You call a person who can speak two languages bilingual.
You call a person who can speak three languages trilingual.
What do you call a person who speaks only one language?
American.
Wow, I'll bet you can say "pretentious douchebag" in a bunch of languages, huh? Though I suspect that in all of your sophistication, you might still miss the irony.
Is there anyone in the world that doesn't know more than one language? Maybe there are a few monolinguals in Washington DC, but the rest of the world seems to be better educated.
I know plenty of multi-lingual people. Some of them are the biggest idiots I've ever met. Ignorant of science, irrational in their manner and communication, befuddled by history and unable to handle the chore of critical thinking. Being able to express muddled thinking and ignorance in multiple languages isn't impressive, it's just an example of how persistence and reason aren't the same things. Worldly and sensible aren't the same thing. I'm sure that several of the fine fellows in ISIS that help in the complex task of doing slick post production work on one of the Burning People Alive videos speak fluently in several languages. I guess they're better educated than, say, a mere simpleton like Richard Feynman who despite only learning one other language well (Portuguese) and learning a bit of a couple others managed to win the Nobel Prize. Obviously a dolt compared to, say, a knee-breaking organized crime debt collector in northern Italy who speaks Italian, French, German and English.
Your idea of "better educated" suggests that you weren't very well educated yourself, as you can't get your head around the whole correlation vs. causation thing.
he used murder to describe executions, any reader would still know it is an execution
No, a reader hearing that the government "murdered" someone might think we were hearing about something done a la Che Guevara (who liked to line up people he didn't like, and have his revolution shoot them dead without a trial, etc). That's an "execution" that's really a murder. The Islamic State "executes" their judgement about whether or not, say, some poor bastard who's guilty of simply being insufficiently Islamic should have his head lopped off his body with a hunting knife - again, murder. So when someone refers to the death of a prisoner as murder, there's ample reason to consider that choice of word as being deliberately meant to color the reader's understanding of the "information" (to use your word) being conveyed. To, essentially, alter the information.
Hard to say if "you" are represented there or not. But it does add clarity to what you said.
Do you think I think the words don't matter in describing those two situations you gave, of course not!
Then why did you treat them that way?
It is interesting that you had to make that stuff up to answer me
It's perfectly reasonable to take your rhetorical construction and to apply it to another scenario so you can see the flaws in what you said.
is totally irrelevant, using the word 'murder' does not change the information someone reading that comment gets from it
Of course it matters. Words mean things. The reason we have different expressions to convey the concept of murder and the concept of the execution of a death sentence carried out against someone who chose to commit murder is: those are not the same things! Labeling them as if they are, and tainting your communication with the connotation of a word chosen when you know it's an inaccurate, agenda-loaded word choice meant to bias understanding of what's said, is not just some breezy situation to dismiss as if it's some linguistic quirk or just the act of someone who's got a childlike vocabulary and doesn't know better.
One chooses the word "murder" to describe an act because one thinks the act is actually murder, and wants to persuade others to perceive it the same way. Don't play dumb like you can't tell the difference.
Poor people commit more crimes precisely because the upper classes dictate...
I see. So in poor areas, where violent gangs murder each other regularly, resulting in a higher rate of murders in that "lower" class, it's your opinion that that's just rich people looking to make themselves somehow... exempt from the same consequences? So when the rich real estate heir in NY who was just arrested for murder is... arrested for murder... that's... what again? Can you please be just a little more coherent?
I actually prefer they use the book value of the car.
Ridiculous. I know people in dual-income households who pull in a couple hundred thousand a year, but who deliberately commute in old clunkers because they don't care about the potholes, the parking garage door dings, etc. I can think of at least one person nearby who is a notoriously hot-headed, but wealthy guy who drives a 12 year Camry. I also know people who live essentially hand to mouth working as landscapers, but who can't afford multiple vehicles, so that get around in a $50,000 truck.
How about: it costs $x when your're a jackass on the roads we all share and pay for, and after you've been fined a few times, it's not just your wallet but your license that's in jeopardy. You know, more or less just like we do it now. Rich guys who lose their licenses for six months can't buy it back.
If someone stole my car or burgled my house, I wouldn't be particularly thrilled about paying for their time in jail. That doesn't mean I think they should be executed.
Who said anything about a burglary or car theft rising to the level of capital punishment? Now, there are people on death row because they broke into a house to steal stuff, found someone home, and then ended up beating, gang-raping, and killing the mother while the children watched, and then killing the kids and setting the house on fire in a lame attempt to hide their crime. When someone who sets out to burgle a house comes across a situation like that, and makes the choice to go completely barbaric like that - and shows no remorse afterwards - does your sense of whether or not the father, returning home to his smoldering house and tortured-to-death family might feel a little differently on the subject... does that change any? Can you put yourself in his position?
Now send him off to work each day, financially ruined and with his family dead, knowing that down the road from him is the guy who did that - and he's forced to help to feed and house them, for as long as they can be kept alive in a box, likely for many decades. Does that change your calculus at all?
They are both killing. It is the same outcome whether someone is called killed or 'murdered'. They are dead... arguing about the name something is given doesn't change this
Do you apply the same muddle-headed moral relativism to all topics?
Let's say you've got $10,000 in your hands:
1) It was the life savings of a little old lady, and you beat her over the head, killing her, and took it.
or
2) Someone very wealthy liked you, and gave it to you.
Doesn't really matter the words we use to describe what led to you having $10,000, right? Because all that matters is you now have $10,000. It's the same outcome! Whew, glad that all of those pesky value judgements are safely out of the equation from now on. The end justifies the means! How and why no longer matter, just the results! Thank you for making everything so simple, now.
He did die, of course, but his death did not bring any peace.
How would she have felt if she were forced to support that person, financially?
I would be happy - insofar as I could know happiness in circumstances like those - to know that my tax dollars were in part contributing to keeping a dangerous inhuman criminal locked away forever.
So, your happiness comes in the form of putting someone in a controlled box for perhaps fifty or sixty years? Yeah, I wonder who's really got the revenge problem here, huh? I want that person to cease to exist. You want to torture them for a few decades.
Your advocating killing them for the reason of not paying a small tax burden?
No, I'm saying that making a guy spend part of every day working to feed and house the person who raped is wife to death is evil. I suppose you could volunteer to be the person who sees to it that a remorseless child raper and killer is getting nice meals every day. How many can you afford?
Murderers rationalize their crimes in exactly the same way
You'd have a point, if you weren't working with an acutely toxic case of moral relativism.
You're using "rationalize" in the popular sense of "make excuse for." Yes, someone who wakes up one morning deciding to kill an innocent person, perhaps after a nice all-day rape and torture session before burning down their house with the kids still inside, definitely has to come up with some sort of "rationalization" for their actions. Removing that person from society requires no excuse-making. They've already removed themselves from society through their own actions, but are still willing to damage society when and how they see fit, leaving dead bodies behind, just for fun. That you can't grasp a difference between those scenarios is pretty astonishing, really.
Wether they are guilty or not, their execution is still murder.
Sure, as long as you choose to use the wrong definition of that word. That's got to make all of your debates simple, huh? Assigning your own meaning to words means you get to always be right. Convenient, but of course self-destructive when it comes to your credibility.
Given that not giving people "another thought" is one of the reasons why people become murderers in the first place
So, the fact that I have zero regard for someone who has decided to break into a house specifically to torture and rape a woman, kill her, and then burn the house down with her kids inside is really just a sign of how I've treated that person badly all along, and their crime is thus someone really my fault? Yeah, I see how you see the world. Everything is always someone else's fault.
The reality is that the government gets to do things that would be crimes if individuals committed them.
Of course "the government" doesn't conduct capital murder trials without a jury. That's "the people," and it has to be a unanimous decision. The frequency with which jurors can't unanimously arrive at a death sentence even for some serious, serious monster killers on trial in front of them, shows that mechanism (a jury trial) is certainly not just some rubber stamp for "the government."
I completely agree...but isn't this what you are also doing too?
I don't think there's a need to feel remorse for ridding society of someone about whom otherwise never give another thought, but who comes to our attention for being a satisfied murderer of innocent people. Supporting the removal of that person from existence isn't the same as wanting to kill anyone.
If you want to argue for the death penalty then you need to restrict it to cases where the evidence is overwhelming and you need to make it rapid.
Overwhelmingly clear guilt, yes. Rapid enough to not be dragging the victim's family back into appeal hearings for decades - which is insane. But too hasty does indeed increase the risk of errors in judgement.
It is obvious from your writing that you are an violent and bloodthirsty person
Not at all. Though it's obvious that you enjoy the thought of the families of murder victims supporting the person who killed their loved ones. Why do you like that idea? What is it about that that excites you so much? Do you have dark fantasies about killing people, and then getting to taunt them for the rest of their family's lives? It's a strange mindset, but your interest in keeping murderers locked up in boxes, cared for and fed by the families of the people they killed says a lot about you. Very ugly.
how is premeditated homicide, which is what an execution is, anything other than murder? because it's homicide under direction of the state?
No, it's death set into motion by the deliberate actions of the murderer suffering the consequences of his own actions. It's consequence. Your moral relativism is pretty sickening, actually. I wonder if you'd snap out of it if someone, say, raped your wife (or mother, or daughter, or best friend) to death after torturing her for fun. That might allow you to distinguish between that act of premeditated murder and the consequences.
Enlightened people can see that by murdering somebody in revenge, you do not bring somebody killed back to life
You probably need to refresh yourself on the meaning of the word "murder."
I would, though, like to hear your opinion on sending a man to work every day so that a bit of his paycheck can be used to buy breakfast, lunch, dinner, and much more for the person who raped his wife to death. Each day, he gets to do another little bit of work so that actual murderer can enjoy another day of reliving his conquest, and perhaps even reminding the dead woman's husband through letters or during occasional hearings how much he enjoyed the crime he committed. Your desire to keep an unrepentant, deliberate sex-torturing murderer alive and supported by, among other people, the surviving family of their victims is a strange urge. You want his indirect victims to look across the breakfast table at the empty chair where their raped to death mother used to sit, while the person who horribly stole her life is having scrambled eggs bought with their tax dollars. You truly are enlightened!
Unless you believe in some primitive, obviously flawed "Heaven and Hell"-model, killing somebody is not a form of punishment
Who said that primitive superstitions are required?
Depriving a person of a future is punishment. Someone who has decided to, and has murdered other people, and who wakes up each morning and has breakfast anyway, is definitely going to be punished by having all of his future days removed. Forcing the families of the people he's murdered to go to work each day to pay some taxes to keep alive, and feed breakfast to, the person who wrecked their lives - that is punishment for the victims. They aren't made whole by the death of the murderer to took their loved ones away, but they spared from spending some of every day to keep that person fed and housed and chipping away at what's left. If the families can convince a judge they'd be happier keeping their loved ones' murderer alive, then that's something to consider.
It is however killing somebody in cold blood
No, it is just completing what the murderer chose to start.
that is one of the most despicable acts humans can commit
I'd say that doing things like raping someone to death is pretty awful. Doing it more than once, and promising to keep doing it is pretty despicable. Showing zero remorse for doing it is despicable. Telling the brothers, mothers, and children of the raped-to-death woman, "Hey, thanks for helping to buy my meals every day!" is pretty awful. Telling them how much he enjoys spending part of every day thinking about the act of killing their family member - pretty awful, right? Ending that person's ability to keep doing so is definitely punishment.
YouTube is adding the adverts (and making the money for its parent company).
YouTube is only adding ads because the guy posting them has expressly said he wants YouTube to couple his material with ads, and the whole idea is that once he has enough viewers, he (the guy posting the videos) will get a piece of the ad revenue. You know, deliberate commercial activity.
The problem is you're missing the whole point of the fine article, and of what the FAA is doing. Picture two people standing next to each other, each one at the controls of a 4-pound DJI Phantom with a GoPro hanging off of it. They're both using exactly the same equipment, practicing exactly the same safety protocols, and each flying 35 feet off the ground over the roof of a house, pointing their cameras at the gutters, looking for debris that might make it worth the risk of putting up a ladder for cleaning. You're watching this, and you have no way of knowing which of two operators is doing it for fun, and which is doing it for $20.
Which of the two people do you think should be fined $10,000?
Can you tell by what they're doing, how they're operating, what the video looks like, or anything else? No. You have to look for the outline of that $20 bill in the one operator's pocket. The FAA considers the guy flying for fun to be operating completely within their guidelines. The indistinguishable guy standing right next to him doing exactly the same thing now owes the FAA a $10,000 fine. The FAA says they will not be asking the one guy to pass any sort of test in order to spool up that quadcopter and fly over those gutters. They guy standing next to him will need to invest many hours and hundreds of dollars in order to make exactly the same flight with exactly the same equipment under exactly the same circumstances. Because there's enough cash to buy a pizza in his pocket.
Nice attempt to completely miss the point! It's not about whether they were right or wrong on the matter of policy or the specifics of some particular looming conflict, etc. It's that they - as Senators - decided to go get directly involved in overseas diplomacy (not just writing a letter!), and the left end of the political spectrum didn't start screaming in transparently fake umbrage about it in order to distract from press coverage about their all-eggs-in-one-basket designated presidential candidate's illegal behavior.
Slashdot Mirror
You call a person who can speak two languages bilingual.
You call a person who can speak three languages trilingual.
What do you call a person who speaks only one language?
American.
Wow, I'll bet you can say "pretentious douchebag" in a bunch of languages, huh? Though I suspect that in all of your sophistication, you might still miss the irony.
Is there anyone in the world that doesn't know more than one language? Maybe there are a few monolinguals in Washington DC, but the rest of the world seems to be better educated.
I know plenty of multi-lingual people. Some of them are the biggest idiots I've ever met. Ignorant of science, irrational in their manner and communication, befuddled by history and unable to handle the chore of critical thinking. Being able to express muddled thinking and ignorance in multiple languages isn't impressive, it's just an example of how persistence and reason aren't the same things. Worldly and sensible aren't the same thing. I'm sure that several of the fine fellows in ISIS that help in the complex task of doing slick post production work on one of the Burning People Alive videos speak fluently in several languages. I guess they're better educated than, say, a mere simpleton like Richard Feynman who despite only learning one other language well (Portuguese) and learning a bit of a couple others managed to win the Nobel Prize. Obviously a dolt compared to, say, a knee-breaking organized crime debt collector in northern Italy who speaks Italian, French, German and English.
Your idea of "better educated" suggests that you weren't very well educated yourself, as you can't get your head around the whole correlation vs. causation thing.
he used murder to describe executions, any reader would still know it is an execution
No, a reader hearing that the government "murdered" someone might think we were hearing about something done a la Che Guevara (who liked to line up people he didn't like, and have his revolution shoot them dead without a trial, etc). That's an "execution" that's really a murder. The Islamic State "executes" their judgement about whether or not, say, some poor bastard who's guilty of simply being insufficiently Islamic should have his head lopped off his body with a hunting knife - again, murder. So when someone refers to the death of a prisoner as murder, there's ample reason to consider that choice of word as being deliberately meant to color the reader's understanding of the "information" (to use your word) being conveyed. To, essentially, alter the information.
Wow, way to misrepresent me
Hard to say if "you" are represented there or not. But it does add clarity to what you said.
Do you think I think the words don't matter in describing those two situations you gave, of course not!
Then why did you treat them that way?
It is interesting that you had to make that stuff up to answer me
It's perfectly reasonable to take your rhetorical construction and to apply it to another scenario so you can see the flaws in what you said.
is totally irrelevant, using the word 'murder' does not change the information someone reading that comment gets from it
Of course it matters. Words mean things. The reason we have different expressions to convey the concept of murder and the concept of the execution of a death sentence carried out against someone who chose to commit murder is: those are not the same things! Labeling them as if they are, and tainting your communication with the connotation of a word chosen when you know it's an inaccurate, agenda-loaded word choice meant to bias understanding of what's said, is not just some breezy situation to dismiss as if it's some linguistic quirk or just the act of someone who's got a childlike vocabulary and doesn't know better.
One chooses the word "murder" to describe an act because one thinks the act is actually murder, and wants to persuade others to perceive it the same way. Don't play dumb like you can't tell the difference.
Poor people commit more crimes precisely because the upper classes dictate...
I see. So in poor areas, where violent gangs murder each other regularly, resulting in a higher rate of murders in that "lower" class, it's your opinion that that's just rich people looking to make themselves somehow ... exempt from the same consequences? So when the rich real estate heir in NY who was just arrested for murder is ... arrested for murder ... that's ... what again? Can you please be just a little more coherent?
I actually prefer they use the book value of the car.
Ridiculous. I know people in dual-income households who pull in a couple hundred thousand a year, but who deliberately commute in old clunkers because they don't care about the potholes, the parking garage door dings, etc. I can think of at least one person nearby who is a notoriously hot-headed, but wealthy guy who drives a 12 year Camry. I also know people who live essentially hand to mouth working as landscapers, but who can't afford multiple vehicles, so that get around in a $50,000 truck.
How about: it costs $x when your're a jackass on the roads we all share and pay for, and after you've been fined a few times, it's not just your wallet but your license that's in jeopardy. You know, more or less just like we do it now. Rich guys who lose their licenses for six months can't buy it back.
If the cops start abusing the rich and powerful we might see some actual changes in the system.
Are you saying that the rich people who would be getting huge speeding tickets wouldn't have actually been speeding?
If someone stole my car or burgled my house, I wouldn't be particularly thrilled about paying for their time in jail. That doesn't mean I think they should be executed.
Who said anything about a burglary or car theft rising to the level of capital punishment? Now, there are people on death row because they broke into a house to steal stuff, found someone home, and then ended up beating, gang-raping, and killing the mother while the children watched, and then killing the kids and setting the house on fire in a lame attempt to hide their crime. When someone who sets out to burgle a house comes across a situation like that, and makes the choice to go completely barbaric like that - and shows no remorse afterwards - does your sense of whether or not the father, returning home to his smoldering house and tortured-to-death family might feel a little differently on the subject ... does that change any? Can you put yourself in his position?
Now send him off to work each day, financially ruined and with his family dead, knowing that down the road from him is the guy who did that - and he's forced to help to feed and house them, for as long as they can be kept alive in a box, likely for many decades. Does that change your calculus at all?
They are both killing. It is the same outcome whether someone is called killed or 'murdered'. They are dead ... arguing about the name something is given doesn't change this
Do you apply the same muddle-headed moral relativism to all topics?
Let's say you've got $10,000 in your hands:
1) It was the life savings of a little old lady, and you beat her over the head, killing her, and took it.
or
2) Someone very wealthy liked you, and gave it to you.
Doesn't really matter the words we use to describe what led to you having $10,000, right? Because all that matters is you now have $10,000. It's the same outcome! Whew, glad that all of those pesky value judgements are safely out of the equation from now on. The end justifies the means! How and why no longer matter, just the results! Thank you for making everything so simple, now.
He did die, of course, but his death did not bring any peace.
How would she have felt if she were forced to support that person, financially?
I would be happy - insofar as I could know happiness in circumstances like those - to know that my tax dollars were in part contributing to keeping a dangerous inhuman criminal locked away forever.
So, your happiness comes in the form of putting someone in a controlled box for perhaps fifty or sixty years? Yeah, I wonder who's really got the revenge problem here, huh? I want that person to cease to exist. You want to torture them for a few decades.
Your advocating killing them for the reason of not paying a small tax burden?
No, I'm saying that making a guy spend part of every day working to feed and house the person who raped is wife to death is evil. I suppose you could volunteer to be the person who sees to it that a remorseless child raper and killer is getting nice meals every day. How many can you afford?
Murderers rationalize their crimes in exactly the same way
You'd have a point, if you weren't working with an acutely toxic case of moral relativism.
You're using "rationalize" in the popular sense of "make excuse for." Yes, someone who wakes up one morning deciding to kill an innocent person, perhaps after a nice all-day rape and torture session before burning down their house with the kids still inside, definitely has to come up with some sort of "rationalization" for their actions. Removing that person from society requires no excuse-making. They've already removed themselves from society through their own actions, but are still willing to damage society when and how they see fit, leaving dead bodies behind, just for fun. That you can't grasp a difference between those scenarios is pretty astonishing, really.
Wether they are guilty or not, their execution is still murder.
Sure, as long as you choose to use the wrong definition of that word. That's got to make all of your debates simple, huh? Assigning your own meaning to words means you get to always be right. Convenient, but of course self-destructive when it comes to your credibility.
Given that not giving people "another thought" is one of the reasons why people become murderers in the first place
So, the fact that I have zero regard for someone who has decided to break into a house specifically to torture and rape a woman, kill her, and then burn the house down with her kids inside is really just a sign of how I've treated that person badly all along, and their crime is thus someone really my fault? Yeah, I see how you see the world. Everything is always someone else's fault.
The reality is that the government gets to do things that would be crimes if individuals committed them.
Of course "the government" doesn't conduct capital murder trials without a jury. That's "the people," and it has to be a unanimous decision. The frequency with which jurors can't unanimously arrive at a death sentence even for some serious, serious monster killers on trial in front of them, shows that mechanism (a jury trial) is certainly not just some rubber stamp for "the government."
I completely agree...but isn't this what you are also doing too?
I don't think there's a need to feel remorse for ridding society of someone about whom otherwise never give another thought, but who comes to our attention for being a satisfied murderer of innocent people. Supporting the removal of that person from existence isn't the same as wanting to kill anyone.
If you want to argue for the death penalty then you need to restrict it to cases where the evidence is overwhelming and you need to make it rapid.
Overwhelmingly clear guilt, yes. Rapid enough to not be dragging the victim's family back into appeal hearings for decades - which is insane. But too hasty does indeed increase the risk of errors in judgement.
It is obvious from your writing that you are an violent and bloodthirsty person
Not at all. Though it's obvious that you enjoy the thought of the families of murder victims supporting the person who killed their loved ones. Why do you like that idea? What is it about that that excites you so much? Do you have dark fantasies about killing people, and then getting to taunt them for the rest of their family's lives? It's a strange mindset, but your interest in keeping murderers locked up in boxes, cared for and fed by the families of the people they killed says a lot about you. Very ugly.
how is premeditated homicide, which is what an execution is, anything other than murder? because it's homicide under direction of the state?
No, it's death set into motion by the deliberate actions of the murderer suffering the consequences of his own actions. It's consequence. Your moral relativism is pretty sickening, actually. I wonder if you'd snap out of it if someone, say, raped your wife (or mother, or daughter, or best friend) to death after torturing her for fun. That might allow you to distinguish between that act of premeditated murder and the consequences.
Enlightened people can see that by murdering somebody in revenge, you do not bring somebody killed back to life
You probably need to refresh yourself on the meaning of the word "murder."
I would, though, like to hear your opinion on sending a man to work every day so that a bit of his paycheck can be used to buy breakfast, lunch, dinner, and much more for the person who raped his wife to death. Each day, he gets to do another little bit of work so that actual murderer can enjoy another day of reliving his conquest, and perhaps even reminding the dead woman's husband through letters or during occasional hearings how much he enjoyed the crime he committed. Your desire to keep an unrepentant, deliberate sex-torturing murderer alive and supported by, among other people, the surviving family of their victims is a strange urge. You want his indirect victims to look across the breakfast table at the empty chair where their raped to death mother used to sit, while the person who horribly stole her life is having scrambled eggs bought with their tax dollars. You truly are enlightened!
So the State, having decided that murder is illegal, resorts to murder as "punishment"
What you're showing, here, is that you don't actually understand what the word "murder" means.
Unless you believe in some primitive, obviously flawed "Heaven and Hell"-model, killing somebody is not a form of punishment
Who said that primitive superstitions are required?
Depriving a person of a future is punishment. Someone who has decided to, and has murdered other people, and who wakes up each morning and has breakfast anyway, is definitely going to be punished by having all of his future days removed. Forcing the families of the people he's murdered to go to work each day to pay some taxes to keep alive, and feed breakfast to, the person who wrecked their lives - that is punishment for the victims. They aren't made whole by the death of the murderer to took their loved ones away, but they spared from spending some of every day to keep that person fed and housed and chipping away at what's left. If the families can convince a judge they'd be happier keeping their loved ones' murderer alive, then that's something to consider.
It is however killing somebody in cold blood
No, it is just completing what the murderer chose to start.
that is one of the most despicable acts humans can commit
I'd say that doing things like raping someone to death is pretty awful. Doing it more than once, and promising to keep doing it is pretty despicable. Showing zero remorse for doing it is despicable. Telling the brothers, mothers, and children of the raped-to-death woman, "Hey, thanks for helping to buy my meals every day!" is pretty awful. Telling them how much he enjoys spending part of every day thinking about the act of killing their family member - pretty awful, right? Ending that person's ability to keep doing so is definitely punishment.
Is the FAA going after every private pilot that posts video of their small plane flights?
Doesn't matter. If they do so randomly it's still enough to create the chilling effect, and the reasoning behind it is still absurd, a la my example.
YouTube is adding the adverts (and making the money for its parent company).
YouTube is only adding ads because the guy posting them has expressly said he wants YouTube to couple his material with ads, and the whole idea is that once he has enough viewers, he (the guy posting the videos) will get a piece of the ad revenue. You know, deliberate commercial activity.
The problem is you're missing the whole point of the fine article, and of what the FAA is doing. Picture two people standing next to each other, each one at the controls of a 4-pound DJI Phantom with a GoPro hanging off of it. They're both using exactly the same equipment, practicing exactly the same safety protocols, and each flying 35 feet off the ground over the roof of a house, pointing their cameras at the gutters, looking for debris that might make it worth the risk of putting up a ladder for cleaning. You're watching this, and you have no way of knowing which of two operators is doing it for fun, and which is doing it for $20.
Which of the two people do you think should be fined $10,000?
Can you tell by what they're doing, how they're operating, what the video looks like, or anything else? No. You have to look for the outline of that $20 bill in the one operator's pocket. The FAA considers the guy flying for fun to be operating completely within their guidelines. The indistinguishable guy standing right next to him doing exactly the same thing now owes the FAA a $10,000 fine. The FAA says they will not be asking the one guy to pass any sort of test in order to spool up that quadcopter and fly over those gutters. They guy standing next to him will need to invest many hours and hundreds of dollars in order to make exactly the same flight with exactly the same equipment under exactly the same circumstances. Because there's enough cash to buy a pizza in his pocket.
Nice attempt to completely miss the point! It's not about whether they were right or wrong on the matter of policy or the specifics of some particular looming conflict, etc. It's that they - as Senators - decided to go get directly involved in overseas diplomacy (not just writing a letter!), and the left end of the political spectrum didn't start screaming in transparently fake umbrage about it in order to distract from press coverage about their all-eggs-in-one-basket designated presidential candidate's illegal behavior.