Of course, there are third rail topics that one can't disagree with (such as the demand by the general masses for undying love for Snowden, Manning, and Ames), and mindless anti-US digs left and right, but all and all,
That's a main reason I continue to come to this site after all these years. The comments are often intelligent and worth reading. Contrast that with most other sites where people just get their stupid on.
We are becoming a country where the rich can do anything they want to everyone else.
Comcast and CenturyLink are corporations; they are not "rich" people, corporate personhood aside. More importantly, they are public utilities. Government has created corporations and offered privileges to utilities, so that's where the problem lies-- not with "rich" people.
True, but to be fair, the rich people have become a problem too.
I love these USofA stories where people are caught lying and then nothing changes. Next a lot of people say how this should not be allowed and is even illegal and nothing changes. Later some people will quote the consititution and then finaly nothing happens at all. Perhaps some likes on facepalm or an octothorpe will do something.
Anybody working with kids or dogs knows that unless there are consequenses for bad behaviour, the bad behaviour will not change. Instead it will become more persistant.
PS, if you clicked the link, hand in your geek card.
The whole country is whistling past the graveyard. Most of us know in some way that we're going down the tubes. We have a captured political system that is unresponsive to the vast majority of citizens. We have an economic system that can't provide for a huge swath of the population. We have an intelligence and law enforcement community that is interested in keeping closer and closer tabs on what everyone is doing, and arrogating unaccountable power. We have a media establishment that just delivers propaganda and entertainment and cannot take on serious subjects that might ruffle any feathers. We, as a society, can't seem to respond to problems like climate change and the need for clean, renewable energy.
We know we're hanging from a cliff, and we're afraid to look down and take in the magnitude of the height we are at. If we just keep pretending everything is okay, maybe it will all just work itself out. Things will have to get worse before they get better, because reality will have to hit us in the face hard enough that we cannot pretend it doesn't exist.
But your question is still reasonable: why are they on the list? It must be some other undisclosed reason(s). Some might be valid, some might not.
These days if it's undisclosed I assume it is not valid.
They've already more or less admitted that they have absolutely no control with these lists, and that any agency, for any reason, without any actual evidence can add someone to the watch lists.
Let's think this through for a minute... So you would rather that the list be made up of persons with known terrorism group allegiances, and that any and all supporting information also be cataloged in the same place so that the list is audit-ready to outline exactly who is a terrorist, why, and how we know that? Yeah fucking right. The list itself would be a roadmap for how the US finds and tracks terrorists. You're just going to have to unwad your panties on this one, you don't get to decide who the defense department targets since you are completely unqualified to do so and frankly, don't know shit about mitigating the risk of terrorism.
We don't need a list at all. We didn't need one before 9/11/2001 and we don't need one now. The CIA and whomever else were tracking the hijackers before they attacked. They just failed to stop them for whatever reason. Two of them were living with an FBI informant for crying out loud. We didn't need a list to know they were with Al Qaeda and where they lived in the country.
We don't need a list. And no speech about how we need Col. Jessup up on that wall will convince me otherwise.
My wife is probably on that list. She ordered two small pressure cookers via Amazon recently one for her and one for our daughter. But it was TWO. Automated add to terror list.
You should see that this is a good thing overall. The quicker this list can be proven worthless in the eyes of everyone, the faster it will become a heated target within politics, ripe for attack. It's own absurdity will remove it's power to abuse.
I somehow doubt that. In my experience absurdity is no obstacle for a policy; especially one driven by fear. As flawed at it is, if we get rid of the list terrorists will start downing planes left and right. You wouldn't want that, would you? Would you?!
Then it means that 60% from this list have terrorist ties ? Good result.
How is a 40% error rate a good result?
Journalists like Conor Friedersdorf have suggested that one explanation for this is that the public is "informed by a press
Balderdash. There is not a press. What is this, communism, comrade? We have many presses. The problem is that the public follows the sensational ones instead of the informative. We The People have the government, and thus the press, which we deserve.
But when they're owned by 5 media companies, all of which are in turn owned by rich media barons, they tend to walk the party line. Remember when Phil Donohue was fired for being against the Iraq war, and couldn't get a job anywhere else? That wouldn't happen if the various media were really independent.
Likewise, the militarization of domestic police forces and their gradual shift from a community law enforcement role to more resemble a national occupation force complete with armored vehicles and heavy crew-served weapons.
A SWAT team per city / county, a few of which might have a light armored vehicle, is an "occupation" army?
You don't suppose you might be overstating things a bit, do you??
Were you in Boston on April 15-20th, 2013? Occupation army isn't too far off.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/pb/radley-balko
I know. I would rather they dump their kids off somewhere, drive two-seaters, and whoop it up at all the latest hot spots. Thing is, when their kids are growning up (teen age...college) they will have a much richer life than you will without those people (kids and all their friends and family) in your life. Being a parent is rather inglorious at first, in fact it is downright humiliating, but coming out of it with your kids in tow is a great life. Careful what you wish for.
Thanks for letting me know how my poor decisions will lead to a meager life later on, stranger on the Internet!
Presumptuous much? Child rearing is not the end-all of human existence. One can live a happy and fulfilling life without children. I frankly do not want the responsibility, and have made a conscious choice. It seems you have made a different choice, and if you're happy with it I applaud you. But don't assume yours is the only way. I enjoy my single life and have no regrets about it.
Government made them difficult and expensive to buy compared to SUV's, which were classified as trucks (hence a lower gas mileage standard).
"Stigma" had nothing to do with it.
Maybe so, but there is still a stigma attached to minivans. They say, "I now live a boring suburban lifestyle". A friend of mine said as much when he bought his Honda Odyssey. He loves the Odyssey, but he knew he was no longer cool. And, to be fair, once he and his wife had kids they became just as staid and boring as their minivan suggested.
It's cool; they're happy with their lives and love their kids and home life. But it reminded me of why I'm still single and childless. That life is unattractive to me.
The other thing is from an individual point of view you can live off the grid in a tent but it won't make any difference. Even if your whole country starts living in a tent off the grid it won't make a big change. So why live in extreme discomfort when it won't make any difference, anyway? Instead we need to accept that people will not modify their habits and do something like perhaps cut military spending a smidgeon and direct it into a Manhattan-project style push for better technology for generating power and for using it more efficiently.
This is my view. I believe that AGW is real, but I am not taking any extra measure to save energy in light of that understanding. It won't make a difference if I change my lifestyle. Society has to change its lifestyle. I support green energy initiatives and try to vote for people who seem to get it. I'm willing to pay more for energy if need be. But I'm driving my car just as much as I would otherwise. I'd love to drive an electric car, but mostly for the torque not the efficiency. My electric bill is already about $35 a month, so there is probably little to reduce there.
What we really need is for the powers that be to give up their dreams of petroleum riches and start society on the path to clean, sustainable energy. But a new energy economy is uncertain, while the oil, gas and coal in the ground are known quantities. Those reserves represent potential profit to the energy industry, and they want that money. So they baffle people with bullshit to keep the money train running, putting us all at risk. AGW is an issue that can't wait for oil to get expensive enough, or solar to get cheap enough. Therefore it is not a problem capitalism can solve. But capitalism is what runs the world; maybe over a cliff.
The hardest part of climbing the ladder of success is getting through the crowd at the bottom.
