America - The Official Thread

[arora]

It is an irrelevant number to begin with.

We have many social issues to overcome no doubt, disarming us is not going to change that one bit. It will take away our ability to defend ourselves however and send us backwards down the rat hole.

 

[Mike Rotch]

I see those two sub-humans in Steubenville were found guilty. It's good to see some sort of justice find them.

 

[Zenith]

i see those two sub-humans in steubenville were found guilty. It's good to see some sort of justice find them.

+1

 

[Nicksfix]

I see those two sub-humans in Steubenville were found guilty. It's good to see some sort of justice find them.

I've been keeping an eye on this one since the onset. I too am glad to see some justice prevail.

 

[Liquid]

Only just read up on that story. Outrageous.

I share the sentiments already expressed; some form of justice has prevailed.

 

[Zenith]

I saw this story on CNN today. It reminded me why I don't watch CNN.



This verdict ruined their promising lives? No, the part where they chose to rape an unconscious minor is what ruined their lives.

On the subject of Obama, I saw this online today as well...

Momentum? Act now? What does he mean by momentum? Would showing the pictures of the dead children like DiFi wanted add to this momentum?

Sorry if this seems a bit tin foil hat, but the Democrats have been talking about how they've been able to capitalize from the public's fear and hastily pass gun control legislation (often without proofreading, New York...) like it's a good thing.

 

[e30 freek]

I saw this story on CNN today. It reminded me why I don't watch CNN.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvUdyNko8LQ">YouTube Link</a>

This verdict ruined their promising lives? No, the part where they chose to rape an unconscious minor is what ruined their lives.

On the subject of Obama, I saw this online today as well...

Momentum? Act now? What does he mean by momentum? Would showing the pictures of the dead children like DiFi wanted add to this momentum?

Sorry if this seems a bit tin foil hat, but the Democrats have been talking about how they've been able to capitalize from the public's fear and hastily pass gun control legislation (often without proofreading, New York...) like it's a good thing.

Just watched that and it really took the p*** I really hope the girl and her family get real justice and CNN are a bunch of dirty pigs

 

[Carbonox]

These messed up rapes are definitely a problem that needs to be cut.

 

[Northstar]

This verdict ruined their promising lives? No, the part where they chose to rape an unconscious minor is what ruined their lives.

Plus, they were charged as minors so they'll be out by 21 at the latest(about 5 years max). That's one thing I hate about our system, imo if you are old enough to rape someone you are an adult and should be charged as such.

 

[Tesla]

What about a 5 year old boy or girl who can't see the difference between making another feel uncomfortable and just playing around?

 

[Northstar]

What about a 5 year old boy or girl who can't see the difference between making another feel uncomfortable and just playing around?

That's obviously a different situation. Perhaps I should word it better, this being the opinions forum and all.

If a person is able to make a decision to forcefully entering another individual while knowing they are violating their rights they should be tried as an adult.

 

[FoolKiller]

If a person is able to make a decision to forcefully entering another individual while knowing they are violating their rights they should be tried as an adult.

This is always an iffy subject. Any viewing of a Spring Break party will show that maturity and thought are not playing a role in judgement. Basically, if an adult convinced one of these boys into doing some weird sexual crap would we call it statutory rape or something along those lines? The law says a minor with hormonal changes creating confusion in their head cannot be considered giving consent. The opposite side of that coin is a minor with hormonal changes cannot be considered as making fully logical decisions. They should definitely face consequences, but decades of imprisonment for a dumb kid achieves nothing.

Of course this makes it hard to distinguish monster from dumb kid. Occasionally it is obvious and occasionally we get it wrong. The question becomes whether we weight the system to err on the side of stopping monsters or not locking away dumb kids for life, or do we just do it on a case by case basis?

In this particular case it would be hard to prove they are monsters because they are at an age where they want to screw anything. A passed out girl is a temptation that may put them in a frame of mind that is not using logic. There is a lot that could lead to these boys not thinking clearly about what they were doing. None of it makes them innocent, but it does just make them dumb kids.

And don't worry, this will forever stick with them. People will know who they are, and depending on where they live, they may have to still register as sex offenders.

 

[Carbonox]

Such tough guys in their video, such softy crybabies in the court.

 

[DK]

I read about the Steubenville story a few months ago on some minor blog, and the impunity which these rapists acted with reminded me of clerical abuse within my own country.

 

[Joel]

In this particular case it would be hard to prove they are monsters because they are at an age where they want to screw anything. A passed out girl is a temptation that may put them in a frame of mind that is not using logic. There is a lot that could lead to these boys not thinking clearly about what they were doing. None of it makes them innocent, but it does just make them dumb kids.

And don't worry, this will forever stick with them. People will know who they are, and depending on where they live, they may have to still register as sex offenders.

I agree here. I don't think they deserve to be locked up for life, but I think it's definitely reasonable that they're registered sex offenders. They're dumb kids and not monsters as you say, but we can't absolve people of responsibility for their actions. CNN's report here was more disgusting to me than the actual crime, "star football players", as if that's supposed to make rape just go away. Insanity.

 

[Omnis]

Had a laugh at this. Give the middle east to the Jews:

 

[Nicksfix]

Another teen trouble ending. This kid needs taken out back and .....

What he wore, and his actions he played out in the courtroom are disturbing, to say the least.

Wearing a T-shirt with "killer" scrawled across it, a teenager cursed and gestured obscenely

and

at one point, he swiveled around in his chair toward the gallery where his own family members and those of the slain teenagers were sitting and spoke suddenly, surprising even his lawyer.

"The hand that pulled the trigger that killed your sons now masturbates to the memory," he said, then cursed at and raised his middle finger toward the victims' relatives.

sick individual

Full article

 

[FoolKiller]

While we are distracted by gun talk Congress is trying to slide one past us.
http://m.cnet.com/news/internet-tax-proposal-up-for-a-vote-in-senate-this-week/57575489

Internet tax supporters, with backing from Walmart, Macy's, and Best Buy, are hoping a Senate vote will give them enough political leverage to require Americans to pay sales tax when shopping online.

Internet tax supporters are hoping that a vote in the U.S. Senate as early as today will finally give them enough political leverage to require Americans to pay sales taxes when shopping online.

Sens. Mike Enzi (R-Wy.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) are expected to offer an amendment to a Democratic budget resolution this week that, by allowing states to "collect taxes on remote sales," is intended to usher in the first national Internet sales tax.

"We're working overtime in pushing this, talking to our members, activating our grassroots," says Stephen Schatz, a spokesman for the National Retail Federation. The group's board members include OfficeMax, Macy's, the Container Store, and Saks, which argue it's only fair to force Americans to pay sales taxes when buying from online retailers.

The justification for the proposal reprises arguments that state tax collectors have made for at least a decade: online retailers that don't always collect taxes are unreasonably depriving state governments of revenue and enjoy an unfair competitive advantage over big box retailers that do collect taxes. On the other hand, there are close to 10,000 jurisdictions that can levy taxes, each with its own rules and ability to conduct audits, and complying with all of those as a small retailer is not a trivial task.

Taxpayer advocates say an endorsement of a multi-billion dollar tax hike on Americans shouldn't be snuck into an unrelated budget bill (PDF) that's expected to be voted on before senators leave for an Easter recess. The National Taxpayers Union set up a petition to Congress this week calling the amendment "really just a way to unleash state tax collectors on the Internet," and 15 conservative groups sent a letter last week to members of Congress saying an Internet tax law is "is bad news for conservative principles and the cause of limited government."

They're joined by by eBay, an association of small Internet sellers called W R HERE, and NetChoice, which includes Facebook, Yahoo, LivingSocial, and AOL as members.

The proposed amendment "does nothing to address what the Supreme Court says was an unreasonable burden on interstate commerce," says Steve DelBianco, executive director of NetChoice. "It's an unprecedented expansion of state sales tax authority."

Enzi and Durbin sponsored the separate Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013 (S.336), introduced last month, which has 25 other Senate supporters and would authorize state governments to collect taxes from remote sellers with more than $1 million in gross receipts.

One thing you will notice is that all the people fighting are big retailers. I've heard members of Congress claim that this will protect small businesses, but in a world where small businesses sometimes do half or more of their sales online it will hurt them. Can Amazon develop a system without much pain? Yes? Can Boggy Creek Fishing Lures? No. And if you are hoping to start an online storefront to sell your new widget you better be ready to know the tax law in every US state and territory.

Big businesses aren't supporting this to be fair and Congress isn't up in arms over fractions of state budgets. No, this creates a new barrier of entry against potential future competitors to the big guys who fund campaigns. These guys hate losing marketshare to little guys all over the country. I know Walmart would like to hinder the online low-sodium store that I spend roughly $50 a month at.


Speaking of low-sodium, the first official attack against Big Salt has been launched.
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/health/2013/03/21/1-in-10-u-s-deaths-blamed-on-salt/

On the heels of a study linking sugary drinks to 25,000 U.S. deaths a year, new research suggests salty food is even more dangerous.

The new study, by the same Harvard research team, linked excessive salt consumption to nearly 2.3 million cardiovascular deaths worldwide in 2010. One in 10 Americans dies from eating too much salt, the researchers found.

“The burden of sodium is much higher than the burden of sugar-sweetened beverages,” said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, an epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health and author of both the salt and sugary drink studies. “That’s because sugar-sweetened beverages are just one type of food that people can avoid, whereas sodium is in everything.”

Mozaffarian and colleagues used data from 247 surveys on sodium intake and 107 clinical trials that measured how salt affects blood pressure, and how blood pressure contributes to cardiovascular disease like heart attacks and stroke.
“From that we could determine the health effects of sodium,” he said, adding that one out of three deaths due to excessive sodium occurred before age 70. “It’s really affecting younger adults, not just the elderly.”

The study, presented today at the American Heart Association’s annual meeting in New Orleans, adds to mounting evidence that packaged and processed foods containing high levels of salt for flavor and shelf life can take a heavy toll on cardiovascular health.

“It’s really amazing how pervasive it is,” Mozaffarian said of salt. “For the average person, it’s very hard to avoid salt – you have to be incredibly motivated, incredibly educated, have access to a range of foods and do all the cooking yourself.”

But not everything is easy to whip up at home, Mozaffarian added. Bread and cheese are the top two sources of sodium in the U.S.
“It’s everywhere,” he said.

For the study, the researchers set the ideal level of salt consumption at 1,000 milligrams per day – less than half of the upper limit recommended by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and less than a third of the average American intake.

The Salt Institute took issue with the unrealistic threshold.
“This misleading study did not measure any actual cardiovascular deaths related to salt intake, since, by the authors’ own admission, no country anywhere in the world consumes the low levels of salt they recommend,” Morton Satin, vice president of science and research for the Virginia-based institute said in a statement.

Satin also stressed that Mozaffarian’s research is yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal, and said it “reveals an agenda far more rooted in sensationalist politics than in science.”

“The Salt Institute does not consider this misleading modeling exercise helpful in furthering our knowledge of the role of salt on our health,” Satin said. “On the contrary, it is disingenuous and disrespectful of consumers.”
Mozaffarian said he plans to submit the study for publication later this year, and stressed that politics has nothing to do with it.

“We have no vested interest in what the research shows,” he said. “This is not sensational. The point is to objectively look at the impact of salt using the best possible science, and that’s what we have done.”

Mozaffarian said he hopes the study will impel policy makers to set sodium limits in prepared foods and make it easier for Americans to lower their salt intake. In the meantime, however, some smart shopping can help.

First, I highlighted two statements that I found important from the guy who headed up the research. It is not about politics, but he hopes it alters policy.

The other thing that gets me is how quickly this guy and his team can pump out these studies on controversial topics that just happen to be discussed by policymakers. How lucky can you get to be putting out this kind of research just as people like Bloomberg are considering regulating the very topic you are studying? Wait a tick, does Bloomberg donate to Harvard? <Googley moogly> Well, look at that. He is an alum of Harvard and:

In 1996, Bloomberg endowed the William Henry Bloomberg Professorship at Harvard with a $3 million gift

Now, I don't like to point out that there are reasons to suspect this study in this way, but its hard not to when the study itself places unreasonable constraints on where they consider healthy sodium levels. They make their measurement at 1,000 milligrams. That is lower than the strictest suggestions. I'm in heart failure and on a doctor-ordered low sodium diet, of 1,500-2,000 milligrams a day. To count (and let's be honest, all this guy did was count) every cardiovascular event to kill a person with a diet over 1,000 milligrams of sodium a day is to count nearly every cardiovascular death there is. This is actually worse than the anti-smoking crowd's inflated data.

This isn't science. This is a hit piece.


But going back to my heart failure, I ran across this opinion piece.
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/a...would-help-to-save-lives-end-violence/248114/

Last month, New Yorker Levy Izhak Rosenbaum pled guilty in federal court to the crime of facilitating illegal kidney transplants. It has been deemed the first proven case of black market organ trafficking in the United States. His lawyers argue that his lawbreaking was benevolent: "The transplants were successful and the donors and recipients are now leading full and healthy lives."

Indeed, why are organ sales illegal? Donors of blood, semen, and eggs, and volunteers for medical trials, are often compensated. Why not apply the same principle to organs?

The very idea of legalization might sound gruesome to most people, but it shouldn't, especially since research shows it would save lives. In the United States, where the 1984 National Organ Transplantation Act prohibits compensation for organ donating, there are only about 20,000 kidneys every year for the approximately 80,000 patients on the waiting list. In 2008, nearly 5,000 died waiting.

A global perspective shows how big the problem is. "Millions of people suffer from kidney disease, but in 2007 there were just 64,606 kidney-transplant operations in the entire world," according to George Mason University professor and Independent Institute research director Alexander Tabarrok, writing in the Wall Street Journal.

Almost every other country has prohibitions like America's. In Iran, however, selling one's kidney for profit is legal. There are no patients anguishing on the waiting list. The Iranians have solved their kidney shortage by legalizing sales.

Many will protest that an organ market will lead to exploitation and unfair advantages for the rich and powerful. But these are the characteristics of the current illicit organ trade. Moreover, as with drug prohibition today and alcohol prohibition in the 1920s, pushing a market underground is the way to make it rife with violence and criminality.

In Japan, for the right price, you can buy livers and kidneys harvested from executed Chinese prisoners. Three years ago in India, police broke up an organ ring that had taken as many as 500 kidneys from poor laborers. The World Health Organization estimates that the black market accounts for 20 percent of kidney transplants worldwide. Everywhere from Latin America to the former Soviet Republics, from the Philippines to South Africa, a huge network has emerged typified by threats, coercion, intimidation, extortion, and shoddy surgeries.

Although not every black market transaction is exploitative -- demonstrating that organ sales, in and of themselves, are not the problem -- the most unsavory parts of the trade can be attributed to the fact that it is illegal. Witnessing the horror stories, many are calling on governments to crack down even more severely. Unfortunately, prohibition drives up black-market profits, turns the market over to organized crime, and isolates those harmed in the trade from the normal routes of recourse.

Several years ago, transplant surgeon Nadley Hakim at St. Mary's Hospital in London pointed out that "this trade is going on anyway, why not have a controlled trade where if someone wants to donate a kidney for a particular price, that would be acceptable? If it is done safely, the donor will not suffer."

Bringing the market into the open is the best way to ensure the trade's appropriate activity. Since the stakes would be very high, market forces and social pressure would ensure that people are not intimidated or defrauded. In the United States, attitudes are not so casual as to allow gross degeneracy. Enabling a process by which consenting people engage in open transactions would mitigate the exploitation of innocent citizens and underhanded dealing by those seeking to skirt the law.

The most fundamental case for legalizing organ sales -- an appeal to civil liberty -- has proven highly controversial. Liberals like to say, "my body, my choice," and conservatives claim to favor free markets, but true self-ownership would include the right to sell one's body parts, and genuine free enterprise would imply a market in human organs. In any event, studies show that this has become a matter of life and death.

Perhaps the key to progress is more widespread exposure to the facts. In 2008, six experts took on this issue is an Oxford-style debate hosted by National Public Radio. By the end, those in the audience who favored allowing the market climbed from 44 to 60 percent.

Yet, the organ trade continues to operate in the shadows and questionable activities occur in the medical establishment under the color of law. Even today, doctors sometimes legally harvest organ tissue from dead patients without consent. Meanwhile, thousands are perishing and even more are suffering while we wait for the system to change.

The truly decent route would be to allow people to withhold or give their organs freely, especially upon death, even if in exchange for money. Thousands of lives would be saved. Once again, humanitarianism is best served by the respect for civil liberty, and yet we are deprived both, with horribly unfortunate consequences, just to maintain the pretense of state-enforced propriety.

I completely agree with this article. I will try to address every possible objection.

First is this notion that it will disenfranchise the poor. Currently, people who are financially unable to maintain the post-transplant treatment are denied a transplant. There aren't enough to go around, so cases that have a high probability of failure are denied. And then we are not talking about a car. When an organ becomes available it isn't as if a car rolled on to the Jackson-Barrett auction block. That organ might work for two or three people. Organ matching is a tricky procedure. TV and movies make it seem as if it is just a case of matching blood types, but there are tissue types, body size, antibody counts, and even properly matching all the connections in cases where the recipient has a pre-existing condition. I had a map of my heart made with a CT scan because I will need extra pulmonary artery tissue from my donor. The black market scenario we have now is far more likely to kill people due to a failed transplant than a legal market. I'm sure we would occasionally hear about a last minute bid but it will probably be less often than the stories of last minute Medicare denials that not only risk the recipient's life but cause the organs to be lost.

But if a bidding market still seems uncomfortable I have a middle ground proposal. Make it a flat rate paid out by the hospital and covered by the patient/insurance. Post-mortem donations could be like $5,000 for every viable major organ. This would greatly benefit families where life insurance isn't available. And live donors could be like $10,000 an organ. Basically upgrade how we do it for blood and semen to a fitting price.

If nothing else, I am a guy facing a heart transplant with very little money. I do OK, but I'm not rich. But if there is an incentive for people to be more willing to donate I could end this waiting. If I told my family and friends that I need $10,000 or whatever I know it would come in over time.

And in the end, is it unreasonable to compensate someone for making a life-saving decision?

 

[DK]

While we are distracted by gun talk Congress is trying to slide one past us.
http://m.cnet.com/news/internet-tax-proposal-up-for-a-vote-in-senate-this-week/57575489

It seems the only time when the Democrats and Republicans will work together is to screw over the Internet.

 

[arora]

Big businesses aren't supporting this to be fair and Congress isn't up in arms over fractions of state budgets. No, this creates a new barrier of entry against potential future competitors to the big guys who fund campaigns.

Man, remember the days I used to bitch at things like this with vigor? lol

That really takes the piss 👎

 

[prisonermonkeys]

Amanda Knox has been ordered to stand trial again over the murder of Meredith Kercher:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-03-26/knox-to-face-retrial-over-murder-allegations/4595982

To the surprise of no-one, the United States is unlikely to extradite her.

 

[BobK]

That Italian prosecutor is in for another round of embarrassment.

 

[Slash]

Oh. My. God. LET IT GO ALREADY.

 

[prisonermonkeys]

That Italian prosecutor is in for another round of embarrassment.

I suggest you read The Monster of Florence, by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi. It follows the two of them as they try and reconstruct the "Monster of Florence" serial killings from the 1970s and 1980s in the hopes of trying to solve the case. They come up with a very plausible idea as to what happened, but they run afoul of Giuliano Mignini - the prosecutor who would go on to try Amanda Knox - who has his own ideas about the nature of the crime, and resorts to some pretty extreme measures to silence them. I'll spoilerise parts of this in case you want to read the book for yourself; it's quite good.

Preston and Spezi come up with this idea:

Spoiler

The gun used by the Monster of Florence could be traced back to a double murder in 1968 that was carried out by a group of Sardinians and a local farmer; the victims were the farmer's wife and the man she was seeing. The farmer confessed to the crime, and claimed he threw the gun away, but the police never found it. Preston and Spezi suggest that one of the Sardinians retreived the gun so that they couldn't be convicted of the crime. That man avoided the police at every opportunity, but later filed a report of a break-and-enter, claiming that nothing had been taken, but accusing his own son of the crime. The writers believe that he did it to distance himself from the gun if it was ever used again, and come to the conclusion that the Sardinian's son stole the gun to carry out the murders.

Mignini, on the other hand suggests this:

Spoiler

That the murders were carried out by a group of "picknicking friends" at the behest of several prominent and powerful members of Italian society, with the objective of acquiring body parts for use in ceremonies worshipping the devil. He later expands on this theory to include the unexplained death of a doctor on a lake several years beforehand, arguing that he was a part of this cult and was murdered because couldn't live with the knowledge of the cult. Then, though a complicated body swap, the police are fooled into believing that he died of natural causes, and in a double body-swap, the body is returned to its coffin so that it is present when exhumed.

And as if just to prove how ridiculous the idea is, all of this culminates in a police raid on a Halloween party at a retirement home, in the belief that it is a cult ceremony.

Preston and Spezi plan to publish a book on the Monster killings at around the same time Mignini does.

Spoiler

But they make the mistake of publicly airing details of the case that would prove Mignini's theory wrong before they have a chance to publish it. Mignini arrests Spezi (Preston escapes the country), and puts him in jail without charge, using laws that not even terrorists and mafia bosses are subjected to in order to justify it. He then leaks details of the "case" to the press (most of which is speculation built on the ramblings of a conspiracy theorist) to discredit Spezi in the hopes of shooting down his publication so that he won't lose face when his own book is published and is proven to be wrong.

Preston includes details of the Kercher case in an epilogue. He expresses bewilderment that Mignini kept his job after the farce he conducts, much less the way he gets the Knox case. Predictably, he handles it in much the same way as he did the Monster case: full of sensationalised speculation and ignoring key details that dozens of witnesses could corroborate.

 

[kikie]

Do you get finger printed every time you land in the US?

 

[FoolKiller]

Do you get finger printed every time you land in the US?

Do you mean when entering the country or just flying within the borders? I've never know it to happen on domestic flights but don't know anyone flying internationally in recent years.

 

[Joel]

Well I'll be flying to Florida in a month so I'll let you know.

EDIT: Actually we might be flying out of Buffalo. It's about the same driving distance to go to Toronto or Buffalo, so we usually go to US destinations though Buffalo to save money.

 

[kikie]

Do you mean when entering the country or just flying within the borders? I've never know it to happen on domestic flights but don't know anyone flying internationally in recent years.

Entering the country as a foreign tourist.

 

[Keef]

Entering the country as a foreign tourist.

I don't see why you'd need anything more than a passport.

 

[kikie]

That's what I have been told. Every foreigner entering the US (airport) get fingerprinted.