Are you deliberately obtuse? Yes, I think you are. It goes along with thinking and talking like a jackass twelve year old.
If broadband were already available to everyone, there would be absolutely no urge to address the issue, right? Right. So what's the problem? Why are there people in Finland who don't have access to broadband, who are now going to have their situation improved by this new right? Do they not have broadband because, despite having the service available to their residence, they can't personally afford the monthy costs? Or is it because somebody else hasn't felt like spending the much larger amount of money necessary to run copper or fiber out to their so-far-unserved physical address, and the person in question can't (or doesn't want to) spend the money to provision new service?
Perhaps you can think of some other thing that's getting in between the not-having-broadband Fin and his/her having it? Either of those scenarios can be addressed by one thing: money. It doesn't sound like their government is mandating that the end user pay to provision the services where they don't already exist, which means that they are mandating that someone else pays for that. The person who gets the service won't be paying for their shiny new connectivity's expensive provisioning, but other taxpayers will. Or a telco will, and will pass those costs along to other people they're already billing for services. So you have the government forcing one group of people to pay for something that another group of people now have the "right" to have. It's an entitlement paid for by other people. Even if the end user has to pay for monthly service, you're talking about other people having to pay to haul the service out to him.
If it made business sense for the service provider to already have service accessible to someone, it would already be there. So, who do you suppose will be footing the provisioning bill, now that the government is getting involved? Either taxpayers directly, or other ISP customers indirectly, as forced to do so by the government.
OK, so let's see how childishly you can spew your next comment. Fire away.
The only large European country I can think of that has toll roads is France, the usual example of American right wing idiots claiming socialism is evil based upon 'facts' coming from/dev/random or worse (Fox News).
I must say, you've produced some lovely irony, there. Thanks! It's fun to hear someone who actually doesn't know the facts put the word facts in quotes as you derisively complain about someone else's ignorance.
Having spent about $100 in tolls while driving for only a few days in Italy just recently, I can assure you that they certainly don't consider the use of their roads to be a "right." There are also toll roads in Greece. And Austria. And Croatia. And Hungary. And Ireland. And Norway. And Portugal. And Spain. And Sweden. And Switzerland. And the UK. And more, of course - shall I go on?
Let me guess: you get all of your ignorance served up by The Huffington Post or the Daily KOS? You obviously don't have any personal experience in Europe, and certainly can't be bothered to lift a finger and use Google when stamping your feet and spouting fact-ish sounding nonsense that you hope nobody else will bother to correct. Classic lefty debating technique: sound offended, use an ad hominem attack, and then completely mis-state reality in hopes that by sounding eliter-than-thou, you'll score some points with a few people in the audience that react more to your drama than to causality, rationality, and actual information.
Thanks for playing, though! Sorry you're so new at it, and it didn't work out. Maybe you could ask for some legislation that makes the government responsible for making sure that everyone gets to win every argument - no matter how wrong they are - just so that it feels more fair, even for the people who don't know what they're talking about. We wouldn't want anyone's feelings to get hurt.
No. That's why there are taxes on the fuel you burn when you use those roads. That's why there are toll roads. That's why some roads are paid for by the business that needs it to be paved into their warehouse area or housing development. That's why there are substantial fees in some places to get a license to drive or to renew the registration on the vehicle you'll use on those roads. Don't want to pay those costs? You don't have to. And you don't get to use the roads.
How about waterways?
See above.
Electricity? Water?
No. You have to pay for those. And if you build a new house or put up a new business, you have to pay a lot to have those utilities extended to your doorstep, if you want them.
if you had more than a half functioning brain you would have understood that it's never been about the government giving you broadband for free
Right. It's about one taxpayer giving it to a non-taxpayer. There is no free. It's never free - it's just the government saying who pays the way for someone else.
Redistribution of the fruits of productive labor?!?
Right. Somebody is paying for this "right." The people who work enough to afford it. If everyone worked enough to afford it, then there wouldn't be the need for the government to create a new entitlement that forces the people who can pay for it to buy it for everyone else who has a "right" to it. The productive people always pay the tab for the ones on the receiving end.
It'd rather difficult to carry on a conversation or assemble if you're not using the same communication tools as everyone else.
In the US, the constitution says that the government can't stop you from speaking or assembling. That's not the same as saying that government (through confiscatory taxation) is under some obligation to provide the means by which to communicate or assemble.
It's easy to defend the rights to freedom of speech or of assembly. Those can be rationally derived from the fact of one's existence. But the right to broadband? Especially to a specific amount of bandwidth? Complete nonsense. What this really means is that the person getting the bandwidth has the power of government, with its ability to jail those that don't pay the appropriate taxes, to make bandwidth-providing slaves out of one group of people, so that another group can have the "right" to a service used (at that data rate) primarily by personal users for entertainment.
So this new right is just yet another form of redistribution of the fruits of productive labor, and more Nanny Statism. Of course. And when you make getting the use of a dermatologist or an allergist a "right," this is exactly the sort of thing that comes next.
Do you honestly think an HMO with a profit motive to deny you coverage is any better?
Yes, if they're allowed to compete with others offering similar services. It's when they don't have competition that it isn't optimal. So, allow them to compete across statea lines, and watch what happens.
I think this just highlights the lack of change that is going on in our country (US)
What are you talking about? Late last year, we had an election that was entirely based on Change (and Hope!). And the person who was pitching it got elected, and has power over both houses of congress. And that's why we've had so much of the immediate change that was promised. So much so, of course, that just 11 days after he was elected, he was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, which of course he was awareded just the other day. So, there you have it: Lots of Hope N' Change. We're all set, now.
I find it hard to believe that people that smart and that educated, having lived in different countries, would want to use terrorism to achieve their ends
You mean like, say, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? Born wealthy, educated in the U.S., and achieving a degree in mechanical engineering? Also the mastermind in plots that killed thousands of people to further the aims of the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Queda, et al? You know, the guy who hacked off the head of a journalist just for the internet video shock factor it was intended to produce?
Yeah, being smart and living abroad and being well educated in a techical discipline: not a guarantee that you aren't also a militant, violent, jihaddist wackadoo.
Would you like to compare those highly publicized incidents to the thounds of times each week that officers have to deal with with drunk, beligerant, crazy, hostile, or drug-addled loons - and now can do so without killing them or having to use a club?
pcp use is pretty freaking rare, so why is this always the strawman
The need to use a taser is pretty rare too. And circumstances where it goes wrong are even more rare. So why are you using that straw man? "PCP" is, yes, code for "generally crazy and not thinking about what harm might come to themselves nor having any sort of normal judgement or restraint" - which can be caused by brain chemistry problems of all sorts, whether DNA-based, or because of idiotic substance abuse.
She's now going to just walk up to him, cuff him, and toss him into the police car just like that?
No, she's going to use her Magical Radio Device - which works at the speed of light! - to get some help, which is never more than a few minutes away. A taser buys her that time. And she can use it again, if she has to, until her larger counterparts pull up and help with the heavy lifting.
billy clubs and (here's the important part:) close combat classes
Yeah, I'll mention that to a cop I know. She's 5'-2". I'm sure she'd much rather get into a physical fight with PCP-stoked guy twice her size than simply drop him, alive, like a sack of potatos. Though it sounds like you'd prefer she used a firearm in that situation.
Oh, silly me. I was referring to the actual present. I keep forgetting that it's OK for the dictatorial head of a murderous socialist regimes to name himself president for life, shut down not-propogandizing-for-him media, "disappear" elected officials that disagree with him, and all of that cool stuff now, because in the past, something else happened.
we now only have a guy like Hugo Chavez who tries to rig elections
And... sends troops across borders, and provides weapons and cash to murderous FARC militants, and jails his political opponents, and provides support to places like Cuba (who jail their own people for trying to leave). Chavez is a lot more than an election-rigger. He's a totalitarian socialist thug who has oil cash to play with.
I only have one goal in this thread, and it's to point out your abject hypocrisy in not proclaiming the left's eight years of positioning themselves as the replacements for the Jews as the victims of a new Nazi-like regime (the previous administration) to be not only hyperbolic and outrageous (to use your terms), but wildly more so, because it went on for eight years. We're not talking about name calling. We're talking about what you brought up: playing the victim, and invoking the events of sixty years ago in a poor rhetorical gesture. The difference? A small, noisy bunch of right wingers are doing it today, and are lambasted in the press for doing so. For the previous eight years? The left did it louder, for years straight, and with the approval of their sympathetic media and pundits.
Again: you think that people who aren't happy about nationalized this-and-that and are comparing Obama to Hitler are usurping the memory of the people Hitler actually victimized. Fine. But you are, in a spectacular fit of hypocrisy, insisting that eight years of far more of the same - and much worse - from the left is just some harmless name-calling. Well, which is it? You already know: the loopy left that made a science out of calling themselves the new oppressed victims of the new fascist regime were doing exactly what you're now complaining about. Did you find eight years of that from the left to be outrageous? They perfected exactly what it is you're complaining about. Show some intellectual integrity and admit it.
No. Large, vocal, and media-tolerated voices on the left didn't just call Bush "Hitler," they referred regularly to the administration as acting just like Hitler's regime, and in subjugating people on the left, or people elsewhere in the way that Hitler did.
You're the one using two different standards when postulating what people mean. Saying "Bush is just like Hitler in terms of what he does and what he wants to do to people is not just calling names. If it is, then you aren't saying anything more substantial, either. So which is it? Are you just calling names, or were the people who continually referred to the last administrations policies, actions, motives, and idealogy as being an extension - in practice, purpose, and kind - of the Third Reich doing a little more than calling names? You don't find that to be hyperbolic or outrageous? Of course not. Because you prefer to give moral comfort that partisan group.
although I'm not quite certain why you chose to focus on me personally rather than what I said
Because you're the one that said it.
I'd be just as outraged to hear anyone hear it -- no matter who they were
Really. In eight years of everyone from Code Pink to Cindy Sheehan to ACORN to the literally thousands of threads on the Daily KOS that earnestly evaluated Bush in an effort to decide just in what ways he was like Hitler, and seeking to destroy "brown people" blah blah blah... you never noticed any of that? The only explanations are that you willfully ignore the lefty loons in hopes that they don't make up as large a percentage of the rabble as you fear, or you've been completely unobservant for eight years. Which doesn't bode well for the credibility of your current observations.
What I'm appalled by, and what I wrote about, is the idea that conservatives would think that the awful 'plight' of conservatives in America is somehow akin to what happened to the Jews
So, never mind the name calling. Were you equally appalled when liberals (in far greater numbers than some noisy right wingers, and for years on end, with gushing media support, insisted they were in the same plight as the victims of fascism and persecution a la Europe 60 years ago? Were you? Because while some people might be stretching it now to compare the nationalization of banks, car makers, doctors, etc., as being some precursor to totalitarianism a la Hugo Chavez, nobody on the left appeared to think it was stretching it for screaming protesters to say that the last administration was exactly like the Reich or Fascist Italy, etc. Did you? Because everyone on the left who screamed that were taking up the mantle of New Fascist/Nazi Victim, by their own description and continual assertion. If you're "not really interested," it's because you don't want to have to recognize it.
Slashdot Mirror
will cause the fabric of the Universe to reformat to its original state
Well, at least that will get rid of that incorrect apostrophe in your signature line. Whew!
Are you deliberately obtuse? Yes, I think you are. It goes along with thinking and talking like a jackass twelve year old.
If broadband were already available to everyone, there would be absolutely no urge to address the issue, right? Right. So what's the problem? Why are there people in Finland who don't have access to broadband, who are now going to have their situation improved by this new right? Do they not have broadband because, despite having the service available to their residence, they can't personally afford the monthy costs? Or is it because somebody else hasn't felt like spending the much larger amount of money necessary to run copper or fiber out to their so-far-unserved physical address, and the person in question can't (or doesn't want to) spend the money to provision new service?
Perhaps you can think of some other thing that's getting in between the not-having-broadband Fin and his/her having it? Either of those scenarios can be addressed by one thing: money. It doesn't sound like their government is mandating that the end user pay to provision the services where they don't already exist, which means that they are mandating that someone else pays for that. The person who gets the service won't be paying for their shiny new connectivity's expensive provisioning, but other taxpayers will. Or a telco will, and will pass those costs along to other people they're already billing for services. So you have the government forcing one group of people to pay for something that another group of people now have the "right" to have. It's an entitlement paid for by other people. Even if the end user has to pay for monthly service, you're talking about other people having to pay to haul the service out to him.
If it made business sense for the service provider to already have service accessible to someone, it would already be there. So, who do you suppose will be footing the provisioning bill, now that the government is getting involved? Either taxpayers directly, or other ISP customers indirectly, as forced to do so by the government.
OK, so let's see how childishly you can spew your next comment. Fire away.
The only large European country I can think of that has toll roads is France, the usual example of American right wing idiots claiming socialism is evil based upon 'facts' coming from /dev/random or worse (Fox News).
I must say, you've produced some lovely irony, there. Thanks! It's fun to hear someone who actually doesn't know the facts put the word facts in quotes as you derisively complain about someone else's ignorance.
Having spent about $100 in tolls while driving for only a few days in Italy just recently, I can assure you that they certainly don't consider the use of their roads to be a "right." There are also toll roads in Greece. And Austria. And Croatia. And Hungary. And Ireland. And Norway. And Portugal. And Spain. And Sweden. And Switzerland. And the UK. And more, of course - shall I go on?
Let me guess: you get all of your ignorance served up by The Huffington Post or the Daily KOS? You obviously don't have any personal experience in Europe, and certainly can't be bothered to lift a finger and use Google when stamping your feet and spouting fact-ish sounding nonsense that you hope nobody else will bother to correct. Classic lefty debating technique: sound offended, use an ad hominem attack, and then completely mis-state reality in hopes that by sounding eliter-than-thou, you'll score some points with a few people in the audience that react more to your drama than to causality, rationality, and actual information.
Thanks for playing, though! Sorry you're so new at it, and it didn't work out. Maybe you could ask for some legislation that makes the government responsible for making sure that everyone gets to win every argument - no matter how wrong they are - just so that it feels more fair, even for the people who don't know what they're talking about. We wouldn't want anyone's feelings to get hurt.
Is equal access to roads a right?
No. That's why there are taxes on the fuel you burn when you use those roads. That's why there are toll roads. That's why some roads are paid for by the business that needs it to be paved into their warehouse area or housing development. That's why there are substantial fees in some places to get a license to drive or to renew the registration on the vehicle you'll use on those roads. Don't want to pay those costs? You don't have to. And you don't get to use the roads.
How about waterways? See above. Electricity? Water?
No. You have to pay for those. And if you build a new house or put up a new business, you have to pay a lot to have those utilities extended to your doorstep, if you want them.
if you had more than a half functioning brain you would have understood that it's never been about the government giving you broadband for free
Right. It's about one taxpayer giving it to a non-taxpayer. There is no free. It's never free - it's just the government saying who pays the way for someone else.
Redistribution of the fruits of productive labor?!?
Right. Somebody is paying for this "right." The people who work enough to afford it. If everyone worked enough to afford it, then there wouldn't be the need for the government to create a new entitlement that forces the people who can pay for it to buy it for everyone else who has a "right" to it. The productive people always pay the tab for the ones on the receiving end.
It'd rather difficult to carry on a conversation or assemble if you're not using the same communication tools as everyone else.
In the US, the constitution says that the government can't stop you from speaking or assembling. That's not the same as saying that government (through confiscatory taxation) is under some obligation to provide the means by which to communicate or assemble.
It's easy to defend the rights to freedom of speech or of assembly. Those can be rationally derived from the fact of one's existence. But the right to broadband? Especially to a specific amount of bandwidth? Complete nonsense. What this really means is that the person getting the bandwidth has the power of government, with its ability to jail those that don't pay the appropriate taxes, to make bandwidth-providing slaves out of one group of people, so that another group can have the "right" to a service used (at that data rate) primarily by personal users for entertainment.
So this new right is just yet another form of redistribution of the fruits of productive labor, and more Nanny Statism. Of course. And when you make getting the use of a dermatologist or an allergist a "right," this is exactly the sort of thing that comes next.
Do you honestly think an HMO with a profit motive to deny you coverage is any better?
Yes, if they're allowed to compete with others offering similar services. It's when they don't have competition that it isn't optimal. So, allow them to compete across statea lines, and watch what happens.
I think this just highlights the lack of change that is going on in our country (US)
What are you talking about? Late last year, we had an election that was entirely based on Change (and Hope!). And the person who was pitching it got elected, and has power over both houses of congress. And that's why we've had so much of the immediate change that was promised. So much so, of course, that just 11 days after he was elected, he was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, which of course he was awareded just the other day. So, there you have it: Lots of Hope N' Change. We're all set, now.
I find it hard to believe that people that smart and that educated, having lived in different countries, would want to use terrorism to achieve their ends
You mean like, say, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? Born wealthy, educated in the U.S., and achieving a degree in mechanical engineering? Also the mastermind in plots that killed thousands of people to further the aims of the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Queda, et al? You know, the guy who hacked off the head of a journalist just for the internet video shock factor it was intended to produce?
Yeah, being smart and living abroad and being well educated in a techical discipline: not a guarantee that you aren't also a militant, violent, jihaddist wackadoo.
random British citizens
Where "random" means "that coincidentally go out of their way to poke around in government computer systems."
Of course extradition happens from the US to the UK. First random Google hit .
Just Google for phrases like "police shoot deaf man" and you'll get the idea.
Would you like to compare those highly publicized incidents to the thounds of times each week that officers have to deal with with drunk, beligerant, crazy, hostile, or drug-addled loons - and now can do so without killing them or having to use a club?
pcp use is pretty freaking rare, so why is this always the strawman
The need to use a taser is pretty rare too. And circumstances where it goes wrong are even more rare. So why are you using that straw man? "PCP" is, yes, code for "generally crazy and not thinking about what harm might come to themselves nor having any sort of normal judgement or restraint" - which can be caused by brain chemistry problems of all sorts, whether DNA-based, or because of idiotic substance abuse.
She's now going to just walk up to him, cuff him, and toss him into the police car just like that?
No, she's going to use her Magical Radio Device - which works at the speed of light! - to get some help, which is never more than a few minutes away. A taser buys her that time. And she can use it again, if she has to, until her larger counterparts pull up and help with the heavy lifting.
Are there not requirements for height, weight and strength for a patrolling officer any more??
No, there don't seem to be. In our politically correct county, they have different physical fitness requirements for female cadets.
billy clubs and (here's the important part:) close combat classes
Yeah, I'll mention that to a cop I know. She's 5'-2". I'm sure she'd much rather get into a physical fight with PCP-stoked guy twice her size than simply drop him, alive, like a sack of potatos. Though it sounds like you'd prefer she used a firearm in that situation.
the last 100 years
Oh, silly me. I was referring to the actual present. I keep forgetting that it's OK for the dictatorial head of a murderous socialist regimes to name himself president for life, shut down not-propogandizing-for-him media, "disappear" elected officials that disagree with him, and all of that cool stuff now, because in the past, something else happened.
Worse than sending troops across borders and providing cash to murderous Contras, is it?
Hmmm.
Yes.
we now only have a guy like Hugo Chavez who tries to rig elections
And... sends troops across borders, and provides weapons and cash to murderous FARC militants, and jails his political opponents, and provides support to places like Cuba (who jail their own people for trying to leave). Chavez is a lot more than an election-rigger. He's a totalitarian socialist thug who has oil cash to play with.
I only have one goal in this thread, and it's to point out your abject hypocrisy in not proclaiming the left's eight years of positioning themselves as the replacements for the Jews as the victims of a new Nazi-like regime (the previous administration) to be not only hyperbolic and outrageous (to use your terms), but wildly more so, because it went on for eight years. We're not talking about name calling. We're talking about what you brought up: playing the victim, and invoking the events of sixty years ago in a poor rhetorical gesture. The difference? A small, noisy bunch of right wingers are doing it today, and are lambasted in the press for doing so. For the previous eight years? The left did it louder, for years straight, and with the approval of their sympathetic media and pundits.
Again: you think that people who aren't happy about nationalized this-and-that and are comparing Obama to Hitler are usurping the memory of the people Hitler actually victimized. Fine. But you are, in a spectacular fit of hypocrisy, insisting that eight years of far more of the same - and much worse - from the left is just some harmless name-calling. Well, which is it? You already know: the loopy left that made a science out of calling themselves the new oppressed victims of the new fascist regime were doing exactly what you're now complaining about. Did you find eight years of that from the left to be outrageous? They perfected exactly what it is you're complaining about. Show some intellectual integrity and admit it.
So some people called George Bush Hitler
No. Large, vocal, and media-tolerated voices on the left didn't just call Bush "Hitler," they referred regularly to the administration as acting just like Hitler's regime, and in subjugating people on the left, or people elsewhere in the way that Hitler did.
You're the one using two different standards when postulating what people mean. Saying "Bush is just like Hitler in terms of what he does and what he wants to do to people is not just calling names. If it is, then you aren't saying anything more substantial, either. So which is it? Are you just calling names, or were the people who continually referred to the last administrations policies, actions, motives, and idealogy as being an extension - in practice, purpose, and kind - of the Third Reich doing a little more than calling names? You don't find that to be hyperbolic or outrageous? Of course not. Because you prefer to give moral comfort that partisan group.
although I'm not quite certain why you chose to focus on me personally rather than what I said
Because you're the one that said it.
I'd be just as outraged to hear anyone hear it -- no matter who they were
Really. In eight years of everyone from Code Pink to Cindy Sheehan to ACORN to the literally thousands of threads on the Daily KOS that earnestly evaluated Bush in an effort to decide just in what ways he was like Hitler, and seeking to destroy "brown people" blah blah blah... you never noticed any of that? The only explanations are that you willfully ignore the lefty loons in hopes that they don't make up as large a percentage of the rabble as you fear, or you've been completely unobservant for eight years. Which doesn't bode well for the credibility of your current observations.
What I'm appalled by, and what I wrote about, is the idea that conservatives would think that the awful 'plight' of conservatives in America is somehow akin to what happened to the Jews
So, never mind the name calling. Were you equally appalled when liberals (in far greater numbers than some noisy right wingers, and for years on end, with gushing media support, insisted they were in the same plight as the victims of fascism and persecution a la Europe 60 years ago? Were you? Because while some people might be stretching it now to compare the nationalization of banks, car makers, doctors, etc., as being some precursor to totalitarianism a la Hugo Chavez, nobody on the left appeared to think it was stretching it for screaming protesters to say that the last administration was exactly like the Reich or Fascist Italy, etc. Did you? Because everyone on the left who screamed that were taking up the mantle of New Fascist/Nazi Victim, by their own description and continual assertion. If you're "not really interested," it's because you don't want to have to recognize it.