Face=>Palm

So, you quote the same hyper partisan types of 'media' Fox uses and claim to not know about Fox at all...oh really. That's an impressive blindness to a political giant not only here, but in your country as well.

Yes, red herring. I'm not bothering with your over abundance of partisan right wing sites, but the one I did randomly check said almost exactly what I said, that they had found NOTHING illegal and probably could never prosecute even if they did because they could not prove she knew it was illegal, but more likely what she did wasn't illegal or improper at the time she emailed from/to her private server. I'm sure the rest told you what you say they did read in the right light...but you don't understand it's all BS. How do I know? No charges. If/when they ever found anything substantive, there will be charges pending the next day and republicans on every channel dancing a jig. Since there aren't, I know there's nothing there.

Your smattering of anti-socialist sites mean nothing. No one said socialism was perfect, just that it's part of society and railing against any instance you can identify is just plain silly. Too much socialism without incentive for production is never a good idea...but none at all is Mad Max, where your precious degree won't be helping save you from the gas boys.

Again, more crazed right wing articles making claims against the ACA mean...what? Nothing. It's survived every challenge so far, and hundreds of attempts to repeal it. It's alive and well, contrary to what you've apparently read. It could certainly be better, but obstructionists would have nothing of 'single payer' and many states have done all they can to sabotage it.

Now for Trump...not a single one of those ideas is anything more than laughable.
1. Good luck with just 'not letting any more in'. You'll need to put the entire army on the borders, and the navy off shore to even come close. Won't happen in any way. The borders and shores are too large to patrol or wall off, much less both.
2. What free Federal resources do you think exist that can round up 11 million people and move them across a border? They don't exist, and would cost the entire GDP to try if it went smoothly...and it wouldn't. And it ignores the millions of legal children left behind which would cost billions-trillions more to take care of poorly. It's just laughable.
3. Smile because you just ate a tasty turd Trump told you was the best, most luxurious chocolate mousse.
Uncontrolled immigration is an issue, but not one easily solved, certainly not with his outrageously expensive plans.

Mexico building a wall because we illegally stop trading with them? (we have a binding trade agreement that precludes any such thing by law) You've got to be kidding. First, can't and won't ever happen, it would cost us trillions to replace/lose the products and trade that come from Mexico, if we could. Second, as I mentioned, illegal. Third, what happens when other nations side with Mexico, who's being illegally and outrageously bullied and blackmailed by the US, and stop trade with us too...like China? The plan is incredibly short sighted and given no thought at all, he just assumes that if we push, they'll all lie down and cry uncle. That's not how the world works.

You claim to have a degree and work for a bank, but you have at least twice tried to pin the entire debt on Obama. Perhaps you don't understand that the debt was about 12 trillion when he took office with the economy in the toilet thanks to the kinds of ideas you support? Our last president, a "conservative" far more than doubled the debt, and took a budget surplus and made it a HUGE deficit (source-https://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/histdebt/histdebt_histo5.htm) and those numbers were while keeping two wars 'off the books' that are now being paid for. EDIT: and Obama has taken an enormous deficit and shrunk it precipitously while also turning the economy around...the right way (yeah, the last pres. turned it around too) Don't get it twisted...I'm pretty disappointed in Obama, I was from the first term, but because he didn't go much farther, not because of what he did get done.

Trump's the Republican second place runner...among republicans willing to answer presidential poll questions a year before the election. He's completely toast in a general election, even if he managed to get the other 76+% of republicans to vote for him (hint...he won't), he won't get any independents.

Vulgar language?!? I re-read my entire post, and not a single vulgar word IMO. One abbreviation of a vulgar word. You have GOT to be kidding me about that. If not, wow...get off the internet NOW and never come back, it's SO not for you. ;-)

I have to admit that I'm partially on the "wrong" side of this one.

Housing, not being fired for being gay, that kind of stuff, I'm with John Oliver 100%.

But restaurants, bakers, etc. ... I dunno, I'm a little torn.

Places like Big Earl's in the clip put up a sign that says "We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason". I tend to think that is a right that we should allow private businesses (NOT things that are set up for the public good like utilities, gas stations, govt. agencies, whatever) to have.

That is NOT to say that I approve of the way that these clowns exercise that right. Dude doesn't want to make cakes for same-sex weddings ... fine. You're a retard, passing up potential customers for a really stupid reason, and also possibly discouraging business from other people that empathize with those that you are denying service to, but ... hey, it is your goddamn business. If you don't want to make a cake for people who's name starts with a Q, I'd support your right to make that (equally dumbass) decision.

Kinda the same thing goes for Big Earl's. That might even be one of the cases where the comfort of your standard clientele (redneck bigots) is potentially more important/beneficial to your bottom line than the potential lost business that your discriminating policy causes. In other words, from a purely capitalistic viewpoint, the policy might be a net positive to the business. Maybe.


The one thing that gives me pause on those more private businesses being allowed to "deny service to anyone for any reason" is shifting from LGBT equality to race equality. If that cake maker refused to make cakes for a black wedding, I'd be more accepting that we need some government intervention. I know that my opinion should be the same in both instances, but I can only honestly admit that at the gut level, I have a different reaction to those 2 scenarios.

I sorta think that even the racist cake-maker should be allowed to continue to be racist (so long as we're talking cakes, and not something more *necessary* to public good), because a racist cake maker will probably put themselves out of business without the need for any government intervention. BUT, I'm sure there are places in the US where that wouldn't have been true (and where it wouldn't be true today), and we needed the push of federal mandate to force such people to remove heads from asses. Maybe the same thing is true for LGBT discrimination.

But I do still feel conflicted about it. Even though I know I shouldn't.

I understand your discomfort with my phrasing. My beef is with the electoral college system.

While I was getting my degree, I took some really good American History and Government classes at college. The prof in the Govt. class really went into depth explaining the electoral college to us, and to me the shittiness of that system was just shocking. For example: (none of this is news to a truly informed voter or an interested person with an internet connection, but it WAS news to me when I was ~20 years old, and I think it still would be news to a really high percentage of US voters)

* First is the very idea of an electoral college. The only way to become president of the US is to win the most electoral votes. But voters don't cast electoral votes, the people of the electoral college do. OK, the electoral college is supposed to follow the votes/will of their state/constituents (more on that next), but the fact remains that literally/practically, our votes as citizens don't matter. Only the electoral votes count. So yes, in the most literal sense ... NONE of our votes "matter".

* In general, the "electors" (the people on the electoral college) are supposed to cast their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote in their state / district. I think 2 states (Nebraska and Maine?) divide up their suggested electoral votes to be as close as possible to the actual proportions of the popular vote, but that's a whole other issue. Anyway, in general the electors are supposed to cast their vote for the popular vote winner in their state. BUT, that process isn't automatic. The votes that actually matter, the electoral votes, are cast by fallible human beings -- and they might "go rogue" and vote against what they are "supposed to" do. That is called a "faithless elector". That would be bad enough if it was just some weird loophole that technically exists but has never actually happened in practice, but actually faithless electors happen fairly frequently. The only upside is that they haven't ever changed the outcome of an election. Yet.

* When we're young and in civics type classes in school, we're brainwashedtaught about Democracy as a very simple, will of the public, one man one vote system. The electoral college shits all over that. One can win the popular vote but lose on electoral votes, and that actually has happened multiple times (not just to Al Gore). In my opinion, the electoral college creates a laundry list of problems (swing states are the only ones that matter, so campaign there and ignore everybody else, etc. etc. etc.), has very few benefits (any supposed benefits of the system are tenuous at best), and is completely contrary to the core concepts of Democracy.


Without the electoral college, a blue vote in Kansas would matter, as would a red vote in Massachusetts. Or a vote for a 3rd party or independent, anywhere. With the electoral college, edge cases like any of those can be safely and easily ignored by candidates.

I think it is unlikely that Kansas would turn blue, even if all of the democrats voted. That being said, we're not a complete LOCK for red; heck, out of the 10 most recent Governors we've had before we turned into Brownbackistan it is an even split between Democrats and Republicans with 5 each. And actually the Democrats had significantly longer total number of years in the office.

So basically, I don't actually think that a vote cast on a losing candidate is "pointless", I just think that the electoral college system does a really good job of making sure that some votes are more pointless than others. It amazes me that there wasn't a MUCH bigger stink made about it when Gore "lost" in 2000, but I guess voter apathy can overcome any challenge to the system.

EDIT: I answered my own question about this. Apparently "US Citizens Living Abroad" is one of the exemptions to the mandate/rule. So nevermind the below.

As a US citizen living outside the US, one thing that concerns me is the health care / insurance mandate and penalties.

I live in Thailand, and have health insurance through the nearly-universal Thai healthcare system because I have a job that pays in to it. On top of that, I have insurance through a private insurer based in the UK.

The Thai system is really good. A few years ago, I had something like 5 episodes of tonsillitis in one year, and my doc told me that I should consider getting a tonsillectomy. I opted to go for it, and the Thai govt. insurance paid for the entire operation except for about $30 that I had to pay myself because I opted to stay in a private, air conditioned room for a recovery night instead of the busy public ward. Other than that, it cost me absolutely nothing.

The private insurer I have is for any travel outside Thailand and backup purposes; it has a higher max payout and would allow for more optional treatments to major things. I haven't made any claims against it so far, but it is a nice safety net. The only downside to it is that it works "around the world*" (*except in the US, because that system is so f*&^ed up they wash their hands of it). So, on the rare occasions where I make a trip back home to the US, I'm technically uninsured.

Signing up for Obamacare would be pretty pointless for me. I've been in Thailand for about 10 years, and during that time I've been back to the US only twice for a sum total of about a month and a half. But technically, it seems that I may be subject to penalties since I don't have any US insurance coverage. No idea if there are exceptions for expats or not.

Tipping while not "mandatory" in the US it is seen as a dick move to not tip even if you think the service was bad. Mainly because in most states servers are paid far less than min. wage. I believe the govt assumes all tips are paid and taxes their income on that assumption.

Also as mentioned most restaurants will automatically charge a min 18% tip to the bill for parties over 6-8 people.

The necessity [of the process] is debatable.

Much of the process exists in order to facilitate the creation of 'artifacts' (actual term used).

Because the oversight folks on the govt side are not technical, and can not interpret test data, they are reduced to interpreting the process - under the assertion that proper process leads to proper development.

Someone has to generate the documents for the oversight folks to review, so contractors have people on hand to write the papers. Those people are not engineers themselves - so they suffer the same 'not technical' limitation as the oversight folks. So they strictly publish documents pertaining to the process taken for each task performed.

For actual 'test data interpretation', the engineers themselves are tasked to create those portions of the documentation. Essentially, the engineers grade themselves, often under a basic understanding that management wants the best light shed on the results.



If the government actually cared for honest effective oversight, they would instead toss all these paper requirements, fire all the government oversight 'English degree' deadweights (non-technical degrees all the way across the sky), and instead contractually embed government employed engineers into the contractors.

Then government paid engineers can participate in the program development, and subsequently be tasked to give short and sweet personal reports on the progress without having to worry about what the contractor thinks of the report (contractor does not pay them, and can't fire them).

-scheherazade

This video lacks a lot of salient details.

Yes, the F35 is aiming at the A10 because contractors want jobs (something to do).

However, the strength of the A10 is also its weakness. Low and slow also means that it takes you a long time to get to your troops. Fast jets arrive much sooner (significantly so). A combination of both would be ideal. F35 to get there ASAP, and A10 arriving later to take over.

It's not really worth debating the merit of new fighters. You don't wait for a war to start developing weapons.

Yes, our recent enemies are durkas with small arms, and you don't need an F35 to fight them - but you also don't even need to fight them to begin with - they aren't an existential threat. Terrorist attacks are emotionally charged (well, until they happen so often that you get used to hearing about them, and they stop affecting people), but they are nothing compared to say, a carpet bombing campaign.

The relevance of things like the F35 is to have weapons ready and able to face a large national power, should a nation v nation conflict arise with a significant other nation. In the event that such a conflict ever does, you don't want to be caught with your pants down.

Defense spending costs scale with oversight requirements.

Keep in mind that money pays people. Even materials are simply salaries of the material suppliers. The more people you put on a program, the more that program will cost.

Yes, big contractors make big profits - but the major chunk of their charges is still salaries.

Let me explain what is going on.

Remember the $100 hammers?
In fact, the hammer still cost a few bucks. What cost 100+ bucks was the total charges associated with acquiring a hammer.
Everything someone does in association with acquiring the hammer, gets charged to a charge code that's specific for that task.

Someone has to create a material request - $time.
Someone has to check contracts for whether or not it will be covered - $time.
Someone has to place the order - $time.
Someone has to receiver the package, inspect it, and put it into a received bin - $time.
Someone has to go through the received items and assign them property tags - $time.
Someone has to take the item to the department that needed it, and get someone to sign for it - $time.
Someone has to update the monthly contract report - $time.
Someone has to generate an entry in the process artifacts report, detailing the actions taken in order to acquire the hammer - $time.
Someone on the government side has to review the process artifacts report, and validate that proper process was followed (and if not, punish the company for skipping steps) - $time.

Add up all the minutes here and there that each person charged in association with getting a hammer, and it's $95 on top of a $5 hammer. Which is why little things cost so much.

You could say "Hey, why do all that? Just buy the hammer".
Well, if a company did that, it would be in trouble with govt. oversight folks because they violated the process.
If an employee bought a hammer of his own volition, he would be in trouble with his company for violating the process.
The steps are required, and if you don't follow them, and there is ever any problem/issue, your lack of process will be discovered on investigation, and you could face massive liability - even if it's not even relevant - because it points to careless company culture.

Complex systems like jet fighters necessarily have bugs to work out. When you start using the system, that's when you discover all the bits and pieces that nobody anticipated - and you fix them. That's fine. That's always been the case.



As an airplane example, imagine if there's an issue with a regulator that ultimately causes a system failure - but that issue is just some constant value in a piece of software that determines a duty cycle.

Say for example, that all it takes is changing 1 digit, and recompiling. Ez, right? NOPE!

An engineer can't simply provide a fix.

If something went wrong, even unrelated, but simply in the same general system, he could be personally liable for anything that happens.

On top of that, if there is no contract for work on that system, then an engineer providing a free fix is robbing the company of work, and he could get fired.

A company can't instruct an engineer to provide a fix for the same reasons that the engineer himself can't just do it.

So, the process kicks in.

Someone has to generate a trouble report - $time.
Someone has to identify a possible solution - $time.
Someone has to check contracts to see if work on that fix would be covered under current tasking - $time.
Say it's not covered (it's a previously closed [i.e. delivered] item), so you need a new charge code.
Someone has to write a proposal to fix the defect - $time.
Someone has to go deal with the government to get them to accept the proposal - $time.
(say it's accepted)
Someone has to write new contracts with the government for the new work - $time.
To know what to put into the contract, "requrements engineers" have to talk with the "software engineers" to get a list of action items, and incorporate them into the contract - $time.
(say the contract is accepted)
Finance in conjuration with Requirements engineers has to generate a list of charge codes for each action item - $time.
CM engineers have to update the CM system - $time.
Some manager has to coordinate this mess, and let folks know when to do what - $time.
Software engineer goes to work, changes 1 number, recompiles - $time.
Software engineer checks in new load into CM - $time.
CM engineer updates CM history report - $time.
Software engineer delivers new load to testing manger - $time.
Test manager gets crew of 30 test engineers to run the new load through testing in a SIL (systems integration lab) - $time.
Test engineers write report on results - $time.
If results are fine, Test manager has 30 test engineers run a test on real hardware - $time.
Test engineers write new report - $time.
(assuming all went well)
CM engineer gets resting results and pushes the task to deliverable - $time.
Management has a report written up to hand to the governemnt, covering all work done, and each action taken - documenting that proper process was followed - $time.
Folks writing document know nothing technical, so they get engineers to write sections covering actual work done, and mostly collate what other people send to them - $time.
Engineers write most the report - $time.
Company has new load delivered to government (sending a disk), along with the report/papers/documentation - $time.
Government reviews the report, but because the govt. employees are not technical and don't understand any of the technical data, they simply take the company's word for the results, and simply grade the company on how closely they followed process (the only thing they do understand) - $time.
Company sends engineer to government location to load the new software and help government side testing - $time.
Government runs independent acceptance tests on delivered load - $time.
(Say all goes well)
Government talks with company contracts people, and contract is brought to a close - $time.
CM / Requirements engineers close out the action item - $time.

And this is how a 1 line code change takes 6 months and 5 million dollars.

And this gets repeated for _everything_.

Then imagine if it is a hardware issue, and the only real fix is a change of hardware. For an airplane, just getting permission to plug anything that needs electricity into the airplanes power supply takes months of paper work and lab testing artifacts for approval. Try getting your testing done in that kind of environment.



Basically, the F35 could actually be fixed quickly and cheaply - but the system that is in place right now does not allow for it. And if you tried to circumvent that system, you would be in trouble. The system is required. It's how oversight works - to make sure everything is by the book, documented, reviewed, and approved - so no money gets wasted on any funny business.

Best part, if the government thinks that the program is costing too much, they put more oversight on it to watch for more waste.
Because apparently, when you pay more people to stare at something, the waste just runs away in fear.
Someone at the contractors has to write the reports that these oversight people are supposed to be reviewing - so when you go to a contractor and see a cube farm with 90 paper pushers and 10 'actual' engineers (not a joke), you start to wonder how anything gets done.

Once upon a time, during the cold war, we had an existential threat.
People took things seriously. There was no F'ing around with paperwork - people had to deliver hardware. The typical time elapsed from "idea" to "aircraft first flight" used to be 2 years. USSR went away, cold war ended, new hardware deliveries fell to a trickle - but the spending remained, and the money billed to an inflated process.

-scheherazade

I believe the problem is with the government's use of competitive judiciary : where each side debates their case, regardless of merit, and the expectation is that the 'right' argument will win simply because truth should naturally be able to present a stronger argument.

This assumption not only leads to some face-palm-worthy cases/charges, it also inevitably leads to people being convicted in situations where everyone involved knows with absolute certainty that the defender is innocent (often because quirks within the rules of the official process).

In this case, the "right" thing to do is : Apologize to the man, and refund him any costs that he's incurred so far due to this mess.

But "process" requires that the government push their argument to its absolute limit, even with zero merit, because the officially sanctioned way by which the situation is resolved is via argument in court (conveniently, the need to do this is also decided by people working in court - effectively excusing their professional existence and securing their very employment).

There is no 'admitting there was a mistake'. A mistake has to be proven in court. So even though everyone involved knows that the man is not at any fault, they will still force him to spend his time and money arguing a case, just to jump through hoops, and in the end it's _extremely_ unlikely that his personal costs will be refunded to him (lawyer fees, etc).

In the mean time, everyone on the government side is simply doing their 9-5. None of this is a burden to them, and it's in fact 'how they put food on the table'. If they aren't charging him, they're charging someone else. This is just another day at the office.

The guy getting screwed can't say 'no thanks, I'll not participate', because men with guns will show up and drag him away (police arrest for not going to court). It's effectively a predatory practice whereby the government fleeces people. Everyone involved knows it's meritless, but they simply force you to dance [else go to jail], and collect some fees in the process.

Because, really, what's at stake is not 'the truth' or 'justice'. It's simply "process". An excuse to inflate the number of court cases, to keep court spending high (to secure next year's budget - "use it or lose it" accounting), to keep collections high, and generally keep the high paid welfare cases (9/10 govt employees) employed.
TBH, for a country that supposedly "hates communism", actual communist countries haven't even managed to work it out this well. (I'm not talking fairy tale boogey man communism like you see in old propaganda. I mean the practical day to day actual workings. Vast government employment, bureaucracy, "process above all".)

-scheherazade

@harlequinn, you do realise that NZ actually has quite sensible gun laws? You can own semi-auto rifles and so on but to do so you need a firearms licence. This includes not only a police check, but the cops will actually come to your house and check that you have adequate storage provisions for your guns. On top of that

You will have difficulty being deemed 'fit and proper' to possess or use firearms if you have:

- a history of violence
- repeated involvement with drugs
- been irresponsible with alcohol
- a personal or social relationship with people deemed to be unsuitable to be given access to firearms
- indicated an intent to use a firearm for self-defence.

To me those are perfectly reasonable and sensible restrictions.

@scheherazade, ah yes, the libertarian argument. I want a gun and fuck everyone else.

Kids getting shot at school? Fuck 'em, not my problem.
Random nutjob mows down a bunch of people in California? Fuck 'em, not my problem.

The fact is that guns do cause harm. The "people kill people" argument is beyond infantile. Of course, people kill people.... with a gun. It's a lot harder to go on a mass killing spree armed with a stick.

Here are the indisputable facts:
- There are some sick people out there. Some are just fucked up, some are in need of help.
- Sometimes these people snap.
- Sometimes when they do, they get a gun and kill a bunch of other people.
- If they didn't have a gun, the harm would be less.
I'm assuming no-one disputes those facts.

Now there are two solutions to this:
- Pro-gun advocates take the position that citizens need guns to defend themselves from this kind of situation. They often argue that instead of taking guns away from everyone, we should focus on either helping the mentally unbalanced or stopping them by shooting them.
- Gun control advocates take the position that if the shooter didn't have access to a gun in the first place, then maybe the whole mess would be avoided or at the very least minimised.

To me, it's a simple matter of practicalities. Option 1 is simply not working. We're decades (possibly centuries) away from completely understanding mental illness, that's if we achieve that at all. Meanwhile, crazy/insane/evil people are still going on shooting rampages.
And stopping them after the fact? That's pretty cold comfort to the people that have already been killed.

I am genuinely perplexed as to how people don't understand this.
Gun control works. In every other developed country in the world, there are reasonable and sensible laws restricting firearm ownership, and there is nothing like the kind of insane shootings we see on a regular basis in the US.

No-one is arguing that all guns should be taken away. No-one is saying you can't hunt or target shoot or even defend your home if necessary (although again, in the civilised world, most of us have no need for that).

But jesus, maybe you don't need an AR-15 with a massive clip. And is it that unreasonable to check to see if someone is mental or criminal before selling them a gun?

Apparently, in the US, it is.

A consensus is not reality, as I've already stated.

I don't care what people believe about global warming. My problem is that when govt's believe we can do something about it, they begin to take my private property i.e. money, to fight it, when gov'ts do little but waste huge amounts of money and increase our debt.

Do whatever you want about global whatever, just don't ask me to believe that what you do will accomplish anything.

Something else you should remember is that the DOW is now at 16,512.89, much higher than it was at its peak in 2008.

The market largely recovered by 2011/2012. Granted, US govt debt has ballooned, but it's not like politicians have tried to fix that since Reagan.

thought you would find this interesting:
http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/dc-insider-theres-shadow-govt-running-country-and-its-not-re-election?page=0%2C0

That is interesting, hadn't seen it. Not sure of a good solution though? We build huge ungodly expensive series of above ground towers, underground fibers to people literally 600 miles out to get to em. Maybe govt should subsidize their NetFlix. They could also move to Anchorage, or they could practice the remote lifestyle more completely.

only the syrian govt had the power to stop the violence.

assad lent the military to the militias. the militias did what the govt allowed them to do.

the people rose in protest and were slaughtered. we now call these people terrorists.

wake up.