of a pole-barn full of expensive machine tools, plus you don't need any advanced machining & metal fabrication skills or training to fabricate high-quality components.
The printer/software and the plan file supplies the majority of the training, experience, and skills otherwise necessary, while replacing multiple expensive pieces of metal working & fabrication equipment while also requiring less space. More like residential garage/shed/basement-size instead of pole-barn size.
A metal printer would also be a much more practical solution in the city. The printer is also far more portable than a bunch of machine shop equipment. It can be relatively quickly moved between locations and concealed compared to normal tooling.
Wishful thinking... It's not the lack of guns that keeps your tyrannical government in place, it's the lack of courage in a population that has turned bovine, uneducated, and more interested in shopping and watching reality shows on TV than in fighting for liberty and moral principles.
I agree. However, I'm hopeful that people are beginning to wake the hell up. I haven't seen the current levels and breadth of dissatisfaction and anger with government since the '60s/'70s, nor anywhere near the current numbers of people who seriously think the government needs to spend less and have fewer powers, and are actively getting involved and doing something about it.
When was the last time you remember *this* happening?
http://conventionofstates.com/
There may yet still be hope. Especially if you consider it was only about 10% of the colonists at the time who were actively for the US Revolutionary War and independence from England.
Can we scrape up 10% with a brain and a spine these days? Who knows. We'll find out, I guess.
Maybe the concept of free men governing themselves by common agreement dies here forever, technology guaranteeing the jackboot continues forever grinding the human face underfoot.
Maybe humans need another few 10, 20, or 100s of thousands...maybe even millions...of years of evolutionary advancement before mankind is ready to leave kings, dictators, tyranny, and authoritarianism behind us.
Strat
Either the US government rapidly steps in to quash or severely-restrict this technology in the US or their plans to disarm the US population will die stillborn.
I love the smell of dying government tyranny in the morning.
I wonder if the firmware/plans they're offering for free will see a Defense Distributed-style clamp down?
Strat
I'm pretty sure I remember US military personnel detonating bombs among civilians including inncen women and children, to "protect" the United States and the Constitution...
Be sure to let me know when the US military employs suicide bombs/vests in places of worship, malls, schools, etc, throws acid in schoolgirls' faces for daring to learn to read, or publicly stones gays/lesbians to death.
Then you might have a point.
False equivalency is not a point. It's intellectual dishonesty and disingenuous in the extreme. Hitler had ovens and so did/do we. That did/does not make us equally as evil as Hitler or equally guilty of committing or planning to commit mass genocide.
Strat
Because I definitely do not want the .gov overstepping their boundaries and ignoring my right to personal privacy. They have no reason to peek in and look at my personal life when I've done nothing wrong.
The problem is needing to protect oneself from un-Constitutional violations of the BoR by an obviously power-mad ruling elite in the first place.
With the immense resources of the US government available and few if any restrictions to methods, if the TLAs want in, they'll get in.
Until the size & power of government and the bureaucracy are massively rolled back and accountability plus term limits enacted and enforced, it's a losing game. They'll get to whomever they need to get to to make sure their abilities to un-Constitutionally spy and gather/analyze masses of data on anyone and everyone without consequence are retained. They already have enough data to blackmail just about anyone in or with power and lots more. Congress won't and can't fix this because of this reason.
We are forced to play by *their* arbitrary, constantly shifting, often counter-intuitive, sometimes retroactive laws, acts, and regulations which they are not constrained by because "national security" "that's classified" "redacted" and "fuck you".
I'm watching this move for a Convention of States (Article V).
http://conventionofstates.com/
It's not without it's risks, but something has to rein in this "Imperial Federal Government" and it's myriads of agencies, departments, "czars", the corruption, the blatant, damaging, and heinous violations of basic civil rights, militarized police terrorizing the citizenry, the crushing spending/debt, etc etc etc, or else living in the US will really begin to resemble living in the old USSR under Stalin.
Maybe that old meme that the US will eventually become socialist/communist/fascist/authoritarian and Russia/China become the new havens of capitalism and individual freedom has some validity.
Ah, the sweet, sweet irony if in 20-30 years, Russian (or Chinese) travelers are smuggling blue-jeans into the US.
Strat
I'd think that there was a similar morale drop in the 1970's, but the NSA has managed to survive that decade unscathed. Once Snowden is finally stopped (not an if, but when), the morale will eventually go back up like it did in the 1980s.
Some people aren't fit to have a security clearance. For some people, they learn that when they learn that they can't get a clearance. Others learn that when they break the rules and lose their clearance. Snowden was one of the latter and thinks that he's more special than anyone else than releases secrets - just because he contains PR-friendly ones.
Sorry Seth, it just doesn't work text-only without the "Darth Vader" lung-ventilator audio FX track.
Not buyin' it, man.
Strat
"Basically the same thing"?
Really?
So then, can you remember the last time a US soldier screamed "Praise Jesus!" before detonating a suicide vest among civilians including innocent women and children?
Yeah, me either.
You seem to have reached your fecal-matter capacity limits on that one.
Strat
The US could turn virtually every major urban area of Iran into radioactive craters, could wipe out most of its navy and air force in 48 hours and likely most of its anti aircraft capacity in pretty short order as well.
Which won't stop or deter them at all.
When I think of major threats I think of Japan in WWII or the USSR during the Cold War.
Which tells me you haven't learned enough history or enough about the people we're talking about that control Iran, and their history & beliefs.
We're talking religious zealot nut cases that think dying for their deity is glorious and expected.
They don't have to strike the US. Just Israel.
Israel will launch a retaliatory nuke strike. The Persian Gulf will likely become blocked/blockaded or simply too dangerous along with the Suez Canal. Then, the whole region falls into chaos and anarchy, followed by the major powers going to war for power, ideology, and resources while the world economy and the US Dollar/US economy collapses.
Strat
Couldn't the FBI just ask Yahoo! for the IP address of the account that sent those messages?
I have one question (well, OK, lots of them, but meh).
Why the *hell* are we asking a domestic LE agency, the FBI , about this instead of the foreign data/signals intelligence agency, the damned NSA that supposedly exercises all this surveillance apparatus abusing everyone's 4A rights just for such foreign threats?
Really, WTF?
It seems like the FBI is chasing foreign enemies while the NSA is data-mining the shit out of the domestic population.
Some kind of kinky "role-reversal play' among government agencies?
Or a clear indication of who they believe is the real threat to their goals of more power, control, and wealth?
Strat
Right, like what has Iran ever done to the US and the West, anyway?
I mean, besides supplying training, logistical and intelligence support, safe refuge, and munitions to jihadists that kill US troops in Iraq & Afghanistan, and launch terror attacks and suicide bombings there and elsewhere against civilians including women and children, as well as military.
Oh, and grab Western tourists and hold them hostage.
Oh, and that little US embassy kerfluffle back in Jimmy Carter's administration that he handled so deftly.
But really, that's all ancient history. Has no bearing whatsoever. Why wouldn't we trust any diplomatic agreements or treaties made with them? Never mind there are Iranian officials openly mocking the idea of Iran actually obeying any meaningful restrictions to their nuclear ambitions in the recent "agreement" touted in the news and mocking the West for our stupidity to believe they would honor any such agreements.
That at the very least will cause Saudi Arabia and any others that possibly can to acquire nukes, and if the 13-Imam nut-cases in leadership positions in Iran like Ahmadinejad attempt or actually do nuke Israel, the entire world will explode in conflict, as I'm sure Israel will launch at least one wave of nukes in retaliation before the Iranian nukes clear their launch-towers.
Strat
But they didn't imprison the German Americans or the Italian Americans.
Sorry, guy. That's incorrect.
Well, the Italians were treated with a bit more discretion, but many innocent Italians were interned.
"The laws regarding "enemy aliens" did not make ideological distinctionsâ"treating as legally the same pro-Fascist Italian businessmen living for a short time in the U.S. and trapped there when war broke out, anti-Fascist refugees from Italy who arrived a few years earlier intending to become U.S. citizens but who had not completed the process of naturalization, and those who had emigrated from Italy at the turn of the 20th century and raised entire families of native-born Italian Americans but who were not naturalized themselves. They were all considered enemy aliens."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian-American_internment
The Germans had it a bit rougher, but neither compared to the scale or extent of the Japanese internment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German-American_internment
Strat
The proposed federal legislation backed by Amazon actually fixed this the right way. It established a central federal database.
Will this live up to the same high standards for Federal projects exemplified by the Obamacare website and back-end infrastructure?
I have no confidence in them pulling it off even to the extent the Obamacare website/back-end is working without multi-year delays, staggering cost over-runs and increases in national debt, scandals, massive political corruption, etc. etc.
In the end, it will still unfairly burden smaller businesses over the large players. But hey, apparently a lot of people wouldn't mind it if alternatives to the big-box, big-chain stores disappeared at an even more alarming rate along with the jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities, not to mention the charm of mom-&-pop shops and stores to visit, and the variety to the world that they provide.
Strat
How about a land, air, or ship launched drone that flies to a pre-set location then submerges and homes-in on a submarine?
I built guidance systems for ASROCs...
http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/ASROC.html
So I tend to think of things going the other way. It actually wouldn't be that hard to build such a drone with the hardware & tech available these days compared to the 1970s.
I wonder how the Navy would feel about swarms of civilian flying-submersible drones shadowing & recording their submarine fleet?
Strat
That niggling feeling that anyone could be lying
You're simply sensing the Matrix all around you.
Unfortunately, nobody can be told what the Matrix is.
Hang on, Dorothy.
Because Kansas...is going bye-bye.
Strat