RTFM, this isn't TPP or any of those treaties. This is some other small sacrificial lamb so everyone stops paying attention.
What this would have aloud is for Obama to submit the TPP to congress and all they can do is yeh or nay. No debate, no amendments. Since the TPA did not pass, when it is proposed to congress, it is open to debate, amendment and the public.
Which means it will have no chance of passing.
How is that Utopia working out for all of you people that keep thinking more Government will solve all our problems?
Are there, in fact, any people making that rather-broad argument, as opposed to, say, arguing that some particular problem might be better handled with more government?
No, but it is common to read people mindlessly repeating these sound bites.
That's sort of how the libertarian viewpoint evolves, I guess. Like Reagan started out as a democrat, presumably because he cared about people and favored social reforms. Then after living through the Communist purges in the McCarthy era, he realized that more government power means more chances for government abuse. Which is why he came to say, "Government is not the solution....government is the problem." As many people like to say, the NSA is a greater threat to US liberty than Al Qaeda.
So, McCarthyism traumatized him so much that, after being FBI informant reporting on people's political beliefs, he then joined the party that fostered McCarthy, and subsequently used similar techniques against student protesters and pot smokers, which was the foundation of his actual political career, as opposed to his sound bites? Sure, whatever you say.
The TTP should be a Treaty, but what it is instead is a secret agreement that Congress would vote on as a regular bill, not a Treaty. The whole point of "fast track" is that it wouldn't be approved even on this basis, so the President needs advance approval on an agreement with terms that are not final and in any case cannot be legally revealed in public. (Congressmen and women have to go to a special room to read them, and can't take notes out.)
Never mind that this "trade agreement" really just represents corporations trying to get things through the back door they could never get through Congress directly, even if it just contained recipes for Apple pie it should be opposed by anyone who cares about our Constitutional system of Government. Treaties, or for that matter normal laws, can be negotiated in private, but they need to be discussed and passed in public.
There is plenty to test - there are new astrophysical tests of gravity, quark matter, etc., almost on a daily basis. (We still have never actually seen a black hole Event Horizon, for example - that should come in the next few years). What there may not be much more of is particle accelerators - if the LHC doesn't find anything beyond the Higgs Boson, I predict it will be very hard to raise money to make a, say, 100 km accelerator ring for another round of accelerator physics.
ISIS is the former Saddam army and bureaucracy. They have extensive experience in running a country and derive income from oil operations and a taxation system.
Bingo. ISIS is most run by Baath members, to the extent I wonder if it isn't really just Baath hiding in plain sight.
They must skip the lessons on communications discipline in the ISIS evil genius training course. Of course, it sounds like Gen. Hawk Carlisle was asleep that day as well.
On the other hand, knowing something of the Middle East, it's probably a triple head-fake of some sort. The selfie was probably taken in front of the house of a local CIA operative whose cover was blown, as an act of combat swatting by ISIS, the 22 hours was the time required for us to get him out of there to safety, and Gen. Carlisle is just spreading disinformation to hide that we figured it out.
Nope, doesn't work that way. For a good (and entertaining) explanation, read the Illustrated Guide to Criminal, particularly the section about Mens Rea: http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=1...
Of course, in the actual world we live in, I would not be surprised in the slightest if the local DA didn't file charges against each one of the five, and alas it would really wouldn't surprise me either to learn that the first three adults all pled out, not wanting to risk a trial.
These speculations are useful intellectual exercises, but should not be taken very seriously. Intelligent life may or may not last for 10^100 years, but the chances of any detailed theory of the long term future of the universe surviving 100 years is basically nil, and even 10 years is no sure thing.
For myself, I'd bet on a "big rip", except that I don't know how to collect on such a bet.
It's called "self-plagerism," and it most commonly occurs when someone publishes a paper in a journal that claims the copyright. Then, if the author uses their text without approval, it's a copyright violation.
Good riddance.
I remember that when the Patriot Act was first passed thinking that
- this was obviously on someone's wet dream wish list (it was not so much written as released from the vaults) and
- passing huge changes in security laws with little debate and less thought in the near panicked initial response to a terrorist attack is basically a good definition of what not to do in a crisis.
Of course, that was before the Bush Administration invaded Iraq and showed us that purposeful stupidity can be worse than mindless stupidity.
I use Chrome, but only for gmail. That way, I figure that Google just gets to read my gmail (mostly used for public email lists) twice.
We need to work together to manipulate all search results to lead to whichever xkcd is most relevant to the topic.
I think this Sunday Morning Breakfast Cereal would be perfect.
On Bing, my response to
What happened to the dinosaurs?
(no quotes) is pretty benign - pbs, wikipedia, and national geographic in that order, and then Answers in Genesis.org, followed by slate. Only 2 of the 8 links on the first response page are fundamentalist, the AIG site and a kiddie site. Finally, while I don't agree with Answers in Genesis, they are certainly not a stealth site, and I don't think it is objectionable just by itself that they in the mix.
Of course, "Your results are personalized" so other people may get different responses.
I was glad I had a Mac, but otherwise didn't care much.
Well, you did ask.
Make sure your code does nothing gracefully.
