It's an extremely small victory in the struggle against fascism, but obtaining David Gregory's arrest warrant helps underscore the point that too many laws is fertile ground for uneven enforcement, which is a refined form of tyranny.
It was a lack of trust in the congressional investigation of Benghazi that prompted the formation of the Citizens' Commission on Benghazi in 2013. The founding members of the CCB were U.S Army Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely, U.S. Navy four-star Adm. James Lyons, U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney (all retired) and Accuracy in Media Editor Roger Aronoff.
Vallely told WND that he believes Gowdy "has received much pressure not to get to the truth, and we are now coming to the conclusion that there is no longer any intention in Washington, by the leadership of both the Democratic and Republican Parties, to get to the truth."
It's blatantly obvious that after so many investigations, the facts of Benghazi are as settled as Global Warming. Will no one rid us of this turbulent brass?
Where have you gone, Jeremiah Cornelius, a website turns its lonely eyes to you.
Please, sir, enlighten us
. .
Chaser:
And don't pretend that you actually want to do that within the confines of the law. You've already demonstrated clearly the contrary.
a) Arrogant demand that I offer an answer.
b) Removal of the truth from the set of possible responses.
c) False claim about anything I've previously demonstrated.
Folks: THAT is how you troll. It's early in the year to talk about the Harry G. Frankfurt Award, but this one's sure to be a contender.
Your attempt at 'semantic engineering' is almost as feeble as d_r's. You would be claiming that every measurement and observation is 'judgement' or subjective. That is not so. People in the fog of cultural habit and religious mysticism proclaim 'judgements', usually bad ones. Those without such hindrances evaluate the situation and determine an objective cost/benefit ratio. Those are the people you find in leadership positions, and they use things like culture and religion to motivate you to do whatever they say while under the illusion of 'freedom'.
Pardon me while I take a drag on this joint, |===============| and evaluate our new wisdom.
judge
transitive verb
1 : to form an opinion about through careful weighing of evidence and testing of premises
2 : to sit in judgment on : try
3 : to determine or pronounce after inquiry and deliberation
4 : govern, rule â"used of a Hebrew tribal leader
5 : to form an estimate or evaluation of; especially : to form a negative opinion about
6: to hold as an opinion : guess, think <I judge she knew what she was doing>
Yeah, fustakrakich's argument makes about as much sense as cancelling the Vagina Monologues for. .
"Terrorism is really just bullying, extreme bullying. And I thought we hated bullying now," Maher said.
"Yeah, liberals hate bullying, all right, but they're not opposed to using it. When they casually throw out words like 'bigot' and 'racist,' it does cow people into avoiding this debate," he said.
That there's some funny:
5. A Harvard professor will find evidence proving evidence proves nothing
6. City of San Francisco will be leveled because steep hills made it handicap inaccessible
7. Nobel-winning economists will admit bafflement that deficit keeps growing despite increased government spending
Read all 10 for good belly laughs. 7 totally smacked of Krugman.
A review on a scale explains how (cheaper) scales provide repeatable numbers.
People love repeatable numbers. Consistency is more important than accuracy. Of course some get the two mixed up. But that's okay, as long as you get what you want.
(Cheap) bathroom scales are affected by slight differences in foot placement. Another scale compensates it otherwise. Other people just go for three consistent weightings.
Similar to the 80/20 Rule, perhaps, most people just want a decision made for them. Sure, we all know the numbers change, but which do i use? Three weightings? That's unscientific! Proximity to the last time? That's silliness! Yes, what if the manufacturer of the scale is willing to do just that for you? Finally, an accurate, consistent scale!
Currently, it has 12,639 out of 15,649 5-star reviews. That's ~80%. Who woulda thought?
One of the funny (tragic?) things is that my son and I traveled to Paris and bought tons of bandes desinnees including ones by some of the cartoonists that were murdered by terrorists today.
I stand with them.
Your right to claim blasphemy ends when you set foot outside the mosque.
Leaving the office yesterday, i got in at the 6th floor. First it stopped at the 5th and a man got on. At the 4th floor, another man and woman entered. From there we went straight down the other 4 floors unabated.
Mr. 4th floor recognized Mr. 5th floor and they chatted. Moments before the gates to freedom something like this transpired:
Mr 4th floor: "Now off to the gym to say hello to all those 2015 resolutions."
Mr 5th floor: encourages him that he'll be able to keep them.
Mr 4th floor: "No, i have no problem with the gym. I mean all the other people."
You probably think this JE's about you, don't you?
When people complain about Facebook, for example, I have basically no idea what they're talking about, because I've never been on it. I avoided Myspace, and Linkedin, and whatever else. The good thing about being very late to jump on trends is that you can avoid some entirely. I'm glad I'm not on any of those services because I've heard (later on that) they're sleazy.
FASHION
I still have a CRT (non-digital) television set. That's my only one. I still get non-digital, standard-def cable TV. I still record all my desired stuff on a VCR. The thing is, all that stuff still works, so I'm loathe to chuck it just because it's comically out of touch. Still, it's 2015 and the thought's crossed my mind, I might move it all to the bedroom and buy myself an HD screen for downstairs, and then figure out if a DVR is something you buy in a store or if it's something you can only rent via your cable co. or if it's something that's not a box in your home but a service you stream from you cable co.
At least then I wouldn't sound like an idiot talking with coworkers sometimes. Many of my adoptions of trends have been based on that. I was the last of my friends to get an answering machine. Remember those? I still have one. No not the tapes kind; I didn't jump on these until they were all non-mechanical by then. You might remember them associated with those old land line things, that we all used to have. Still have a land line. And still pay for long distance service, now that I think about it, and not sure why.
I was the last of my cohorts to get a cell phone, a small Nokia brickphone that everyone had (for a year or better) at the time. Then I was last to have that, and even though it worked fine, I spent $99 to move to a basic flipphone, only because everyone had those by then, and I was starting a new job, and didn't want to look like an idiot. What a reason to spend $100!
I plan on looking for a new job this spring, so just a few weeks ago I got my first ever smartphone. (Which one? Let's just say that I've now joined all the iDiots, I'm sorry to say.) The flipphone isn't broken, it's just unfashionable! So now I've gone from a $100 phone to a $650 one, and a little more than doubled my monthly service payment for it, just to learn about the smartphone world so I don't say something and reveal myself to be too far behind the times at a next job.
I got a netbook at the very end of that trend. But short-sightedly, I got one with Windows XP instead of Vista Home, for performance reasons, and now while it works just fine, I can't use it for anything serious because it's unsecured. And now that I have a smartphone, which boots to being able to check something on the web even faster, dunno what I'll use a perfectly good netbook for. It did get a fair amount of use for note-taking in classes (it's a Sammy 12" with a near-laptop-sized keyboard, which I needed to be able to touch type on it), so maybe I got my money's worth. (But how will I get my money's worth on the smartphone?)
AHEAD
I have been ahead of trends a couple of times in my life. In college I bought myself a Hayes 1200 baud modem (around $400 at the time; a *lot* for a ramen-eating [I miss those] starving college student back then) and was one of only a few at my college who did their homework on their home computer and then dialed in to upload it and, re-run it already developed and debugged on the school's system, and print it on the campus main printer. The only time I was in computer labs after my freshman year was to work (paid) in them. (Okay and for late-night study/party sesssions with my homies if I had been scheduled for some closing shifts and it was nearish the end of the semester.)
I also got the idea from a coworker at my first job back in the early 90's to fax one's resume to places. I know for a fact that that technique got me one of my jobs, as after I started there I found out the lady who placed the ad, with her company email address, promptly left, and no one was checking that account for resumes! But faxing resumes may not have ever gotten wildly popular, so what it was I was ahead of might not qualify as a trend I guess.
INVISIBLE
The good thing about not having gotten caught up in the social media trend is that I'm invisible on the interwebs. I use a robots meta tag with noindex/nofollow in my personal web space, that I only remove for the duration of looking for another job. I may be getting dinged in a job search by not being findable on social media, but at least then I can have *some* (controlled) web presence. Hopefully that's okay going forward.
I don't use my real name here, and have never revealed any personally identifiable info, such as things that would give away what city I live in or where I work. Since [goes and looks it up] 2004 the Slashdot journal system has enabled me to say what I really think (I mean politically; I'm a not necrophiliac or some other kind of societally-shunned weirdo besides being Conservative), without it possibly affecting hiring decisions. Just have to exercise a little care, and think before hitting Submit.
Actually I can be found, with some political/religious views exposed, in Usenet archives. At least in the programming forums on Usenet, back then, if you used a pseudonym you weren't taken seriously.
But it's near impossible to get that far in a web search, because, luckily, there's someone with my name and middle initial, in my region, who's a prolific writer. And later hits show someone who has their own business. So I got lucky in having a shadow for my name that seems to go on and on in the search results.
Who knows how exposed I am on Monster and Dice. They don't let you actually delete your account, just flag that you're not actively looking, as I recall. Some of my spam may be from any schlub with a few bucks creating a faux employer's account and trawling for victims. Same if I decide to try one or more dating sites this year. I'll have to really think hard about what I want to put out there (but to still make it hopefully worthwhile). Not that I think Monster and Dice and eHarmony and Match would sell me directly, like I've heard Facebook and Linkedin have, but that they'd not worry about being too careful about who they sell privileges to view my account to.
Beyond that Amazon knows tons about me. Probably Google as well, as I had to sign up for Google Groups once for a class, which tied my name to my IP address at the time. Probably browser fingerprinting, in my IP block, continues to identify me after my ISP issues me a new dynamic address. So I started using Bing last year, but I don't always remember to.
THE BAD
Being late to trends means, well, when I had hair on my head to really speak of, I was usually behind in hairstyles. In elementary school I just had a mop head of hair, but then in jr high I noticed everyone had moved to a center part. Who knows how long before that had happened. Then in high school a side part came in, so before I went off to college I figured I'd better finally lose my center parting.
Until last year when I said eff it and am now buzzing the top of my head, my side part had turned into a comb-over, without me noticing it, as my hair gradually thinned on top. So I had the side part for almost 30 years, completely skipping the moussed front sticking up thing. And of course then the Justin Bieber swirlie thing, although which I guess no one my age ever went to.
And I've skipped the goatee thing, retaining the moustache that my face started growing in 7th grade. So I've looked like a 70's porn star all this time (I would imagine!). No bit of fuzz growing under the bottom lip. Thought that may have been a short and/or non-widespread trend.
No tattoos or piercings. I think that makes me really behind the times. After watching a few seasons of Naked and Afraid, it's occurred to me that basically *everyone* now has a tattoo.
Clothing styles don't permeate my brain until they've been around long enough that they're just about to die off. I still wear polos to work. I still wear very light blue jeans and white tennis shoes on Fridays, even though I think that pristine look went out long ago. Everything's dark colors now. I'm so sick of black (especially in car interiors). I need to wear light, bright things half the time or it's depressing. And my dark colors load gets too big and the light colors cold load too small.
And finally another bad thing about being late to trends is, I hate pop songs when they first come out, and I don't give popular TV shows a chance. Their overwhelming popularity overwhelms me and makes me revulse. But then years later I get in to a show in re-runs, and then no one gets my references! Or I hear a song from a prior era, that's pathetically locked style-wise in that era, and it's stuck in my head and I hum it and people think I'm dangerous.
1. Oil prices remain depressed, taking the world economy to the edge of instability. Russia, Iran, China, Venezuela--fertilizer decorates global air circulators. Baleful Barack brings bronze bollocks; Tsar Putin triumphantly treads titanium testicle territory.
In reply to Barbara Hudson, I offered something I'd written over a decade ago, in the "haiku sonnet" form that I fetish for some strange reason.
So, while I can't admit what I may or may not have done in detail myself, one of the most interesting things at Christmas was finding out my dad was indeed part of the precursor to the NSA, confirming what my mom had thought.
Life is fun.
"Protozoa are small, and bacteria are small, but viruses are smaller than the both put together."
