So that's about one per year? Ummm... yeah so you're proving my point then? Do you realize how many bridges there are in this country? In all honestly if there was zero failures since 2000 I would say we're putting too much money into it. I would agree on Northern Europe and Holland, but I'm not saying better doesn't exist. I'm just saying compared to most of the first world it's pretty good based on what I've seen. Haven't been to the shit hole states like Mississippi so I'm sure it's a bit different there. On another note I'm a bit surprised Trump keeps climbing. I do understand the appeal of someone who's willing to actually say something instead of tip toeing around any potentially controversial topic, but still... how could so many vote for that clown? The two top candidates for republicans right now are Trump and Carson and that's just pathetic. Pick a candidate that's actually viable for fuck's sake. I consider myself an independent, but I'm not sure how much longer that will actually apply or if it even really does anymore. I know that's pushing the limits of this thread, but come on, it's Donald Trump. I still think he has no chance to win because while he is in line with hard core Republicans he's not in line with the majority of Americans on practically everything he talks about. Also, I maintain that once the pretender candidates in the Republican field drop out those votes will not be going to Trump. I think too that that is a big problem for the Republican party that's only going to get worse. Not nearly as many people vote in the primaries and the people that do tend be further left and further right. To win the Republican primaries you have to say and believe in a bunch of shit that is going to hurt you in the general election and alienate huge groups of voters. The party needs to start adapting and stop being stupid on non-issues (like gay marriage) or they're going to start losing more and more power over the next 20 years. Edit: Looking at that list a little more closely nearly all the bridges that failed in the United States were due to something crashing into them or unexpected severe weather. Again, it's not the problem that people, for whatever reason, like to pretend that it is. Made into an issue by the John Olivers of the world who base their careers off trying to make everything sound like impending doom.
So your argument started wth blithely questioning how often bridges fail, and then once you find out how often they do, you arbitrarily decide it's an acceptable number because it's greater than zero and smaller than some imaginary number that would be too high. Your argument is non-falsifiable, and there's really not much I can say at this point.
What? What are you even rambling about? It's a very small, infrequent number. That is my point. That is the totality of my point. Actually, there's more. The fact that most, more specifically nearly all of those failures were cause by things like shipping freights plowing into them and severe floods kind of makes my point that's it's a bullshit talking point. Before you come back with your smug nonsense go read what actually caused those collapses. I counted two in the last fifteen years that were actually from faulty infrastructure. Granted, I scanned it only as I'm not going to waste too much time on this. I can live with two in fifteen years. I can live with 5 in fifteen in years if it came to that. If you can't, there's probably all kinds of shit you'd like to dump billions into in a totally unrealistic fashion. So I'm arbitrarily deciding what's acceptable. Ok, is there a way to not arbitrarily decide what's acceptable? Yes, it is non-falsifiable. So is almost every political discussion. Is whether something is moral or not falsifiable? Is what people want to spend their money on falsifiable? I don't even know what you're trying to accuse me of. Edit: For reference on my 'arbitrary opinion', you know, the arbitrary kind of opinions... there are over 600,000 bridges in the United States. You do the math.
Y'all realize infrastructure includes things other then roads and bridges right? Like our outdated and vulnerable power grid, our telecommunications, sewers, water supplies, etc....
Never mind failures within that infrastructure that happen to make the news isn't the primary indicator. When you don't do preventative maintenance, shit will deteriorate, and it will eventually get to the point where it's not a matter of if it will fail, but when. A lot of infrastructure is at the point where it's declining, but still operational, and when it fails, it'll require replacement, not repair. Infrastructure also involves planning. Drive in LA or Seattle sometime and tell me infrastructure doesn't need work. Additional infrastructure to handle near term requirements are long-term projects, and a number of them are not in the planning stages. There's a reason Elon Musk has stepped in with his Hyperloop project (which has had amazing new progress this week: http://gizmodo.com/it-looks-like-weve-got-ourselves-a-good-old-fashioned-h-1725484968)
After the big bridge collapse last year in Seattle, this made the rounds: http://old.seattletimes.com/flatpages/local/structurally-deficient-bridges.html Infrastructure is not being maintained at a positive rate.
Yup. We had that little tiny earthquake here a few months ago and they had to shut down the major highway interchange here for hours while they inspected it before they declared "Meh. It's not going to fall down yet."
Here's my problem with all the doomsday stuff regarding infrastructure. Going back to bridges for a second according to some sources 20,000+ are at imminent risk of collapsing. 20,000+. Yeah. And yet it doesn't happen. But it totally will. Unless you give us more money. Right now. Yeah. Seriously. You'd think it would happen more than once or twice a decade with so many at risk. My problem is we don't have infinite money and I don't want to dump tons into minor problems. People have been doing the whole, "it's not happening yet, but man, oh man, any second it's all about to collapse." It's bullshit, and people/bogus studies have been projecting the implosion for a long time. Politicians play this crap up because 'yeah, sure whatever, I want to invest more in infrastructure.' It's a good talking point in an election, but ultimately an empty one. Internet service, as well as some other areas aren't an issue of allocating funds so much as they are how this country perceives markets. It's not an issue of 'how are we going to pay for and maintain this' so much as 'how are we going to regulate and provide this'. I put it under the economy sector, but I guess you could look at it either way The problem is convincing crazed voters a government system works better than their shitty overcharging local provider. Having it proven ad nauseum in other countries doesn't help sadly. This is the kind of situation where dumb asses point to 'investigation' articles on Europe that lump Moldova and Sweden in the same category. Aside from all this, I consider a lot of infrastructure a state and local problem like I do with education. Idiots want to not invest in it so they can save 1% on taxes? Fuck em, let em drown and reap the consequences. I lived in an area where they voted to pull more funding from schooling every chance they got. It is fucking their community over big time and then they blame everything on the oh so scary ever enveloping communism movement. Can we just let the south secede like they wanted?
For me the main issues are: the current political system is fucked up equality (the gay marriage thing et. al.) legalization/decriminalization of certain "drugs" like marijuana, or at least less law enforcement resources towards it separation of church and state. Not letting religion prevent you from making reasonable decisions as mentioned above. education the debt healthcare military immigration I'm always at a loss every election because I'm socially very liberal while being extremely republican regarding the economy. I hate the two-party system, though I'm not sure hate is a strong enough word. When your country makes you choose the less shitty of two candidates to vote for, instead of the one you actually like, you know they're doing something wrong. Vote in your local elections, people. Best way to make a difference.
Any thoughts on the Hillary email scandal? The whole "destroyed the server" thing sounds like bullshit. She was born in 1947, so I doubt she suddenly became an IT wizard. I do think the timing is meant to disrupt her campaign cycle. Now is the time she should be fundraising and solidifying her base, but instead she's responding to this. I also highly doubt a former first lady, secretary of state and senator is betraying state secrets in an email. My prediction is that this costs her dearly later on, Bernie Sanders gains steam because the Republican "whaarrrgarbl" machine is focused on Hillary. Bernie shockingly (sarcasm) speaks to the American public better than Trump & the stooge crew and the Republicans repeat something they should have learned in Iraq: don't remove someone from power when the next person in line is worse.
Clinton's situation is the same as Petraeus. Both held & passed classified information on unclassified non-government networks. The difference is the scale. As a former first lady, SecState, & senator, her electronic correspondence is a target for hackers, other governments, etc. Outside of a few kooks, nobody's said they think she's betraying state secrets or intentionally passing classified information to the Chinese. It's the fact she's handling the information in a way that's expressly forbidden because it is a dangerous practice. Her personal email server doesn't have the same type of security as the government's. Hell it could be better than the government's, but the government has zero oversight to even be aware of any attempted or successful intrusions. I'm no IT wizard either, but as a guy who works with classified information; if I'd done something similar my ass would already be sitting in jail. I do agree some rules should be applied differently due to her position as Secretary of State compared to me a worker bee analyst; people in high level positions couldn't effectively execute the duties of their positions if they weren't. However it speaks to her character that she has a 'those rules don't apply to me' attitude. One last thing. Even if it's determined none of the emails contained classified information, those emails sent in her official capacity as SecState are not her property. They're property of the US government.
I haven't followed the e-mail scandal all that closely but it sounds like a bunch of bullshit. If nothing critical got leaked then shut the fuck up about it already. Sure it was irresponsible but unless it actually compromised something really important I don't care. It reminds me about Bengazi. Yes it was a tragedy but it wasn't some catastrophic impeach everyone fuck up people made it out to be. No regime is immune to terrorism and all things considered very few Americans have died in the last 7 years from terrorist attacks. The same people who lost their shit over Bengazi were the same people who wouldn't blame Bush at all when 1000x Americans died on 9/11. Hmmm...
I really agree and think this country is in dire need of a viable third party. The problem is whenever a new political group gathers steam it's worse than before. I.e. the tea party and libertarians. We need a real third party, not a more extreme version of existing parties.
I work in that space and that's just it; it's not a bunch of bullshit. Think of it this way; what would you think of someone who handled gasoline carelessly? Say your neighbor stored large amounts of gas in non-identified or approved containers (say a large swimming pool), burned trash right next to it, dumped excess gas in the grass, etc. Would you not agree those are dangerous practices? He's never blown up and so far it hasn't affected anything critical; your house, yard, ground water, etc but I'm betting you'd care about the catastrophic potential. Handling classified information is the same thing.
No, it's not the same thing. The relevant part is what she put at risk. Nuclear launch codes? That's a problem. Tea times of executives or some other meaningless crap? That's not really a problem. Also, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to say that just because she accidentally exposed some innocuous things means she could have accidentally exposed anything. Yeah, misusing an e-mail isn't in the same universe as starting a fire next to hundreds of gallons of gasoline. It is worth investigating, but it's kind of ridiculous that since most people don't know what was exposed they just jump to these crazy worst case scenarios.
Please, tell me again how you are privy to the content of the emails she ran through her server, which makes you at all competent to make such assertions? The failure here is not in the content of the emails, it's the failure to adhere to a security protocol. That much has now been determined within a court of law, by people who have the facts. It should also be noted that the initial investigators determined that 4 out of 40 initial emails randomly sampled had content that was breaking that protocol.
That's what I'm saying though. I don't know. She made a mistake, but I'm not going to jump on the thrashing wagon until we see what was actually leaked. If it's 'stuff that shouldn't be leaked' but 'doesn't actually matter' I just don't think it's THAT big of a deal. To each his own though...
Really. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/25/u...inspector-general-intelligence-community.html Of note: So out of 40... that's 40... emails they randomly checked, they found 4 of them to be government secrets that were not supposed to be there. I can't help but think that out of the 30k that are there, there's going to be more than just the 4. What more do you need? And rather than assist with the investigation, she had her server wiped, and then proceeded with that gong show of a press conference where she wouldn't make a definitive statement as to whether she did or did not wipe her server... she's being evasive as hell because she doesn't want to come out and say "she didn't" for fear of incriminating herself later, or saying "she did" and incriminating herself now.
You do realize the word 'Secretary' in the title does not mean personal assistant? Here, let me do a little research for you: Executive Order 13526- Classified National Security Information: Section 1.1. Classification Standards. (a) Information may be originally classified under the terms of this order only if all of the following conditions are met: (1) an original classification authority is classifying the information; (2) the information is owned by, produced by or for, or is under the control of the United States Government; (3) the information falls within one or more of the categories of information listed in section 1.4 of this order; and (4) the original classification authority determines that the unauthorized disclosure of the information reasonably could be expected to result in damage to the national security, which includes defense against transnational terrorism, and the original classification authority is able to identify or describe the damage (b) If there is significant doubt about the need to classify information, it shall not be classified. This provision does not: (1) amplify or modify the substantive criteria or procedures for classification; or (2) create any substantive or procedural rights subject to judicial review. (c) Classified information shall not be declassified automatically as a result of any unauthorized disclosure of identical or similar information. (d) The unauthorized disclosure of foreign government information is presumed to cause damage to the national security. I highlighted key points. As SecState she was an original classification authority however she did not and does not own the information; the US Government owns the information. Specific guidelines in Section1.4 outline what must be classified and in the capacity of the office, she handled that type of information daily. If you think the only kind of information the US Secretary of State handles is 'tea times of executives or some other meaningless crap' you do not understand the duties of the office. If you think that's the only kind of information the US Secretary of State is expected to handle there's no point continuing.
Kampf has now been banned from replying to this thread for 7 days in the hopes he can get his head extricated from his ass in that time. EDIT: To be a little less flippant, the reason was the lack of critical thinking in responses. People can't just make wild claims as if they're fact... it's like arguing with an anti-vaxor, and does nothing to promote the discussion, it only derails things.