Why do any cars go above 90mph? ever? when is it ever safe and necessary to drive in excess of this speed? Why is there no government control over the torque or horsepower in vehicles? Wouldn't it be easier to catch criminals and racers if only cops could drive over 90mph? Why aren't peoples licenses permanently revoked after 1 or 2 DUIs? Why are we obligated to keep giving DUI offenders 3rd and 4th and 5th chances just so their lives arent adversely affected?

The same response to these questions could be applied to gun ownership. Because one, those situations where people suffer because of this kind of behavior are the exception and not the rule, and two the government has decided that it is not justification enough to infringe on peoples rights to own a fast and powerful vehicle anymore than it is to prevent people from going hunting or shooting for hobby.

If peoples guns must be removed for the good of us all, despite there being reasons to want to own one ABOVE and beyond recreation, then why not stuff like fast cars and dangerous hobbies?

To be clear: my point is a nanny state can't and should not stop short of any one persons bias on what is good or bad. Either the state should do everything in its power to safeguard people against themselves OR we have to accept that the government will allow things that may be unsafe/harmful for people in certain situations. If you accept that 2nd part then give thought to the fact that just because guns are pointless to u, it does not mean they are pointless to everyone.

This is ridiculous and the cops DO need to be disciplined beyond a write up or paid time off.

That being said when they say that the cops should behave up there with the best of us, that they should be held to a higher standard etc. I agree with him. Now assuming that you believe this, it's only natural that the people who have:
- one of the most dangerous domestic jobs around
-that have large amounts of work and personal stress derived from their job
-that are constantly under criticism (sometimes founded but mostly not) by the people that they serve
- are expected to behave above and beyond normal societal standards while on duty

...should be some of the best paid, highly qualified, and highly respected people in our community. Lucky for us we treat them that way....right?

We can't expect the best of people all the while treating them worse than we treat store clerks or waitresses that bring us our lunch.

No, you are wrong.
Simply Put: Exploitation of its workers

Wal-Mart has a proven track record of doing the absolute minimum for it's workers in all cases.
The insurance they offer is a joke. Almost every employee is part time so they don't have to pay benefits. If you miss a shift because you need to work two jobs to get by, they cut your hours down to almost none.

http://www.amazon.ca/How-Walmart-Destroying-America-World/dp/1580086683
http://videosift.com/video/Confessions-of-a-Wal-Mart-Hit-Man
http://videosift.com/video/Mother-of-Dead-Soldier-Sued-by-Wal-Mart-for-Insurance-Money

There is nothing wrong with Capitalism as a model as long as you compensate your workers and reward them fairly for going above and beyond. If the system is designed to squeeze every possible dollar out of the system at the expense of your workers then that system is flawed and exploitative..

>> ^My_design:

Wow, the "free thinkers" lash out.
Not a corporate shill, but work in a corporate environment. Not saying that corporate actions are always right, but you guys only ever want to tear down, and never propose how to fix it. Your own hatred blinds you to reality.
So F_ck Walmart, F_ck Target, F_ck Coke and Pepsi and all the other companies that make "ridiculous" profits at the expense of consumers and employees. Stop buying their crap, form a commune and move to the hills. Consumerism and free market are screwing up the country/planet right? So let's seize corporate profits, block them at every angle and get us back to the good old days, you know before Carnegie, Ford, JP Morgan, and Rockefeller. Hell before Edison while we're at it. Oh wait there has always been corporations doing business in the US. Oh well, enjoy your new life with the Amish.
No options for jobs?
Here's a 160 pages of options just for the 50 miles around Chicago:
http://www.careerbuilder.com/JobSeeker/Jobs/JobResults.aspx?lr=cbcb_ct&siteid=cb_ctnpqsb&use=all&s_rawword
s=Chicago&s_freeloc=Il&s_jobtypes=ALL&uJobsF
oundCount2%3Ajlrd=50&Submit=GO
There are always options. We tend to forget that just 50 years ago people were subsistence farming, living with 3 generations in a household, working 2 jobs, and no health insurance. Hell in some places that is still going on. But now we complain and strike because the manager bullies us and causes unnecessary stress (0:22) If that is really the case, then document it. It is called contributing to a hostile work environment and is covered under the sexual harassment laws in the US.
"Because I'm tired of working at a company where workers get cheated and cheaters get rewarded" What? Umm that would be a class action lawsuit like the ones that hit Walmart in the past.

@ReverendTed

Abortion is not murder, but that's not really the point. America, and by extension, the world, doesn't really have a problem with killing as a whole. We war with ourselves and kill fellow beings in the name of religion, politics, land and other resources. We kill criminals if they commit heinous enough crimes. We kill vast amounts of wildlife for fun and sport. We kill flies and other insects merely because they bother us. We step on insects without even knowing it.

We humans kill.
We are killers.
There is no escaping this fact.
Create the right conditions and anyone will kill...anyone.

The only thing you can do is: 1. Hopefully create a world in the future where we don't have to kill as much and 2. Hope that we are killing for the right reasons. Sometimes this will be true, sometimes it won't be. But that's life. That's the human condition. A law will change nothing other than whether or not abortions are performed safely or not. I choose to live in a world where if someone I know decides to have an abortion, that they do it safely with a doctor and not in some back alley. Abortions will happen REGARDLESS of what the law says. If we're going to end an unborn child's life, let's at least make sure the mother remains safe. Outlawing abortions just increases the chance that we'll have two ended lives instead of just one.

Abortion, by definition is the LAWFUL termination of an unborn child...LAWFUL. Murder is the UNLAWFUL termination of a life. Key distinction there.

This false morality that some people are somehow above and beyond the rest of us mere mortals and hold life to be irrevocably sacred just does not understand history or the human condition. These sorts of people seem to be the same people who would casually send us to war for religious or ideological reasons and thus condone the termination of more lives. The hypocrisy is glaring.

In regards to this notion that a person would go have an abortion just because a baby would be inconvenient is sad certainly, but when it comes right down to it....tough. Cost of living in a free society. people are going to things you don't approve of. deal with it. Your rights end where mine begin and vice versa. People who go have abortions out of convenience are in the minority. Quit worrying about what the minority does..especially with their own body. You and I don't get to decide what is right for someone else.

We don't live in a post-scarcity world yet. If every viable pregnancy ever was brought to term, we would have an even bigger resource shortage problem on our hands.

We live in a world where your quality of life (and your offspring) is directly related to your job. Until the quality of life of humanity becomes more equalized, We are going to continue to have situations where if someone gets pregnant it will directly affect their quality of life (and their child's) for the worse. So I really don't have a problem with someone terminating the pregnancy so that they go on to improve their quality of life so that they can have a kid later who will benefit from that better quality of life.

I too would ideally prefer adoption to abortion. But that's not exactly saying much. Adoption agencies have tons of kids and not enough parents to go around. As fertility science continues to improve, fewer and fewer parents are going to want adoption when they can just undergo a procedure and still have their own. This recently happened to a friend of mine who was having difficulty conceiving. She and her husband initially decided to adopt, but at some point, they changed their mind and pursued some massively costly fertility treatments so that they eventually did conceive. I was immensely happy for her, but at the same time, I personally felt they should have stuck with the adoption as those orphans are already here and need help now. But here's the thing. It's not my choice, it's hers and her husbands. So we can deal with the realities of the situation or continue to play hypotheticals. If everyone gave their kid up for adoption instead of abortion, we'd just have a different kind of problem and the quality of life of a vast amount of kids would be affected for the worse.

As for your big questions, They are best left to people far more educated on this subject than you and I. Of course there is some point in a pregnancy where abortion should no longer be an option. I don't think anyone is arguing this. As you say, the question is when. I simply don't know and am unqualified to make that judgement. No matter what is decided upon, it obviously won't satisfy everyone, but a decision has to be made and you can't please everyone.

>> ^chingalera:

Fast n furious , energy relegated to the now. That's the mettle, that's the dedication shining...
You have obsessively proven yourself far into the above and beyond, kiss a kitty to celebrate your new bling.
A major accomplishment in about 6792 less comments it took choggie to sink into infamy....Congratulations, have a latte'..☕


This peppermint soy no whip mocha is for YOU! [sip] =oD

Someone will have to fill me in on this Choggie character some day ... I've noticed the name bandied about here and there =oI

Fast n furious , energy relegated to the now. That's the mettle, that's the dedication shining...

You have obsessively proven yourself far into the above and beyond, kiss a kitty to celebrate your new bling.

A major accomplishment in about 6792 less comments it took choggie to sink into infamy....Congratulations, have a latte'..☕

>> ^BicycleRepairMan:

Look, I can clearly see the guy loves his dog, and seems to do anything to ease its pain. But seriously, he needs to fucking get his head out of his ass and have the dog put down. As far as I'm concerned, this is animal cruelty, and its all too common with owners who cant bear the thought of putting their dog out of its misery.
Dogs have a really high tolerance for pain, which means that they can be in a lot of pain without showing it. When they DO show it, like this poor old sap, it means they are in a WORLD of pain. Constantly.
Insofar as anything is supposed to be anything, I would say that dogs are definitely not supposed to live like that. Dogs are supposed to be able to run, jump and have fun, to use their healthly legs and not least their brains, to do searches and whatnot. Being in constant pain (save for a few hours in the water) and barely being able to walk, much less run, is no life for a dog.
Putting a dog down is hard. Really hard. I know, because I've done it. I love all dogs, and I love my own dogs to death and its the hardest shit ever. But it needs to be done. Its part of having a dog, its part of the responsibility: If you get a dog its your goddamn responsibility to feed it every day, to walk it every day, to play with it every day, and not least to end its misery when the dog cant do those things anymore.


I fully understand your point and respect the humanity (or doganity?...) However I would never be able to put any creature out of its misery unless it could communicate in some fashion how much pain its in. I don't see how we can make that decision unless we have the proof (in this case a dogs whimpers or whining) to make that choice. I would feel terrible if I could not guarantee that I made the right choice.

Even though he is taking such drastic steps to ease the animals pain we don't know how severe the situation actually is. The owner might simply be going above and beyond when taking his pooch out for these naps.

I thought I recognized the crazy old goof... I liked the start how he talks of wars and rumors of wars as they are bad things, but then wants to vote for the party responsible getting us into these wars and refuses to cut what is above and beyond the worlds largest military budget and instead wants to sacrifice helping the sick and the working poor Jesus said to help... or perhaps that is why they vote for them, to make the process go faster, even though God said he had an appointed time... I can see it now, they bring about the end of the world conditions by 2025, and wonder where the apocalypse is, and then when they get to heaven they go, "...but God, there were wars and rumors of wars and killed millions of innocent women and children. We put the mark of the beast on everyone, and everyone needed a chip to buy stuff. We let the planet ecology fall apart. Why didn't you come back as you said you would?" Then god says to them "I said APPOINTED time, that was going to be the year 502080, just because you made the conditions happen sooner doesn't mean I was going to come back sooner." I honestly heard somebody once say after Obama won "Well maybe this means god is coming back sooner..."

>> ^Edgeman2112:

That's the third eagle of the apocalypse!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOQsvOkkLq4

I feel this rant that I didn't read needs to be quoted.
>> ^RFlagg:

@bobknight33 I never said to tax the rich out their ass or take all corporate revenue. I think another 3% isn't going to hurt to hurt the top 1% or even the top 2% of wage earners (most of whom are not job creators anyhow, but lawyers and surgeons and the like, not a single real small business owner among them), and punishing the people who can't make a living wage isn't the solution, but it is the only one the conservatives consider. As @KnivesOut pointed out, and as I noted in the part you didn't quote, there is a huge military spending that the Republicans refuse to cut spending on. I don't know if I would cut 70%, but at the very least 50%. Last figures I saw we were spending more than the next 19 countries combined, and most of them are allies or neutral, that leaves China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and perhaps Brazil... Cutting out budget in half still leaves us spending more than the next 6 combined, and again, most are allies. Even as a percentage of GDP, we are far above and beyond what most countries spend, we'd probably have to get down to that 70% mark to get even close to the average of the top 20. Conservatives love to complain about NASA wasting money, but NASA's entire budget for a year is less than what we spend on air conditioning our troops in Afghanistan alone.
My only comparison to other countries had nothing to do with their finances, but with the fact that the US was the only industrialized country in the world that wasn't communist or Islamic to not let gays server openly.
How is Obama a liberal? What has he done that is remotely liberal? Did he give us the health care plan he promised, which was a single payer health insurance? No. We ended up with what the Republicans would allow, which was Mittcare on a national level. A program that favors Big Pharma and the Insurance Companies and while it does help some people, it does no where near as good for the vast majority of Americans that the single payer would have been. Sure the insurance companies would have gone from making hundreds of billions of dollars off people's suffering to just tens of billions or hundreds of millions at worst, and big pharma the same, but aside from that, for everyday people, they would be better off.
How did we turn our back on Israel? And even if we did, who cares? We should just leave the middle east alone. It isn't our business. That is why they hate us you know, not our so called freedoms that we gave up after the attacks, or any other such BS, it is because we interfear with their business.
As to Obamacare... I already stated, it isn't Obamacare. Obamacare would have been a nationalized health insurance, what we got is Mittcare on a national level which is a mandate to buy insurance from a for-profit insurance company. The only positives is that they can no longer deny people based on pre-existing conditions, extended coverage for children... this compares to what Obamacare would have done had it passed, which would create an insurance that is cheaper and just as good as and in many if not most cases better than the private insurance that most Americans had. It would have been cheaper, meaning far less money taken out of their paychecks and more money to spend. Millions of uninsured and under-insured workers would have finally have access to affordable health care, not just have to show up at the ER when things reach a level that could have been prevented had they been able to see a regular doctor and been able to cover any lab fees...they then end up not being able to pay said ER visits, which raises the cost of health care for everyone else, and many others file bankruptcy to get out of medical bills, which in the US is the number one reason for bankruptcy for individuals, which again adds to overall medical costs for everyone. Conservatives like to blame lawsuits, which do raise the cost of surgery, and is an issue, but the real cause of high medical costs, beyond greed, is the fact that so many people end up not being able to pay for what services they got the medical community then passes those costs on.
One of the primary reasons I am not a Christian anymore is because so many Christians spoke out against taking care of the sick and the needy. Even though Jesus' main commandment was love. Most Christians are full of hate for those who they don't like. They hate the gays and want to revoke the free-will god gave them, and not let them get married. They don't want to help the sick and the poor and want to give the money those sick and poor people earned and turn it over to the money lenders. They basically want to be the exact opposite of what Jesus taught. It is like Gandhi said, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
Obama hasn't been allowed to put his economic policies in effect becaouse the Republicans have refused. What we have is a continuation of Bush's economic policies because the Republicans promised they would never negotiate and do everything they can to make his Presidency a failure. We have been running a Republican budget for years now... and we've been foolishly thinking it will trickle down for over 30 years now. The rich keep getting richer and richer at a faster and faster pace, while the poor get poorer and the middle class dissolves to the poor. Yet the Republicans still keep saying it will work. Yeah, it works for 2%, while everyone else suffers for it.
Know why jobs aren't being created? Because the rich don't care. They don't want to make jobs, they want private jets and mansions and will fuck over everyone to do it. The place I used to work at, in 2010 fired 350 people and then told everyone else they weren't getting raises because they said the cost of living went down. He then went out and purchased a private jet and another mansion in an exclusive gated community in town, already have the second largest there wasn't enough apparently... he could have closed his Miami Beach office, which is literally on the beach, he walks out the door he is on the beach, and there is only one employee there, but no, he destroyed the lives of 350 families and basically everyone else who worked for him to get his stuff. The next year, 250 more fired, and still no raises. This year, 350 more and still no raises, and just recently another 100 or so more fired. So over 1000 families put out, and those still working for him haven't had raises for 3 years just so he can have his stuff. He could have kept those people on and not have got that stuff, he could have closed the Miami Beach office and let one person go, he could have made other cuts (like not buying a $5 Million software that as I understand it after 4 years of work still doesn't work as promised, it wasn't working when I left and it was already 2 years of that money spent and was no where near working) but no, he chose to sacrifice the lives of people under his care. The so called job creators haven't been in the business of creating jobs simply because they choose to outsource, they choose to take for themselves rather than care for those under them. It isn't Obama's fault... hell it isn't even Bush's or Reagan's fault. It is the rich's fault. They could create jobs, but they choose not to. They choose to widen the gap between the haves and the have not's at a rate nobody has ever seen anywhere. The CEO of Wal-Mart could be given a total package of $250,000, then with that as the top line, drawing from the minimum wage workers (so the line would look like "/") and spending the same amount of money on all salary, HR expenses, compensation and all that jazz hire hundreds of thousands more, or give everyone more to live on, or actually provide health insurance... but no, they and nearly every company in America is setup to have a salary structure that looks like "˩". I firmly believe the owner should make a fair salary above and beyond everyone else, but it shouldn't be so far out of proportion to everyone else in the company that they sacrifice people under their care just so they can get ahead. The fact Republicans think that is okay is what is sickening. The fact Christians think that is okay is sickening.

@bobknight33 I never said to tax the rich out their ass or take all corporate revenue. I think another 3% isn't going to hurt to hurt the top 1% or even the top 2% of wage earners (most of whom are not job creators anyhow, but lawyers and surgeons and the like, not a single real small business owner among them), and punishing the people who can't make a living wage isn't the solution, but it is the only one the conservatives consider. As @KnivesOut pointed out, and as I noted in the part you didn't quote, there is a huge military spending that the Republicans refuse to cut spending on. I don't know if I would cut 70%, but at the very least 50%. Last figures I saw we were spending more than the next 19 countries combined, and most of them are allies or neutral, that leaves China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and perhaps Brazil... Cutting out budget in half still leaves us spending more than the next 6 combined, and again, most are allies. Even as a percentage of GDP, we are far above and beyond what most countries spend, we'd probably have to get down to that 70% mark to get even close to the average of the top 20. Conservatives love to complain about NASA wasting money, but NASA's entire budget for a year is less than what we spend on air conditioning our troops in Afghanistan alone.

My only comparison to other countries had nothing to do with their finances, but with the fact that the US was the only industrialized country in the world that wasn't communist or Islamic to not let gays server openly.

How is Obama a liberal? What has he done that is remotely liberal? Did he give us the health care plan he promised, which was a single payer health insurance? No. We ended up with what the Republicans would allow, which was Mittcare on a national level. A program that favors Big Pharma and the Insurance Companies and while it does help some people, it does no where near as good for the vast majority of Americans that the single payer would have been. Sure the insurance companies would have gone from making hundreds of billions of dollars off people's suffering to just tens of billions or hundreds of millions at worst, and big pharma the same, but aside from that, for everyday people, they would be better off.

How did we turn our back on Israel? And even if we did, who cares? We should just leave the middle east alone. It isn't our business. That is why they hate us you know, not our so called freedoms that we gave up after the attacks, or any other such BS, it is because we interfear with their business.

As to Obamacare... I already stated, it isn't Obamacare. Obamacare would have been a nationalized health insurance, what we got is Mittcare on a national level which is a mandate to buy insurance from a for-profit insurance company. The only positives is that they can no longer deny people based on pre-existing conditions, extended coverage for children... this compares to what Obamacare would have done had it passed, which would create an insurance that is cheaper and just as good as and in many if not most cases better than the private insurance that most Americans had. It would have been cheaper, meaning far less money taken out of their paychecks and more money to spend. Millions of uninsured and under-insured workers would have finally have access to affordable health care, not just have to show up at the ER when things reach a level that could have been prevented had they been able to see a regular doctor and been able to cover any lab fees...they then end up not being able to pay said ER visits, which raises the cost of health care for everyone else, and many others file bankruptcy to get out of medical bills, which in the US is the number one reason for bankruptcy for individuals, which again adds to overall medical costs for everyone. Conservatives like to blame lawsuits, which do raise the cost of surgery, and is an issue, but the real cause of high medical costs, beyond greed, is the fact that so many people end up not being able to pay for what services they got the medical community then passes those costs on.

One of the primary reasons I am not a Christian anymore is because so many Christians spoke out against taking care of the sick and the needy. Even though Jesus' main commandment was love. Most Christians are full of hate for those who they don't like. They hate the gays and want to revoke the free-will god gave them, and not let them get married. They don't want to help the sick and the poor and want to give the money those sick and poor people earned and turn it over to the money lenders. They basically want to be the exact opposite of what Jesus taught. It is like Gandhi said, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

Obama hasn't been allowed to put his economic policies in effect becaouse the Republicans have refused. What we have is a continuation of Bush's economic policies because the Republicans promised they would never negotiate and do everything they can to make his Presidency a failure. We have been running a Republican budget for years now... and we've been foolishly thinking it will trickle down for over 30 years now. The rich keep getting richer and richer at a faster and faster pace, while the poor get poorer and the middle class dissolves to the poor. Yet the Republicans still keep saying it will work. Yeah, it works for 2%, while everyone else suffers for it.

Know why jobs aren't being created? Because the rich don't care. They don't want to make jobs, they want private jets and mansions and will fuck over everyone to do it. The place I used to work at, in 2010 fired 350 people and then told everyone else they weren't getting raises because they said the cost of living went down. He then went out and purchased a private jet and another mansion in an exclusive gated community in town, already have the second largest there wasn't enough apparently... he could have closed his Miami Beach office, which is literally on the beach, he walks out the door he is on the beach, and there is only one employee there, but no, he destroyed the lives of 350 families and basically everyone else who worked for him to get his stuff. The next year, 250 more fired, and still no raises. This year, 350 more and still no raises, and just recently another 100 or so more fired. So over 1000 families put out, and those still working for him haven't had raises for 3 years just so he can have his stuff. He could have kept those people on and not have got that stuff, he could have closed the Miami Beach office and let one person go, he could have made other cuts (like not buying a $5 Million software that as I understand it after 4 years of work still doesn't work as promised, it wasn't working when I left and it was already 2 years of that money spent and was no where near working) but no, he chose to sacrifice the lives of people under his care. The so called job creators haven't been in the business of creating jobs simply because they choose to outsource, they choose to take for themselves rather than care for those under them. It isn't Obama's fault... hell it isn't even Bush's or Reagan's fault. It is the rich's fault. They could create jobs, but they choose not to. They choose to widen the gap between the haves and the have not's at a rate nobody has ever seen anywhere. The CEO of Wal-Mart could be given a total package of $250,000, then with that as the top line, drawing from the minimum wage workers (so the line would look like "/") and spending the same amount of money on all salary, HR expenses, compensation and all that jazz hire hundreds of thousands more, or give everyone more to live on, or actually provide health insurance... but no, they and nearly every company in America is setup to have a salary structure that looks like "˩". I firmly believe the owner should make a fair salary above and beyond everyone else, but it shouldn't be so far out of proportion to everyone else in the company that they sacrifice people under their care just so they can get ahead. The fact Republicans think that is okay is what is sickening. The fact Christians think that is okay is sickening.

>> ^tymebendit:

How would it be cheaper?
They're paying the teachers more (upper middle class), providing free meals, free school supplies, and more personal attention to those in need.
Maybe it would cost less to the society in the long run, but I think the initial cost of the system would have to be higher. It would have to be a serious commitment by whoever wants to try it.
>> ^CreamK:
>> ^tymebendit:
i wish we can try the finnish system.
pick a state, or a city, and try it for 10-15 years.
everyone says out current system is terrible and not working.
how much worse could it be than our current one?
it will cost a bit more than our current system, but probably not that much more...

Actually, Finnish system is cheaper than US and by a large margin... Schools that don't have to make profit are much more cost efficient..


The meals you are served at school are typically cheaper than the equivalent meal you would get at a cafeteria anywhere else, they are subsidized or cost mitigated at some point. Plus they provide meals to many kids already free of charge.

School supplies, a school would be able to buy supplies on the whole cheaper than an individual parent x however many students.

And the US schools already provide smaller classes and special buses and/or vans to get handicapped children to and from school. Plus they provide bussing to private schools in my area, I am not sure if they do that at a nominal fee or do it as part of their mandate to provide transportation to these kids.

On top of these things, schools also have sports programs which are astronomically expensive since they require maintaining tracks, fields, and stadiums within the budget of the school. They also pay teachers to be coaches or have an separate coach, all transportation to and from "away" games, uniforms, equipment and the additional parking and safety requirements needed to have games on their premises.

The local school district to me, when they have to make cuts, they never threaten to cut sports. It's always threatening to cut building maintenance, teachers salaries, and buses. Yet sports have no impact on education or the future of about 75% of the kids going through those schools, it's usually a very small group of kids who get to even benefit from the sports programs the school offers but they maintain a stadium, a baseball field, soccer field, football field. Provide uniforms for volleyball, baseball, football, soccer, tennis, and all the other equipment for male and female teams when applicable. I remember it being a big deal with the debate club of 5-10 people who used a small room after school to do their practices got shirts and they otherwise have no additional cost but a few lights and an hour of a teachers time once or twice a week plus debates against other schools...I dont even think they got transportation provided they were expected to be driven to these places by their parents.

US schools spend money on things not related directly to increasing knowledge and education instead preferring to spend major sums of their budgets on sports related costs. Then you have the extra costs associated with special needs kids, because it keeps them from standardized testing to have these kids separated from the regular kids. And yet the kids who are the bright but don't learn well in the traditional classroom get labeled as special needs or "difficult" and are essentially screwed unless their parents go above and beyond to provide them what they need. This is not a system that is designed with cost in mind, whether it be money or the cost of unknowable "future" issues either on personal levels for each student neglected or as a society as a whole as we become about only teaching subjects one way and only one way.

And this is ignoring college education costs and just looking at High School and below. College is astronomically expensive and yet again, they spend loads of money on sports programs but they MIGHT make some fraction of that cost back via ticket sales and such at a generic University and might actually be a profit center in big name University's like OSU.

How can something that should be considered common decency be labeled as "humanitarian".

To me being a humanitarian is going above and beyond the norm for the benefit of those in need. Volunteering at a shelter or raising money for the needy.

Helping a fallen person with crutches off of a busy roadway should just be expected.

>> ^Trancecoach:

humanitarian

>> ^Hybrid:

Actually it's not too hard to make an app, but you do have to know how to program. Obviously, the more the app does, the longer it'll take and the more bugs there might be to fix. But simple apps/games can be knocked up in days. I do Android development myself and it's quick and easy, but I make games for a living so I have the programming knowledge to get things done.
However, an app is only worth making if it does something unique on it's own. I just don't see what a VideoSift app would do, above and beyond the standard mobile version of the site.


I'm under the impression that most apps of the sort we're discussing here are nothing more than SSBs. I believe it's little more than laying some custom chrome on top of Webkit, basically producing a website with the feel of a native app by making the interface partially a local app.

Based on that assumption, my next assumption would be that they can be cobbled together rather quickly but you are correct that it would not do a whole lot that the mobile site doesn't already do.

Actually it's not too hard to make an app, but you do have to know how to program. Obviously, the more the app does, the longer it'll take and the more bugs there might be to fix. But simple apps/games can be knocked up in days. I do Android development myself and it's quick and easy, but I make games for a living so I have the programming knowledge to get things done.

However, an app is only worth making if it does something unique on it's own. I just don't see what a VideoSift app would do, above and beyond the standard mobile version of the site.

The reason I say 20,000 a year is for one that's what a lot of the average blue collar workers earn. And two it would eliminate people who only get into politics for the money.

>> ^Sagemind:

@Auger8
I agree that lobbying should be illegal!
But I think your salary cap is a bit low. I'm assuming by 20k, you mean $20,000.
That's low by any standards. You'd never attract anyone with any intelligence for that kind of paycheck. "The current salary (2011) for rank-and-file members of the House and Senate is $174,000 per year." I can agree to a pay scale between 100-200k. And with a limit as to what expenses can be claimed on the office expense account (eg. nothing for personal use, caps on meal claims.)
I do as well, however, agree to the auditing. Any monies gained above and beyond that must be proven as legitimate while living expenses and assets must not exceed their incomes.