>> ^Quboid:

>> ^conan:
>> ^EMPIRE:
Here in Portugal the law is similar to german. You obviously can install a video surveillance system, but you need to fill out a form informing the data protection agency, telling exactly what can be seen through the camera(s). Otherwise, that footage will never be accepted in a court of law as evidence.

Another fun fact in law differences just by the way: evidence illegaly obtained can sabotage a case in the US (at least has to be disregarded) whereas it makes no difference in Germany. Police unlawfully searches your home and find drugs? You will be prosecuted (but the copper also will).

That's interesting. I always thought it was weird that illegally obtained evidence is unusable, surely if it proves the guy did it then evidence is evidence? If it is obtained illegally, then whoever obtained it should be charged with whatever the illegal action was. Court cases should be "is the guy guilty" rather than "can we show the guy is guilty within the rules". I know it gets more complicated than this but on the face of it "evidence against Mr. Big is accepted, but you just implicated Officer Smith" seems right.


This is one thing that I feel very strongly that we (Americans) do right. I don't know how it really works in practice in other countries, but the way you describe it, it would be far too easy for a government to set up a massive illegal fishing expedition to look for any hints of illegal activity, then either have a fall guy or claim that it was an accident when they wanted to use the 'evidence'.

>> ^Quboid:

>> ^conan:
>> ^EMPIRE:
Here in Portugal the law is similar to german. You obviously can install a video surveillance system, but you need to fill out a form informing the data protection agency, telling exactly what can be seen through the camera(s). Otherwise, that footage will never be accepted in a court of law as evidence.

Another fun fact in law differences just by the way: evidence illegaly obtained can sabotage a case in the US (at least has to be disregarded) whereas it makes no difference in Germany. Police unlawfully searches your home and find drugs? You will be prosecuted (but the copper also will).

That's interesting. I always thought it was weird that illegally obtained evidence is unusable, surely if it proves the guy did it then evidence is evidence? If it is obtained illegally, then whoever obtained it should be charged with whatever the illegal action was. Court cases should be "is the guy guilty" rather than "can we show the guy is guilty within the rules". I know it gets more complicated than this but on the face of it "evidence against Mr. Big is accepted, but you just implicated Officer Smith" seems right.


Agreed, that seems the most sensible way to go.

>> ^conan:

>> ^EMPIRE:
Here in Portugal the law is similar to german. You obviously can install a video surveillance system, but you need to fill out a form informing the data protection agency, telling exactly what can be seen through the camera(s). Otherwise, that footage will never be accepted in a court of law as evidence.

Another fun fact in law differences just by the way: evidence illegaly obtained can sabotage a case in the US (at least has to be disregarded) whereas it makes no difference in Germany. Police unlawfully searches your home and find drugs? You will be prosecuted (but the copper also will).


That's interesting. I always thought it was weird that illegally obtained evidence is unusable, surely if it proves the guy did it then evidence is evidence? If it is obtained illegally, then whoever obtained it should be charged with whatever the illegal action was. Court cases should be "is the guy guilty" rather than "can we show the guy is guilty within the rules". I know it gets more complicated than this but on the face of it "evidence against Mr. Big is accepted, but you just implicated Officer Smith" seems right.

>> ^EMPIRE:

Here in Portugal the law is similar to german. You obviously can install a video surveillance system, but you need to fill out a form informing the data protection agency, telling exactly what can be seen through the camera(s). Otherwise, that footage will never be accepted in a court of law as evidence.


Another fun fact in law differences just by the way: evidence illegaly obtained can sabotage a case in the US (at least has to be disregarded) whereas it makes no difference in Germany. Police unlawfully searches your home and find drugs? You will be prosecuted (but the copper also will).

Here in Portugal the law is similar to german. You obviously can install a video surveillance system, but you need to fill out a form informing the data protection agency, telling exactly what can be seen through the camera(s). Otherwise, that footage will never be accepted in a court of law as evidence.

Common sense would dictate that drug companies be allowed to offer deals to terminally ill patients, perhaps in exchange for paying for their care. But the FDA is there to make sure common sense is kept locked away.

Everything you've stated is true, and the fadeouts of these potential 'cures' certainly don't sell papers like hype does.



>> ^bamdrew:

These are costly and typically slow-moving ventures. A lot of waiting for approvals, signing up and weeding through subjects, processing collected data, etc.. Many promising ideas get lost in the ~4-8 years from rodent animal model to large human trials (researchers leave the project following new ideas, funding dries up, etc.).
One trick you'll often see if you look for it is the country the initial human data is collected in; Portugal (and Scandinavian countries to an extent) has laws with a higher tolerance for experimental use of clinically approved devices and devices shown to be biocompatible than the US, so you'll see a group from Purdue in the middle of Indiana gathering data with surgical staff and subjects who are in Portugal.
The study you cite is also surgically invasive, and the obese subjects are not going to be the healthiest people out there... the fear of random health complications can keep project leaders up at night, and can quietly kill a project if they're bad enough. Related to the study you cite, I'm aware of vagal nerve stimulation being researched for treating depression... in other words, systems in the body that seem straightforward often reveal themselves to be a part of complex, intertwined feedback loops.

>> ^quantumushroom:
While far from a conspiracy nut, I notice that fat-reducing products that have great potential (and even actual results) are never seen nor heard from again. In America alone the 'diet industry' is 40 billion a year.

Two I remember:

Intra-abdominal vagal blocking (VBLOC therapy): clinical results with a new implantable medical device
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18549888


There was also a pill that mimicked exercise (stuck at the mouse phase).
Both of these items are from 2007-2008.

These are costly and typically slow-moving ventures. A lot of waiting for approvals, signing up and weeding through subjects, processing collected data, etc.. Many promising ideas get lost in the ~4-8 years from rodent animal model to large human trials (researchers leave the project following new ideas, funding dries up, etc.).

One trick you'll often see if you look for it is the country the initial human data is collected in; Portugal (and Scandinavian countries to an extent) has laws with a higher tolerance for experimental use of clinically approved devices and devices shown to be biocompatible than the US, so you'll see a group from Purdue in the middle of Indiana gathering data with surgical staff and subjects who are in Portugal.

The study you cite is also surgically invasive, and the obese subjects are not going to be the healthiest people out there... the fear of random health complications can keep project leaders up at night, and can quietly kill a project if they're bad enough. Related to the study you cite, I'm aware of vagal nerve stimulation being researched for treating depression... in other words, systems in the body that seem straightforward often reveal themselves to be a part of complex, intertwined feedback loops.


>> ^quantumushroom:

While far from a conspiracy nut, I notice that fat-reducing products that have great potential (and even actual results) are never seen nor heard from again. In America alone the 'diet industry' is 40 billion a year.

Two I remember:

Intra-abdominal vagal blocking (VBLOC therapy): clinical results with a new implantable medical device
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18549888


There was also a pill that mimicked exercise (stuck at the mouse phase).
Both of these items are from 2007-2008.

I'm from Portugal, and although I knew we were one of the world's best spots for surf, I really had no idea there were waves this big here. This seems hawaii stuff

subsidizing big business friends that don't need the subsidy or tax break may be the place to look for that

Places like Illinois, California, Wisconsin, and New Jersey are not facing fiscal black-holes because they are paying too much in subsidies to ‘big business friends’. The main problem is that they have promised government workers a gold-plated lifestyle when they only had a copper-plated budget. You could end every ‘big business’ tax break, subsidy, and kickback tomorrow and it would not even make a dent in the budget shortfalls of states like Illinois. The problem is government over-spending. Here it is in black and white. This isn’t ‘left or right’. This isn’t ‘liberal or conservative’. This is just the brutal, harsh, cold reality…

http://sunshinereview.org/index.php/Illinois_state_budget#Public_Employees

You will notice that Illinois’ budget is NOT dominated by a big line item of ‘subsidies to big business’. The budget is dominated by government spending on unions, union benefits, and entitlements. The only way to ‘fix’ such a budget is to cut the spending. Really. Because for every 12 people living in Illinois, there is one full-time salaried government worker pulling a higher wage, more benefits, and a better retirement than the people paying for him. Such a system is economically impossible to support. And there is plenty of evidence that such systems will ALWAYS collapse because of ineffiency. Greece, Italy, Portugal – entire nations are collapsing because of exactly the same problem. And that problem is the poison of Keynesian economics propping up an impossibly lavish public sector.

That's basically my point, this country has plenty of money, it just does it's that people are greedy as **** so they're going to say that only THIS slice of the pie is available for you guys

You are talking as if the public sector is NOT getting its ‘piece of the pie’…

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2011/09/14/study-finds-public-employee-compensation-better-than-private-sector.html

http://www.aei.org/docLib/AEI-Working-Paper-on-Federal-Pay-May-2011.pdf

It's just not true, public service unions have nothing to do with the crisis, when you look at the fact that we're in two Wars and spend double what the entire world spends on the armed forces

To say public unions have 'nothing' to do with the economic shortfalls is just factually incorrect. The links above prove it. Illinois has entire sections of its budget dominated by union issues, and union contracts repeatedly block any attempts at reform.

But regardless... Sure. Cut federal defense spending. And while we are at it, we should also cut Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and every other program. Cut them all. Slash them by 33% across the board. No exceptions. No mercy. But anyone that thinks that the only place we need to cut is ‘defense’ and that’ll fix it all it living in a dream world.

For example – how is cutting defense spending going to help Illinois? Or California? Or New Jersey? Or let’s take it national. Greece’s defense spending was a measley 3.4%. Explain how they would solve their massive budget shortfall by cutting defense. Or the US… Even if you cut US defense spending to zero, our current deficit is over 1.4 trillion. Defense to zero? 700 billion. Only HALF of just the deficit. It doesn’t even touch the 14 trillion in debt the nation already has. Or the further SEVENTY trillion in debt we have to cover all the 'unfunded liabilites' of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

At some point all the prog-libs out there are going to have to accept the facts. You can’t close the massive budget shortfalls that cities, states, and nations have with defense cuts. The problem is not defense. It is not ‘big business’. The problem is that governments are overspending on unsustainable public employee packages and entitlements that have no reasonable expecation of ever being paid for.

A brief look at some of the *history behind our present movement. Occupy has moved forward as an important part of the 15-October *worldwide protests.. With protests in Greese, Spain, Chilie, and Portugal, Canada and many others, more than 950 cities 82 countries, in fact. It will be interesting to see where this meme goes. *promote

Pffft... 2$/Gallon Gasoline? If I'M elected The streets will be paved with gold.
By the way, here in Portugal gasoline is 6euros/Gallon (around 1,59 euros per litre)

So let’s just sum it all up…

The United Kingdom has one of the biggest social hammocks on the planet. Universal health care, permanent unemployment, universal retirement payments, and public education? Check. And the yobs are rioting because they don’t have enough entitlements.

Well – clearly the problem is easily solved. The government just needs to seize all wealth so it can be fairly redistributed via socialized programs. At that point the yobs will become happy and line up like good little comrades at the government feeding stations. After all, every government that does this kind of thing has nothing but happy citizens who don’t riot, complain, or live in total poverty and oppression. Look at places like Cuba, North Korea, Germany, Greece, Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, and on and on. No government in history that siezes private capital has EVER just wasted, squandered, and frittered it away. All the social programs that governments run are fair, efficient, and wise stewards of the public trust. I mean, there’s not a socialist government on the PLANET that dribbles out its revenues to the tune of pennies on the dollar. No social system leaves the public with neither freedom OR financial prosperity.

:eyeroll:

The real focus here is the antics of "your" imperial senator. Since he's on "your" side, do ya think he doesn't have to answer questions or be accountable? You'd think he'd be better prepared to defend himself since he's a big mouth crap talker.

Sure, you can attack the journalist and suggest Reverend Moon is whispering in his ear, even though the man's identified himself as an independent social journalist at (an) event sponsored by (the) City Club of Chicago and open to media and the public.

As for the other thing, what else can the left do but flip the script and blame Republicans for the debt crisis? Saint Obama is infallible as long as you ignore the effects of his runaway spending. While the Right isn't innocent, this debt crisis is the baby of this clueless administration. Or did the Tea Party cause Greece, Portugal and Ireland's economic meltdowns?


>> ^shuac:

Anyone who works for the Reverend Sun Myung Moon (publisher of the Washington Times who proclaimed himself the second coming of Jesus Christ) is immediately suspect.
I mean, you can see this reporter's not unstable at all. <- sarcasm.
Another stellar clip, Roomie. Thumbs up, buddy.

Obama stinks, and not 'cause he didn't give you "free" health care.

Why the left continues to carry water for this con man is beyond me.

BTW, is the Tea Party also responsible for the economic meltdowns of Greece, Portugal and Ireland?

Misinformation

1. The numbers are accurate. You may not like them, but that doesn't change reality. Wiki for accuracy? Really? Regardless, I didn't say Bush didn't rack up a lot of debt. He did, and folks like me have always derided Bush as a wrong-headed spendthrift trying to buy votes.

2. We had a good deal. It was called Cut, Cap and Balance. Obama refused to even look at it - and then has the chutzpah to whine to the nation about compromise.

3. Social Security - like all Federal Programs - keeps growing and growing when it should be reduced. It was originally a simple program for a very limited number of persons who were in dire need but is now a sprawling monster. The demography is irrelevant. What is relevant is the fact that SS's projected budgets are unsustainable and must by necessity be decreased rather than grow over 8% YOY.

It great courage to admit socialism has failed. It takes humility to admit that socialism has gone beyond what is sane, rational, or even POSSIBLE. But Thatcher's "eventually you run out of other people's money" day or reckoning has arrived. First Russia failed and collapsed. Now its Britain, Germany, Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal... The list of failed Euro socialist systems that have bled their capitalist engines dry with impossible promises does nothing but grow ever longer.

And sadly, the US is right there with them. Riots in Wisconsin over simple, commmon-sense limits to unions... Riots and violence in Pittsburg... Riots and violence in Detroit, Akron, and many other places... The US only has once choice if it wants to avoid becoming Britain. That choice is to make the hard, necessary cuts to our socialist programs right now before they expand even further and cause even greater damage to society.

A simple freeze now, a few common sense cuts, basic tax code reform, and a balanced budget ammendment that Congress cannot just end-run-around and America is back on track. If we follow Obama's (and yes - Bush's) plan of ignoring reality while increasing the socialist network on pure debt spending and tax increases then the country will collapse and balkanize. It would be inevitable. But who knows? Maybe that's what Obama and neolibs like him really want. They sure are going about it in earnest.