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I would guess that this sort of comment belongs in the lounge. I'm pretty sure talking about the politics thread doesn't count as talking politics.

At 11/5/14 10:17 AM, ChloeFlora wrote: Okay, just imagine that you have a bodyguard who was involved in some public scandal. What image it may cause to your reputation?

As far as things go, the reputation of a security service is pretty low on the list of scandal worthy.

At 11/4/14 06:15 PM, RydiaLockheart wrote: Tomorrow I get to go on a clear liquid diet. Fun.

Popsicles and jello. It'll be like you're a kid again.

At 11/4/14 04:50 PM, mysticvortex13 wrote: well there you have it. our very own governments and media are turning against us with more of their propoganda.

I wouldn't say that. I doubt very many (if any) politicians or media outlets are actively trying to harm the people by this. The media is merely trying to get people to watch/read. In this world of ubiquitous news, whether it be 24 news on TV, or the array of interent news sources, outlets have been economically forced to get people to pay attention. This has resulted in a dramatic increase in the sensationalization of news and the use of click bait articles.

The politicians, on the other hand, are very much using these things to their own personal gain, and often times doing so immorally and unethically. Some politicians have a specific agenda they wish to enact and use the fear factor of terror to get it, whle others believe the fear factor in general will keep them in office.

About both of these tactics, they're really not that new. Politicians have been making fear based claims for as long as politicians have exited. Media utlets have been using shock claims and fear tactics to get people to watch for decades.

It's just the "in" fear now is related largely to terrorism.

this will cause more irrational violent outbursts in our own country twoards people of those demographics,

Such outburts have also been fairly consistent in our history. It's just the who and the stated why that has changed.

At 11/4/14 03:43 PM, wildfire4461 wrote: Touch screen voting machines need to be done away with.

Ah, yes. The good old "There's a malfunction in teh system that I know how to go around, but I intentionally don't to make the point of conspiracy" statement.

The issue with the touchscreen in the video is ABUNDANTLY clear to anyone who has ever used touchscreen before. The angle is off. If the reader is reading a centimeter below where you're wanting it to show, just press a centimeter higher. My guess is that pressing on the Democrat would result in the vote going to the third party candidate listed below. Sad part is that there is a ton of stupid out there who would believe the video in which the person is clearly playing stupid.

Non issue.

At 11/4/14 02:55 PM, mysticvortex13 wrote: and yet there are far more extremist groups emerging throughout the world in short succession than ever last i checked..

There have always een extremist groups. The difference now is that you hear about every single one.

not that i'm 100% up to speed on my history lessons in such matters.. but as far as the stereotypical "holy wars" are concerned, the crusades and the historic rivalry between israel and egypt aren't exactly much for comparison..

Everything we find deplorable about ISIS and their methods was once considered commonplace for even what we would consider the most civilized peoples. Mass murders of civilians, including children, were common. Mass ravaging of cities and women were common. Torturing for punishment was common. Roving bands of brigands and rebels were common just outside the edges of big cities. Not to mention murder was legal for many of the upper end of society.

Society may seem bad today, but people are far less likely to die from civilian murder, war, or the remnants of war (famine, displacement, and so on) than even just 200 years ago.

What makes the Earth seem bad today is a combination of two things: sheer volume, and information. The world has exploded in populaton over the past 120 years. The amount of people that lived during that period is enourmous, and probably is equivalent to the total amount of humans that had lived in every period before it since the dawn of the species. So when we say 200+ million have died due to war since 1900, it must come with a caveat, noting that the population of the earth was around 1.5 billion at the beginning of the 20th Century.

Add to that the massive exposure every piece of information gets (especially information that can be used for political gain by politicians and for ratings by news outlets) and it seems like there's terror everywhere.

I live in a vot eby mail state and I seem to be the only person here who misses the actual polling stations.

Voting used to be something you went out and did, like a civic duty. Now it seems like little more than responding to a vguely intreaguing piece of junk mail.

Personally, I think we should have a graduated voting system.

- For rights based voting, the entire populace gets to vote.
- For issue based voting that is not rights, you have to answer a couple prequisite questions first to show you have the slightest bit of understanding of what the issue is.
- For regulations, you have to answer 5-10 questions on the subject to ensure you're qualified.

The problem with having everyone vote is that you get people who do not know the simplest basics of an issue, or don't care, and they just throw their vote at a random one or whichever side can make the most base argument for why it should/should not pass. Hell, I do this (the random voting) for issues that I neither know much about or care much about.

If voting was limited to those with knowledge and/or a stake in the game, the outcomes would be much better.

At 11/3/14 06:53 PM, mysticvortex13 wrote: debatable whether it really has changed at all overall..

more peaceful in some areas, less in others, which areas are which are in a perpetual cycle of uncertainty if you ask me...

What exactly become less peaceful? Other than the capacity for war and violence, I'd have to say nothing. Our World today is extremely peaceful (relative to human history), even with all the conflict going on.

At 11/3/14 05:18 PM, mysticvortex13 wrote: way to totally strawman me. i wasnt saying it was irrelevant, i was saying that these companies have the right to stick their middle fingers up at america if they want.

I actually strongly dispute this point.

Every business entity beyond sole proprietorship and de facto partnership is created solely by the government. This means the government does have a great degree of control over what a business can and cannot do while still retaining its ability to legally do business in the US.

While the government has chosen to keep its nose out of what business such entities conduct, and has only entered into the arena of how the conduct business in the matter of protection of the public, the government does have a very strong power to ensure that the businesses are not playing tricks whether legal or not to get out of paying the taxes that fund the fondation upon which they were even able to create their business.

The only difference bwteen tax avoidance and tax evasion is the legality. In the end, they are both selfish acts that place the needs of the few well above the needs of the many. And while they are legally allowed to do so, they are still morally and ethicaly shitty for doing so. (You can blame the Dodge brothers for this.)

At 11/3/14 12:12 PM, WallofYawn wrote: We should destroy all BK and MCshitties and replace them with In-N-Out and Steak-N-Shake.

Never understood the draw to In-N-Out. I've been there many times, and every time the burger was burnt and the fries tasted like cardboard.

At 11/3/14 03:24 AM, SadisticMonkey wrote: Voter ID laws would lead to large numbers of low-IQ people not voting. Does that make it good in your book then Camaro?

Mere low IQ is not a bar to political efficacy. It's an obstacle, yes, but definitely not a bar. Frankly, effort and a bullshit meter are more importnt than actual smarts.

The town I live in is one of the most educated in the US, yet it seems to fall for bullshit all the time. Stupid ideas like "Creationists are stupid because they don't believe in science. Vaccines are bad, don't believe the scientists!" There are thousands of college educated (including graduate level educated) people who have no political brain whatsoever.

Even if low IQ was the problem, as opposed to general efficacy, the voter ID issue actually makes it worse. Instead of allowng the low IQ people to largely cancel each other out on most issues, it is a bald fced attempt to stack the deck of mindess voters to one side. Minless voting is bad enough, mindless voting by only one side's group of thralls is extremely dangerous.

At 11/2/14 04:49 PM, Feoric wrote: That's a pretty elitist thing to say.

I won't deny that at all.

However, when you have political ads seriously saying that illegals with driver IDs will lead to dramatically increased terrorism on airplanes, you can't exactly trust the system to the average person who isn't smart or willing enough to put that claim to the test.

While like the idea of having everyone vote, the idea of every idiot voting concerns me. We already have serious problems with the dumbing down of politics here in the US. Not only has the discourse from the politicians and measuee supporters dipped heavily since the advent of the TV, the comments that come from the dumb end (and by end I mean 60% of the voting population) makes my brain hurt.

The goal of democracy is 100% political efficacy. Voting from all is essential to that. HOWEVER, voting is only a small part of it. The knowledge and interest (or at least caring) about politics and the results is vital as well. Having one without the other leads to problems. Sad thing in the US, the knowledge and interest portion of efficacy is so low, a high level of voting would not only be problematic, but particulalry dangerous.

At 11/2/14 01:40 AM, TNT wrote: No one liked my suggestion? :(

Sounds good on its face. However, I'd like to tstart over and look at this in detail. Anyone complaining about this tax break want to give us the details on it?

At 11/2/14 05:21 AM, SadisticMonkey wrote: There's also the enormous warm-fuzzies aspect of electing another non-white/male president.

Pretty sure those have very much worn off by now. But, hey, whatever makes it easier for you to blame this one on black people again.

At 11/2/14 12:50 AM, DoctorStrongbad wrote: Yes. Burger King never, Checkers forever.

Naw, I've had Checkers before (no, seriously, I have, even though the closest one is probably 2,500 miles away) and I found their burgers to be slimy and greasy. I prefer my burgers, especially fast food ones, to be on the slightly drier side, so BK gets the nod there over most chains.

If I wanted a grease fueld colon irrigation, I'd take Sonic, cause least their future anal hurricane comes in a wider variety of flavors.

At 10/31/14 07:12 PM, LazyDrunk wrote: And the people give government that authority. Hence, voting to ban same-sex unions as being a right granted by the government....
....unless you aren't actually arguing this angle, and are arguing the constitutional protection angle... which doesn't really make sense to me in this context. It's like comparing abortions and abortions because only daddy wants one.

Actually, I haven't argued any angle on gay marriage here. I have merely argued the problems with the idea that marriage should be trashed.

Because some loudmouths are claiming disenfranchisement, when marriage isn't even their franchise. Pretty simple really.

Again, you're arguing something very different than I am. But I'll jump on board. The expansion of who can join in is not fixing something that isn't broken. The restriction of someone from enetering a supposedly universal prgram because we don't like who they chose is a very broken part of marriage. Marriage as a whole is not broken, thus making the addition of gay marriage an actual fix, and the removal of marriage fixing something that isn't broken.

Anal sex is not gross; it's dysfunctional.

Actually, it's irrelevant. How someone chooses to have sex is 100% irrelevant to public marriage. You could make the child argument, but in today's society there are so many ways to bring children into a family that do no involve the two married partners concieving. I would also point out that anal sex among hetersexual couples very much exists and we have yet to see marriage crumble because of it. So using that as a reason to deny someone's entry into marriage is a pretty pathetic argument.

Any reason why three or four people can't enter into this contract?

If the rules can be modified to allow for more than two people, I don't see why not. It will take some time and some work to build these new rules and nuances as a subset of law into the marriage form contract.

There does represent a possible issue of consent, though. Seeing as marriage is a contract between two people and the government to become a family, if a third is to be brought in, should both of the original spuses have to consent, or does the spouse not actively involved the new relationship have to just deal? That's a tough issue, but a fairly straightforward one.

I just wanna know how you can blur one line and then claim another doesn't even exist.

What line am I blurring and what line am I saying doesn't exist? I'm not sure you understand what points I was making.

At 10/31/14 08:16 AM, ChloeFlora wrote: I believe that training and routines won't stop them from using drugs and sleeping with prostitutes!

Simple question to judge whether or not these bad acts are severe. Did the use of drugs or prostitutes ever endanger that which they were assigned to protect? If not, it's 100% ancillary and merely an image issue.

At 10/31/14 07:31 AM, LazyDrunk wrote: First off, government doesn't grant rights, which is what I'm being led to believe same-sex unions are: a human rights issue.

Actually, the government is the only thing that allows you rights.

.....and change is bad?

If it isn't broken, why fix it?

I don't see where it'd be any more of a clusterfuck than it already is. Could you give some examples?

Marriage isn't a clusterfuck. It's a form contract that deals with tons of issues such as division of property during and after marriage, child custody and paternity, legal authority, death and intestacy, and so on and so forth. Why should we trash all of this leaving the unsophisticated masses to fuck it up just because a few pseudo intellectuals think they're smarter than the concept and a few perverted nutjobs think anal sex (only when it's man on man) is gross?

Many of the parts of marriage deal with the ending portion and how to relatively quickly and painlessly apportion upon death or dissolution. The formation of businesses, shows us that people, even those sophisticated enough tto start a business, often do not think about the endgame issues. This is why the current legal contract of marriage is a good thing It does it all for us. If people want to make thier own rules, they can use something called a prenup.

This whole issue is one of semantics where people who have no idea what public marriage actually is are trying to out think those who have thought about this for centuries because they dislike the idea of marriage or because they dislike gay people.

At 10/30/14 01:54 PM, Feoric wrote: The nurse in Maine was directly exposed to a patient who had ebola. She should absolutely be quarantined.

If Ebola was a disease with a modicum of actual contaigiousness, I'd agree. However, it is NOT. We have yet to have ANY exposure of the disease to any of the general population, and yet the ebola people have done some very public actions.

Quarantines are not necessary, and can actually be counterproductive.

Now, if this were the bubonic Plague, where the contagiousness is extreemely high, then hell yes, quarantines would be warrated and actually would make a difference. Here it's just violating people's rights for a neglible benefit. Ebola is just as difficult to transmit as AIDS, so why haven't we quarantined people who have come into contact with AIDS? Because AIDS isn't contagious enough to make it worthwhile. Neither is Ebola. About Ebola, it manifests itself long before it gets to the stage where the infectiousness increases to a problematic level.

So, in short, there is no reason she should be quarantined. I have also pointed out how her treatment is likely to actually lower our defense to the disease.

Restrutured? I'm not really sure how any of those scandals, all quite minor, would lead to restructuring.

The worst of the scandals were the three where the secret service was unable to keep unauthorized people away from teh President. This just means they need more training and better routines, not an entire restructuring.

At 10/30/14 07:58 AM, LazyDrunk wrote: Marriage should have been a simple institution, bereft of government interest. Once you get the gov involved, money talks and the bullshit talks louder. Proving the government has a vested interest in married couples (or three- and foursomes) should really be your guys' goal.

First off, marriage began as a government program, so don't give me that garbage. Second, the government has extreme interest in marriage as it has had 200+ years of American and English jurisprudence applied to it to settle the legal ramifications of joing two people into one family. That, alone, is enough to justify its existence. Otherwise, you could throw it all away and have a massive and extremely expensive legal clusterfuck everytime someone enters into a relationship.

At 10/29/14 10:49 PM, cga-999 wrote: Better be safe over sorry, though, right?

There's a point to which the acts required to be "safe instead of sorry" actually only increase the safety by an extremely small amount. The chances of her infecting someone outside of quarantine are pretty damn close to the chances of her infecting someone inside of quarantine. Why waste the effort and money on something that does not need it? Especially when there wasn't a scintilla of indication that she even had the disease?

Even worse is that some forms of "better safe than sorry" actions actually make life more dangerous. Think driving 30 on the Interstate. Sure, you may doing it ostensibly to make the road afer, but in reality you are dramatically increasing the danger. Same here. Treat the ebola people like shit and you'll do two things that will place more people in danger. Frst off, you'll discourage people from going to the government when sick (which is actually a big problem in the Ebol stricken countries in Africa. So much misinformation is going on the people are avoiding the hopitals and infecting mre people). We are monitoring people right now, and if they show signs, we know where they are and who they are and can quickly mobilize. Yet, if we close down good channels of communication we are left in the dark, waiting until it's too late. On top of that the best way to protect Americans from ebola is to stop ebola in africa. cntain it there and it cannot come here. Yet, if you keep punishing (both governmentally and socially) those who go to save America from the disease in Africa, people will be discouraged from going.

I can bet you that if there was even the SLIGHTEST indication that she actually had ebola, (shit, a sore throat and fever would be enough) she would have cooperated. The forceful requirment or angry suggestion of quarantining all who are 6 degrees from ebola is draconian, serves no actual purpose, and can actally backfire.

So, when you say better safe than sorry, I suggest you think twice.

At 10/29/14 12:05 PM, Korriken wrote: I just hope this isn't that one asshole.

Ebola is extremely difficult to transmit before the late stages of the illness. Unless she is throwing up into an open wound, pooping into an orifice, having sex, or bleeding somewhere, she is pretty much not contagious.

I trust that she would definitely be in a hospital long before she got to the more contagious stage of the illness.

Clerical note: your link that says it is a list of countries by net migration is rather a list of countries by Gross Domestic Product.

I would definitely clarify the whole freedom of movement and migration thing. They are not the same Freedom of movement doesn't necessairly mean that people move in and out of the country. That doesn't really correlate to wealth. I would actually render a hypothesis that movement within a country is a better sign of wealth. It means that there are jobs and, most importantly the people have the resources to uproot from their community, family, and support structure.

At 10/27/14 06:53 PM, Ranger2 wrote: This brings up a good discussion: How do you stop radicalization at home? Besides simply making it dangerous for those who may convert to that set of beliefs, what do you do to provide a viable alternative to radicalization for angry young people?

Provide them opportunity at home, and cross your fingers. Most radicalization is born out of stagnation and loss of purpose. If you can keep opportunities open for people to both live and work, they will less likely to be radical. There is a small few who are predispose to be radical and are 100% unpreventable. You're best hope with these people is that they find a relatively benign form of extremism.

At 10/25/14 07:25 PM, orangebomb wrote: There is no easy or guaranteed answer to mounting terror attacks on home soil, but by far the best options for civilians is a commitment to vigilance and zero tolerance towards obviously suspicious behavior, and from the military side is to find where the terrorist hub/base of operations and keep pounding them into submission, which is more or less what we've been doing with Al-Qaeda this whole time. While a few may slip through the cracks, the terrorists would have little, if any, organization to go towards and resort to going after softer targets. (i.e. Middle East or Africa)

The nightmare scenario in teh US doesn't involve a cell. They're too big and cumbersome to be able to quietly and discreetly pull off such a wave of attacks. The nightmare scenario involves lone wolf acts akin to what happened in Canada, the NYC subway, and the Boston Marathon Bombers.

What makes these so difficult to stop is that when it comes down to it, there really is no such thing as an obviously suspicious act until it's well too late. A homeless guy acting odd on the subway? Not suspicious. A Canadian driving a rental car in Ottawa? Not suspicious. A couple Guys wearing backpacks watching the Boston Marathon? Not suspicious. It is not until they have begun to commit that final act that anything really becomes suspicious, and even then, it may not even be that suspicious. In Canada, it never got suspicious until the guy was running out of his car with a gun, too lte to really stop without force. In NYC, it wasn't suspicious until the homeless pulled out the hatchet and initiated hs attack. In Boston, it was NEVER obviously suspicious. Someone setting their backpack down and leaving it 9999 times out of 10000 is harmless, which means it's not all that suspicious. Even with McVeigh it wasn't suspicious at all before the act occurred.

Doxxing is a textbook form of terrorism. It is the the threat of violence toward another (not directly, but highly implied and highy intended) in order to intimidate and coerce that person into reversing or abandoning a position.

At 10/27/14 12:21 AM, TNT wrote: Should the government not give tax benefits to the mother and the kids after she manages to divorce her abusive husband?

You all are acting as if there is some barrier to getting married. If your parents/mom wanted those benefits for you, she could have easily got them without really any work whatsoever. Shit, had she been so inclined she could have had the benefits back before sundown on the day she was officially divorced. She made the active choice to not go out and get those benefits and you are trying to blame the government. (Don't get me wrong, I know why she wouldn't and think she's very valid in her choice, but the point still stands.)

How is something that is pathetically easy for everyone (remember the crux, here) to get with no real barrier ever a penalty?

Heck, a driver's license takes far more work and no one is calling it a penalty even though driving increases the prices of many things for everyone across the board. What is it specifically about marriage that makes its choice a penalty when other choices are not?