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[jammaster82]

... i mean its taking away our freedoms by the minute...

http://www.free-press-release.com/news/200905/1241690624.html

i remember when i forgot to pay my auto insurance and
was mailed a suspension and fine letter automatically i
began to stir up this grief over the loss of freedoms.

remember before cell phones when you could just be
'out' and you had a good window of time to work with..

now you have to be accountable to an instant.

i mean like the way call waiting took away being able
to just take the frikkin copper off the hook and be
busy.


i mean in a small town where everybody had a primer gray camaro, i used
to be able to outrun the radio and take the emergency lane out of traffic on
the interstate take a few turns, dark out, slip behind the house and crack open
a beer and listen to the sirens ...

now theyve got every mile streaming live on the internet and
an army of tattletales with camera phones...

grrrr... whats next... dope sniffing robots?
xray vision of the insides of our homes?
i mean the cooler the technology gets the easier it becomes
to completely strip us of our freedom..

they forced that one kid  to have chemo so their power
now extends into what kind of health care i need and/or are
willing to accept? are they going to to have their
 fingers in my prostate by government order?!?

 I MEAN BUY ME A F@cKin' DRINK FIRST TELL ME
 MY BUTT ISNT BIG AND STUFF

where does this all stop, logans run, forced euthanasia?

I never gave a shit about all the kids in asia anyway.

[vsloathe]

they forced that one kid  to have chemo so their power
now extends into what kind of health care i need and/or are
willing to accept? are they going to to have their
fingers in my prostate by government order?!?

Let's not be sensationalist. No one forced anyone to do anything, the state stopped a couple of nutjobs from abusing their child by refusing him proper medical care.

[perkiset]

Pandora's box.

You don't get one without the other, and once you've started down the path it's impossible to go back. You're not going to be able to have your mobile tech/love nest with Cantenna and other people's wifi without the government wanting to do the same. Unfortunately screaming at the wind.

And I agree with VS: we as a society have an obligation to help people stuck in their religious fervor understand that care is a good thing. If we did not help that child we and the mother would be passively murdering him.

[vsloathe]

I don't want my meaning confused either: I think that if you're an adult capable of making your own decisions, and you want to forego medical care for religious reasons, have a ball!

[perkiset]

but there's the rub... an ADULT capable of making decisions. She was making he decisions for the child and was an idiot.

Cripes, you need a license to catch a fish, but any ignorant buttwad can make a baby.

[jammaster82]

Let's not be sensationalist. No one forced anyone to do anything, the state stopped a couple of nutjobs from abusing their child by refusing him proper medical care.

respectfully i have to disagree here, sir.  injecting poison is proper medical care?

Not in my opinion.  I just want everyone to have the right reserved for them to be able to do what they will with their own health care based on what they believe.. If im not too far off on a rant this morning, I do believe this line was crossed and we fought a war with England over freedom of religion (...or was it rights to the tobacco? lol)

I guess that prostate exam from the new health care system will have u.s.d.a. grade a certified organic leeches that will suck the adhd right out of me...

I was under the impression that the constitution provided me with certain inalienable rights that protected the govt from being able to make decisions about what goes in and out of my body and what happens to it.  It's my body, and if it's my kid, it's my decision, not the governments about what we would do.

Somewhere along the line i feel like that whole idea has gotten completely lost.

Whats next... standing in line for bread and mandatory military service?

zap me if im too far off the radar here but DAMN! WTF IS HAPPENING HERE!?!?!

:fumbles for somas to stave off the brave new world:

[vsloathe]

You're an adult.

You miss the point.

[jammaster82]

You're an adult.

side note: im an adult, technically! mentally im six years old laying on my stomach with the BIG BOWL of cocoa crispies soaking in the rest  of all the milk in the house, watching tranzor z and playing indy 500 on my atari 2600.

You miss the point.

I think i may have your point, i just went off on a tangent about
how the line has been crossed... and the line has been blurred and
will continue to be blurred until the govt does have control over
adults as well... My point is that now,  is this incident proof the govt
has control over what non adults do or dont do to their bodies and not
the parents/legal guardians?

[vsloathe]

No. I call your line very clearly defined in the real world. We wouldn't allow someone to beat his child to death and just walk away. In the same way, we don't allow people to refuse their children life-saving treatment. They're the same end: preventing child abuse.

[perkiset]

Have to agree with VS here JM - doing nothing for the child is actually passive murder, since we are absolutely certain of the outcome if we do nothing. Yes, Chemo is poison and essentially, the best minds in our medical system have determined that this particular poison kills cancer cells more quickly than normal cells, so has a reasonable rate of success.

You are listening to too much horse crap if you think we're on the path to more government control, and this extends to health care. When the morons on the right say that there will be more government control of your healthcare and you won't be in a position to make a decision anymore, you neglect the fact that ATM your healthcare decisions are being made by the for-profit insurance industry and are being modified by the for-profit legal system. This is what the right is protecting, not your healthcare, patient rights or relationship with your doctor.

In fact, the left has been the group of "Stay off my body and out of my home" where the right has turned to freedom for corporations and restrictions on what you can do, think and say. It's utterly Orwellian in the lie of it, and sickens me.

[nop_90]

Basically you all are failing to miss the point (ok rest day lazy so posting lots )

Real issue is that majority of voters are not qualified to vote.
In the past every country had some sort of poll tax.
Origionally in britain for example you had to earn at least 2 pounds per year to vote.
Generally speaking income is directly proportional to education/intelligence.
So it had the effect only intelligent people could vote.

In 1936 majority of europe supported hitler. (A fact that modern history likes to hide).
It was estimated that even in great britain 30% of people supported hitler.
My father was in czechoslovakia before/during and after the german occupation.
Fact is that when hitler invaded a many people of these places supported him.
He catered to the masses.
Simple solutions, can't get a job, jews fault.
An artifical inflated economy based on massive military spending.
Who cares about rights, just as long as there are lots of consumer goods.
Shoving jews in the oven, who cares, jews are bad people good riddance.
The people who opposed hitler's gain in power the educated class.
Then when people started being esterminated, well it was too late.

2 elections ago who did perks vote for ?
I don't think it was for GW Bush 
Again same story, Bush catered to the poor american's mentality.
Ironically under a "Bush" type economy perks economically would be probably better off. And probably most of you guys on this board also would be
Average Joe american does not give a shit about rights, what USA is doing abroad etc.
Literally he is clueless

Teen pregnancy, Drug abuse, petty crime, pretty much a "intelligence" problem.
In PH where there is economic extremes you can see this.
You start talking to some guy lets say he is a taxi driver. Even if he is not educated, but you can see he is intelligent. 
So you ask him how many kids do you have ? Generally speaking 2-3.
If he is older, even if he is just a guard, you will see that all of his kids will be going to college. How the fuk he puts 3 kids thru college on $100 a month i have no idea
Then someone like your maid, she is 40. How many kids does she have, like 10.
Consequences. None of her kids can read or write. Then as a result they each will have like 10 kids and same old story.
While the guy who has 3 kids, well he can afford to send them to school, educate them etc.
So in a nutshell stupid people are breeding faster then intelligent ones
The cheapest form of birth control pills here are like $2 per month. The gov't in some cases will even offer free vasectomies. Again the poor people refuse it.
Or they use the excuse they can not afford it. Heck of a lot cheaper to spend $2 per month then to feed another kid for 18+ years .
Again since less intelligent people think of only the now, and not what might happen later ........

In USA/Canada you see the same thing granted not as bad.
Poorer people have more kids, are less concerned about educating thier kids etc.

Anyway in this case I do not have any solutions

[isthisthingon]

This thread strays from the original point IMO.  There will always be the reality of "you can't have one without the other" when it comes to technology.  At the same time, it's very important that we don't fall asleep at the Democracy Experiment wheel and allow the use of technologies in combination with bad policies such as the Patriot Act to chip away at our freedoms.  Freedoms are never granted and always fought for, which is why even though I disagree with the extent of the concern shared by jam, I think it's a great thing to keep an active dialog about these issues.  I would tend to side with those who err on the side of caution when it comes to protection of freedoms, privacy, etc. than those who err on the side of complacency.   

@nop

In 1936 majority of europe supported hitler. (A fact that modern history likes to hide).

Very true, along with the United States of America.  Just ask Ford or IBM.  IBM designed the tattoo-based, detainee tracking system that supported the massive roll-out of Concentration Camp 3.0.  The lovely banking industry had quite a hand in funding WWII as well.  Socially speaking and from a public opinion standpoint, it's not too different from our post-9/11 hysteria that caused us to complacently and righteously permit preemptive war in Iraq. 

Here's a quote from one of my favorite authors of all time.  It's Noam Chomsky paraphrasing Walter Lippmann's ideas about democracy:

Now there are two "functions" in a democracy: The specialized class, the responsible men, carry out the executive function, which means they do the thinking and planning and understand the common interests. Then, there is the bewildered herd, and they have a function in democracy too. Their function in a democracy, [Lippmann] said, is to be "spectators," not participants in action. But they have more of a function than that, because it's a democracy. Occasionally they are allowed to lend their weight to one or another member of the specialized class. In other words, they're allowed to say, "We want you to be our leader" or "We want you to be our leader." That's because it's a democracy and not a totalitarian state. That's called an election. But once they've lent their weight to one or another member of the specialized class they're supposed to sink back and become spectators of action, but not participants. That's in a properly functioning democracy.

And another sharp one:

The issue is whether we want to live in a free society or whether we want to live under what amounts to a form of self-imposed totalitarianism, with the [people] marginalized, directed elsewhere, terrified, screaming patriotic slogans, fearing for their lives, and admiring with awe the leader who saved them from destruction, while the educated masses goose-step on command and repeat the slogans they're supposed to repeat and the society deteriorates at home. We end up serving as a mercenary enforcer state, hoping that others are going to pay us to smash up the world.

Good morning Cache 

[vsloathe]

Have you read Failed States? Quite a book.

I have read a lot of Chomsky. He lives right down the road in Newton.

[isthisthingon]

Have you read Failed States?

Nope, but I just dropped it into an Amazon shopping cart   Last one of his I read was Hegemony or Survival and it was definitely quite a book.  It would be fantastic if required reading in our schools included even a sample of his work and The Red Badge of Courage became optional.

[vsloathe]

It opened my eyes to a number of things.

He goes into pretty great detail about the initial US attack on Fallujah and how it went down. He also makes a point of mentioning how Reagan and Maggie gave Saddam plenty of materials in the 80s to build WMDs, plenty of solid and liquid propelled rocket parts and fuel, etc. Also the US had intel on all hundred some-odd sites that were outfitted to actually build missiles, but those facilities were completely and utterly ignored during the entire operation, left unguarded, and as of 2006 something like 1 in 9 trucks crossing the border into Syria scanned as having radioactive material aboard. Scary stuff.