classic "he disagrees with me, therefore he is wrong" fallacy.

You basically got every single thing wrong about the case.

The pictures of militia men on bridges with scoped rifles sighted in and pointed at the BLM trucks would beg to differ.

I'm from Nevada, since before this was even local news two decades ago.
I'm VERY familiar with this case.

This is exactly and precisely about freeloader grazing.

No one, NOT ONE PERSON from the feds threatened any violence or murder.
The ONLY ONES to do so are Bundy and his militia supporters.

You are wrong and nothing you have stated about it is factual.
It's that simple.
Go away liar.

it does belong to the people.
that fact disagrees with you, or that enough people disagree with you create laws you dont like, doesnt change that fact.

No.
You can't.
You really cannot make that argument AT ALL.

It's simple property rights.
The case is NOT complicated.
The feds ownership claim by far pre-dates his claim.

It's federal land. Period.
It's not and has never been his land or his family's. Period.

For many years Bundy has grazed his cattle on that land.
For many years Bundy paid the required fees (think "rent") for that priviledge.
Then Bundy stopped paying.

But continued using it, even after being ordered by several courts to abide by very basic property rights, THAT EVERYONE ELSE ABIDES BY.

The fed did nothing, not one thing, abusive or unethical.
The only one doing anything abusive or unethical is Bundy, violating basic laws of property, tresspassing, and lease contracts.

And then there's that whole threatening violence against federal BLM employees, and not recognizing the federal government and constitution, only the nevada government and costitution, even though the envada constitution specifically spells out as a matter of law that Nevada is a part of the United States and holds the federal government and constitution as legally valid entities, and holds allegiance to them.

Economist
National Geographic
Analog
NYTimes
New Yorker
Discover Magazine
Time
Life, before it went out of print...still worth tracking down copies if you can.

The NYTimes is as close to middle of the road journalistic integrity as you can get. It is far, FAR from being "just a liberal rag". They print opinion pieces from nearly anyone, on any subject, on nearly any stance. They just recently published Jenny MacCarthy. In the past they've published Ronald Reagan. They've written both in support and against the middle east involvements, often in the same issue.

The Grey Lady is not to treated so badly or dismissed so simply.

Also, if your opinion is that simply using facts and logic are what make one a liberal, then that implies that a lack of those things is what makes one a conservative....and certain individuals are doing a VERY good job of proving that point.

same thing. grandparents have Nat Geo mags going back to 1945. I read their entire collection over the course of a 6 or 7 summers of visits in the 90s. I'd gladly include Nat Geo on the list of magazines to read. I'd include Life if it was still around, but since its not, I have to be content with tracking down old TimeLife books when the libraries sell off older collections. The geography ones ("The Sierra Madre", "The Russian Steppes"...) were a high point of photo essay literature. Life itself is to me just such an iconic publication I find it hard to accept that it went away. I get that the internet makes it theoretically easier to do the same thing (visually travel to far off places)...but it the coherence and thematic consistancy of the Life publications and books as I remember them.

hah. you called slashdot conservative (and im not one generally speaking).

on topic:
I'm all for rephrasing it to make it clearer.
i believe there are two possible interpretations:

1:
the assumption of a militia as a band of men/volunteers as seperate from a standing army and as a potential counter to that army. this militia is essential to the security of a free state by providing the means with which to resist an overpowering government. thus, its essential this militia be able to arm itself.

problems with this is the Militia of the United States is now called the National Gaurd and fall under the command of the US Army, even though the governors can call them out for various states of emergency. specifically part of the Army Reserves. National Guard members are thus both part of hte Army and comprise the legally defined US militia (the us militia also includes "all able bodied men ages suchandsuch", part of which was the basic for conscriptiona nd the draft, etc etc....deeper than this is intended to go). some states also have state militias, but that's also deeper than this is inteded to go. The effective difference in the National Guard and the Army is essentially nil, since they are now essentially just hte Army Reserve (or part of it), and thus fully capable of being delpoyed overseas to augment or relieve regular army units, as we've seen in the past decade and a half.

To sum up, the problem here: If the militia is intended in the USC as the counter to the government's standing army, then we now have created a conflict of interest as the counter to the standing army is now considered part of it.

this is also the primary problem with the book authors addition, as his rephrasing implicitly assumes this interpretation, while ignoring the present status of the National Guard.

2:
the other interpretation swaps the role of the militia, and equates the militia with the concept of an official military force, regardless of form (standing army or volunteer militia). This interpretation says that "while a militia, or standing army, or national defense force, or whatever you want to call it, is neccesary to the security of a free state from outside forces, this is a neccessary evil. we distrust standing armies, and thus every citizen shall have the right to be armed in potential defense against such a force being used against its own people".

this is the concept i hew to, as it seems to most accurately reflect the founder's pholisophies and experiences with standing armies. it also creates many potential problems. for one, Disparity of Force. We have guns, the military has tanks and bombers and battleships. its basically impossible to achieve its stated goal of resistance if push actually came to shove.

another, is some people simply shouldnt be allowed to have guns. societally we have solved this one by basically saying, well, reasonable gun controls are OK. And I support that notion. of course, the devil is in the details of what constitutes "reasonable". for some anything and everything is unreasonable, and for others a blanket ban is totally reasonable.

me, i say background checks and short waiting period are essential, reasonable, and common sense, plus they give a dealer/seller peace of mind that he isnt inadvertantly aiding a criminal act (though admittedly there are some dealers who wouldnt care). even if the individual still obtains a weapon illegally, at the least it wasnt made too easy for him to do so.

and there are the additional problems of the times and society and its attitudes have changed. in this hyper partisan atmosphere we recently had "militias" ready to shoot and kill BLM agents simply for enforcing the governments property rights against a rancher in nevada who decided he can use land that isnt his for free. (abject hypocrisy and stupidity by these individuals, but what else is new?)

The flat tax is still regressive and disproportionately affects poor and low income folks.
It sounds good, but you must remember that while you can scale a tax as a flat percentage of income, you can't scale the minimum cost of living (MCOL). Its the flip side of the "decreasing value of money" theory.

This is generally handled by the marginal tax bracket system, which is what we use: splitting your income into portions, and then say from 0-20k, you pay 0% on that portion of income (first 20k free), then from >20k to 40K, pay say 10% on that portion, and then 12% on the next portion, on up the line.

ideally, the result is more effective and efficient at acounting for the MCOL of low incomes while still providing sufficient revenue and fairly evenly distributing the tax burden across a population, such that folks all pay roughly the same % as a function of their purchasing power not just income. but the devil is in the details, and this is where the special inerest come in, such as the GOP cutitng the top marginal rates (ie, the infamous tax cuts for the rich).

you can handle it in a flat tax system by simply exempting the first 10k (or whatever) dollars, but now youve created the basis of a marginal tax bracket system, albeit one with a single sharp inflection instead of a smooth curve, so might as well go full monty with the thing.

Not true at all. You propogated several myths.

Myth 1: Government programs never die.
Reality: Government programs die all the time. Some fade away never to be heard from again, others are explicitly killed once they're run their course and achieved their purposes. An average of 38 programs die every year. Since the mid 90s nearly 650 government programs have been put out to pasture.

Myth 2: Government programs inherently inefficient, less so than market forces.
Reality: Government specifically tackles those issues which the market either can't and hasn't, or are specifically and inherently inefficient for the market to handle. IE, market failures. Public utilities, public infrastructure, and other public goods are the perfect examples. Social programs, particulary the safety nets also. Healthcare is the defacto best example: the governement programs (medicare/medicaid) are the single most efficient and effective segments of our healthcare industry, far far more so than the private insurance segments. As a whole our entire industry costs far more (200-300%) on average than any other country while providing far less...but split into segments and the government programs are only about 40% above countries, while the private segments are >400% above.

http://www.governmentisgood.co...

Another example is space, and the article touches on that as well. Then there's R&D, science, education. The list goes on and on.

The short of it is this: goverment is NOT inherently sheilded from the market, unless specifically designed to be such. It can and usually is very active in the market and has direct effects on it. Public options in the market have long, LONG, been known to have the effect of keeping prices downa nd forcing innovation and further efficiency in the market by the private actors just by virtue of the need to compete with and attract customers away from the public options.

Why bother with the shotgun and waste the rounds conducting this worthless experiment.

Because it's fun.

You must be loads of laughs at a party.

--
BMO