"It is no wonder the USians consider the government inefficient. It is so corrupt that it convicts its uncorrupted parts for the crime of performing a public service."
Very well said. The government, especially the feds, can't even be trusted to do the things that a government should, in principle, be doing. I'm in favor of net neutrality from a conceptual standpoint. However, I don't trust Washington D.C. to pass any legislation that actually benefits the average U.S. citizen . . . especially if it might hurt corporate profits. These days, no legislation is good legislation.
"Iraq was a response to a decade of ignoring UN security council resolutions and international law."
According to International law, the only justification for war is defense against an attack or an imminent threat of attack. Iraq did not attack the United States, nor was Iraq an imminent threat. According to United States Law, only the U.S. Congress has the power to declare war.
It's a bit of a stretch to claim that the nation of Afghanistan attacked the United States, but I can see some small shred of an argument there. Even so, Congress should have declared war to make it legal.
As for the Iraq war, it is, and remains illegal, un-Constitutional, and totally unjustified.
" . ..cutting federal taxes has crippled state and local governments which used to depend on that money getting back to them."
That's a naive way of looking at it. We send money to Washington, the Feds then take their cut to construct air conditioned offices and over-pay a bunch of bureaucrats to populate them. When it comes to "giving" back to the states, they use the funds to blackmail the states into complying with their stupid mandates (e.g. Pass a Seatbelt Law, or you don't get any of YOUR money back to build roads!!!). It's a negative sum game. We'd be better off if the wealth never left the states to begin with!
"If the state or country doesn't have enough money to pay for people to work, people stop showing up to work."
Federal government employees not showing up for work sounds like a good thing. Let's give Congress, the President, SEC, Dept. of Education, Dept. of Commerce, Dept. of Health and Human Services, Dept. of Treasury, BATF, DHS, HUD, FEMA, OTS, FHA and NSA a nice unpaid furlough like millions of people in the real world have had to deal with.
"Sorry but I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories."
LOL. That's right. If the mainstream media doesn't say it, then it can't POSSIBLY be true, right? Anytime someone asks questions that run counter to the official propaganda, they're labeled a "kook" or "conspiracy theorist". I wonder if the people who questioned the gulf of Tonkin incident were branded "conspiracy theorists" in their day. Is it still a "conspiracy theory" if it turns out to be true?
"EVERY non-secular muslim is against us, and "against us" in the sense that they'd like to massacre Americans."
What a crock of absolute $#!T. Even if it was remotely true, it's U.S. foreign policy and not religious fanaticism that fuels the underlying anger. I think U.S. citizens could turn into a rather nasty bunch if a muslim country invaded the U.S. and proclaimed that religious theocracy was the absolute best form of government
Re:From the last Slashdot article and FYI:
on
Revisiting DIY HERF Guns
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Mod this one up:
"Most tailgaters habitually drive on the tail of whoever happens to be in front of them, no matter *how* that person is driving. I haven't figured out *why* they do it, but I don't think it's because they're trying to elicit modified driving behavior from the person in front of them."
I think you're absolutely right, and it was a very interesting and somewhat pleasant revelation for me. I figured this out a long time ago when I had to do some hitch-hiking while my car was undegoing major repairs. I met at least half a dozen drivers whose tailgating behavior I would previously have attributed to rudeness or impatience. These people were nice enough to pick up a poor hitch-hiker, seemingly care free and not at all in a hurry, but insisted on following the vehicles in front of them at ~1-2 car lengths when doing 40-50 mph. I couldn't figure out "why" they did it either, and I wasn't about to question the driving behavior of someone giving me a free ride. It's always nice to find out that there are fewer arseholes in the world than you had previously imagined.
"...so minimally faster that it will take several miles before they pass the car on their right." "In those cases, it's the fucker in the left lane that's creating an unsafe circumstance."
IYHO, what is the minimum relative speed required for passing while being considerate to your fellow drivers? I completely agree that going "several miles"(=several minutes) to complete the maneuver is rude and obnoxious. However, a person using the left lane with a relative speed of 5mph is not creating an "unsafe circumstance" just because the arsehole behind him can't wait 30 seconds (assume 0.4-0.5 miles) for the passing maneuver to be completed.
"...you haven't inconvenienced yourself, and you have diffused a dangerous situation that you are partly responsible for..."
That depends on what you mean by "minimally faster". How long should a driver be stuck in the right lane behind a slower driver without being "inconvenienced" just to keep the left lane free?
"The actions the telecoms took were legal under the PATRIOT act."
Oh really? Then why did the government pass a law which granted them retroactive immunity for their actions? You don't need immunity if you didn't do anything wrong. There was nothing in the Patriot Act which authorized telecom companies to violate the privacy of their customers. That's the central point in the civil suits against them. Ex-post-facto law is indeed unconstitutional, which is why the telecom companies can't legally be given immunity for their previous offenses.
Furthermore, the law of the land applicable to wiretapping at that time was the original FISA law, not the Patriot Act. The FISA law clearly and unambiguously makes it a CRIME for any U.S. government employee to engage in domestic surveillance without a warrant. The Bush administration and the intelligence agencies flagrantly violated this law. Why do you think it was referred to as "warrantless wiretapping"? This was clearly an impeachable offense, and if the Democrats were any less corrupt than the Republicans, anyone invovled in this activity (Bush and Cheney included) would be charged with the applicable crimes in the FISA law.
Part of this whole "retroactive immunity" deal for the telecom companies was to make sure that no civil or criminal cases ever came into court. If there were actually a trial, it could potentially unearth evidence of massive criminal activity on the part of intelligence agencies. It took a very long time for government abuses in the Johnson and Nixon years to come to light. We can only hope that the full extent of the illegal wiretapping in the Bush years is eventually exposed.
You sound like a person with a narrow minded "two sides" black and white world view. That's why you automatically react to criticism of Pres. Obama and the Democrats by assuming that it must be someone from the "other side". FYI, there are some people in this country who take a principled stand on issues such as civil liberties. The fact that "Bush did it too" or "McCain would do the same thing" is no justification for Obama's perpetuation of the Bush administation's policies.
Just to be clear, there are TWO things going on here. Please don't get confused.
1. There are three key provisions of the Patriot Act that are set to expire at the end of the year. Note that Pres. Obama and the Ministry of Justice want to renew these provisions.
2. This article is referring to Russ Feingold "S. 1686" bill (aka the "Justice Act,") which is basically a watered down version of the original Patriot Act.
I have to give Feigngold credit for his voting record on civil liberties. My concern however is that his bill will be amended to renew the expiring provisions, preserve retroactive telecom immunity, and do very little to restore civil liberties. Recall that the Democrats pretended to put up a fight about telecom immunity when the new FISA legislation was being debated (voting it down once) before eventually approving it (in spirit of bi-partisanship).
IMHO, the best approach (assuming you care about civil liberties) is to prevent ANY new legislation from passing, thereby allowing the expiring provisions to die.
"...if one trained military force can defeat another trained military force at those odds, what makes you think a trained military force can't defeat an untrained civilian force at those odds?"
Vietnam, Russians in Afghanistan, Israel in Lebanon, NATO in Afghanistan... also because the civilian force doesn't wear uniforms and can blend in with the rest of the population.
Not to mention the fact that most of the men and women in our military are people of character and honor, and unlike our elected officials, take their oaths seriously.
The Federal government does a lot of things that I disapprove of, but they tend to project an aura of "incompetence" to mask what is a well thought out and deliberate policy of expansion of Federal power and destruction of individual liberties. If you look at what the government does under the assumption that they are "trying" to pursue an agenda that is in the best interests of the vast majority of U.S. citizens, words like "Idiotic" and "Insane" come to mind. Unfortunately, that conclusion is based on the false premise that they really "represent" their constituents. With a few exceptions, the Federal government is subservient to a politically well connected elite and pursues policies (wars, bailouts, regulatory negligence, selective law enforcement, patriot act...) which benefit that elite, and benefit themselves, to the detriment of the nation as a whole.
The fundamental problem with "giving them as much data as they want" is that they don't have a need or desire to look through it ALL, thereby "choking" on it. They just need enough to make it look like they're doing "something" and can keep it on the shelf for later analysis whenever they need to single out some political dissidents for additional scrutiny.
It's time to take a few thousand of these anti-terror warriors in Federal law enforcement and task them with investigating white collar crime, and government corruption.
"We need to realize that all of these boundaries we have set up are simply arbitrary, artificial constructs that have NOTHING to do with reality."
The human race has drawn lines on the earth, and those lines are typically guarded by people with weapons. Furthermore, when you step across one of those boundaries, the people there might have an entirely different world view, and will use varying degrees of force to impose certain standards of behavior. That's the REALITY, and from an end user perspective, there's nothing "artificial" or "arbitrary" about it. Bill Hicks was taking hallucinogenic drugs when he came up with a lot of his theories.
I love my Lotus stuff. Lotus 1-2-3 is still my favorite spreadsheet of all time, and WordPro is an excellent word processor. It has enough bells and whistles to do everything I want to do without trying to wipe my nose for me (i.e. popping up a stupid paper clip while I'm trying to work). EARLY versions of Lotus Notes had some glitches, but the last few releases have been awesome. I think Notes and Domino get a bad name because of all the capabilities. From a sys-admin point of view, it might be a challenge, but once you're set up, the tools can be really powerful.
"And yes if you drive 65 in a 55 zone and the electronic cops catches you, then you should be ticketed."
What if you drive 56 mph in a zone with a 55 mph limit, say for 2 seconds? What if you're going into a reduced speed zone and didn't hit the brakes quickly or firmly enough, resulting in a speed which exceeds the limit by 0.5 mph when your vehicle crosses the line? If you're so dedicated to being a good citizen, how about we install a GPS-enabled device in your vehicle which monitors your speed and location, and mails you a ticket every time you exceed the speed limit by 1 mph for more than 1 second? If you're not guilty, then you have nothing to hide, right? After all, "the law is the law."
"...an electronic cop enforcing the law is no different than a human cop enforcing the law"
WRONG!
You're talking about cameras, not Robocop. A police officer enforcing criminal law has the power to arrest you for committing a crime. Very well. A camera watching and recording your every move has the potential to make your life miserable for mistakes, minor indiscretions, or any number of things that are merely embarrassing but certainly not criminal. You really think that uniquitous surveillance cameras are "fine"? I find it hard to believe that there is nothing you might do during the course of your life that you'd rather not see posted on YouTube.
Looks like we'll have another low pressure front moving through as we go into the weekend, which will probably stick with us for at least the next few centuries.
"There is no basis in science for dividing humans into *race*"
I think you meant to say "religion" as opposed to "science". If you believe in $deity, we may all be "equal" under his/her eyes. If you believe in making observations of the natural world and drawing conclusions (=~ science), it's obvious that there are differences among the races. You said in your bloody post that the people of the various races "look different"! Is that somehow "random chance" or is there an underlying genetic basis?
From a SOCIETAL standpoint, I do think that race is greatly over-emphasized as a means of fomenting divisions amongst the masses. I'd like nothing better than to live in a society that was genuinely race-blind. Claiming that "race" has no "scientific" basis is just silly however.
The fact that you're expressing the typical politically correct BS while the OP is expressing a minority opinion should tell you who has been brainwashed.
A joke wouldn't be a joke without an element of truth. For instance, try to make a joke about Chinese people being "lazy" and see if you can elicit a laugh, even from an evil racist.
Making a racial, religious, or cultural based joke is not "judging" a group as a whole, merely making fun of a stereotype easily formed by inductive reasoning. No intelligent person would universalize such a statement to 100% of the subject group.
Are you REALLY offended by such things? Or are you just exhibiting the Pavlovian-style "feigned offense" response that you were conditioned to make by TV and higher education?
"By that logic radar to record speeding cars is not allowable. It's just a stupid gadget."
Big Brother is glad that you feel that way. Due to the fact that you are a good citizen with nothing to hide, we're going to install a device in your vehicle to monitor your speed at all times, along with a GPS unit reporting your location so that we know the speed limit on any particular stretch of road you might be driving on. We know that as a good citizen you would NEVER accelerate to 66 mph on an interstate clearly marked with a 65 mph speed limit. But, just as a precaution, we're going to set up the system such that a speeding ticket is auto-generated just in case you inadvertantly exceed the limit.
You know you're not supposed to be speeding, and you have no reason to expect privacy in your vehicle, or on public roads.
"To me that's like saying, "I'd hate to have an officer standing on the corner and policing my neighborhood.""
I would hate to have an officer,(or more likely an armed soldier carrying a military rifle), standing on the corner and "policing" my neighborhood.
"our human rights protected from those who want to cause us harm."
OMFW! It's up to YOU to protect yourself and your family against those who want to cause you harm. I'm sure that police states swarming with armed soldiers and government agents and a population of sheep-like citizens who will report you to big brother for bad-mouthing the state are nice and "safe". Oh . . . what was that you were saying about human rights?
" . ..i also think that the blogger as journalist idea needs to die a swift death. Journalists have to take ethics classes and are ACCOUNTABLE for their actions."
Oh really? I think the mainstream media needs to die a slow painful death. How many times have the so called "journalists" and "reporters" in the MSM gotten things absolutely and positively dead wrong? How often do they refrain from spinning the news for the benefit of themselves and their corporate masters? What stories do they choose to emphasize and what stories do they choose to ignore? What accountability do they have for any of this?
1 MSM employees are not journalists 2 GOTO 1
I weigh everything with a healthy degree of skepticism, but I find bloggers and independent media sources much more credible that the corporate-owned mainstream media and their minions of trained propagandists with 3 credit hours of "ethics". Can you even IMAGINE how twisted your world view would be if you had to rely on television and major print publications for information? Thank $deity for the Internet and bloggers worldwide.
"Refusing healthcare means refusing the right to Life, and as such it should be deemed unconstitutional."
I've read The U.S. Constitution and I can't find the passage you're citing. In fact, I don't see any Constitutional basis whatsoever for the Federal government to involve itself in healthcare, and I wouldn't trust the bastards to do it even if it was Constitutional.
As for "rights", no individual should be forced into servitude to fulfill the needs of others. That is completely antithetical to the whole concept of individual liberty. The individual has a right to "life" as in freedom and self determination, not the right to benefit from the fruits of someone else's labor.
I'll entertain an argument suggesting that a society has a moral obligation to provide for the basic needs of its citizens, but I won't accept the idea that there can be individual "rights" which necessitate the compulsion of other individuals for their provision.
"Seriously, healthcare is no different than having a standing army"
Thomas Jefferson described standing armies as "inconsistent" with freedom. Elbridge Gerry described them as the "bane of liberty" and James Madison said that the "greatest danger to liberty is from large standing armies."
I therefore concur with your conclusion. Allowing our Federal government ro run healthcare is a danger to liberty, and completely inconsistent with freedom.
Note: One would think that after the Federal government lied about the Iraq war, lied about the stimulus, continues to lie about the Wall Street bailouts, undermined our freedom with the USA PATRIOT Act, military commissions act, indefinite detentions, warrantless wiretapping, telecom immunity, etc. etc. the people would be a little more reluctant to trust them with trillions of healthcare $$$ and more of their personal information.
Is a de-facto monopoly still "evil" if it is providing a good or service which previously wasn't available? It's not like Google swooped in and used their wealth and market dominance to crush smaller competitors in the digital book search industry. In addition, everyone is still free to visit libraries, use inter-library loan services, etc. so Google didn't do anything to undermine the "competing" services which were already available. Isn't this type of innovation exactly in line with the spirit of a free market?
How the hell am I supposed to remember a name like "Cyxmu" when I don't even know how to pronounce it?
I'm not doubting your hypothesis, but your research would definitely need one or more control groups trying to remember names of various commonality and complexity in the same context. (Damn! Now that we've talked about it, I'll probably have the name "Cyxmu" burned into my EEPROM)
Slashdot Mirror
"It is no wonder the USians consider the government inefficient. It is so corrupt that it convicts its uncorrupted parts for the crime of performing a public service."
Very well said. The government, especially the feds, can't even be trusted to do the things that a government should, in principle, be doing. I'm in favor of net neutrality from a conceptual standpoint. However, I don't trust Washington D.C. to pass any legislation that actually benefits the average U.S. citizen . . . especially if it might hurt corporate profits. These days, no legislation is good legislation.
"Iraq was a response to a decade of ignoring UN security council resolutions and international law."
According to International law, the only justification for war is defense against an attack or an imminent threat of attack. Iraq did not attack the United States, nor was Iraq an imminent threat. According to United States Law, only the U.S. Congress has the power to declare war.
It's a bit of a stretch to claim that the nation of Afghanistan attacked the United States, but I can see some small shred of an argument there. Even so, Congress should have declared war to make it legal.
As for the Iraq war, it is, and remains illegal, un-Constitutional, and totally unjustified.
" . . .cutting federal taxes has crippled state and local governments which used to depend on that money getting back to them."
That's a naive way of looking at it. We send money to Washington, the Feds then take their cut to construct air conditioned offices and over-pay a bunch of bureaucrats to populate them. When it comes to "giving" back to the states, they use the funds to blackmail the states into complying with their stupid mandates (e.g. Pass a Seatbelt Law, or you don't get any of YOUR money back to build roads!!!). It's a negative sum game. We'd be better off if the wealth never left the states to begin with!
"If the state or country doesn't have enough money to pay for people to work, people stop showing up to work."
Federal government employees not showing up for work sounds like a good thing. Let's give Congress, the President, SEC, Dept. of Education, Dept. of Commerce, Dept. of Health and Human Services, Dept. of Treasury, BATF, DHS, HUD, FEMA, OTS, FHA and NSA a nice unpaid furlough like millions of people in the real world have had to deal with.
"Sorry but I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories."
LOL. That's right. If the mainstream media doesn't say it, then it can't POSSIBLY be true, right? Anytime someone asks questions that run counter to the official propaganda, they're labeled a "kook" or "conspiracy theorist". I wonder if the people who questioned the gulf of Tonkin incident were branded "conspiracy theorists" in their day. Is it still a "conspiracy theory" if it turns out to be true?
"EVERY non-secular muslim is against us, and "against us" in the sense that they'd like to massacre Americans."
What a crock of absolute $#!T. Even if it was remotely true, it's U.S. foreign policy and not religious fanaticism that fuels the underlying anger. I think U.S. citizens could turn into a rather nasty bunch if a muslim country invaded the U.S. and proclaimed that religious theocracy was the absolute best form of government
Mod this one up:
"Most tailgaters habitually drive on the tail of whoever happens to be in front of them, no matter *how* that person is driving. I haven't figured out *why* they do it, but I don't think it's because they're trying to elicit modified driving behavior from the person in front of them."
I think you're absolutely right, and it was a very interesting and somewhat pleasant revelation for me. I figured this out a long time ago when I had to do some hitch-hiking while my car was undegoing major repairs. I met at least half a dozen drivers whose tailgating behavior I would previously have attributed to rudeness or impatience. These people were nice enough to pick up a poor hitch-hiker, seemingly care free and not at all in a hurry, but insisted on following the vehicles in front of them at ~1-2 car lengths when doing 40-50 mph. I couldn't figure out "why" they did it either, and I wasn't about to question the driving behavior of someone giving me a free ride. It's always nice to find out that there are fewer arseholes in the world than you had previously imagined.
"...so minimally faster that it will take several miles before they pass the car on their right."
"In those cases, it's the fucker in the left lane that's creating an unsafe circumstance."
IYHO, what is the minimum relative speed required for passing while being considerate to your fellow drivers? I completely agree that going "several miles"(=several minutes) to complete the maneuver is rude and obnoxious. However, a person using the left lane with a relative speed of 5mph is not creating an "unsafe circumstance" just because the arsehole behind him can't wait 30 seconds (assume 0.4-0.5 miles) for the passing maneuver to be completed.
"...you haven't inconvenienced yourself, and you have diffused a dangerous situation that you are partly responsible for..."
That depends on what you mean by "minimally faster". How long should a driver be stuck in the right lane behind a slower driver without being "inconvenienced" just to keep the left lane free?
"The actions the telecoms took were legal under the PATRIOT act."
Oh really? Then why did the government pass a law which granted them retroactive immunity for their actions? You don't need immunity if you didn't do anything wrong. There was nothing in the Patriot Act which authorized telecom companies to violate the privacy of their customers. That's the central point in the civil suits against them. Ex-post-facto law is indeed unconstitutional, which is why the telecom companies can't legally be given immunity for their previous offenses.
Furthermore, the law of the land applicable to wiretapping at that time was the original FISA law, not the Patriot Act. The FISA law clearly and unambiguously makes it a CRIME for any U.S. government employee to engage in domestic surveillance without a warrant. The Bush administration and the intelligence agencies flagrantly violated this law. Why do you think it was referred to as "warrantless wiretapping"? This was clearly an impeachable offense, and if the Democrats were any less corrupt than the Republicans, anyone invovled in this activity (Bush and Cheney included) would be charged with the applicable crimes in the FISA law.
Part of this whole "retroactive immunity" deal for the telecom companies was to make sure that no civil or criminal cases ever came into court. If there were actually a trial, it could potentially unearth evidence of massive criminal activity on the part of intelligence agencies. It took a very long time for government abuses in the Johnson and Nixon years to come to light. We can only hope that the full extent of the illegal wiretapping in the Bush years is eventually exposed.
You sound like a person with a narrow minded "two sides" black and white world view. That's why you automatically react to criticism of Pres. Obama and the Democrats by assuming that it must be someone from the "other side". FYI, there are some people in this country who take a principled stand on issues such as civil liberties. The fact that "Bush did it too" or "McCain would do the same thing" is no justification for Obama's perpetuation of the Bush administation's policies.
Just to be clear, there are TWO things going on here. Please don't get confused.
1. There are three key provisions of the Patriot Act that are set to expire at the end of the year. Note that Pres. Obama and the Ministry of Justice want to renew these provisions.
http://www.mainjustice.com/2009/09/15/justice-department-supports-renewal-of-patriot-act-provisions
2. This article is referring to Russ Feingold "S. 1686" bill (aka the "Justice Act,") which is basically a watered down version of the original Patriot Act.
I have to give Feigngold credit for his voting record on civil liberties. My concern however is that his bill will be amended to renew the expiring provisions, preserve retroactive telecom immunity, and do very little to restore civil liberties. Recall that the Democrats pretended to put up a fight about telecom immunity when the new FISA legislation was being debated (voting it down once) before eventually approving it (in spirit of bi-partisanship).
IMHO, the best approach (assuming you care about civil liberties) is to prevent ANY new legislation from passing, thereby allowing the expiring provisions to die.
"...if one trained military force can defeat another trained military force at those odds, what makes you think a trained military force can't defeat an untrained civilian force at those odds?"
Vietnam, Russians in Afghanistan, Israel in Lebanon, NATO in Afghanistan ... also because the civilian force doesn't wear uniforms and can blend in with the rest of the population.
Not to mention the fact that most of the men and women in our military are people of character and honor, and unlike our elected officials, take their oaths seriously.
The Federal government does a lot of things that I disapprove of, but they tend to project an aura of "incompetence" to mask what is a well thought out and deliberate policy of expansion of Federal power and destruction of individual liberties. If you look at what the government does under the assumption that they are "trying" to pursue an agenda that is in the best interests of the vast majority of U.S. citizens, words like "Idiotic" and "Insane" come to mind. Unfortunately, that conclusion is based on the false premise that they really "represent" their constituents. With a few exceptions, the Federal government is subservient to a politically well connected elite and pursues policies (wars, bailouts, regulatory negligence, selective law enforcement, patriot act...) which benefit that elite, and benefit themselves, to the detriment of the nation as a whole.
The fundamental problem with "giving them as much data as they want" is that they don't have a need or desire to look through it ALL, thereby "choking" on it. They just need enough to make it look like they're doing "something" and can keep it on the shelf for later analysis whenever they need to single out some political dissidents for additional scrutiny.
It's time to take a few thousand of these anti-terror warriors in Federal law enforcement and task them with investigating white collar crime, and government corruption.
"We need to realize that all of these boundaries we have set up are simply arbitrary, artificial constructs that have NOTHING to do with reality."
The human race has drawn lines on the earth, and those lines are typically guarded by people with weapons. Furthermore, when you step across one of those boundaries, the people there might have an entirely different world view, and will use varying degrees of force to impose certain standards of behavior. That's the REALITY, and from an end user perspective, there's nothing "artificial" or "arbitrary" about it. Bill Hicks was taking hallucinogenic drugs when he came up with a lot of his theories.
I love my Lotus stuff. Lotus 1-2-3 is still my favorite spreadsheet of all time, and WordPro is an excellent word processor. It has enough bells and whistles to do everything I want to do without trying to wipe my nose for me (i.e. popping up a stupid paper clip while I'm trying to work). EARLY versions of Lotus Notes had some glitches, but the last few releases have been awesome. I think Notes and Domino get a bad name because of all the capabilities. From a sys-admin point of view, it might be a challenge, but once you're set up, the tools can be really powerful.
"And yes if you drive 65 in a 55 zone and the electronic cops catches you, then you should be ticketed."
What if you drive 56 mph in a zone with a 55 mph limit, say for 2 seconds? What if you're going into a reduced speed zone and didn't hit the brakes quickly or firmly enough, resulting in a speed which exceeds the limit by 0.5 mph when your vehicle crosses the line? If you're so dedicated to being a good citizen, how about we install a GPS-enabled device in your vehicle which monitors your speed and location, and mails you a ticket every time you exceed the speed limit by 1 mph for more than 1 second? If you're not guilty, then you have nothing to hide, right? After all, "the law is the law."
"...an electronic cop enforcing the law is no different than a human cop enforcing the law"
WRONG!
You're talking about cameras, not Robocop. A police officer enforcing criminal law has the power to arrest you for committing a crime. Very well. A camera watching and recording your every move has the potential to make your life miserable for mistakes, minor indiscretions, or any number of things that are merely embarrassing but certainly not criminal. You really think that uniquitous surveillance cameras are "fine"? I find it hard to believe that there is nothing you might do during the course of your life that you'd rather not see posted on YouTube.
Looks like we'll have another low pressure front moving through as we go into the weekend, which will probably stick with us for at least the next few centuries.
"There is no basis in science for dividing humans into *race*"
I think you meant to say "religion" as opposed to "science". If you believe in $deity, we may all be "equal" under his/her eyes. If you believe in making observations of the natural world and drawing conclusions (=~ science), it's obvious that there are differences among the races. You said in your bloody post that the people of the various races "look different"! Is that somehow "random chance" or is there an underlying genetic basis?
From a SOCIETAL standpoint, I do think that race is greatly over-emphasized as a means of fomenting divisions amongst the masses. I'd like nothing better than to live in a society that was genuinely race-blind. Claiming that "race" has no "scientific" basis is just silly however.
The fact that you're expressing the typical politically correct BS while the OP is expressing a minority opinion should tell you who has been brainwashed.
A joke wouldn't be a joke without an element of truth.
For instance, try to make a joke about Chinese people being "lazy" and see if you can elicit a laugh, even from an evil racist.
Making a racial, religious, or cultural based joke is not "judging" a group as a whole, merely making fun of a stereotype easily formed by inductive reasoning. No intelligent person would universalize such a statement to 100% of the subject group.
Are you REALLY offended by such things? Or are you just exhibiting the Pavlovian-style "feigned offense" response that you were conditioned to make by TV and higher education?
+1 Funny if I had points. :-)
"By that logic radar to record speeding cars is not allowable. It's just a stupid gadget."
Big Brother is glad that you feel that way. Due to the fact that you are a good citizen with nothing to hide, we're going to install a device in your vehicle to monitor your speed at all times, along with a GPS unit reporting your location so that we know the speed limit on any particular stretch of road you might be driving on. We know that as a good citizen you would NEVER accelerate to 66 mph on an interstate clearly marked with a 65 mph speed limit. But, just as a precaution, we're going to set up the system such that a speeding ticket is auto-generated just in case you inadvertantly exceed the limit.
You know you're not supposed to be speeding, and you have no reason to expect privacy in your vehicle, or on public roads.
"To me that's like saying, "I'd hate to have an officer standing on the corner and policing my neighborhood.""
I would hate to have an officer,(or more likely an armed soldier carrying a military rifle), standing on the corner and "policing" my neighborhood.
"our human rights protected from those who want to cause us harm."
OMFW! It's up to YOU to protect yourself and your family against those who want to cause you harm. I'm sure that police states swarming with armed soldiers and government agents and a population of sheep-like citizens who will report you to big brother for bad-mouthing the state are nice and "safe". Oh . . . what was that you were saying about human rights?
" . . .i also think that the blogger as journalist idea needs to die a swift death. Journalists have to take ethics classes and are ACCOUNTABLE for their actions."
Oh really? I think the mainstream media needs to die a slow painful death. How many times have the so called "journalists" and "reporters" in the MSM gotten things absolutely and positively dead wrong? How often do they refrain from spinning the news for the benefit of themselves and their corporate masters? What stories do they choose to emphasize and what stories do they choose to ignore? What accountability do they have for any of this?
1 MSM employees are not journalists
2 GOTO 1
I weigh everything with a healthy degree of skepticism, but I find bloggers and independent media sources much more credible that the corporate-owned mainstream media and their minions of trained propagandists with 3 credit hours of "ethics". Can you even IMAGINE how twisted your world view would be if you had to rely on television and major print publications for information? Thank $deity for the Internet and bloggers worldwide.
"Refusing healthcare means refusing the right to Life, and as such it should be deemed unconstitutional."
I've read The U.S. Constitution and I can't find the passage you're citing. In fact, I don't see any Constitutional basis whatsoever for the Federal government to involve itself in healthcare, and I wouldn't trust the bastards to do it even if it was Constitutional.
As for "rights", no individual should be forced into servitude to fulfill the needs of others. That is completely antithetical to the whole concept of individual liberty. The individual has a right to "life" as in freedom and self determination, not the right to benefit from the fruits of someone else's labor.
I'll entertain an argument suggesting that a society has a moral obligation to provide for the basic needs of its citizens, but I won't accept the idea that there can be individual "rights" which necessitate the compulsion of other individuals for their provision.
"Seriously, healthcare is no different than having a standing army"
Thomas Jefferson described standing armies as "inconsistent" with freedom. Elbridge Gerry described them as the "bane of liberty" and James Madison said that the "greatest danger to liberty is from large standing armies."
I therefore concur with your conclusion. Allowing our Federal government ro run healthcare is a danger to liberty, and completely inconsistent with freedom.
Note: One would think that after the Federal government lied about the Iraq war, lied about the stimulus, continues to lie about the Wall Street bailouts, undermined our freedom with the USA PATRIOT Act, military commissions act, indefinite detentions, warrantless wiretapping, telecom immunity, etc. etc. the people would be a little more reluctant to trust them with trillions of healthcare $$$ and more of their personal information.
Is a de-facto monopoly still "evil" if it is providing a good or service which previously wasn't available? It's not like Google swooped in and used their wealth and market dominance to crush smaller competitors in the digital book search industry. In addition, everyone is still free to visit libraries, use inter-library loan services, etc. so Google didn't do anything to undermine the "competing" services which were already available. Isn't this type of innovation exactly in line with the spirit of a free market?
How the hell am I supposed to remember a name like "Cyxmu" when I don't even know how to pronounce it?
I'm not doubting your hypothesis, but your research would definitely need one or more control groups trying to remember names of various commonality and complexity in the same context. (Damn! Now that we've talked about it, I'll probably have the name "Cyxmu" burned into my EEPROM)