National Security or Liberty?

Ignoramus · Aug 12, 2010

obtuseobserver said:
not sure I recall what it was ... eee

obtuseobserver said:
Matters not to the dead guy. He's dead as you note. Matters a great deal to the guy who killed him. In one case it may be a crime and in another not. That's a cavernous distinction.

Shall we discuss the weapons involved in the murder and the rate of recidivism, oh, and the racial profiles in homicides while we are at it?
After all, there are a lot of paths away from the subject.

Because people who kill intentionally are people we need to lock up. Those who do so by accident are not. Quit looking at it from the dead guy's perspective... "the dead know only one thing. It is better to be alive." We look at it from the perspective of the killer when deciding if the killing was criminal or not.

Locking people up comes under deterrence. I believe I covered that. Again, the reason is to prevent future deaths. I used the term murder, that makes it a crime. I?m looking at it from the standpoint of the next victim in both cases. Your logic in punishing is to prevent deaths. However, you ignore preventing deaths in the case of accidental death.
If there is a condition on the road that makes a subsequent death probable why is that less important than the probability that the murderer will kill again if the probabilities are equal. Is the victim of homicide somehow more sacred. Yes, I know, installing a stop sign is much less satisfying than executing a murderer, but it?s also a lot cheaper.

My uncle shot a deer 30 years ago. The bullet passed through the deer and quite a distance further when it lodged in the head of another hunter killing him.
John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln in the head point blank.
Does this cause a dilema in deciding which act or acts were or were not criminal?

I am comparing murder with accidental death. Where is the dilemma?

No, that's one of two that leap to mind. Deterrence is a good thing. So is punishing the guilty (which you are not concerned with) but the second is protection. Society is, mostly, protected from the incarcerated felon.

Just who are you debating? It might be interesting to know.

It is very difficult to measure how many people chose not to murder owing to a fear of the DP or other sentencing. You can't really poll for it "Excuse me Sir. How many times in the last month did the fear of punishment deter you from killing your neighbor with the loud dogs?"
Like regulating our pharmaceuticals, food, chemicals, requiring seatbelts?

I conceded deterrence, though statistics don?t support it.

There's an algebraic equation for when risk avoidance makes sense.
If the likelihood of harm multipled times the degree of harm is greater than the cost of prevention.... spent the coin to prevent. It's often called the calculus or algebra of negligence.

Yes, large corporations use it. They calculate the cost of lawsuits when making a product with a known potential for lethality. If they feel that profit outweighs the cost, they go ahead.
Of course their calculus is based on societies value of life in dollars divided by the skill of their lawyers.

Because crimes require intent. We don't criminalize tragic accidents - we mourn the victims.

Yes, even when the tragic accidents are premeditated and for profit. As long as corporations can afford good lawyers, no problem.
How many lives does mourning the victims save? Over forty thousand a year in traffic fatalities alone. That?s a lot of mourning. That?s not counting those whose lives are ruined and become a burden on the state for the rest of their lives.
Over forty thousand in traffic fatalities alone verses roughly seventeen thousand homicides a year. Homicides are not necessarily murders, so that means less than seventeen thousand murders a year. However, where do we put the emphasis? In which case do we get the most bang for the buck? By bang, I mean the reduction in victims.
Look at the cost of our penal systems. Compare that to the cost of enforcing sensible traffic regulations. Which is cheaper?
Which saves the most lives?
Logic versus emotion. In politics, we know which wins.

It does this though. Think of all the safety regs out there.

　
I thought. Consider seat belts. We can almost calculate the number of lives that will be saved by their adoption. Ford tried it, the public wouldn?t buy them. They didn?t want to think about the possibility of having an accident. I?m not a helmet law advocate. If a chap wants to risk splattering his brains on the pavement that?s his business. Insurance companies don?t look at it like that. They have to pay when it?s their insured that?s at fault, that is, unless they can wiggle out in court. So they have helmet laws.
Seat belts are the same. It?s not really because society values lives, it?s because insurance companies value money.
　

Well, depending on what you mean by possible... yes.
There are circumstasnces where it goes further. If one created the peril in which another finds himself one has a legal duty to get the potential victim out of the mess. Some relationships create a legal duty (spousal, parent child).
I think as a general moral rule, yes, we are obligated to save another's life whenever reasonably possible. Reasonable is a squishy term but we can look at it like this, would another reasonable person in the same situation act to save the life. The reasonable man standard.

I?ll concede the point on possible. That?s a bit far. The only problem is reasonable. The Swiss are reasonable. They have reasonable traffic laws. They enforce them. They have far fewer traffic fatalities per capita than we do.
Even Americans have a problem calling Americans reasonable.
However, the calculus of cost effectiveness seems a bit tight on traffic accidents. When it comes to terrorism, cost effectiveness isn?t even a factor. Of course, when one man?s cost becomes another man?s profit, it depends on the political effectiveness of the man in question.

obtuseobserver · Aug 12, 2010

Ignoramus said:
Shall we discuss the weapons involved in the murder and the rate of recidivism, oh, and the racial profiles in homicides while we are at it? After all, there are a lot of paths away from the subject.

Not following your point.

Ignoramus said:
However, you ignore preventing deaths in the case of accidental death.

Accidents by definition are accidental. We can, and do, take steps to try to minimize the opportunity for accidents to happen but I think I'm not following your point?

Ignoramus said:
If there is a condition on the road that makes a subsequent death probable why is that less important than the probability that the murderer will kill again if the probabilities are equal. Is the victim of homicide somehow more sacred. Yes, I know, installing a stop sign is much less satisfying than executing a murderer, but it?s also a lot cheaper.

Well, we do fix roads. We calculate stats on intersections. We require X Y and Z as safety measures. Predatory violent criminals are a priority because we can catch and incarcerate them and discourage others. Intentional bad acts are simply deemed a priority. This is not to say that we, as a society, don't take preventive measures to avoid accidents. We do. The CDC and many other agencies are tashed with finding ways to minimize accidental deaths. Other agencies are tasked with catching killers.

Ignoramus said:
I am comparing murder with accidental death. Where is the dilemma?

They are quite different issues. One is intentional and the other accidental. We address them differently as a society.

Addressing crime has been around a long time. Public safety issues not so much... though they are certainly ballooning.

Ignoramus said:
Just who are you debating? It might be interesting to know.

I thought I was discussing the issue with you. But you're comparing intentional bad acts to accidental acts which result in death. They are very different in all ways except that we have a dead guy.

Ignoramus said:
I conceded deterrence, though statistics don?t support it.

I was agreeing. It is very difficult to measure deterrence for reasons I gave.

Ignoramus said:
Yes, large corporations use it. They calculate the cost of lawsuits when making a product with a known potential for lethality. If they feel that profit outweighs the cost, they go ahead.

Actually, the facts you assert were pretty much directly on point in the Pinto litigation. They got hammered hard for that calculation. Public policy arguments make such calculations void as a defense. Offering such facts tends to enflame juries who punish those corps severely (as they should).

Ignoramus said:
Of course their calculus is based on societies value of life in dollars divided by the skill of their lawyers.

No, it is used to determine if the party who failed to take corrective measures acted negligently (. It pre-dates Grimshaw v Ford by 50 years or so and was offered up by one of the greatest judges to ever serve (Learned Hand - what a name for a judge huh?)

Ignoramus said:
Yes, even when the tragic accidents are premeditated and for profit.

These facts, though fairly vague actually sound much more like criminal negligence than a simple tort or an accident.

Now, is a hammer manufacturer liable for buisted thumbs because he knows they'll occur?

Reasonable standards need to be applied an one size does not necessarily fit all.

Ignoramus said:
As long as corporations can afford good lawyers, no problem. How many lives does mourning the victims save? Over forty thousand a year in traffic fatalities alone.

And in what way are you asserting that the auto (or other) manufacturer has been complicit in these deaths? Pinto? Quite. Tell me which manufacturer has down what Pinto did to contribute to that 40,000?

Ignoramus said:
Over forty thousand in traffic fatalities alone verses roughly seventeen thousand homicides a year. Homicides are not necessarily murders, so that means less than seventeen thousand murders a year. However, where do we put the emphasis? In which case do we get the most bang for the buck? By bang, I mean the reduction in victims.

Back to you. Of the 40,000 how many were not a result of driver error but a result of a design flaw known to the manufacturer who did nothing?

Homicide just means death caused by another human.

16,272 murders in 2008 for the record

Ignoramus said:
Look at the cost of our penal systems. Compare that to the cost of enforcing sensible traffic regulations. Which is cheaper? Which saves the most lives?
Logic versus emotion. In politics, we know which wins.

What traffic regulations do you propose that would reduce accidentasl deaths?

Incarceration is expensive. Would you prefer to keep murderers in jail or spend less on prisons?
　

Ignoramus said:
So they have helmet laws.
Seat belts are the same. It?s not really because society values lives, it?s because insurance companies value money.

Liberty issue. You can't tell a fool to stop being a fool unless the consequences of being a fool cost the state more money than they are willing to spend. I'm with you on this. I think the law is an intrusion on liberty. I also think the state shouldn't have to tell people not to be stupid. The problem is that there are too many stupid people that cost the tax payers too much. And helmet and seatbelt laws are minimal intrusions when you consider that they apply only on public roadways.
　

Ignoramus said:
I?ll concede the point on possible. That?s a bit far. The only problem is reasonable. The Swiss are reasonable. They have reasonable traffic laws. They enforce them. They have far fewer traffic fatalities per capita than we do. Even Americans have a problem calling Americans reasonable.

What's the population in Switzerland and the rate of accidents? Do they have cities like LA Chicago and Dallas? They are not directly comparable. What laws do the enforce that we do not that would make our roadways safer?

Ignoramus · Aug 13, 2010

QUOTE=obtuseobserver;15619]1
Not following your point.
[/quote]
That was my point.

Accidents by definition are accidental. We can, and do, take steps to try to minimize the opportunity for accidents to happen but I think I'm not following your point?

The argument for giving up our liberty to fight so called terrorism was to save lives. My point is that if we were really all that concerned with saving lives, we could get far more bang for our buck by changing our regulation of passenger auto traffic. What I?m implying is that the motive for the so called war on terror isn?t really to save lives but to grab power.

Well, we do fix roads. We calculate stats on intersections. We require X Y and Z as safety measures.

Actually we do a very bad job of fixing roads at the moment. Our infrastructure is a national disgrace. That is because we are converting our economy into a third world economy without an industrial base and a pampered oligarchy which is allowed to plunder and pillage at will.

Predatory violent criminals are a priority because we can catch and incarcerate them and discourage others. Intentional bad acts are simply deemed a priority.

Yes even here we concentrate on cure over prevention. We ignore social pathology and incarcerate the results. As a consequence we have the highest incarceration rate in the world with it?s attendant financial and social cost. Of course, this is merely farther proof of our political incompetence which probably doesn?t have to be proved to the rest of the world.

This is not to say that we, as a society, don't take preventive measures to avoid accidents. We do. The CDC and many other agencies are tashed with finding ways to minimize accidental deaths. Other agencies are tasked with catching killers.
They are quite different issues. One is intentional and the other accidental. We address them differently as a society.

There is a common factor in both cases, incompetence. The results speak for themselves.

Addressing crime has been around a long time. Public safety issues not so much... though they are certainly ballooning.
I thought I was discussing the issue with you. But you're comparing intentional bad acts to accidental acts which result in death. They are very different in all ways except that we have a dead guy.

The private automobile hasn?t been around all that long. It is the largest single killer of young people. However, what I?m concerned with is preventing premature deaths. Killing someone like me is mercy killing, however, killing a child isn?t. Well, considering the way things are headed, maybe it is. You seem to feel that preventing homicides should have a higher priority than preventing accidental deaths. I fail to see the logic of that.
You have managed to stretch your post out a bit, in answering it, I?ve exceeded the word limits. I really don?t want to go back and reedit so I will just butcher it a bit.

Actually, the facts you assert were pretty much directly on point in the Pinto litigation. They got hammered hard for that calculation. Public policy arguments make such calculations void as a defense. Offering such facts tends to enflame juries who punish those corps severely (as they should).

Not all that clear on the Pinto case. There is the Corvair, there is the Chevrolet pickup trucks with the side mounted gas tanks which the company knew turned the trucks into potential fireballs and there is the Ford Crown Victoria, with the exposed gas tank which turned the car into a death trap with a high speed rear impact. One of the principal users of the Crown Victoria were Highway Patrolman who had to park on the side of freeways during the performance of their duties. Ford killed more cops than any single individual, and they walked.
Oh, Ford finally come up with a fix, but it cost extra. In the meantime they were arguing successfully in the courtroom that the problem didn?t exist.
However, this is irrelevant. I?m not concerned here whether there was criminal intent or criminal negligence, my only concern is whether the deaths are preventable.

Homicide just means death caused by another human.
16,272 murders in 2008 for the record
What traffic regulations do you propose that would reduce accidentasl deaths?
Incarceration is expensive. Would you prefer to keep murderers in jail or spend less on prisons?

As compared with over forty thousand traffic fatalities. Regulations are meaningless without enforcement. We don?t enforce traffic regulations. If someone is given a ticket for speeding, he lost the lottery. How many times have you seen someone brazenly run a red light or a stop sign? In areas with posted speed limits, what is the average speed of traffic? These comments apply to the United States. In Germany or Switzerland, the law is enforced.

What's the population in Switzerland and the rate of accidents? Do they have cities like LA Chicago and Dallas? They are not directly comparable. What laws do the enforce that we do not that would make our roadways safer?

Damn, I assumed that most people knew about Switzerland. They represent an anomalous social order where the citizens are competent. This is sort of like looking up the proof that the Earth is flat. However, I suppose that we must take into consideration the deplorable state of the American educational system. This wouldn?t be necessary in Europe, there they know about Switzerland.
Well, there goes precious time that could be spent watching animes.
To begin with, I can?t verify with a cite the fact that Swiss license plates contain RFIDs. Where I live we have a community that was settled by Swiss about a hundred years ago. Some still return to Switzerland to visit, and some are visited by Swiss relatives. Thus I am somewhat more familiar with Switzerland than most Americans.
It is my understanding that Swiss license plates contain RFIDs. They have radar traps all over the place and when they spot an infraction, they take the information from the license plate RFID and mail the ticket to the Address of the registered owner of the vehicle.
The same applies to red lights and stop signs. Screw up, and they will nail you. Thus they monitor infractions without a great deal of manpower.
Switzerland is like most Europeans countries in that they expect you to know how to drive before you drive. Getting a drivers license is not the free pass for idiots that it is in the United States.
http://driving.drive-alive.co.uk/driving-in-switzerland.htm
This for chaps from UK visiting Switzerland. Notice the alcohol limit.
http://wikitravel.org/en/Switzerland
this from the Wiki article above.

Speed limits: 120 km/h on motorways, 80 km/h on normal roads and inside tunnels and 50 km/h inside villages. Vehicles unable to travel at 80 km/h are not permitted on the motorways. Whilst driving "a wee bit too fast" is common on motorways, people tend to stick pretty closely to the other two limits. Fines are hefty and traffic rules are strictly enforced. If stopped by Police, expect to pay your fine on the spot.
Don't Think You'll Speed Undeterred
If you get fined but not stopped (e.g. caught by a Speed Camera) the police will send you the fine even if you live abroad. In Switzerland, speeding is not a violation of a traffic code but a Legal Offence, if you fail to comply there is a good chance that an international rogatory will be issued and you have to go to court in your home country.
Also, starting from 2007, Switzerland banned all GPS appliances with built-in speed cameras databases as they are equipped with "Radar Detectors".
According to some GPS navigator producers, it is advised to remove the Swiss radar database while driving in the country as the police may give you a fine and impound your device even if is turned off and placed in the trunk of your vehicle!

The blood alcohol concentration limit is 0.05%.

Oh, again, I can?t give you a cite on this. Picked it up from a bike magazine article. Don?t hit a bicyclist in Switzerland. It?s against the law to hit a bicyclist, period. This partly explains the great courtesy which bicyclists are accorded in Switzerland. Of course the Swiss don?t really need laws to make them decent, but not everyone driving in Switzerland is Swiss.
As for comparative stats for Switzerland versus the United States, these are a bit dated for Switzerland. The moped statistics are a European thing. In many European countries they delay the age of motorcar driving, but give youths from the age of 14 up the right to drive mopeds. Needless to say, this is a group with a high mortality rate. I believe the rationale is that the moped rider kills himself but not the other folks out there. The positive side is that by the time the moped rider survives to drive an auto, he has learned a bit about defensive driving.
Moped drivers are almost non-existent in America.
You should be familiar with the American stats, so I?ll leave you the joyous task of pointing out how much safer Americans are in traffic.
As for large cities, I wasn?t aware that the per capita rate in New York City was higher than in rural America. After all, a lot of people don?t drive in New York City.
　
　

obtuseobserver · Aug 13, 2010

Ignoramus said:
The argument for giving up our liberty to fight so called terrorism was to save lives. My point is that if we were really all that concerned with saving lives, we could get far more bang for our buck by changing our regulation of passenger auto traffic. What I?m implying is that the motive for the so called war on terror isn?t really to save lives but to grab power.

My basic point if disagreement is that to some degree we must accept that accidents will happen. We cannot make this an accident free world. We can, however, put a world of hurt on terrorists bent on killing people.

Ignoramus said:
Actually we do a very bad job of fixing roads at the moment. Our infrastructure is a national disgrace. That is because we are converting our economy into a third world economy without an industrial base and a pampered oligarchy which is allowed to plunder and pillage at will.

I have no hard data either way. In Dallas road construction is tediously slow but the raods are not dangerous from a driving standpoint.

Our industrial base is second only, and barely, to China's and they have triple+ the population that they can essentially force into absurdly cheap labor.

Who are these plunderres?

Ignoramus said:
Yes even here we concentrate on cure over prevention.

That's one of the trade-offs for having the Bill of Rights. Criminal law enforcement as a general (though not specific) matter is retroactive looking. It doesn't seek to prevent crimes it seeks to catch and punish those who have committed crimes. It is much easier to prevent crime in totalitarian states - much harder in liberal democracies.

Ignoramus said:
We ignore social pathology and incarcerate the results.

Not true in all cases. I have one example, it is narrow but catches up a lot of people. Pedophiles who have served their criminal penalty are often slapped with a civil commitment charge. They face a different form of trial and if found sufficiently likely to reoffend they can be incarcerated until they are no longer deemed a risk worthy of keeping locked up.

Ignoramus said:
As a consequence we have the highest incarceration rate in the world with it?s attendant financial and social cost.

This would be a useful point if it compared the rate of incarceration to the rates of crime. I'd assert that we are better at catching and convicting our criminals. Now, there's also a large portion of the prison population in on drug charges. I favor ending prohibition for many reasons including the incarceration issues.

Ignoramus said:
Of course, this is merely farther proof of our political incompetence which probably doesn?t have to be proved to the rest of the world.

I'd dissent from this view. What state is politically compitent so I have something to compare the US to?

Ignoramus said:
There is a common factor in both cases, incompetence. The results speak for themselves.

Again, I dissent. We are able to bring disaster relief around the globe faster than the state suffering the disaster.

Ignoramus said:
You seem to feel that preventing homicides should have a higher priority than preventing accidental deaths.

I didn't say that and don't think that. See above. Our criminal policy is, almost completely, bound to catch criminals after the fact rather than prevent them - bound up withing the Bill of Rights.

Safety regs are to prevent deaths before they happen. Some regs I think make sense and others I think are absurd... take child seats. That's a product of great lobbying. Manufacturers got Congress to mandate that Americans need to buy their product with minimal improvement in safety.

Ignoramus said:
Not all that clear on the Pinto case.. There is the Corvair, there is the Chevrolet pickup... Crown Victoria... However, this is irrelevant. I?m not concerned here whether there was criminal intent or criminal negligence, my only concern is whether the deaths are preventable.

And my point was that the suit shoved a fist up Ford's read to send a message to manufacturers to not do this again. Corporations respond to the bottom line so that's where the suit hit them.

Ignoramus said:
As compared with over forty thousand traffic fatalities. Regulations are meaningless without enforcement. We don?t enforce traffic regulations.

My roster of speeding, et al tickets beg to differ

Ignoramus said:
If someone is given a ticket for speeding, he lost the lottery. How many times have you seen someone brazenly run a red light or a stop sign? In areas with posted speed limits, what is the average speed of traffic? These comments apply to the United States. In Germany or Switzerland, the law is enforced.

Germany has the Autobahn where there is no speed limit...

Switzerland is a mountainous country where driving more slowly will prevent you from driving off the mountain.

Take South Dakota.... 380 miles of flat and sparse population... it begs for high speed limits.

Back to europe... do you really think that they ticket a higher percentage of their traffic violators? I have no clue whether they do or not.

Ignoramus said:
Damn, I assumed that most people knew about Switzerland.

Many of the enforcement methods you noted (that I chopped out for our eyeballs sakes) would have trouble if challenged should they be applied in the US. The "problem" again is our Bill of Rights.

Ignoramus · Aug 14, 2010

obtuseobserver said:
My basic point if disagreement is that to some degree we must accept that accidents will happen. We cannot make this an accident free world. We can, however, put a world of hurt on terrorists bent on killing people.

You aren’t disagreeing with me, you are avoiding my argument. I’m not arguing for an accident free world. I’m stating that we can save more lives with less cost by going after traffic accidents than we can with our campaign against terror.
You do realize if we keep screwing around like this, an American city is going to go up in a mushroom cloud. Don’t say the War on Terror will stop that from happening. Not when kilotons of narcotics and millions of illegals flow across our Southern boarder. All they have to do, once they bring the warhead across the border, is load it on a pickup truck and drive to LA. It’s only a matter of time before someone like Osama bin Laden buys a thermonuclear warhead from somebody. After that, you can forget about even the myth of the Bill of Rights.

I have no hard data either way. In Dallas road construction is tediously slow but the roads are not dangerous from a driving standpoint.

Compared with where, Afghanistan or Ecuador?

Our industrial base is second only, and barely, to China's and they have triple+ the population that they can essentially force into absurdly cheap labor.

Only if you don’t count the EU. We are the third largest country in area and population in the World. You want to compare our economy with Switzerland? How proud I am. We have over seventy five percent of the industrial base of China. As someone who has lived and worked through the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies in America, you have no idea how absurd I find that.

Who are these plunderres?

So you slept through 2008. I guess a lot of people did. Better that way, if you were awake you might have been ashamed that you didn’t take Jefferson’s proscription.

That's one of the trade-offs for having the Bill of Rights. Criminal law enforcement as a general (though not specific) matter is retroactive looking. It doesn't seek to prevent crimes it seeks to catch and punish those who have committed crimes. It is much easier to prevent crime in totalitarian states - much harder in liberal democracies.

As Jackson was the first to prove, the Constitution and the Bill of rights are just paper. Bush Light and the intellectually challenged members of our congress continued a long established tradition of ignoring the Bill of Rights.

Not true in all cases. I have one example, it is narrow but catches up a lot of people. Pedophiles who have served their criminal penalty are often slapped with a civil commitment charge. They face a different form of trial and if found sufficiently likely to reoffend they can be incarcerated until they are no longer deemed a risk worthy of keeping locked up.

Yeah, it’s nice knowing that the prisons are full. The problem is that the pedophile laws have been widened to include practically any kind of sexual offenders. Here in California, that means Violent Sexual Offenders like the very real case of the chap who came home high on drugs and raped his wife. Obviously someone who should be locked up for the rest of his life.

This would be a useful point if it compared the rate of incarceration to the rates of crime. I'd assert that we are better at catching and convicting our criminals.

Yeah, we are so good at it that Japanese gangsters bring their wives here to kill them. Our rich kill with impunity. They know that they can beat the rap with a good lawyer. The poor innocents have to plea bargain for a lesser conviction, but the rich walk. The FBI statistics or solved murders are closed with arrests, not convictions.
Yes, compared with Mexico, we have a good record on solving crimes, compared with Japan or most Western European Countries, we suck. No, you didn’t do your homework, and I’m not going to do it for you.

Now, there's also a large portion of the prison population in on drug charges. I favor ending prohibition for many reasons including the incarceration issues.

It would solve the civil war in Mexico as well. It would save untold lives. It would reduce crime in the United States. It would reduce the strain on budgets. It would be the totally smart thing to do. We aren’t into smart, stupid is our thing.

I'd dissent from this view. What state is politically compitent so I have something to compare the US to?

Politically competent? None. More competent than the United States? Name a first world country other than the United States. I’ll throw out a couple, Norway and Switzerland.

Again, I dissent. We are able to bring disaster relief around the globe faster than the state suffering the disaster.

As demonstrated by Katrina.

I didn't say that and don't think that. See above. Our criminal policy is, almost completely, bound to catch criminals after the fact rather than prevent them - bound up withing the Bill of Rights.

What is there in the in the Bill of Rights that keeps us from taking care of our kids?

Safety regs are to prevent deaths before they happen. Some regs I think make sense and others I think are absurd... take child seats. That's a product of great lobbying. Manufacturers got Congress to mandate that Americans need to buy their product with minimal improvement in safety.
And my point was that the suit shoved a fist up Ford's read to send a message to manufacturers to not do this again. Corporations respond to the bottom line so that's where the suit hit them.

Right, so Ford learned. That’s why they made the Crown Victoria to barbecue highway patrolmen. What Ford learned was how to beat the lawsuits.

My roster of speeding, et al tickets beg to differ

And where you live, the average car driver drives under the speed limit? My, how different it is from where I live. Where I live, the traffic laws are ignored. When somebody signals before making a turn, I almost fall off my bicycle. Stop for stop signs, that means slow to somewhere between five and fifty.

Germany has the Autobahn where there is no speed limit...

Americans flunk geography tests. Germany has the Autobahn which has sections without speed limits. However, the Autobahn is the second safest high speed motorway in the World, last time I checked.

Switzerland is a mountainous country where driving more slowly will prevent you from driving off the mountain.
Take South Dakota.... 380 miles of flat and sparse population... it begs for high speed limits.

The safest high speed motor way in the World is the Swiss Autobahn. Yes, the Swiss have roads which were first laid out for Roman Legions and they will slow a Motorcycle down. However, when the Swiss build modern highways, they go through mountains, not around them. By the way, British tourists are warned not to follow Swiss drivers in the mountains. The Swiss seemed to be accustomed to driving in Switzerland.
You take South Dakota. The whole World doesn’t come to see the scenery in South Dakota. However, the number of drunks per mile should probably make driving there interesting.

Back to europe... do you really think that they ticket a higher percentage of their traffic violators? I have no clue whether they do or not.

Wasn’t talking about Europe. In Switzerland and Germany, damn right. I accept that you are clueless.

Many of the enforcement methods you noted (that I chopped out for our eyeballs sakes) would have trouble if challenged should they be applied in the US. The "problem" again is our Bill of Rights.

Where in the Bill of Rights does it prohibit RFIDs in license plates? License plates are there so that the vehicle’s owner can be identified. In the United States, the cop gives you a ticket, if you don’t sign it, you go to jail. No trial involved. In the United States, your phone calls are monitored, your library records are monitored, your bank records are monitored and if the gestapo questions somebody about you, the people questioned are not supposed to reveal it to you.
Oh, and here in California, just try keeping an Stgw 90 in your home.

obtuseobserver · Aug 14, 2010

Ignoramus said:
You aren?t disagreeing with me, you are avoiding my argument. I?m not arguing for an accident free world. I?m stating that we can save more lives with less cost by going after traffic accidents than we can with our campaign against terror.

No, I've addressed your point directly.

Stated simply...

There is only so much that can be done to prevent people from doing stupid things that kill them.

There are only so many things that can be done to prevent out of the blue accidents from happening.

Intentional acts may kill far fewer people but they pose a more significant threat because they act with intent whereas accidents are accidental.

I can reduce American automobile deaths to zero by destroying every car in America. Is that a reasonable trade off?

We assume everyday risks when we fly,when we drive, when we go the grocery store.

We have safety regulations up the wazoo that seek to minimize accidents of every nature imaginbable.

Ignoramus said:
You do realize if we keep screwing around like this, an American city is going to go up in a mushroom cloud.

You stocking up on your supply of tinfoil? Good lord that's an absurd conclusion. If what continues? bad roads and poor traffic enforcement?

Ignoramus said:
Don?t say the War on Terror will stop that from happening.

I didn't and won't. However, I will say that without our efforts roll up terrorism the odds of that mushroom cloud increase greatly. That is the benefit fo the war on terror. It is hard to calculate how many weren't killed but for our effortsw in fighting terrorists.

We can say that treating it as a crime as we did with WTC I resulted in WTC II. Its an effort well worth the cost. History shows us that the opportunity cost for not fighting it is a city block in NYC reduced to a hole, 3000 dead, the Pentagon severely damaged etc.

Terrorists have declared war on us and they mean it.

Ignoramus said:
Not when kilotons of narcotics and millions of illegals flow across our Southern boarder. All they have to do, once they bring the warhead across the border, is load it on a pickup truck and drive to LA. It?s only a matter of time before someone like Osama bin Laden buys a thermonuclear warhead from somebody. After that, you can forget about even the myth of the Bill of Rights.

And how much easier if we stop the war on terror?

I'm all about securing the border for reasons you gave.

Ignoramus said:
Compared with where, Afghanistan or Ecuador?

Having never been to either I can only say that I haven't experienced the issues you have. And I drive a thousand miles several times a year to get to my parents house. Then another 500 to get to my in-laws. The roads only suck when its snowing.

Where are you seeing these bad roads?

Ignoramus said:
Only if you don?t count the EU.

The EU is not a state and we still have a larger induistrial sector than the entire EU. Then consider the PIIGS and the collapse of their credit.

Ignoramus said:
We are the third largest country in area and population in the World. You want to compare our economy with Switzerland? How proud I am.

No. I was contrasting them. You compared them. I was pointinmg out that such a thing is silly. Glad you agree.

Ignoramus said:
We have over seventy five percent of the industrial base of China. As someone who has lived and worked through the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies in America, you have no idea how absurd I find that.

don't follow

Ignoramus said:
So you slept through 2008. I guess a lot of people did. Better that way, if you were awake you might have been ashamed that you didn?t take Jefferson?s proscription.

lol - I actually worked a good deal of credit swaps litigation. I'm pretty famikliar with the events. You issued a vague and overly broad allegation into the ether without facts or detail. I asked for you to provide some. Its not a terribly challenging question. I simply wanted to know whom you referred to.

Ignoramus said:
As Jackson was the first to prove, the Constitution and the Bill of rights are just paper. Bush Light and the intellectually challenged members of our congress continued a long established tradition of ignoring the Bill of Rights.

We'll have to disgaree greatly on that. Having spent my time in criminal courts I can tell you that those protections are alive and well. You never hear about the system working efficiently... that's not news. You hear about outrageous exceptions and have extrapolated that into believing it is par for the course. It isn't.

Ignoramus said:
Yeah, it?s nice knowing that the prisons are full. The problem is that the pedophile laws have been widened to include practically any kind of sexual offenders. Here in California, that means Violent Sexual Offenders like the very real case of the chap who came home high on drugs and raped his wife. Obviously someone who should be locked up for the rest of his life.

Lol - there's no pleasing yuo is there? We're too soft on crime... we're too tough on crime... I won't stand for it!!!!

Yup, should be. FTR - I worked for a DA in CA.

Ignoramus said:
Yeah, we are so good at it that Japanese gangsters bring their wives here to kill them. Our rich kill with impunity. They know that they can beat the rap with a good lawyer. The poor innocents have to plea bargain for a lesser conviction, but the rich walk. The FBI statistics or solved murders are closed with arrests, not convictions.
Yes, compared with Mexico, we have a good record on solving crimes, compared with Japan or most Western European Countries, we suck. No, you didn?t do your homework, and I?m not going to do it for you.

You really are impossible to please.

Let's take Juarez where there have been so many murders that they outpace combat deaths in Iran and Afganistan. The other side of the border is experiencing record low murder rates. Why? Cartel members who commit crimes in the US get caught. So they stopped doing it. Hell, they'll kidnap people in El Paso and take them to Juarez to kill them to avoid American law enforcement.

We do have a much better record than europe... crimes rates there are increasing and there enforcement is largely absurdly superficial. You can believe what you wish but until you see suburbs in flames for a month while the police do nothing there's little valid comparison.

Ignoramus said:
Politically competent? None. More competent than the United States? Name a first world country other than the United States. I?ll throw out a couple, Norway and Switzerland.

Each with fewer people than NYC. Norway with a 95+% ethic homogenity... Switzerland is a confederation. Tiny little utopias. Our society is greatly different. In your eyes greatly less capable of pretty much anything. I disagree. At least we have clarity.

Ignoramus said:
As demonstrated by Katrina.

The effected area was larger than England. The media focused on NOLA.. a city, much of which lies below the surface level of Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River. You don't hear so much about other effected areas not run by the crooks that control NOLA recovered quite quickly.

Ignoramus said:
What is there in the in the Bill of Rights that keeps us from taking care of our kids?

nary a clue what you're getting at

Ignoramus said:
Right, so Ford learned. That?s why they made the Crown Victoria to barbecue highway patrolmen. What Ford learned was how to beat the lawsuits.

Your pessimism is a thing to behold. I don't share that point of view in the slightest.

Ignoramus said:
And where you live, the average car driver drives under the speed limit? My, how different it is from where I live. Where I live, the traffic laws are ignored. When somebody signals before making a turn, I almost fall off my bicycle. Stop for stop signs, that means slow to somewhere between five and fifty.

can't really address anecdotal assertions... nor do you have anything but anecdotal evidence. I'll accept you hold the opinion that Americans drive like idiots.

Ignoramus said:
Americans flunk geography tests. Germany has the Autobahn which has sections without speed limits. However, the Autobahn is the second safest high speed motorway in the World, last time I checked.

Geography: Vastly overstated. You use the worst examples from the US and compare them to the best examles of other places. FTR - my daughter can identify every country in Asia, Africa, Europe, NA and SA... when she was 5.

Autobahn second safest... perhaps the problem then isn't driving too fast it is driving too slowly.

Ignoramus said:
By the way, British tourists are warned not to follow Swiss drivers in the mountains. The Swiss seemed to be accustomed to driving in Switzerland.

?

Ignoramus said:
You take South Dakota. The whole World doesn?t come to see the scenery in South Dakota. However, the number of drunks per mile should probably make driving there interesting.

So where did that snide remark come from?

There are many people who go there for the natural beauty. That you are unaware of it perhaps relates to the flunked geography tests

Ignoramus said:
Wasn?t talking about Europe. In Switzerland and Germany, damn right. I accept that you are clueless.

Then clue me in. What percentage of speeders and stop sign violators are caught and ticketed in Germany and Switzerland?

obtuseobserver · Aug 14, 2010

..part 2

Ignoramus said:
Where in the Bill of Rights does it prohibit RFIDs in license plates? License plates are there so that the vehicle’s owner can be identified. In the United States, the cop gives you a ticket, if you don’t sign it, you go to jail. No trial involved.

Depends on the state. Depends on the violation. You are again, overstating to the point of absurdity the nature of things. Provide evidence of a person going to jail for not signing a speeding ticket.

As for trial. Guess where murderers go before trial? Jail. Your understanding of how our legal system works is more a matter of an outraged opinion than anything else.

Ignoramus said:
In the United States, your phone calls are monitored, your library records are monitored, your bank records are monitored and if the gestapo questions somebody about you, the people questioned are not supposed to reveal it to you.
Oh, and here in California, just try keeping an Stgw 90 in your home.

dear lord ... you must have stock in aluminum manufacturing stock... chinese manufacturers of course.

Do you really think we have the resources to monitor everyone's phone calls? The government you keep calling incompetant is able to pull off all that stuff you just alledged? Which is it? Bumbbling idiots or devious masterminds of espionage on their own people?

I get it. You're angry. But your facts are garbage.

Ignoramus · Aug 15, 2010

obtuseobserver said:
No, I've addressed your point directly.

obtuseobserver said:
Stated simply...
There is only so much that can be done to prevent people from doing stupid things that kill them.
There are only so many things that can be done to prevent out of the blue accidents from happening.
Intentional acts may kill far fewer people but they pose a more significant threat because they act with intent whereas accidents are accidental.
I can reduce American automobile deaths to zero by destroying every car in America. Is that a reasonable trade off?
We assume everyday risks when we fly,when we drive, when we go the grocery store.
We have safety regulations up the wazoo that seek to minimize accidents of every nature imaginbable.

Still running from the argument. My argument was that we could save more than three thousand lives a year simply by changing our traffic rules and enforcement. You have not rebutted that, you have simply avoided it.
Destroy every car in America? Hardly, all you have to do is raise the driving age to 21 and enforce it. That would save eight thousand lives a year. Not interested? Of course not, no power grab to be gained there.
http://georgetownprojectgraduation.com/
from the above source

Vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death for young people aged 15 to 20, accounting for more than 20% of the nation's annual traffic fatalities. Nearly 1/3 of the 15 to 20-year old drivers who were killed in fatal crashes in 2003 had been drinking, and 25% had a blood alcohol concentration level of 0.08 and above.

My point was that the war on terror is not about saving lives but grabbing power. You prove it over and over again. Saving lives doesn?t interest you, putting the hurt on terrorists does.
How do we put the hurt on terrorists. We give up our freedoms. We expose our naked bodies and our wives naked bodies to the minions of the state in order to board a plane. We give up any pretenses of right to privacy. We create our version of the NKVD. The excuse for this, saving lives. It?s a lie, but then, when isn?t our government lying to us?

You stocking up on your supply of tinfoil? Good lord that's an absurd conclusion. If what continues? bad roads and poor traffic enforcement?
I didn't and won't. However, I will say that without our efforts roll up terrorism the odds of that mushroom cloud increase greatly. That is the benefit fo the war on terror. It is hard to calculate how many weren't killed but for our effortsw in fighting terrorists.
We can say that treating it as a crime as we did with WTC I resulted in WTC II. Its an effort well worth the cost. History shows us that the opportunity cost for not fighting it is a city block in NYC reduced to a hole, 3000 dead, the Pentagon severely damaged etc.
Terrorists have declared war on us and they mean it.
And how much easier if we stop the war on terror?

I ran into the word barrier, and I chopped out the meat of my argument. The what that continues was this.

It?s inconceivable that a smuggled nuke will take out an American city? Hell, they write books about it and they make movies about it.
Why is it unthinkable? Because we mustn?t think about it. It?s the inevitable price for the fun and games that you want to play.
The terrorists declared war on us? Why. Because they are evil and we are good. The incredible thing about that is the number of stupes that buy that. Ignorance is a virtue in the United States. Anyone who has followed the games that America plays in the Mid-East knows why Osama bin Laden struck. They know why Iran hates us. Why practically every Arab country hates us. They didn?t come here first, we went there, and we crapped all over them. The Americans are so utterly stupid that they bought the Saddam was behind 9/11 story. They bought the WMD scam. Now they support the incredible stupidity of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. No, not all, there are intelligent and informed Americans. However, they are a politically insignificant minority. Fox News is the number one news source. The spin stops here. It?s the rest of the media that?s lying to you, not us at Fox. Yeah, they?re right about one thing, the rest of the media is lying. So are they.
My source? The Encyclopedia Britannica. It?s all there, especially on the article on the CIA. Of course, this is only for the past. After the dust settles, then they can tell a little of the truth. Still, if you want to know how we got where we are, it?s right there in the EB. If you can see how they lied in the past, it kind of gives you a hint of what?s going down now.
There is a 9/11 conspiracy story out there. I know, because here on the border, some of the Mexican stations were running the story. In the land of the free, they couldn?t get air time, but they could in Mexico.
The reason for the 9/11 conspiracy theory is that it worked out so very nicely for Bush and crew. I don?t buy it. I don?t believe Bush and crew are that smart. Their conduct of the war in Iraq proved them to be a bunch of stupid incompetents.
Events gave Bush the ball, and he fumbled it. However, with a public as stupid as the American public, who needs to be skillful?
It?s obvious that the only reason that Osama didn?t smuggle in a nuke is because he didn?t have one. 9/11 was much more complicated than smuggling in a nuke. If you don?t have a nuke, you make do. However, you only kill 3,000 people as opposed to 300 thousand people. Three million if you get one of the really good nukes.
So nukes are going to be unavailable forever, right? The main reason nukes are scarce is because of the fission detonator. It?s hard to come up with the raw materials and processing them is a bitch. The countries that do it are kind of careful with the end product because they don?t want it used on them.
The age of the nuclear monopoly is coming to an end and the age of nuclear proliferation is beginning. It won?t be long, and error, greed, and stupidity will take their toll, and someone like Osama will have a new toy. Yeah, this is unthinkable, it?s also inevitable.
However, the boys that are running the game want it to be unthinkable. If it were thinkable, could we have a border so porous that millions of illegals and kilotons of drugs come across every year? Once the first American city goes, that will all end.
However, when it ends, the big boys will have their blank check. Look what they give Bush Light after 9/11. Imagine a thermonuclear warhead in LA. A million casualties minimum. A whole lot of sick and dying people afterwards. The Pax Atomica will be replaced by the nuclear inquisition.
China, and whoever else is running the World then, will let the loonies in the US do what ever they want as long as they don?t bother them.
In the meantime, go ahead and play kill the terrorists. It will be a fun game until it stops being fun.
However, will the silly game seal the border? Like it?s sealed now? No, stand in line at the airport, assuming that they will do 9/11 all over again when the passengers wouldn?t even permit it. Stop the next Black Swan? Hell no, only nuts wearing tin foil would even think of things like that. Damn, the people who get paid to brainwash the American public should be ashamed to take their money!

And how much easier if we stop the war on terror?

If we quit screwing with them over there, what reason do they have to come over here? Oh, I forgot, they?re evil, and we?re good.
Screw it. None of the rest of this is relevant to the thread. It?s just concerned with you ducking the issue.

Ignoramus · Aug 15, 2010

Sorry double post. This editor is so much fun. Of course, my stupidity doesn't help

obtuseobserver · Aug 16, 2010

Ignoramus said:
Still running from the argument. My argument was that we could save more than three thousand lives a year simply by changing our traffic rules and enforcement. You have not rebutted that, you have simply avoided it.

BS. I said point blank that I don't buy your claim. But I'll say it again... I believe you claim has zero merit.

Ignoramus said:
My point was that the war on terror is not about saving lives but grabbing power.

And I disagree.

Ignoramus said:
It?s inconceivable that a smuggled nuke will take out an American city? Hell, they write books about it and they make movies about it. Why is it unthinkable? Why is it unthinkable?

I never said it was impossible to smuggle a nuke across the Mexican border.

I said lax border enforcement makes it easier to do.

I also said that abandoning the war on terror would make even easier still.

Ignoramus said:
They know why Iran hates us. Why practically every Arab country hates us. They didn?t come here first, we went there, and we crapped all over them.

You forget the Barbery Coast War? We went toi them because they were messing with us - not the other way around.

In any event you and they have us confused with the Brits and the French.

Ignoramus said:
The Americans are so utterly stupid that they bought the Saddam was behind 9/11 story.

No, what is stupid is that people still think that the Bush administration believed that claim and tried to sell it. They claimed that Iraq was involved with terrorism. However, the correct version of the facts is a little hard to get angry about.

Ignoramus said:
Screw it. None of the rest of this is relevant to the thread. It?s just concerned with you ducking the issue.

I'm not ducking - I'm straight up telling you I think its a horseshit argument. We disagree. That's pretty much it.

Ignoramus · Aug 17, 2010

obtuseobserver said:
BS. I said point blank that I don't buy your claim. But I'll say it again... I believe you claim has zero merit.
And I disagree.
I never said it was impossible to smuggle a nuke across the Mexican border.
I said lax border enforcement makes it easier to do.
I also said that abandoning the war on terror would make even easier still.
You forget the Barbery Coast War? We went toi them because they were messing with us - not the other way around.
In any event you and they have us confused with the Brits and the French.
No, what is stupid is that people still think that the Bush administration believed that claim and tried to sell it. They claimed that Iraq was involved with terrorism. However, the correct version of the facts is a little hard to get angry about.
I'm not ducking - I'm straight up telling you I think its a horseshit argument. We disagree. That's pretty much it.

If you note, with jfla, I conceded points because he made valid arguments. You don?t seem to know what an argument is. I will let you have the final word on this subject.

AK_ID · Aug 18, 2010

We really don't have to make the choice between liberty and national security, at least not in the situation presented. Practice a bit of profiling, and most threats to security would be covered nicely.

RoccoR · Aug 27, 2010

slipgear89, et al,

This is a very inspiring video. Professionally put together and dynamically presented.

slipgear89 said:
I agree with Nemo completely those who try and trad there birth rights of Liberty do not deserve safty nor there Liberty. However I think the reson for us losing the war on terror in the first place is that the people we Trusted with great power to give us all better lives, have all betrayed us. This video can say it better then I ever could. Pleas take time to watch. http://www.youtube.com/slipgear89

(COMMENT)

But there is an unspoken truth that lays behind this little composition. It really doesn't matter which party is in office. They are essentially cut from the same cloth. You can count on one hand, the number of senior officials, diplomatic officers, major politicians and political leaders (in general) in office, one side or the other, that are persons of integrity, good moral character and honesty. Like Dr House says, "everyone lies." And these people in Washington are corrupted by power and influence; intoxicated with their self importance. They all have an agenda. It's not about patriotism, or service to the nation and its people. It's about getting re-elected.

You, me, everyone is partly at fault here. We have, for so long, allowed senior politicians to "speak falsehoods and half truths" ---- and not held them accountable; that it is common place. We all, in our heart, know that a Politician is about two steps below the integrity of a Used Car Salesman. Politicians are so notoriously dishonest, that we Americans joke about it:

Jeffrey Pelt: Listen, I'm a politician which means I'm a cheat and a liar, and when I'm not kissing babies I'm stealing their lollipops. But it also means I keep my options open.

Bending the facts to fit their need or agenda, politicians find this exercise to be a "matter of survival." Even though their integrity might be tainted --- they know they will not be held accountable; least of all by either the media or the people. If bending the truth, projecting a false or misleading image, gets them re-elected, then they perceive this as a reward for lying and tacit approval by the voters. And we generally re-elect them on a recurring basis.

You really cannot blame them. Like Pavlov's stimulus-response theory, reward them enough for telling lies, bending the facts, molding the truth, omitting key information, or blindly following Party Lines against the best interest of the people, and that is what you get; what we see today as common practice in the Government (Military or Civilian). Honesty and integrity are values that are naive. To a Washington politician, General Officer, and major media outlet personalities, the common man's concept of honesty, integrity, good moral values, are considered unsophisticated - to them - proving that the common man simply doesn't appreciate the complexities of today's politics that necessitates and demands that they be allowed to deviate from the elementary cultural norms that separate them from us. They operate in a totally different social strata in which "naturally "lie" and they do it for survival and rewards. To them, truth is relative and they don't really expect you unsophisticated people to understand. They are Princes of the Realm, members of the Royal Court, and above the law. If Congress operated under the normal laws of the average citizen, the health care of the average citizen, the hourly wage of the average citizen, AND under the same social criteria that our fathers taught, things would be different. But they don't --- because we've rewarded them for what they have done. You and I have to pay our bills. You and I are expected to tell the truth - the "whole truth" and nothing but the truth. Does that even remotely sound like Washington to you?

We should be proud. Our politicians are so accurate and truthful in their statements, that everyone honorably recognizes the integrity of our government pronouncements. They all start out: Once upon a time...

omeythehomie said:
The best way to combat terrorism is and remains prevention through intelligence. In both 9/11 and the Christmas bombing attempt, we had intelligence that could have been followed more thoroughly to prevent what happened. There are many more attacks that are foiled by the intelligence community that we never hear about. That's because only the failures become widely known.

A N D

At what point do effective security measures stop and end up being simply nothing more than security theater? We can either have security that follows the constitution and live with a tiny risk of dying in a terrorist attack or have unconstitutional and heavily invasive security and still have the same small risk of dying in a terrorist attack.

(COMMENT)

The nations security is an outcome of the success or failure of National Security Decision Making Process" (NSDMP). This process is broke. It has been broke for several decades. It has become an incubation chamber for myopic political agendas (too numerous to mention), that are not meant to be beneficial to the general public, but to further a political position of the sponsor. This is just as true for one party, as it is for the other.

America's true national security has several components. We instinctively know them:

The Economy
It's Commerce
It's Employment (Unemployment & Under Employment)
It's National Defense Capacity
It's Industrial and Utility base Infrastructure

Everything thing else, follows from these five (5) simple areas of concern. And a nation like ours needs members of these communities, not professional politicians, to further these serious concerns. We need an Imhotep, to rebuild America; which is the theme of the video (supra). Imagine, if you will, if we had dumped the Trillion Dollars, that we've spent in Iraq & Afghanistan, and invested it into the R&D of effective electrical energy production, and built (citizen owned) power plants; so many that electrical power would be virtually free to industry, such that industrial employers would not be burdened with the cost of power in CONUS. That would be a competitive advantage for inducing manufacturers to construct inside CONUS, hiring inside CONUS, spending inside CONUS. Imagine, if you will, a nation that rebuilt its communications and electrical distribution networks. Again, inducing stakeholders to construct inside CONUS, hiring inside CONUS, spending inside CONUS. This, at least, circulates the money inside the US, hiring more people who contribute to revenue streams.

(OPINION)

I am pro-America, helping ourselves first; improving employment, increasing the Standard of Living, cutting the cost of education, performing the maintenance on the national infrastructure, and developing hard industry. If this is wrong, then I'm so colored.

We all know that there is something seriously wrong with our economy. This is an "American" issue. It is NOT a political issue: US 'vs" THEM - Democrat 'vs' Republican. We are all Americans and we will all lose something in this struggle if we don't come together. Whatever we may think about these other subjects-the monetary health of the nation is everyones concern. We will all benefit by fixing it.

We need to quit throwing money around the world, on nations that don't want us, don't need us, and for which we don't have any reasonable expectation of covering any return on our investment.

We need an Imhotep (27th Century - brought forward) that can rebuild our nation. We should give-up this endless struggle to rebuild other nations and concentrate on our home, our schools, our industry. We need to find a leader that will bring back the glory that was once"AMERICA."

It is doable. But we can't waste any more time quibbling about policies and issues that don't contribute to the gross national product, industrial capacity, and our economic welfare. Quit trying to export Democracy to countries that don't want it and rebuild our home. We don't really need a Department of Homeland Security as much as we need a Department of Homeland Development.

Most Respectfully,
R

AK_ID · Aug 28, 2010

We need fewer departments and far fewer acronyms.

RoccoR · Sep 13, 2010

AK_ID, et al,

I had to chuckle here.

AK_ID said:
We need fewer departments and far fewer acronyms.

(EXPERIENTIAL - FOR YOUR ENJOYMENT)

I have noticed, that the longer one is exposed to the realm of government, the more we speak in acronyms. I remember a moment that I was embarrassed when a visiting superior ask me the meaning of an acronym I had used: FSEC.

I knew who they were, where they worked, their mission, and played poker with them, the Force Strategic Engagement Cell (FSEC). But in that moment, I could not put the words together. I had used the acronym for so long, the words had left me. I had to go to a computer to look it up.

Most Respectfully,
R

AK_ID · Sep 14, 2010

Although I never worked in government, I spent a lot of years working with people who did, most of them military, some civil aviation folks, some politicians. One of my favorite pastimes was saying "Huh?" when someone spit out an acronym, and then watching them try to recall what it meant in Anglais. It's akin to watching someone try to recover beer from their sinuses -- they know what it is, but aren't certain how it got there.

obtuseobserver · Sep 14, 2010

AK_ID said:
-- they know what it is, but aren't certain how it got there.

sounds like me on Saturday mornings in college with regard to where I woke up

AK_ID · Sep 14, 2010

Et tu?
............................................................................................................

obtuseobserver · Sep 14, 2010

Brute?

Nah, just a joke... I usually knew where I woke up and why.

AK_ID · Sep 14, 2010

That's why you're the lawyah and I'm the English major.

National Security or Liberty?

Similar threads