Darkstar wrote:Mt Fan

Interesting POV you have regarding homogeneity of laws and such across state lines. I was just having a conversation with a friend of mine - I wondered allowed if the framers didn't allow the states some autonomy in the hopes of attracting citizens. More citizens == more Representatives.

I just think that had the framers of the Constitution known just how mobile this society would become, and how easily we would travel from state to state they might have put somewhat of a different spin on things to accommodate that reality. They did a great job given their reality. No way they could have conceived of what this country would become 200 years later.

I'd love to see the basic rules tweaked for modern times but there's no-one I'd trust to get it right and I wouldn't want to see the essence tampered with. At some point in the future it will likely become a necessity and it's a scary thought what we'll end up with. But some degree of standardization would benefit mobility and commerce IMO. In my opinion the mish-mash of all the various state and federal laws creates an impediment to freedom and commerce, and they don't enhance either.

I feel the same way about the tax codes. Simple, common-sense and uniform laws would seem to make the most sense to me. You shouldn't have to be a freaking lawyer or accountant to just function in society. If true freedom and liberty were the goal, there are probably better ways to achieve these things than the current variety of overlapping systems.

Don't get me started on the tax code ...

Too late!

On NPR yesterday they had the head of the IRS on for a really dumb segment. But even before the dumb segment, the IRS guy said something to the effect of "the letters I-R-S have a negative connotation for some people, but 80% of Americans have a positive experience with us every year when they get thousands of dollars back in their tax refund."

He must think that 80% of Americans are absolute idiots.

This jerkwad is the head of the IRS! If I were king, the IRS would be GONE.

VT'er wrote:Don't get me started on the tax code ...

Too late!

On NPR yesterday they had the head of the IRS on for a really dumb segment. But even before the dumb segment, the IRS guy said something to the effect of "the letters I-R-S have a negative connotation for some people, but 80% of Americans have a positive experience with us every year when they get thousands of dollars back in their tax refund."

He must think that 80% of Americans are absolute idiots.

This jerkwad is the head of the IRS! If I were king, the IRS would be GONE.

I'm willing to pay for public services and I'm willing to pay a lot if we were actually paying down debt instead of increasing it. I do believe there are a lot of things that can be done best by "We the People". I would say it should be run like a business but I see too many businesses that are run very poorly, same bad rap as government.

But The tax code should basically look like this;

You make X, you pay Y. ( Finished)

Then we can argue about what is and what is not worth paying for. But whatever debt we have incurred as a nation should be automatically paid for, with enough extra in there to make payments to pay down the balance on the principal over some agreed time frame (say 50 years). And these things should be locked in to law so different Congresses can't wiggle out of it.

Politicians should then be required to show how their management will affect people's taxes on a nation-wide and individual basis (I assume there's a computer program that could spit this out depending on what is entered, and the politician would have to stick with what he's proposed).

Then people vote for politician A or politician B making an informed decision based on what they're willing to pay for, and what services they want provided by government. I would change the whole political process and remove the big money completely. Politicians would state their planned budgets and expenditures, plus their intentions in the event of foreseeable contingencies.

The entire campaign would be this process only (developing and present programs and budgets, then the voters choose) and the rest of the current process would go in the trash. Political parties would be eliminated and individual politicians would run on their own individual ideas, proposed programs and budget, period.

That's roughly how it would go down if I were king. (Yes a lot of details would have to be worked out )

I would live in this kingdom

MtFan wrote:

VT'er wrote:Don't get me started on the tax code ...

Too late!

On NPR yesterday they had the head of the IRS on for a really dumb segment. But even before the dumb segment, the IRS guy said something to the effect of "the letters I-R-S have a negative connotation for some people, but 80% of Americans have a positive experience with us every year when they get thousands of dollars back in their tax refund."

He must think that 80% of Americans are absolute idiots.

This jerkwad is the head of the IRS! If I were king, the IRS would be GONE.

I'm willing to pay for public services and I'm willing to pay a lot if we were actually paying down debt instead of increasing it. I do believe there are a lot of things that can be done best by "We the People". I would say it should be run like a business but I see too many businesses that are run very poorly, same bad rap as government.

But The tax code should basically look like this;

You make X, you pay Y. ( Finished)

Then we can argue about what is and what is not worth paying for. But whatever debt we have incurred as a nation should be automatically paid for, with enough extra in there to make payments to pay down the balance on the principal over some agreed time frame (say 50 years). And these things should be locked in to law so different Congresses can't wiggle out of it.

Politicians should then be required to show how their management will affect people's taxes on a nation-wide and individual basis (I assume there's a computer program that could spit this out depending on what is entered, and the politician would have to stick with what he's proposed).

Then people vote for politician A or politician B making an informed decision based on what they're willing to pay for, and what services they want provided by government. I would change the whole political process and remove the big money completely. Politicians would state their planned budgets and expenditures, plus their intentions in the event of foreseeable contingencies.

The entire campaign would be this process only (developing and present programs and budgets, then the voters choose) and the rest of the current process would go in the trash. Political parties would be eliminated and individual politicians would run on their own individual ideas, proposed programs and budget, period.

That's roughly how it would go down if I were king. (Yes a lot of details would have to be worked out )

I do not believe government should interfere with beer selection. Separation of beer and state, dammit!

Keep the state away from my beer!

Some Himalayan glaciers actually growing, scientists find

Published April 17, 2012

FoxNews.com

A new study reveals that some Himalayan glaciers in the Karakoram mountain range may actually be getting bigger, according to a study published in the April issue of the journal Nature Geoscience -- a surprising quirk in the planet’s response to a changing climate.

The Karakoram range runs along the India-China-Pakistan border and is home to about half the volume of the Himalayan glaciers, including K2 -- the world's second highest peak. Using computer models to compare the ice volume in satellite photos from 1999 and 2008, the study showed that some glaciers are holding steady and even gaining ice mass.

The new finding appears to align with another startling report published Feb. 9 in the science journal Nature, which found that the Himalayas have barely melted at all in the past 10 years.

Yet the surprising growth of some glaciers isn’t commonplace, said study researcher Julie Gardelle, of CNRS-Université Grenoble, France. She told LiveScience that the larger trend was clear: all the other glaciers are melting.

"The rest of the glaciers in the Himalayas are mostly melting, in that they have negative mass balance; here we found that glaciers aren't," Gardelle told LiveScience. "This is an anomalous behavior."

The earlier study disagreed.

The Nature report offered the first comprehensive study of the world’s glaciers and ice caps, using GRACE -- a pair of orbiting satellites racing around the planet at an altitude of 300 miles.

That study concluded that the Himalayas have barely melted at all in the past 10 years.

"The GRACE results in this region really were a surprise," said University of Colorado at Boulder physics Prof. John Wahr, who led the study.

Glaciologist Jonathan Bamber (who was not part of the research team) cautioned that the Nature study doesn't alter his view that the climate is changing.

“This new study doesn't change our view of the risks and threats from climate change,” he said in an online chat at the Guardian. “What it does do is improve our knowledge of the recent behavior of one part of the climate system.”

Indeed, Wahr’s study clearly notes that lower-altitude glaciers and ice caps are melting, to the tune of about 150 billion tons of ice annually, which the study predicts could lead to an overall rise in sea levels. He concluded that the higher altitude and therefore colder Himalayan peaks may be temporarily impervious to factors causing melting.

"One possible explanation is that previous estimates were based on measurements taken primarily from some of the lower, more accessible glaciers in Asia and were extrapolated to infer the behavior of higher glaciers. But unlike the lower glaciers, many of the high glaciers would still be too cold to lose mass even in the presence of atmospheric warming," Wahr said.

Glaciers grow and shrink based on how much snow falls and the temperatures in the area, LiveScience said. Why the Karakoram range isn't melting is still a mystery. "For now we don't have any explanation," Gardelle said. "There's been a study reporting an increase in winter precipitation; this could maybe be a reason for the equilibrium, but that's just a guess."

The United Nations’ climate arm warned incorrectly in 2007 that the Himalayan glaciers would melt completely in 25 years, vanishing by the year 2035 due to the effects of climate change.
Rajendra Pachauri, head of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and director general of the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in New Dehli, India, ultimately issued a statement offering regret for what turned out to be a poorly vetted statement.

How are the glaciers doing in Glacier Park?

Tribe Fan in SC/Cali wrote:
Darn Darkstar, if I had known in advance you were so cerebral I might have found different haunts for us for our day and evening in San Francisco.

You're kidding on this one, right?

BTW - Flecktones Thursday night.

Let's just say I have diverse knowledge of things to do in San Francisco.....

Mt fan

I haven't been there yet this year but the two trips I was there last year they were still there. And ugly as ever.

Probably going through the same cycle they have went through numerous times during their duration.

VT'er wrote:Keep the state away from my beer!

I prefer imports these days. Purely a Guinness guy. How does that factor into this kingdom?

And back on the original subject of drinking and whoring....

I'm sure most have noted this recent report of the Secret Service guys and advance detail for President Obama's vacation scouting trip in Colombia.

I got a chuckle out of this related tidbit in the news today:


Sullivan said the 11 Secret Service agents and 10 military personnel under investigation were telling different stories about who the women were. Sullivan has dispatched more investigators to Colombia to interview the women, said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/ ... 7-19-28-14

In the Broadway show and movie 1776 there is a neat scene with Benjamin Franklin taking a snooze while endless debate goes on about the possibility of a "declaration of independence" from England. A messenger comes to the session to report that there are stories of prostitutes and alcohol being prevalent on the front lines with The Continental Army.

Ben Franklin is awakened and titillated by the news and announces he's off with others to get the equivalent of personal knowledge on the details of drinking and whoring.

Transitioning, I remember my day that President Kennedy was assassinated like it was five minutes ago.

I've been an avid consumer and student of the writings, details and theories of that event.

I've remembered today that it was widely documented that President Kennedy's motorcade Secret Service guys were present in large numbers at Jack Ruby's Carousel strip club in Dallas the night before our US President was assassinated.

I certainly have nothing against blowing off steam, and I certainly have nothing against some girls who might be "dancers." I lived with one for awhile around the inception of this board. She was a good girl.

I only diss our most recent Secret Service fubar on their bad judgment of scenery and timing. They could have really mucked things up with their escapades in a Banana Republic with our President's visit so near, and certainly exercised horrible US safety judgement.


I may not like or approve of President Barack Obama, but he's our damned son of a bitch and he should have supreme protection in the name of Our Country.

While Lennon read a book on Marx.....

Acoustic.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0Y_XRiJsCI

Q: What does Obama do when his dog gets stuck?
A: Grabs a toothpick.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/04/17/obama ... z1sUzbxsrn