Comment Re:Ban caffeine! (Score 2) 511
It's gateway personalities that are the problem.
It's gateway personalities that are the problem.
They also collaborated, along with Motorola, on the PowerPC. Admittedly, that's a dubious thing to note.
Simply harping on about "misogyny" and "racism" betrays the intellectual bankruptcy of your critique.
Generally speaking, the highest earners provide the greatest benefit to the country.
This has been the favored business model of big players in this country since before the railroads. From what I can gather, it began with the canals. Monied interests get in bed with politicians and use the law to squeeze out everyone else. I think you're absolutely right. And none of us should be surprised when Amazon, whose web services host a number of government departments, and whose CEO owns one of the two major newspapers in the country, is granted an "exception."
This is how the crooked game is played.
The whole idea of (whatever they're calling it now) global warming is inextricably bound up with centralized economic planning or, at the very least, extensive economic regulation; and in many cases it goes beyond that with the advocating of international boards that threaten national sovereignty. Furthermore, many of these proposed treaties are seen by their opponents—and not without good cause—as a way of stifling rich, developed countries while favoring un-developed or developing countries. They're seen as a political punishing of the "Great Satan." This is what people can't get past.
Imagine if Pinky and the Brain had possessed such capabilities! They could not have been stopped.
What's stopping them is socialism.
So, what! The Cubans can just put the resources of their mighty socialist republic to work and manufacture all the food and medicine the people need. Isn't that the way it works?
Who knew that Bible-thumping Republicans were farming Sweden!
You do know that the Common Core has only begun with English and math standards, and that social studies and science standards are next, right?
I think national standards are the entire problem. We shouldn't have national standards. For one, we're a nation of some 300-plus million people distributed across 50 states, with varying geography, cultures, industries, and so forth. Why would anyone think one size should fit all? It's funny how there is so much talk about "diversity" all the time and how great it is, but heaven forbid there should be diversity in education in this country. The federal government has no business in education. But apart from all that, centralization in a country like this poses another problem. It gives a single pressure point for every kind of political or ideological fad or bent. Anyone with an axe to grind, a chip on his or her shoulder, or just a run-of-the-mill "I know better than thou" complex has but a single pressure point to grab hold of to bend the country to his or her will. Today you may like who is behind this push for a de facto national curriculum. But tomorrow you may not be. What happens then?
I'm for competition, diversity, innovation, and freedom. The Common Core is antithetical to all that.
I hope I'm remembering this correctly, but haven't some people challenged the National Security Letters, only to have the FBI rescind them before the case comes to court, presumably because they fear having a court rule them unconstitutional?
I want to be sympathetic to your sentiment, but there is no one outside of the United States threatening our freedom. That's a fact. There is no one in the military fighting for our freedom. Granted, they may stand ready to defend our freedom, should a foreign threat materialize, but that's a different story.
Sadly, the real threat to our freedom is from within. It's from people in government who fancy themselves on the side of the angels and who think it's okay to bend or break the rules—a.k.a. the Constitution—to defend the "homeland." They're setting up the legal framework and law enforcement infrastructure that will completely obliterate the United States of America for good. What will be left is lines on a map claiming a heritage it has no right to.
It's not simply that they're "just doing their job." Some of them justify what they do that way. But some of them have convinced themselves that they're on the side of the angels. They catch "bad guys"—that's the simpleton phrase they use. So, anything they do is okay, because the ends justify the means.
What?! Do you like bad guys or something?
The average person cannot integrate anything so abstract and complicated as the need for constitutional restraints: meaning, why government power needs to be restrained, even if in the short run of particular cases the "inconvenience" of such restraints lets the "bad guys" get away. The only thing the average person is able to digest is so-called "patriotism," the fight of "good guys versus bad guys" (in this case, literally, cops and robbers), and the kind of chauvinism of association that allows them to believe that they and the other great bunch of guys on the job are hard at work doing good.
This kind of mentality can accommodate any kind of political circumstances just as happily as any other—America, Iran, Cuba, the old Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, or what have you. That's what's so scary.
So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of money? -- Ayn Rand