champu

He's a LIAR. His very first statement about tax rates is untrue. Raising the TOP MARGINAL RATE by 5% doesn't increase the tax on a couple earning $250k by $12.5k. So having established himself as a deliberate LIAR, why should we believe anything at all that he says subsequently? This is politics, if you dismiss anything anyone said after their first lie you'd have to put earmuffs on until November and throw darts at a ballot. I agree this guy clearly and deliberately misrepresents how marginal rates and exemptions work, but according to TPC Obama's plan to change the top brackets has one that starts below $250K going up, which would cost around $1100 for a person making $250K. So when Obama says he's not raising taxes on the middle class if you make less then $250K/yr, try and muster up about 1/12th the disgust you have for this guy and apply accordingly. As for the elimination of various deductions and FICA caps, he's closer on his calculations but I can't readily find information on what Obama actually plans to do. All I get from campaign sites are info-graphics for 6th graders and qualitative claims. If I follow the trend set above by Obama saying he won't get rid of them and this guy exaggerating how bad they'll hurt, I'd guess that it'll cost a few thousand here and a few thousand there, maybe $5-10K total for a $250K household.

"If you've done nothing wrong, you've nothing to worry about". Mantra of police states everywhere. You might find this of interest: http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/the-data-trust-blog/2009/02/debunking-a-myth-if-you-have-n.html I like the guy who wrote the 1800 word comment to a 1000 word web article. That aside, a pretty good summary of the problems. "Continuity, context, and control" are really all getting at the same thing; as a lump of personal information grows so too, inevitably, does the number of people with access to it and the number of bad ideas people get for it. "Consistency" is my greater concern, though, as people have a tendency to pick a source of information, fall in love with it, and grow to see it as infallible. And if an error does occur in the information about you, you're not going to find out from someone who has any motivation to correct it or help you correct it. Ever have a debt collector think your cell phone number belonged to someone they were going after? Ugh... literally years to sort out while your number gets sold along with the debt to every company in the business one by one.

Given how opposed you are to facts and statistical data and the bizarre nature of this particular statement, can you please expand on your claim? The explanation is contained therein. Statistical data show that it's the people of speakers corner's fault that they have difficulty taking personal responsibility and the government needs to do something about it? Or do the atheists need to do sometihng? Are they supposed to do "a fact?" I'm really at a loss trying to figure out what your post is saying.

I just did some $15 jumps at Lodi this past weekend when I was up there visiting emmiwy. For a couple people that have quite a few jumps and know what they want to do, it's a great place, and they were turning loads well for a Friday. I don't know how the load organizing or coaching works for someone with less experience, but everyone I talked to was nice enough.

Standard Dreamdancer debating techniques. And yet, he still gets to use his multiple accounts to do this over and over. Matt Replying is a bit like tossing a farthing at a roaming clown, that's all he really wants, you don't expect much in return, and it makes for disposable entertainment that comes in high volume if multiple people are chipping in. No reason for the authorities to step in unless the dance gets rowdy. More on topic... I worked a part time job while I was in high school (20-30 hrs/wk) and was only paid minimum wage for the first month. At that point I was given a raise, and they continued to keep my wage at parity with what other local places would be willing to offer because apparently I was worth keeping around. I'm not sure what it would say about the argument if the reason so few minimum wage jobs belonged to part-time teen workers was because they work harder than full-time unskilled laborers and get paid more.

I don't mean to suggest you've made or would make that particular argument, or even that they're aren't good arguments to be made, I'm just skeptical of ill or broadly defined labels for things. I'm just posing the, "so what / who cares / what are you really asking?" question.

My problem with people trying to argue that something is accurately described by a succinct but overly general pejorative (in your case you even went on to list 14 largely unrelated things attributed to fascists) is that the writer usually wants to change something to address a very specific interpretation of the word. If he or she is successful in convincing people that the epithet is appropriate in some interpretation, they go on to argue their suggestion for change is suitable, regardless of whether that change has anything to do with the original discussion. So, who cares if we're "fascists" any more than if we're "meanie doo-doo heads?" If you want to argue that unions need more power because people wave flags too much then just own that shitty argument.

As I've mentioned before, there's nothing for him to be charged with unless it can be shown that he conspired ahead of time with Manning to go after the information. From what I've read of the Manning case so far, I don't think there's anything to suggest that happened. US citizen or not, nobody has any legal responsibility to keep classified information secret unless they've signed an NDA.

...agreed.

It's missing something... ...wait, I got it.

That all depends, what would you could you do with sentence?

Information was shared with him and he shared it with other people, but as far as I know, the original possessors maintained access to it the entire time. So the information's value may have been reduced by virtue of increased supply, but I don't see where Assange "stole" it. Blues, Dave What, exactly, is the point of this post? It was pretty obvious, wasn't it? He didn't steal any of the information published in wikileaks. My interpretation was that he was trying to draw a parallel to copyright infringement and arguments differentiating it from theft, which I think is asinine. Classification is not tantamount to a government copyright on the information, nor do the ramifications of the unauthorized sharing of either resemble one another. I honestly wasn't sure, so I asked. It's the correct conclusion that Assange never stole anything but a completely pear-shaped reasoning.

Information was shared with him and he shared it with other people, but as far as I know, the original possessors maintained access to it the entire time. So the information's value may have been reduced by virtue of increased supply, but I don't see where Assange "stole" it. Blues, Dave What, exactly, is the point of this post?

I interviewed several people over the course of last month and I can tell you this is true. I don't know what my applicants are studying in college but it doesn't apply in the real world. Unless a college student takes it upon themselves to educate themselves, what they are learning in college will be of no use upon graduation. One thing I will recommend to engineers out there: Even if you don't plan on being a software developer, you owe it to yourself to develop a working knowledge of C, matlab, vb, maybe pick an interpreted language like php/ruby/perl to get to know, and at least understand what's going on in an SQL database. Being the person who understands a system architecture and can write a graduate level paper showing why something should work is great, but also being able to use that knowledge to throw together a tool in C or perl in an hour or two to parse through captured data and explain what's going on when something isn't working is indistinguishable from magic to most people.

I don't know why anything takes as long as it does, but I'm always keen to apply Hanlon's Razor *. In any event, he has been arraigned so he does have charges to face, and apparently the trial is supposed to be getting under way in the next month or so. /edited to add: * I will admit, however, that there's a sad irrelevancy to Hanlon's Razor as despite the disparate prevalence of malice and stupidity, they are equally incurable.

Definitely have to agree with the ones related to communicating when/what you actually need. I'm lucky, at the moment, to work on a large team where virtually everyone understands this so even in true hurry-up cases you don't get "as soon as possible" you'll get, "I need it by ." What annoys me most is not any specific phrase or term but when someone dissociates an opinion or decision from the person who holds/made it with langauge like "management thinks that..." or "the project decided that..." as an appeal to authority. I'm not entirely sure why people do this, but I think some people are just adverse to going back to their bosses and saying, "Hey, you know that thing you decided and told me to tell everyone? Well someone brought up a really good point about why it's a bad idea and has an alternative they want to share with you."

I hope so. The US and the UK need to let Assange fade away into obscurity like the fart in the wind that he is. Something a lot of folks on this board, not necessarily you kelp, have had difficulty with is remembering that Bradley Manning and Julian Assange are not the same person, nor are their situations all that similar. Assange held a Q&A session about what he did and simply stroked his own ego and insulted anyone who opposed, he claimed to have redacted stuff he thought was dangerous but did a poor job at it, and later incompetently released the un-redacted versions and tried to throw someone else under the bus over it. But given all that I've still always said he shouldn't have weird unrelated allegations trumped up to get back at him for it. I just find it disgusting that people actually laud him for taking advantage of Manning and others when it's pretty clear his only goal is promoting himself.

If only there was an activity they showed interest in or a goal they cared about that would motivate them to put in the hard work it would take to beat their illness, a teachable moment presented itself where they could see what success looked like making it that much more realizable, and a person took advantage of that moment to explain the reality of the situation to them that things weren't hopeless but nor were they easy... If only...

There's a pretty obvious compromise in this instance: shoot him 46 times in the legs.

Sometimes it's important to draw attention to things people say under their breath and for some reason this is calling me. There are enough examples of actual inconsistency in politics and the news media, do we really need to invent our own by muttering, "or at very least were silent about them?" Getting hung-up on the circumstances over which the military decided to award someone medals is douchebaggery. So is touting decorations in the first place. In fact, there aren't enough hours in the day nor blood vessels in the forehead to express outrage over every instance and flavor of douchebaggery out there. If someone actively supports thing 'A' and previously or subsequently speaks out against 'A', fine, call them out. But let's all go easy on the calls for perpetual outrage.

This is probably not a model incident in favor of taking emergency response into one's own hands.

I like that word. I'm gonna have to remember that one. ...the rest of the post was crap though.

If this statement is intended to be a tautological instantiation of the law of identy, then bravo. If, on the other hand, you're asserting that all taxes are the same (i.e. levied from the same authority, with equivilant purpose, and equally justifiable) then you're simply incorrect.

I've made my point of view regarding inheritance taxes clear previously (and consistently) so I won't waste people's finger strength by making them scroll past it again. I do find it amusing, however, that people in this thread are defending the inheritance tax against detractors by basically saying that anyone who ever has to pay it is an idiot. Pardon my French, but then what the fuck is the point? "I demand more hoops! More hoops in the status quo!"

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2703#comic