TomAiello

To be fair, their anti-gunner was pretty low rent, too. When she wanted the kid to go to college, I kept wondering if she had ever had any higher education. I mean, come one, she's got a stunning career as a "hip hop aerobics instructor." Facing facts, it would have been very hard for them to find people with more going on who had time to drop everything and live on camera for a month. Well, I guess they could have asked Kallend to do it during summer break, but do you really think that your average upper middle class college educated gun owner is going to have time to let the cameras into their house for a month? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

People are forgetting that, like Rush Limbaugh, this show is entertainment. It's meant to pull in viewers, not engage in serious political discourse. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

That argument can be made of any action we choose to take, from eating a hamburger to committing murder. It can, and in my opinion it should. Your observation in no way takes away from Ron's argument. Did you have a response to it? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Have all of your cameramen, packers and tandem masters incorporate, and file for their own carbon credits. Add some fraction of a carbon credit to the price of a ticket. You'll still do ok as a business, since the tandems will have some credits. It's the competitive skydivers trying to train (lots of jumps with no extra people donating the carbon credits) who will really get hosed. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Wow. Really? Any deposed leader? And wish them well? "Don't mind us--just making a social call on Pol Pot to wish him well. Going to see Enver Hoxha and Nicolai Ceuasescu next..." -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

It's irrelevant if anyone agrees or disagrees with his conclusions. The facts are that he is a bona fide expert, with a real viewpoint, grounded in real scientific research. You shouldn't exclude scientifically valid points of view from the debate because they are politically inconvenient. What is this, the middle ages? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Yeah. The whole "we've got to get this poor kid away from those guns so he can go to college" was pretty over the top. There was definitely some perpetuation of the "uneducated people own guns" stereotype. After her initial stereotyping of them as having a confederate flag out in front of their trailer, it would have been funny if the "gun people" had been someone like Dr. Bordson. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Wow! Was he a President? I probably missed a lot while sleeping. No. He was a candidate, and wanted to be sure he knew where he stood, legally, since he might become President, and had been born outside the USA. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

That was the premise of the article in the original post. That's why I worked from it. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Absolutely. It's a distraction from real issues. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

For the sake of consistency, did other Presidents show their birth certificates to the public? Did you see GWB birth certificate? John McCain did. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

If this is what the majority of the democratic party actually represents, then I think the democratic party has lost its way in a similar way to how the republican party has as I mentioned above. I see most of the republican party being just as socialist as the democratic party is, so labeling authoritarianism as a key feature of liberalism I think is false. I actually think it is. The fundamental core tenet that appears to unite the Democratic party is an abiding faith in the use of government power to "better" the world. The Republicans, while paying lip service to the idea of limited government, in actual practice usually also try to use government power to "better" the world. Obviously, they're working at cross purposes much of the time, because their ideas of "better" are a bit different. My problem is that they both (usually) want to use the power of government for their own ends, and get irate when the other party uses it for a different set of goals. I'd prefer that we reduce the power of government so that it couldn't be used by a political elite (of whichever stripe) to enforce their vision of "good" on the rest of us. The reason I'm more often "Republican" than "Democrat" (when in fact I am a libertarian) is that the Republicans occasionally act against the expansion of government power generally. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I realize you're probably being intentionally obtuse, but; A straight tax penalizes _all_ use, not just overuse. If you want to hit only _over_ use, you need to have an established level of average use, and then penalize usage above that point. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Yes. But what comes after that is enough to drive most classical liberals away. The fundamental divide is whether it is appropriate to use government power to force individuals to conform to your ideas of a "better world." -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Um, he's quoting from currently valid Supreme Court Precedent (Miller). -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

You can convert a gas tax into an "overuse" model by establishing a quota of untaxed gas for each person. Then you issue a national ID card that records each persons gasoline usage. You swipe it before you swipe your payment card at the pump, and then if you're over your quota you pay the overuse surcharge. No ID? No gas. While you're at it, you can link it all into a central database to monitor the locations of all citizens. Add in their background information, ethnic background, sexual orientation, firearms purchases, and more, and it's a great tool for improving our society. While you're at it, you could have it monitor their food intake and exercise, to prevent obesity, which will also reduce healthcare costs. And, of course, it would be your new insurance card, to access your federally provided health benefits. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Tax exemption isn't a right. Rights are things like freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, right of petition (I think there's a list somewhere floating around in Washington DC). Are there actual cases where a group of individuals can speak when each individual themself is barred from doing so? Are groups permitted free exercise of religion, while individuals are not? The military is not a group of individuals. It's an arm of the government. Government isn't a collection of individuals, either. It's a separate entity, independent unto itself. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Silly argument.....groups are sometimes given rights, obligations, or exemptions that do not filter through to the individual members of that group. Why (are rights given to groups)? Can you give me some examples, explaining why the individuals shouldn't or don't have the right, but the group does? And how do we justify a right adhering to a group of people, who taken one by one, do not possess it? -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Meet the new boss...same as the old boss. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

Yeah, but Orange County is pretty red, too. Without some kind of numbers, it's all just speculation. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

You don't happen to have some data about tax revenue and government spending by county, do you? I bet if you cross reference by county the story looks a bit different. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

There's a difference between hurting someone intentionally and having an accident. Accidents will happen, and they will hurt people--that's just the nature of life. If your accident hurts someone, then you are responsible for making it right. That doesn't mean that you should never do anything that might result in an accident. If you did that you'd never do anything at all. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

You forgot the part where the taxpayers back home get shafted with the bill for the whole thing, and the profits go into the pockets of whoever bought the right politician. It'd be so much more honest if we just voted to give the taxpayers money directly to the big corporations who fund the political campaigns, wouldn't it? Oh, wait, that's exactly what we're doing... -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

I think the fundamental disconnect here is the manager's failures. If he fails to motivate his employees and keep them reasonably happy, then he's doing a bad job. Someone needs to take him to task for that. If he's the owner of a small business, then it's the market that will do it. He'll be less successful, and make less money, than a competitor who does a good job managing his people. If he's at a larger enterprise, the problem is that his manager is failing to take him to task--and in so doing the higher level manager is doing a bad job, too. Get enough of that, and your whole enterprise has issues. The major problem comes when the government tries to shield the company from having to face the consequences of it's poor management because it's "too big to fail" or whatever. The solution there is to get the government out of the way, and let the bad managers/owners/businesses actually fail. Bottom line: if you're a manager and everyone who works for you is unmotivated and unhappy, you're doing a piss poor job, and you probably need to be fired. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com

If you damaged something, then the problem is that you damaged it. You're responsible for the damage you did to it, and ought to make it right to the owner of the building. Personally, I carry insurance that would cover this situation up to a million dollars. Hopefully I won't break more than a million bucks in windows. In the cases you're talking about, I'm pretty sure that the BASE event was carrying liability insurance that paid for the damage. The issue there is the damage (to someone else's property). Not the BASE jumping. The jump itself hurts no one. Once you start damaging other people's stuff (whether by BASE jumping or anything else), then it's on you to make it right for them. Emotionally, you mean? Or are you envisioning some kind of physical damage? Honestly, you're going to hurt your loved ones when you die, however you do it. The manner of it happening is up to you to determine. Hopefully you've talked with your family about it in advance. But regardless, you're an adult, and you make your own choices. If your death is painful for your family and friends (which I'd expect it will be), that's the price of freedom. I'd much rather my family be free and happy than confined in a padded room somewhere just to make sure their misfortunes didn't hurt me. If the appearance is effecting the job, then it's a performance issue. If you are still performing well (for example, despite your facial piercings, lots of old ladies are buying annuities from you), then a smart manager wouldn't mess with success. I'll admit that the way you keep pulling your "hypotheticals" from my life has me wondering who you are. I mean, let's just say, hypothetically, that you get hurt on a BASE jump and spend months in the hospital and need accomodations at work for a while on your return. Or, hypothetically, what if you make a BASE jump and damage some property, and it needs to be paid for? Hypothetically, what do you do if your employee finishes their work early? Do you cover for them and send them home? I'm guessing that the fact you're having this conversation with me, and I'm probably the only poster here who's actually been in all those situations, is not a coincidence. -- Tom Aiello Tom@SnakeRiverBASE.com SnakeRiverBASE.com