I'm not arguing that Slavery wasn't a key factor in the growth of the US economy up to a point. It was a major component of our history and evolution even outside of economic terms.

However since we were not one of the wealthiest countries in the world once slavery ended or anytime soon there after, I don't know that you can attribute the success after WW2 to slavery directly. Our having so much of the worlds wealth after WW2 had as much to do with how much everyone else LOST as it did with how much we HAD (and how much we made off of their loss because we were not slowed economically by war).

Sure you can say we weren't poised to take advantage of a post-WW2 world without slavery but the same can be said about many things including: Territory purchases, agricultural and technological advancements, organized banking, FDIC insured banking, a centralized monetary system, removal of the gold standard, social and political shifts in the world...you get the idea.

In fact some could make the argument that indentured servitude could be given a lot of credit for our early growth as well, which had nothing to do with African Slavery. And also provides evidence that even in the absence of full fledged slavery, the early colonials would have found a way to exploit cheap labor to accomplish their goals and they would not need a native or african population to do so.

☝☝☝
Rational eh?

Criminals polluting the world's food production and distribution with a cadre of lawmakers and lawyers poised to give the beast a free-pass for the foreseeable future?

In March of this year, complicit cunt Obama signed H.R. 933, ‘Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2013’-Missouri Senator Joe Blunt (R) worked with Monsanto to craft the language of a 78-page section of the bill which effectively protects biotech companies from judicial scrutiny should any notable public health risks arise as the result of GMOs. -IB Times’ Connor Sheets adds, “choosing to sign a bill that effectively bars federal courts from being able to halt the sale or planting of GMO or GE crops and seeds, no matter what health consequences from the consumption of these products may come to light in the future.”

Their army of lawyers-as formidable as any of Walmart's punk-ass legal teams, work constantly to keep information out of the public scrutiny while cementing the future experimentation on humans with their tweaks to the staple food sources of the planet's food. Over-reacting??

How does one "rationally oppose" the calculated acts of criminals who not only make the laws, but stack the odds in their favor by buying those who mold the legal system in their favor?

Go educate yourself. Perhaps start with a short list of GMO crops used in just about everything??
http://www.disabled-world.com/fitness/gm-foods.php

Then check out the cases Monsanto has brought to trial against a never-ending list of farmers who have tried to take on the beast when their livelihoods were destroyed by opening their mouths....

Anyone with common-sense and a worthless high-school diploma who hasn't been drinking the Kool-Aid their entire lives should be able to see that the fucking emperor is clothed in a human flesh tuxedo....

His mom's reaction looked great-He's poised to find himself along the way just fine. He may be better off without the baggage of the Mormon cult but people get over religious indoctrination if they have a mind to evolve, which this guy looks like he's got.

You find love when you give love man, pretty, fat, gay or straight-Go hug somebody and climb outside of your own bullshits' a good way to start....

The buzz surrounding this event seems to be headed down the road that led to further firearms on the ban list.

The Miasma from Chicago has always been in favor of gun control measures which do nothing to address causes but minimally treat symptoms and the whims of those who would control humans by eliminating choices along with personal responsibility. He's discussing it right now using fake tears and more than a few examples of the retarded logic that dystopiafurtdy here posted above. It's insulting both to my intelligence and sensibilities to be addressed by a U.S. President, like a blind child with down syndrome.

Cerberus Capital Management, a New York-based investment firm that that owns the largest U.S. gun maker Freedom Group (Bushmaster, Remington) is poised to sell, while stocks in Sturm, Ruger & Company has increased more than 700 percent (Smith and Wesson, 253% ) since Obama was elected in 2009. Not very wise stewards of those pensions for teachers, California!.....The same retarded ban on firearms in California happened back when I lived in San Francisco. One lone gunman walks into the 101 California Street building and kills a few peeps with a variety of guns and "BOOM!", people who don't know how to use a shovel properly, acting on emotions and severely compromised common sense,support bans on a whole spattering of guns, ammo, etc., because on-accounta it was so horrible and was apparently the gun's fault Now SOH Feinstein is at it again, another fractured piece of out-of-touch, privileged human pieces of garbage appealing to emotions rather than reason, and playing the game she was placed in position to play.

Dipshits?? No, same intentional, systematic plans like the Brady Bill and the National Assault Weapons Ban, a knee-jerk, and well-timed coup on individual rights relative to protecting oneself and family.

How about for STARTERS, "Anyone ever treated for mental illness or prescribed anti-psychotic or psychotropic drugs for the treatment of the same, can't even be around anyone with guns, much less purchase them. That would stop MOST of these random acts of carnage.

I won't even begin to mention in detail the amount of illegal firearms on the banned lists-to-date that are in the hands of drug dealers, pimps, gang members, etc. and the insanity of THAT subset of society, COPS, and SOLDIERS being the only people with that kind of monopoly on firepower. Fuck that shit. Time is nigh to becoming a criminal or expatriate.

Less than 3.5 days to go to submit entries and it looks as if, dystopiafurtdedyyy is poised to become a winner of this contest by default.

As Homer Simpson once said...."Default? Woo hoo! The two sweetest words in the English language: De-fault! De-fault! De-fault!

Ok, I'll start with a few things that most people would probably agree with, but the police force currently would fight like hell to avoid. How about we decide to actually punish cops who break existing rules and laws. Use testing to weed out unbalanced power hungry or corrupt types from becoming cops. QUIT hiring COMBAT veterans to become PEACE officers. I'm sure there are many things that could be done to fix the problem with the police, its just that it's not being done because the police think the only problem is that we, the lowly people, dont always follow ALL commands,and sometimes we need to be put in our place. >> ^shveddy:
False dichotomy, among other things. There are innumerable intermediate steps between "allowing them to do whatever they want to you" and "shooting the motherfuckers." I'll admit that there is a point where armed resistance is warranted, but if you think that we have arrived anywhere near that point with enough frequency to warrant armed resistance, then you are crazy.
Yes, there are plenty of instances of people's rights being violated - but in 99.99% of those occasions, I think the problem can best be solved through other means.
Do I think that the students who got peppersprayed at UC Davis had their rights violated?
Yes, I do. But this guy seems to suggest that the proper response is for the students to pull guns and start a shoot-out. Let's imagine what that would look like for a second:
One of the students peers through the caustic mist with righteous fury and a wet t-shirt over his mouth. He can feel the comforting weight of his Barretta, held close to his heart in a chest holster, and he knows that this is the moment to act. He stands up tall despite the onslaught of bright orange asphyxiation, reaches for his piece and takes aim. Somewhat startled, the officer is suddenly defenseless with his canister and it is not long before he crumples to the ground in an ever expanding pool of blood. He basks in a brief moment of clarity before chaos reigns. His fellow students are quick to bear arms themselves, but the training, body armor and poise of the officers allows them a significant head start and the students suffer heavy casualties in this initial volley.
Not to be deterred by the deaths of their friends, the occupy movement takes up refuge in the life sciences building which, designed in the late sixties with a brutalist aesthetic, is mostly concrete and as such is a perfect fortress from which to outlast the ensuing siege and inspire innumerable citizens on the outside world to take up arms as well. Guerrilla warfare is the only tactic effective in such asymmetrical circumstances, and after a few weeks of violence the powers that be succumb to international pressure and agree to negotiate with the 99%...
...or we could launch an official investigation, fire the guy as a scapegoat after an admittedly long, expensive and cumbersome process, and let the public outrage that ensued lead to a more cautious approach to future student protests. Bloggers and editorialists collectively write millions of words on the subject, increasing awareness and generally shaming the agency that allowed it to happen.
Not perfect, but a whole hell of a lot more civilized.
Any time you use guns against a government entity in he US, you will eventually be caught and put in jail. Period. The only way to avoid this is to be a small part of a large popular movement that eventually overthrows the US government, and I don't see that ever happening with citizen gun-owners unless it involves guerrilla tactics. Imagine gunfights erupting at your local municipal buildings. Imagine pipe bombs at your local police station. People need to realize that this is what they are advocating when they argue for second amendment rights as a fourth check and balance.
If you disagree with that statement, feel free to fill in a reasonable sequence of events to span the gap between "guy whose fourth amendment rights are violated guns down cop" and "said guy is vindicated, and massive changes are made to our law enforcement policies." I suspect that we are far more likely to see a greater militarization of the police in response.
I humbly propose that we join the civilized world and come up with more creative ways to correct our problems.

False dichotomy, among other things. There are innumerable intermediate steps between "allowing them to do whatever they want to you" and "shooting the motherfuckers." I'll admit that there is a point where armed resistance is warranted, but if you think that we have arrived anywhere near that point with enough frequency to warrant armed resistance, then you are crazy.

Yes, there are plenty of instances of people's rights being violated - but in 99.99% of those occasions, I think the problem can best be solved through other means.

Do I think that the students who got peppersprayed at UC Davis had their rights violated?

Yes, I do. But this guy seems to suggest that the proper response is for the students to pull guns and start a shoot-out. Let's imagine what that would look like for a second:

One of the students peers through the caustic mist with righteous fury and a wet t-shirt over his mouth. He can feel the comforting weight of his Barretta, held close to his heart in a chest holster, and he knows that this is the moment to act. He stands up tall despite the onslaught of bright orange asphyxiation, reaches for his piece and takes aim. Somewhat startled, the officer is suddenly defenseless with his canister and it is not long before he crumples to the ground in an ever expanding pool of blood. He basks in a brief moment of clarity before chaos reigns. His fellow students are quick to bear arms themselves, but the training, body armor and poise of the officers allows them a significant head start and the students suffer heavy casualties in this initial volley.

Not to be deterred by the deaths of their friends, the occupy movement takes up refuge in the life sciences building which, designed in the late sixties with a brutalist aesthetic, is mostly concrete and as such is a perfect fortress from which to outlast the ensuing siege and inspire innumerable citizens on the outside world to take up arms as well. Guerrilla warfare is the only tactic effective in such asymmetrical circumstances, and after a few weeks of violence the powers that be succumb to international pressure and agree to negotiate with the 99%...

...or we could launch an official investigation, fire the guy as a scapegoat after an admittedly long, expensive and cumbersome process, and let the public outrage that ensued lead to a more cautious approach to future student protests. Bloggers and editorialists collectively write millions of words on the subject, increasing awareness and generally shaming the agency that allowed it to happen.

Not perfect, but a whole hell of a lot more civilized.

Any time you use guns against a government entity in he US, you will eventually be caught and put in jail. Period. The only way to avoid this is to be a small part of a large popular movement that eventually overthrows the US government, and I don't see that ever happening with citizen gun-owners unless it involves guerrilla tactics. Imagine gunfights erupting at your local municipal buildings. Imagine pipe bombs at your local police station. People need to realize that this is what they are advocating when they argue for second amendment rights as a fourth check and balance.

If you disagree with that statement, feel free to fill in a reasonable sequence of events to span the gap between "guy whose fourth amendment rights are violated guns down cop" and "said guy is vindicated, and massive changes are made to our law enforcement policies." I suspect that we are far more likely to see a greater militarization of the police in response.

I humbly propose that we join the civilized world and come up with more creative ways to correct our problems.

>> ^charliem:

Whats its application?


Many new reactors are experimenting with new fuel types. This has a higher fissile density because of the structure, so you can pack more fuel into a given space, it also has better thermal transfer and less susceptible to radiation damage that traditional uranium oxide. Hyperion Power Generation plans to use a uranium nitride compound in their Gen4 reactor. Gen4 reactors are a whole new breed of reactor, the infusion of modern computer modeling and materials development. While we still have a shitty regulatory system in the US as to not allow newer safer reactors to come online here, they will be launching in places like China, the UAE, and Korea in the future. America is poised to fall behind in the technology it invented, as it has with many other areas that aren't wall street or the technology sector.

Known quite a few Eagle scouts 'n think the criteria they use at BSoA to get a scout there is pretty damn cool. But yeah, it's a private boy's club that can set criteria for membership according to their world view and through the years, have established their organization an iconic "American" institution.
Gay or not Scoutmaster, if anyone can get through your rigors and is poised to match the bar you have set AND he completes the prerequisites only to be shot-down in flames before graduation??...Well, you may have to adjust your shit before too many more "fags" make it to the gate...Because rest-assured, there's more representatives involved in your organization who remain in the closet than you have any idea of who respect the organization in spite of your policies....HELLO!!?? BOY scouts!!???

>> ^VoodooV:

The only problem I have with the 2nd amendment is that it says nothing about being trained or being competent with a firearm
Any insecure idiot who longs for the days of the wild west with delusions of grandeur can buy a gun, but it says nothing about whether or not they can use it well.
If everyone had the same training and skill as that cop I doubt I would have a problem with excessive gun ownership.
But the odds of those idiots actually using a gun well is actually pretty low and in such a case, they'd be more of a liability than a benefit.
It's just like that sift of the old dude who happened to have a gun when the internet cafe he was at was being robbed. He fired it indiscriminately regardless of the nearby bystanders. Fucking asshole was lucky not to have hurt the bystanders instead of the criminals.


I don't think you would have many gun enthusiasts complaining about a show of competency in safety before owning a gun, because most enthusiasts are emphatic about this themselves...the cost and red tape may become an issue for some but eh...can't please everyone.

Did you watch the video of the old man? I just rewatched it and based on the 2 main camera angles of the video it was safe to shoot within the building (you could not easily account for people on the other side of the wall/door). When he opens fire he is almost even and a couple feet to the side of a bystander, but according to the 2 views the only people in the radius of where he fired were the robbers.

Not only that, but he had decent form (2 handed grip with bent knees and squared shoulders) and paused his movements when he fired, all of which point to someone experienced with the firearm. If anything I'd say he showed great poise for an untrained person.

Yikes. As Ron Paul said to Rick Santorum a few weeks ago: I think you're a little "overly sensitive!"

I haven't "lashed out" at anyone, and I certainly haven't demanded information of anyone. (Where are those accusations coming from?) I called you out for posting an uninformative video (uninformative in the sense that, in an attempt to share a story about Anonymous' "exposure" of Ron Paul, you put up a one-minute clip of Sam Seder making generalized statements without any specific evidence—and note that other people in this comments section share my opinion on this), and I took issue with @dystopianfuturetoday's overly simplified discussion of states' rights.

The issue of states' rights is obviously something of a complicated one (this part of my response if for @Boise_Lib, too). I'm aware of the historical weight of the term, but I'm also aware that there's no inherent link between states' rights and racism. There are lots of people on the Sift who care about states' rights and who appreciate our federal system of government, one that allots certain rights to the federal government and certain rights to the states, and yet I've never seen ONE comment on the Sift that showed any sort of overt racism. (I haven't been around as long as many of you, so it's possible that there have been some; it's just that I've never personally seen one.) That should be a good example, in and of itself, of the fact that states' rights, for many people, do NOT go hand in hand with white supremacy. For dystopianfuturetoday to make that suggestion in the context of a Sift discussion on the issue *is* insulting to many of us.

And for the record, @dystopianfuturetoday, Ron Paul doesn't have me in some trance-like state of manipulation. I didn't vote for him in the last election, and I don't plan to vote for him this time around. There are *lots* of things about his platform that I outright disagree with, and there are a handful of things that I disagree with so fundamentally (his positions on abortion, climate change, evolution, his religiosity, among others) that I often question why I even bother keeping up with his politics. (The reason: because there are lots of his positions that I *do* agree with, in particular positions that no one else seems even to address.) But this whole racism thing really just peeves me. I mean, for magical Christ's sake, if he's a racist, and if he's in cahoots with white supremacists and Neo-Nazis, then I, more than anyone else, want to read some credible, vetted news stories on the matter, so I can put the issue to bed once and for all. But instead, I keep seeing videos like this one which purport, rather dramatically, so "expose" him in all his shameful glory ... only to be disappointed by the content of the video.

I suppose that frustration at being continually disappointed by these racist "exposures" is all wrapped up in my original reaction to the video (and its title). In any event, though, I'm interested to see how this new issue plays out. As I said in my second post, I want to know the truth about his relationship to these white supremacists; if it's damning, then let's see some good journalism exposing it as such.>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^aurens:
(And sorry if I came off as combative; it wasn't my intention.)
Yes, yes, you've been the model of poise and restraint. You've lashed out at me, Sam Seder, the site who's reported on this, and have demanded some sort of full investigative report be delivered to you, because you refuse to even try to answer your own questions with your own research.
Never mind that the link I gave you included a link to the full document dump of the e-mail recovered by Anonymous, you think it's "amateurish" because you didn't understand what they were talking about, or didn't like their tone, or some BS like that.
Now you're trying to castigate DFT for not contributing to "the conversation"? Dude, you've been doing your best to make sure there won't be anything like a sane and rational conversation on this video from your very first comment.
Take some deep breaths. Go google "Ron Paul anonymous american third position" and read some links until you have an idea of what's going on. Then come back when you're ready to have a measured conversation about the topic.

>> ^aurens:

(And sorry if I came off as combative; it wasn't my intention.)

Yes, yes, you've been the model of poise and restraint. You've lashed out at me, Sam Seder, the site who's reported on this, and have demanded some sort of full investigative report be delivered to you, because you refuse to even try to answer your own questions with your own research.

Never mind that the link I gave you included a link to the full document dump of the e-mail recovered by Anonymous, you think it's "amateurish" because you didn't understand what they were talking about, or didn't like their tone, or some BS like that.

Now you're trying to castigate DFT for not contributing to "the conversation"? Dude, you've been doing your best to make sure there won't be anything like a sane and rational conversation on this video from your very first comment.

Take some deep breaths. Go google "Ron Paul anonymous american third position" and read some links until you have an idea of what's going on. Then come back when you're ready to have a measured conversation about the topic.

@Jinx

This behavior speaks to her intelligence and poise. If she wasn't considered presidential caliber by many, it would be a non-issue. The fact that a large percentage would vote for this woman to be president makes the hand-writing very relevant.

Upvote for the balance, strength and poise necessary to avoid breaking her fool ankle skipping in those shoes.

6 minutes!

It appears that the Sun got hold of this CCTV footage of a man so impossibly wankered he appears almost indestructible.

CCTV -- there to protect and entertain.


Incredible how the earth shakes like that and he stays poised and balanced the whole time.