We, The little People do not want to be in the "race" to a cashless society! There are so many negative consequences that the whole idea scares the hell out of me. The privacy implications are creepy enough, but that's only part of it. If the government eliminates cash from the economy, we will be totally reliant on banks. If the option to withdraw & hold physical money disappears, the banks will charge us just for holding our wealth. Think 0.5% interest on your savings account sucks? How about -0.5%, or -2%? The banks will also set or increase fees for every single transaction. Want to sell something on Craigslist or say, have a yard sale? Get ready to pay the same sort of fees that merchants pay for accepting credit card transactions, and be prepared to declare the proceeds as some sort of "income" on your tax forms. You know damned well that Big Brother will have access to the whole system. Maybe they will auto-deduct the taxes every time something comes into your account and make you prove that it wasn't some sort of income or profit? Then you have the risk that either the bank or the government could arbitrarily turn you OFF. Or maybe we experience a prolonged power outage and ALL commerce in the affected area stops?
The "facts" on climate change are that we have a bunch of massaged historical temperature measurements that indicate a warming trend. The bullshit on climate change is that "scientists" can use those observations and create a model which predicts the future. Science is based on observation and experiment. Predicting what's going to happen 20,30 or 50 years in the future is not "science", no matter how many PhDs you have working on it.
"science deniers are holding all progress back"
"Progress" as in higher taxes, a new Wall St. casino for trading "carbon credits" and more government micro-management of our personal lives? No thanks. We're better off dealing with the consequences of "climate change" than the consequences of more government. Besides, if all these doomsday predictions come true, there will be a massive die-off of homo sapiens. If homo sapiens are truly the cause of the problem, then it's a self-correcting problem.
"Immoral people who are given any type of power over others usually will and do misuse that power."
Yes, but "normal", healthy, psychologically stable people who are put in positions of power over others will also abuse that power. Look up "Stanford Prison Experiment".
"Power Corrupts" isn't just an adage, it's a real psychological phenomenon. For some reason, power is a corrupting influence on the human psychology. That's what makes government so fundamentally dangerous and so naturally inclined toward corruption.
That's just a label that people like you apply to others in order to deny them a forum. Exactly the way people use "Racist!" and "Racism!". Have you ever bothered to read anything written by Richard Spencer, or do you just read the out-of-context quotes which attempt to make him look bad? Have you ever listened to anything he has to say, or do you only listen to what the MSM say about him? Trump's appeal to the so-called "alt-right", apart from his immigration policy, is his reaction when the media tried to use the magic R-word to discredit him. Rather than fall all over himself apologizing like most people, Trump did what should have been done long ago and basically ignored the professionally offended.
"We have pretty good evidence that leaving Nazism unchecked leads to bad outcomes."
What "evidence" would that be? You mean you have ONE observation? Meanwhile, we have numerous historical examples of socialism and communism leading to the slaughter of tens of millions of people, typically the citizens of nations where this ideology takes hold. Still, we don't see determined efforts to ban commies from social media. We don't see PayPal shutting down their accounts. Nor do we see people using protest or violence to prevent commies from meeting, speaking or demonstrating. Why not?
The main '-ism' to be scared of is and always has been "authoritarianism". It doesn't matter if it's nazism, communism, socialism, monarchy or even "democracy". Too much power in too few hands is at the root of all of these historical horrors. All of the murderous authoritarian regimes have another thing in common as well. They always stifle free speech and political dissent.
She didn't "win" a damned thing! Thanks to the wisdom of the founders, we have the electoral college so that the "more people" in California and New York don't get to rule the rest of the country. WTF does "gerrymandering" (re-drawing legislative districts to favor a particular party) have to do with the presidential election which is done on a state-wide basis(except for 2 electoral votes in Maine which are awarded by district)?
Russian hackers != Russian government. It's true that the Russian government generally takes a hands off approach to Russian hackers. That doesn't mean the hackers work for the government. Some Russian hacker successfully conducted a spear-phishing attack on the DNC and the Democrats and MSM try to imply that it's some ultra-sophisticated attack orchestrated by the Russian government. Ridiculous.
" Ukraine, end up having to eject their Putin puppet,"
The USA government organized and architected a coup against the democratically elected government of Ukraine. We have a recording of U.S. assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland having a detailed discussion with the U.S. ambassador as they decide the makeup of the post-coup government. Hardly a spontaneous uprising by disaffected Ukrainians.
Firearms-related homicides are down by more than 50% from their 1993 peak. Injuries resulting from criminal mis-use of firearms are down by more than 70% over the same time period. Look at the CDC data. Heart disease and cancer are by far the leading cause of death, killing over 600k and 500k each.
The "unemployment rate" that the politicians, economists and media like to talk about is bullshit. It doesn't really mean a hell of a lot when the government can arbitrarily adjust the size of the "labor force" to produce whatever fraction they want. It's not like 450,000 people just decided to retire in November. People fall into this category when their unemployment benefits run out, but they're still unemployed.
IMO, the most relevant metric for assessing the employment situation of the U.S. economy is the employment to population ratio.
I say it's the most relevant because it can't be so easily manipulated like the other "unemployment rate". Also because the working people, in one way or another, have to support themselves as well as all the non-working people. Of course there are a few who are living on retirement savings, but if they're old enough, they're getting their SS checks too, so they're still being supported in part by working people. That ratio is 59.7% at the moment, which is barely one percentage point above the lows it hit in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown. The whole "economic recovery" and the "unemployment rate" which has gone from 8-9% down to 4.9% is an illusion. The real economy and real employment situation still suck.
Actually, I think an even more interesting metric would throw kids into the equation. They need to be supported too. In that case, we've got a country where ~152 million people are supporting 320 million people, so the unemployment rate is really 52.5%
Yes, the whole "free speech" thing was 100% bullshit to begin with!
Charlie Hebdo has published cartoons suggesting that the leaders of Le Front Nationale should be arrested and thrown in prison. They also helped circulate a petition trying to get the party officially banned in France. I don't condone violence, but it was poetic justice that Muslims attacked them after Charlie Hebdo had been so fiercely opposed to an anti-immigration political party.
"The whole global cooling has been hashed over ad nauseam here and many other places..."
Perhaps it has, but that doesn't change the fact that people were, at one time, promoting that theory. Just because you've discussed it, doesn't mean that it never happened. If you have access to a university library, you can go peruse old periodicals from the '70s and '80s and find articles about how the earth could be moving toward a new ice age. Try "Omni". I think that's where I read about it.
"If you're still banging that drum, the only reason can be willful, mindful ignorance"
Why is it "ignorance"? Just because you want to ignore it? The fact that "global cooling" has changed to "global warming" in 30-40 years (the blink of an eye on a geological time scale) demonstrates that the authors and scientists who were studying the issue back then were not infallible. Or maybe they were right, and the current scientists are wrong?
"Can anyone tell me why [Snowden] did not go public until he was living in a country willing to shelter him?"
That's not true. He was in Hong Kong when he began sharing the documents with journalists. He didn't know if they would be willing to shelter him and as it turned out, they probably wouldn't have done so. He got out of there with the help of people from Wikileaks. Even then, there was no guarantee that Russia would shelter him. That's why he spent weeks in the Moscow airport before finally being granted asylum.
As far as "going public", it was Glenn Greenwald and other people in the media who began releasing the information to the public. Snowden never released anything directly to the public.
"because they won't get off Facebook, Candy Crush, Pokemon Go, or..."
Google maps? You really want to ban driving apps and force everyone to go back to using a road atlas or folding map for navigation?
Whether it's cars, guns, drugs, alcohol, chainsaws or whatever, there are always going to be careless and irresponsible people out there creating hazards. Trying to regulate the world so that it turns into a padded cell is an exercise in futility.
"I've seen several reports of violence in my social media feeds from both friends and friends of friends"
Yeah, yeah. I keep hearing that there's some Trump-inspired hate crime wave sweeping the nation, but the only "evidence" I ever see is graffiti, vandalism and second hand bullshit from "friends and friends of friends".
There are tens, if not hundreds of millions of cell phone and CCTV cameras all over the country. If there's some rash of violent incidents all over the country, it seems strange that they never make it onto YouTube. SMH If this bullshit was real, there would be plenty of stuff caught on camera and it wouldn't be on YouTube, it would be on national news broadcasts!
I wasn't a huge fan of Trump, but seeing the ongoing deluge of whining, excuses and accusations from the mainstream media regarding the election results is wonderful entertainment. I like Trump a little more every day.
The media has always been slightly biased toward the left, but the degree of anti-Trump bias in this election was absolutely jaw dropping. They shed every pretense of neutrality and objectivity, went all-in for Hillary Clinton and they still ended up on the losing side. This relentless deluge of excuses...
It was Facebook! It was Wikileaks! It was Comey! It was Putin!
is nothing more than them being bitter about the fact that they can no longer control the narrative. For decades, they've been successfully telling the American people what to think, and this harsh rebuke by the voters is apparently hurting their delicate feelings. LOL That, plus the fact that Trump played them like a fiddle in the early days to build his name recognition(no such thing as bad publicity and all that).
Up yours MSM! Your candidate totally sucked and this time, the people of the USA weren't swallowing your propaganda.
States joined the union by having their state legislatures ratify The Constitution, thus agreeing to the terms which grant the federal government its powers. According to the Bill of Rights, Amendments #9 and #10, the federal government has only those powers specifically delegated to it in The U.S. Constitution. There is nothing in that Constitution which states that the decision to join the union is irreversible. There is likewise nothing in that Constitution which grants the federal government the authority to use military force to coerce states into remaining in the union. Had those provisions existed in the document, none of the original states ever would ratified The Constitution until the offending text had been removed. In fact, when the Virginia legislature ratified The Constitution, they simultaneously passed a bill which clearly stated that they were doing so only with the understanding that their legislature could reverse its decision at any time.
This issue was not "settled" in the 1860s simply because the North was able to use brute force to subjugate the South. Lincoln was wrong(and an evil bastard) and the SCOTUS was wrong in its "Texas v. White" decision. The South was right.
The idea of CA liberals wanting to secede from the union is nevertheless hilarious. Movements who seek to restore state sovereignty as well as groups advocating outright secession have generally been right-leaning and are met with total condemnation by the political left. Still, if their state government votes to withdraw from the union and form a sovereign country, they have every right to do so.
Right. Comey never said there was no evidence of a crime, he said that "No reasonable prosecutor would bring charges". Obviously, any reasonable prosecutor would know that going up against the Clintons means your life could be ruined, or perhaps terminated, and would therefore make the reasonable decision to not bring charges.
"... people who support [Trump] will believe absolutely anything he says, no matter the evidence to the contrary. The people who were convinced to vote for "Brexit" in the UK were similarly immune to fact when the facts didn't fit their world view."
So I take it that your particular world view is the only "correct" one? Your beliefs are entirely based on "TRUTH", evidence and verifiable facts and are in no way biased toward what you want to believe?
Nonsense. It is both arrogant and naive to think that you are immune to the same underlying thought processes that are at work in the people you are attempting to ridicule. All human beings, yourself included, have their own unique reality tunnel through which they observe the world and are strongly inclined to seek out evidence to confirm their existing beliefs while dismissing evidence to the contrary. All of the "true" material you've gathered through web searches and Wikipedia footnotes doesn't make your reality tunnel unique and special. Nor does it make you invulnerable to the same sorts of confirmation bias which exists in Trump/Clinton supporters, people who think alien spacecraft have landed on earth or those who believe in the paranormal. There are billions of devout monotheists in the world. Ask any of them to produce "evidence" to support their beliefs and they'll have plenty of it. Will you exhaustively study the bible and koran to evaluate their "evidence" for a deity, or will you dismiss it out-of-hand because it doesn't conform with your existing beliefs? I'm not saying your evidence is right or wrong or that your "truth" is true or false, but the psychological activity involved in interpreting evidence to confirm our existing beliefs is very easy to see in others, but extremely difficult to notice in ourselves.
Eliminate the personal and corporate income taxes and implement the revenue-neutral "Fair Tax"(fairtax.org). Then, allow a one-time, tax-free repatriation of any offshore assets held by individuals or businesses. Next, restore a sane trade policy where foreign producers won't be allowed a competitive advantage in the U.S. market based entirely on labor and environmental arbitrage. That would increase U.S. competitiveness in a huge way and begin a real economic recovery.
"Other than that, I see no reason to haul around hitchhikers."
How about helping someone who needs a ride? People don't usually hitchhike for fun. Thank goodness I live in a place where you can pick up a hitchhiker without being afraid... and you can legally carry a gun just in case. I haven't kept statistics, but a common refrain among the people I've picked up is that their car is broken down or they've lost their license for some reason DUI or whatever. They're often going to/from their jobs as well. I also picked up this guy who, with some friends, was going from vehicle A to vehicle B via canoe, had trouble and needed a ride to one of the vehicles. I guess it depends on what kind of people live in your area, but hell, if you're going in their direction anyway, why not give them a hand?
It's the same sort of argument as "look who's talking" or the "pot calling the kettle black". Yes, if you are debating a specific issue then a diversion into "whataboutism" is clearly a logical fallacy.
In the context of international relations however, I think it can be an entirely valid tactic. When the USA government criticizes Russia or some other nation for its policies, they are essentially scrutinizing those countries by some sort of "moral standard" to which a nation should conform. With Russia, it's "You're killing poor civilians in Aleppo!". This is true, and a "whataboutism" doesn't change that fact. However, if the USA government is so concerned about civilians suffering in war, why did they invade Iraq? Why are they conducting drone strikes in seven different countries? Why are they providing weapons to the Saudi government to fight a war in Yemen that's causing massive human suffering? Condemning Russia and the Syria government for their actions, and even going so far as to threaten them with the use of force is ridiculous in a context where the USA could alleviate much more human suffering by changing its own policies. The debate becomes "What gives the USA the right to establish and ENFORCE a moral standard which they are simultaneously violating?"
"You bombed a hospital in Aleppo! You're an evil nation committing war crimes!" "What about the hospital you bombed in Kunduz?"
Is that a logical fallacy or a very pertinent fact when it comes to an international standard about the conduct of war?
"hacking someone else's device, regardless of the reason, is not a legal activity"
I was waiting for this comment. "Access" is the crime regardless of what you do to the system. The hacker Max Butler wrote a worm to patch a vulnerability in BIND, but the FBI prosecuted him for "unauthorized access" to government computer systems. "Hey! I made your system MORE secure!" didn't fly as a defense.
"when you say "freedom of speech" you mean the freedom to be a white supremacist neo-nazi hate monger."
Definitely! Or maybe freedom to be advocating a homosexual lifestyle, or freedom to be a pornography spreading filth monger, or freedom to instruct people about making bombs or cooking meth. Yes, in the USA there is a First Amendment, but that only provides a little protection against government censorship. It does nothing to restrain the militant, hate-filled SJWs from using every tactic imaginable, including brute force, to stifle speech that they don't like. Creating a forum for unpopular opinions and controversial material is an entirely noble enterprise
"The collection in question was specifically authorized by a warrant issued by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, said the two government sources"
Notice how Reuters just regurgitates the info they get from "anonymous government sources"? They don't even bother to cite the law, nor do they question it on Constitutional grounds. Anonymous sources say that the FISA court said it was OK, therefore it's OK? Thanks for the investigative journalism.
From The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:
"... no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized..."
IANAL, but it would be impossible for the government to demonstrate "probable cause" to search the e-mail messages of every single Yahoo! user. The word "particularly" is also very relevant here as it contrasts to "general". It's illegal to issue a "general" warrant. The verbiage is very deliberate in meaning that the "particular" person or premises must be named in the warrant. "All Yahoo! e-mail users" or "All e-mail on Yahoo! servers" is not a "particular" description.
I'm not optimistic, but *maybe* there's a lawsuit here that will force a court ruling on this crap. If all Yahoo! e-mail users were affected, the government can't argue(as it has done successfully in the past) that the plaintiffs lack legal standing to sue.
Of course the Swedish authorities could still claim that he needed to appear in Sweden to face charges, but there's no reason he couldn't have been questioned in Britain anytime in the last 4 years.
As of now, Assange is subject to arrest in Britain or any European country, but only because of treaty obligations related to the extradition request from Sweden. If that goes away, so does the EU-wide arrest warrant. What crime did he commit in Britain? Something like "resisting arrest" because he ducked British authorities and fled into the embassy?
Consumers are king, but you can't please everyone. Check out the BuzzFeed article where they interviewed the VP of engineering and another VP at Apple about the decision.
According to them: "among the features people most care about in a high-end smartphone... is the camera."
Removal of the headphone jack apparently let them add some extra image stabilization and camera features along with a 14% larger battery. They apparently believe that they ARE catering to the consumers. Revenue from dongles and special Apple headphones will probably offset losses from people who won't buy the phone because of the missing headphone jack.
I'm from the "I'm not buying one of these phones without the headphone jack" camp, but after reading an interview with some Apple engineers, I understood why they made their decision. Interesting read. They had determined that the overwhelming use of the i-Phone involved people taking selfies and other photos. Removing the headphone jack freed up space for some image stabilization hardware and other camera-related functions and allowed for a slight increase in battery size. Sounds like they know their customers and apparently, people like me, who use that headphone jack almost every day, are in the minority. Hopefully Samsung has good design reasons and isn't just following Apple.
Slashdot Mirror
We, The little People do not want to be in the "race" to a cashless society! There are so many negative consequences that the whole idea scares the hell out of me.
The privacy implications are creepy enough, but that's only part of it. If the government eliminates cash from the economy, we will be totally reliant on banks. If the option to withdraw & hold physical money disappears, the banks will charge us just for holding our wealth. Think 0.5% interest on your savings account sucks? How about -0.5%, or -2%? The banks will also set or increase fees for every single transaction. Want to sell something on Craigslist or say, have a yard sale? Get ready to pay the same sort of fees that merchants pay for accepting credit card transactions, and be prepared to declare the proceeds as some sort of "income" on your tax forms. You know damned well that Big Brother will have access to the whole system. Maybe they will auto-deduct the taxes every time something comes into your account and make you prove that it wasn't some sort of income or profit?
Then you have the risk that either the bank or the government could arbitrarily turn you OFF.
Or maybe we experience a prolonged power outage and ALL commerce in the affected area stops?
We absolutely do not want to go cashless.
The "facts" on climate change are that we have a bunch of massaged historical temperature measurements that indicate a warming trend.
The bullshit on climate change is that "scientists" can use those observations and create a model which predicts the future. Science is based on observation and experiment. Predicting what's going to happen 20,30 or 50 years in the future is not "science", no matter how many PhDs you have working on it.
"science deniers are holding all progress back"
"Progress" as in higher taxes, a new Wall St. casino for trading "carbon credits" and more government micro-management of our personal lives? No thanks. We're better off dealing with the consequences of "climate change" than the consequences of more government. Besides, if all these doomsday predictions come true, there will be a massive die-off of homo sapiens. If homo sapiens are truly the cause of the problem, then it's a self-correcting problem.
"Immoral people who are given any type of power over others usually will and do misuse that power."
Yes, but "normal", healthy, psychologically stable people who are put in positions of power over others will also abuse that power. Look up "Stanford Prison Experiment".
"Power Corrupts" isn't just an adage, it's a real psychological phenomenon. For some reason, power is a corrupting influence on the human psychology. That's what makes government so fundamentally dangerous and so naturally inclined toward corruption.
"The guy is a Nazi."
That's just a label that people like you apply to others in order to deny them a forum. Exactly the way people use "Racist!" and "Racism!". Have you ever bothered to read anything written by Richard Spencer, or do you just read the out-of-context quotes which attempt to make him look bad? Have you ever listened to anything he has to say, or do you only listen to what the MSM say about him? Trump's appeal to the so-called "alt-right", apart from his immigration policy, is his reaction when the media tried to use the magic R-word to discredit him. Rather than fall all over himself apologizing like most people, Trump did what should have been done long ago and basically ignored the professionally offended.
"We have pretty good evidence that leaving Nazism unchecked leads to bad outcomes."
What "evidence" would that be? You mean you have ONE observation? Meanwhile, we have numerous historical examples of socialism and communism leading to the slaughter of tens of millions of people, typically the citizens of nations where this ideology takes hold. Still, we don't see determined efforts to ban commies from social media. We don't see PayPal shutting down their accounts. Nor do we see people using protest or violence to prevent commies from meeting, speaking or demonstrating. Why not?
The main '-ism' to be scared of is and always has been "authoritarianism". It doesn't matter if it's nazism, communism, socialism, monarchy or even "democracy". Too much power in too few hands is at the root of all of these historical horrors. All of the murderous authoritarian regimes have another thing in common as well. They always stifle free speech and political dissent.
She didn't "win" a damned thing! Thanks to the wisdom of the founders, we have the electoral college so that the "more people" in California and New York don't get to rule the rest of the country. WTF does "gerrymandering" (re-drawing legislative districts to favor a particular party) have to do with the presidential election which is done on a state-wide basis(except for 2 electoral votes in Maine which are awarded by district)?
Russian hackers != Russian government. It's true that the Russian government generally takes a hands off approach to Russian hackers. That doesn't mean the hackers work for the government. Some Russian hacker successfully conducted a spear-phishing attack on the DNC and the Democrats and MSM try to imply that it's some ultra-sophisticated attack orchestrated by the Russian government. Ridiculous.
" Ukraine, end up having to eject their Putin puppet,"
The USA government organized and architected a coup against the democratically elected government of Ukraine. We have a recording of U.S. assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland having a detailed discussion with the U.S. ambassador as they decide the makeup of the post-coup government. Hardly a spontaneous uprising by disaffected Ukrainians.
Firearms-related homicides are down by more than 50% from their 1993 peak. Injuries resulting from criminal mis-use of firearms are down by more than 70% over the same time period.
Look at the CDC data. Heart disease and cancer are by far the leading cause of death, killing over 600k and 500k each.
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastat...
Firearms related homicides don't even make the top ten.
The number of people considered "not in the labor force" increased by nearly 450,000 in November. The total is now at a record high of 95 million.
http://www.bls.gov/news.releas...
The "unemployment rate" that the politicians, economists and media like to talk about is bullshit. It doesn't really mean a hell of a lot when the government can arbitrarily adjust the size of the "labor force" to produce whatever fraction they want. It's not like 450,000 people just decided to retire in November. People fall into this category when their unemployment benefits run out, but they're still unemployed.
IMO, the most relevant metric for assessing the employment situation of the U.S. economy is the employment to population ratio.
http://www.bls.gov/news.releas...
I say it's the most relevant because it can't be so easily manipulated like the other "unemployment rate". Also because the working people, in one way or another, have to support themselves as well as all the non-working people. Of course there are a few who are living on retirement savings, but if they're old enough, they're getting their SS checks too, so they're still being supported in part by working people. That ratio is 59.7% at the moment, which is barely one percentage point above the lows it hit in the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown. The whole "economic recovery" and the "unemployment rate" which has gone from 8-9% down to 4.9% is an illusion. The real economy and real employment situation still suck.
Actually, I think an even more interesting metric would throw kids into the equation. They need to be supported too. In that case, we've got a country where ~152 million people are supporting 320 million people, so the unemployment rate is really 52.5%
Yes, the whole "free speech" thing was 100% bullshit to begin with!
Charlie Hebdo has published cartoons suggesting that the leaders of Le Front Nationale should be arrested and thrown in prison. They also helped circulate a petition trying to get the party officially banned in France. I don't condone violence, but it was poetic justice that Muslims attacked them after Charlie Hebdo had been so fiercely opposed to an anti-immigration political party.
"The whole global cooling has been hashed over ad nauseam here and many other places..."
Perhaps it has, but that doesn't change the fact that people were, at one time, promoting that theory. Just because you've discussed it, doesn't mean that it never happened. If you have access to a university library, you can go peruse old periodicals from the '70s and '80s and find articles about how the earth could be moving toward a new ice age. Try "Omni". I think that's where I read about it.
"If you're still banging that drum, the only reason can be willful, mindful ignorance"
Why is it "ignorance"? Just because you want to ignore it? The fact that "global cooling" has changed to "global warming" in 30-40 years (the blink of an eye on a geological time scale) demonstrates that the authors and scientists who were studying the issue back then were not infallible. Or maybe they were right, and the current scientists are wrong?
"Can anyone tell me why [Snowden] did not go public until he was living in a country willing to shelter him?"
That's not true. He was in Hong Kong when he began sharing the documents with journalists. He didn't know if they would be willing to shelter him and as it turned out, they probably wouldn't have done so. He got out of there with the help of people from Wikileaks. Even then, there was no guarantee that Russia would shelter him. That's why he spent weeks in the Moscow airport before finally being granted asylum.
As far as "going public", it was Glenn Greenwald and other people in the media who began releasing the information to the public. Snowden never released anything directly to the public.
"because they won't get off Facebook, Candy Crush, Pokemon Go, or ..."
Google maps? You really want to ban driving apps and force everyone to go back to using a road atlas or folding map for navigation?
Whether it's cars, guns, drugs, alcohol, chainsaws or whatever, there are always going to be careless and irresponsible people out there creating hazards. Trying to regulate the world so that it turns into a padded cell is an exercise in futility.
"I've seen several reports of violence in my social media feeds from both friends and friends of friends"
Yeah, yeah. I keep hearing that there's some Trump-inspired hate crime wave sweeping the nation, but the only "evidence" I ever see is graffiti, vandalism and second hand bullshit from "friends and friends of friends".
There are tens, if not hundreds of millions of cell phone and CCTV cameras all over the country. If there's some rash of violent incidents all over the country, it seems strange that they never make it onto YouTube. SMH If this bullshit was real, there would be plenty of stuff caught on camera and it wouldn't be on YouTube, it would be on national news broadcasts!
Video or it never happened.
I wasn't a huge fan of Trump, but seeing the ongoing deluge of whining, excuses and accusations from the mainstream media regarding the election results is wonderful entertainment. I like Trump a little more every day.
The media has always been slightly biased toward the left, but the degree of anti-Trump bias in this election was absolutely jaw dropping. They shed every pretense of neutrality and objectivity, went all-in for Hillary Clinton and they still ended up on the losing side. This relentless deluge of excuses ...
It was Facebook!
It was Wikileaks!
It was Comey!
It was Putin!
is nothing more than them being bitter about the fact that they can no longer control the narrative. For decades, they've been successfully telling the American people what to think, and this harsh rebuke by the voters is apparently hurting their delicate feelings. LOL That, plus the fact that Trump played them like a fiddle in the early days to build his name recognition(no such thing as bad publicity and all that).
Up yours MSM! Your candidate totally sucked and this time, the people of the USA weren't swallowing your propaganda.
States joined the union by having their state legislatures ratify The Constitution, thus agreeing to the terms which grant the federal government its powers. According to the Bill of Rights, Amendments #9 and #10, the federal government has only those powers specifically delegated to it in The U.S. Constitution. There is nothing in that Constitution which states that the decision to join the union is irreversible. There is likewise nothing in that Constitution which grants the federal government the authority to use military force to coerce states into remaining in the union. Had those provisions existed in the document, none of the original states ever would ratified The Constitution until the offending text had been removed. In fact, when the Virginia legislature ratified The Constitution, they simultaneously passed a bill which clearly stated that they were doing so only with the understanding that their legislature could reverse its decision at any time.
This issue was not "settled" in the 1860s simply because the North was able to use brute force to subjugate the South. Lincoln was wrong(and an evil bastard) and the SCOTUS was wrong in its "Texas v. White" decision. The South was right.
The idea of CA liberals wanting to secede from the union is nevertheless hilarious. Movements who seek to restore state sovereignty as well as groups advocating outright secession have generally been right-leaning and are met with total condemnation by the political left. Still, if their state government votes to withdraw from the union and form a sovereign country, they have every right to do so.
Right. Comey never said there was no evidence of a crime, he said that "No reasonable prosecutor would bring charges". Obviously, any reasonable prosecutor would know that going up against the Clintons means your life could be ruined, or perhaps terminated, and would therefore make the reasonable decision to not bring charges.
"... people who support [Trump] will believe absolutely anything he says, no matter the evidence to the contrary. The people who were convinced to vote for "Brexit" in the UK were similarly immune to fact when the facts didn't fit their world view."
So I take it that your particular world view is the only "correct" one? Your beliefs are entirely based on "TRUTH", evidence and verifiable facts and are in no way biased toward what you want to believe?
Nonsense. It is both arrogant and naive to think that you are immune to the same underlying thought processes that are at work in the people you are attempting to ridicule. All human beings, yourself included, have their own unique reality tunnel through which they observe the world and are strongly inclined to seek out evidence to confirm their existing beliefs while dismissing evidence to the contrary. All of the "true" material you've gathered through web searches and Wikipedia footnotes doesn't make your reality tunnel unique and special. Nor does it make you invulnerable to the same sorts of confirmation bias which exists in Trump/Clinton supporters, people who think alien spacecraft have landed on earth or those who believe in the paranormal.
There are billions of devout monotheists in the world. Ask any of them to produce "evidence" to support their beliefs and they'll have plenty of it. Will you exhaustively study the bible and koran to evaluate their "evidence" for a deity, or will you dismiss it out-of-hand because it doesn't conform with your existing beliefs?
I'm not saying your evidence is right or wrong or that your "truth" is true or false, but the psychological activity involved in interpreting evidence to confirm our existing beliefs is very easy to see in others, but extremely difficult to notice in ourselves.
Eliminate the personal and corporate income taxes and implement the revenue-neutral "Fair Tax"(fairtax.org). Then, allow a one-time, tax-free repatriation of any offshore assets held by individuals or businesses. Next, restore a sane trade policy where foreign producers won't be allowed a competitive advantage in the U.S. market based entirely on labor and environmental arbitrage.
That would increase U.S. competitiveness in a huge way and begin a real economic recovery.
"Other than that, I see no reason to haul around hitchhikers."
How about helping someone who needs a ride? People don't usually hitchhike for fun. Thank goodness I live in a place where you can pick up a hitchhiker without being afraid ... and you can legally carry a gun just in case.
I haven't kept statistics, but a common refrain among the people I've picked up is that their car is broken down or they've lost their license for some reason DUI or whatever. They're often going to/from their jobs as well. I also picked up this guy who, with some friends, was going from vehicle A to vehicle B via canoe, had trouble and needed a ride to one of the vehicles.
I guess it depends on what kind of people live in your area, but hell, if you're going in their direction anyway, why not give them a hand?
It's the same sort of argument as "look who's talking" or the "pot calling the kettle black". Yes, if you are debating a specific issue then a diversion into "whataboutism" is clearly a logical fallacy.
In the context of international relations however, I think it can be an entirely valid tactic. When the USA government criticizes Russia or some other nation for its policies, they are essentially scrutinizing those countries by some sort of "moral standard" to which a nation should conform. With Russia, it's "You're killing poor civilians in Aleppo!".
This is true, and a "whataboutism" doesn't change that fact. However, if the USA government is so concerned about civilians suffering in war, why did they invade Iraq? Why are they conducting drone strikes in seven different countries? Why are they providing weapons to the Saudi government to fight a war in Yemen that's causing massive human suffering?
Condemning Russia and the Syria government for their actions, and even going so far as to threaten them with the use of force is ridiculous in a context where the USA could alleviate much more human suffering by changing its own policies. The debate becomes "What gives the USA the right to establish and ENFORCE a moral standard which they are simultaneously violating?"
"You bombed a hospital in Aleppo! You're an evil nation committing war crimes!"
"What about the hospital you bombed in Kunduz?"
Is that a logical fallacy or a very pertinent fact when it comes to an international standard about the conduct of war?
"hacking someone else's device, regardless of the reason, is not a legal activity"
I was waiting for this comment. "Access" is the crime regardless of what you do to the system.
The hacker Max Butler wrote a worm to patch a vulnerability in BIND, but the FBI prosecuted him for "unauthorized access" to government computer systems. "Hey! I made your system MORE secure!" didn't fly as a defense.
"when you say "freedom of speech" you mean the freedom to be a white supremacist neo-nazi hate monger."
Definitely! Or maybe freedom to be advocating a homosexual lifestyle, or freedom to be a pornography spreading filth monger, or freedom to instruct people about making bombs or cooking meth.
Yes, in the USA there is a First Amendment, but that only provides a little protection against government censorship. It does nothing to restrain the militant, hate-filled SJWs from using every tactic imaginable, including brute force, to stifle speech that they don't like.
Creating a forum for unpopular opinions and controversial material is an entirely noble enterprise
From the article:
"The collection in question was specifically authorized by a warrant issued by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, said the two government sources"
Notice how Reuters just regurgitates the info they get from "anonymous government sources"? They don't even bother to cite the law, nor do they question it on Constitutional grounds. Anonymous sources say that the FISA court said it was OK, therefore it's OK? Thanks for the investigative journalism.
From The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:
"... no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized ..."
IANAL, but it would be impossible for the government to demonstrate "probable cause" to search the e-mail messages of every single Yahoo! user. The word "particularly" is also very relevant here as it contrasts to "general". It's illegal to issue a "general" warrant. The verbiage is very deliberate in meaning that the "particular" person or premises must be named in the warrant. "All Yahoo! e-mail users" or "All e-mail on Yahoo! servers" is not a "particular" description.
I'm not optimistic, but *maybe* there's a lawsuit here that will force a court ruling on this crap. If all Yahoo! e-mail users were affected, the government can't argue(as it has done successfully in the past) that the plaintiffs lack legal standing to sue.
Of course the Swedish authorities could still claim that he needed to appear in Sweden to face charges, but there's no reason he couldn't have been questioned in Britain anytime in the last 4 years.
As of now, Assange is subject to arrest in Britain or any European country, but only because of treaty obligations related to the extradition request from Sweden. If that goes away, so does the EU-wide arrest warrant. What crime did he commit in Britain? Something like "resisting arrest" because he ducked British authorities and fled into the embassy?
Consumers are king, but you can't please everyone. Check out the BuzzFeed article where they interviewed the VP of engineering and another VP at Apple about the decision.
According to them: "among the features people most care about in a high-end smartphone ... is the camera."
Removal of the headphone jack apparently let them add some extra image stabilization and camera features along with a 14% larger battery. They apparently believe that they ARE catering to the consumers. Revenue from dongles and special Apple headphones will probably offset losses from people who won't buy the phone because of the missing headphone jack.
The market will decide.
I'm from the "I'm not buying one of these phones without the headphone jack" camp, but after reading an interview with some Apple engineers, I understood why they made their decision. Interesting read. They had determined that the overwhelming use of the i-Phone involved people taking selfies and other photos. Removing the headphone jack freed up space for some image stabilization hardware and other camera-related functions and allowed for a slight increase in battery size. Sounds like they know their customers and apparently, people like me, who use that headphone jack almost every day, are in the minority.
Hopefully Samsung has good design reasons and isn't just following Apple.