Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Happy Siftaversary. 11th is steel. http://holidayinsights.com/anniversary/year.htm Sifty would have to be happy about that.

I wore my old patinaed VideoSift tee to the markets today - I'll count that as a commemoration. Onwards!

@scheherazade just gave you one.....ask (read) Hawking for more....or this article has a few options....
http://science.howstuffworks.com/dictionary/astronomy-terms/before-big-bang.htm

That if is a mighty big if.

And the lessons you think they "need to learn" from this election are probably different from the lessons that the professional class (credit to Thomas Frank) thinks the Democrats need to learn. To them, it's not about getting a candidate that has a higher favorability rating than a meteor strike, but to find a candidate that maintains their status in society. They are the winners of "free trade" (see Rigged by Dean Baker) and globalisation, while a vast number of people have been thrown into debt peonage, wage slavery or worse.

Unless the Democratic Party emancipates itself from the donors and the professional class, I don't see them becoming a home to champions of the people. Look at how the DNC conspired with the Clinton campaign to crush the Sanders candidacy -- lots of juicy bits about that in the Podesta emails. Look at Corbyn, who is basically caught up in a civil war within Labour, despite overwhelming support by the party base.

The Third Way (Social-)Democrats have bought into neoliberalism at such a fundamental level that I just cannot see anyone turning them into a vessel for social equality without getting utterly corrupted or even crushed along the way.

The lesson they learn might be to not nominate a member of a dynasty with so much baggage attached to them. Yet even that depends on them actually recognising the baggage in the first place, which they seemed unwilling to during this election cycle. Everything was brushed off.

And then you're still stuck with a representative of a system that doesn't work for a lot of people. The situation of the rust belt is not a result of anything particular to the current or previous candidates, but of the Washington Consensus and the widespread acceptance of neoliberalism as gospel.

Without major outside pressure, I don't see the party changing its ways sufficiently enough to become a representative of the people again. Maybe a Trump presidency is enough to create such movements, maybe not. Occupy was promising, yet crushed by the establishment in bipartisan consensus.

Here's a poll that recently emerged about the election.

http://us.blastingnews.com/news/2016/10/president-donald-trump-emerges-via-halloween-masks-sales-accurate-prediction-since-nixon-001206445.htm

In short, the sale of Halloween masks of presidential candidates has predicted every election since Nixon when tracking began, and Hillary did not win with trick-or-treators.

There are a few million who would disagree with you if they weren't killed by Christians over the last few centuries.

http://www.truthbeknown.com/victims.htm
http://markhumphrys.com/christianity.killings.html

The senate and house official websites can be confusing, but you can find full voting records there.

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/vote_menu_114_2.htm

The links under the vote tally column are what you want, and the votes were on the 20th.

Not 100% by party lines, but pretty close.

Self defense is a perfect reason to hit anyone, regardless of gender. There's no reasonable excuse to hit someone first (unless you're boxing).

According to a Harvard study, 70% of one sided domestic abuse is perpetrated BY women, not against women. When both sides participate, it's about 50/50.
http://newscastmedia.com/domestic-violence.htm

It seems that teaching women to not hit is ignored in favor of teaching men to not hit.

(I edited, and some stuff pertains to your reply)

Regarding well regulated, here's the sauce :
http://www.constitution.org/cons/wellregu.htm

Keep in mind that the 2nd amendment is 2 part.
1st the motivation for why the rule exists, 2nd the rule.

The rule exists, whether or not the motivation is provided (and it's nice of them to provide context - but not necessary).

Even if regulation was meant in the modern sense, it would not change the fact that the rule does not depend on the motivating factors.

But if you insist on motivational prerequisite, here's Hamilton regarding individual right to bear :

"The project of disciplining all the militia of the United States is as futile as it would be injurious, if it were capable of being carried into execution. A tolerable expertness in military movements is a business that requires time and practice. It is not a day, or even a week, that will suffice for the attainment of it. To oblige the great body of the yeomanry, and of the other classes of the citizens, to be under arms for the purpose of going through military exercises and evolutions, as often as might be necessary to acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the character of a well-regulated militia, would be a real grievance to the people, and a serious public inconvenience and loss. It would form an annual deduction from the productive labor of the country, to an amount which, calculating upon the present numbers of the people, would not fall far short of the whole expense of the civil establishments of all the States. To attempt a thing which would abridge the mass of labor and industry to so considerable an extent, would be unwise: and the experiment, if made, could not succeed, because it would not long be endured. Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped; and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year. "
[etc]

(That last sentence - there's your training requirement, tee hee. Not only that, but that they should assemble people 1-2 times a year to make sure that everyone is armed and equipped. That's more than an individual right to bear, that's an individual requirement to bear. Let's just be happy with it being a right.)


Laws are supposed to be updated by new laws via representative legislators (who may need to be coerced via protest facilitated by freedom of assembly).
Or challenged by juries (i.e. citizens, i.e. members of the state) via jury nullification (i.e. direct state democracy). That's why there are juries. You need direct state involvement so that the legal system can not run amok independent of state sanction. It's not just for some group consensus.
The system was architected to give the state influence, so that government can't run off and act in an independent non-democratic manner.

-scheherazade

In case anyone was interested:

Well regulated means, in the context of the day, in good working order. It does not mean regulated by the government.

http://www.constitution.org/cons/wellregu.htm

There was an interview on ABC that I was watching at work, and the lady being interviewed made more or less the same points as this article from the Grauniad, Dilma Rousseff: Brazilian congress votes to impeach president http://gu.com/p/4tdg9/stw

She said that many of the minor parties spent a lot of time explaining their votes, and that many of them had nothing to do with either corruption or Rousseff... so many Brazilians think it's all politicised and partisan and little to do with any real wrongdoing.

It'll possibly show up here in a day or so - http://www.abc.net.au/transcripts/ (I think it was probably ABC News, Series 2016 | Episode 77). I kinda wish I'd paid more attention to the who/what/when/where/why/how.

The end of this BBC News report highlights something that Greenwald said, which is that the supporters of impeachment are rich and white, and those who oppose it are poor and likely to be mixed race (skip to 1:37):



p.s. This isn't the transcript I was talking about, but yesterday is missing from the list (?!?) It does have some details I haven't seen much elsewhere: http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2016/s4445246.htm

"I covered this entire planet once."

I didn't know that and doubted it, so I googled. Link says that before around 1 billion years ago, water (ocean) covered 95% of the surface of the earth, and then continents erupted relatively quickly, geologically speaking.

However, I think that 95% coverage figure (and possibly more earlier on?) would mostly be owed to the crust and mantle being relatively flat and smooth after cooling down from being a largely molten ball very early on. Now that the earth has cooled enough to allow plate tectonics to push stuff around and create subduction zones and mountain ranges, there are too many high-elevation points (and low elevation chasms for the ocean to fill in) for the ocean to ever cover the entire earth again. Even if all of the ice on the earth melted, apparently sea level would only rise by about 70 meters / 230 feet.

So the "and I can always cover it again" bit at the end is a bit overstated. We'd almost certainly be dead as a species if conditions were extreme enough to melt all of the ice around the world, but not because of being drowned off of dry land to live on.

Beware of missing the forest for the trees!

Humans are quite capable of thriving on an entirely meat based diet - https://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2015nl/apr/eskimos.htm

I personally wouldn't enjoy it much, but am willing to acknowledge that it's physically possible.

Can you think of a herbivore with that ability? Most herbivores are quite willing to eat a bit of meat occasionally, but by definition don't only eat meat. Here's a deer eating a bird for example, which is really not unnusual, but deer really are herbivores:

I'll just take the opportunity and quote from Hunter S. Thompson's comment on Richard Nixon's death:

"If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin."

If you haven't read this, you should -- I think you will enjoy it.

https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm

The thumbnail image for this video has been updated - thumbnail added by eric3579.