roboneal

The U.S. may appear to be a broken democracy to most but it is a functional constitutional republic. This was was the purposeful intent of the founders to safeguard the sovereign interests of the individual states.

After reading the article, it's quite clear the residents segregated themselves.

(See Edit) Count me in the "me too" category. Pretty sketchy process. I've revoked their permission to my Facebook account and pray my cc info is not being sold on the Russian black market. Edit: Trevor at TinkerCoin cleared up the issue and the BTC are in my Coinbase wallet. So Kudos to them.

I'm calling you a troll for re-writing your comments without even noting the "edit" -- 4 hours later in a lame attempt to refine your propaganda. This isn't Reddit.

Why are you massively editing your comments hours later? You are a troll.

Nice document you supplied. Did you read it?

This lawsuit is about repeated assurances to the MANY plantiffs that the only plans for the property were for "low rise" (below the tree line) water tanks and the company later deciding to violate existing zoning regulations and seek to built the 160 ft water tank.

Your bias on this issue is only exceeded by your laziness.

Seriously? IANAL or a Texas attorney either but I can read...

Page 4...Section 211.003..."The governing body of a municipality may regulate...the height, number of stories, and size of buildings and other structures"

So I can just build my own privately owned 160ft industrial structure wherever I want?

That's a lot of "mind reading" you've accomplished there -- complete with imagined quotes. Quite an accomplishment.

That's some fairly tortured logic. Legally it has no bearing.

If the lawsuit was judged with your standards, a CEO of a water utility would be a hypocrite for opposing the same water tower being built "for municipal use" next to his ranch.

To dig deeper, do you question the motives of the other parties to the lawsuit - his ranching neighbors and other members of the community? Are they washed with your brush of perceived "hypocrisy" because they happen to live next to the CEO of Exxon?

The actual lawsuit isn't against fracking itself. It is to prevent construction of a 160 water tower that would be used to fill trucks with water for fracking and other oil/gas exploration activities and this is in violation of the existing zoning ordinances in the ranching community in which he lives.

While it appears a subtle distinction to those looking for an example of glaring hypocrisy, would it be any different if he (and his other rancher neighbors) were protesting a construction of a 160ft water tower intended for some other purpose?

I'm former Navy (Electronics Technician - Radio/Radar), but was in Army JROTC in High School.

First step is to take the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB). There is no obligation to take that test (despite the pressure from the Navy or Air Force recruiter that you need to "lock up" your spot right away). Your score on this test will essentially open or shut doors to the variety of jobs/ratings you can ask for.

Generally, if you score high enough, you can guarantee a slot in a school of your choice, post-boot camp graduation. Like anything, if you fail in boot camp (generally sent home) or fail in the the "A-school" -- you can be put into any classification as the military sees fit.

Ignore all "promises" from recruiters that are not explicitly made in writing. Verbal assurances are meaningless -- no matter how sincere the recruiter appears.

You will be best served, if you feel the military is not going to be a career, to select jobs/classifications that have immediate transferability to civilian applications.

Once in, take advantage of all the training schools or other educational outlets that the military offers (and the GI Bill when you exit).

P.S., Some boot camp tips (applies to Air Force probably)

1. Consider when your boot camp located and join in "good weather" months. Great Lakes is hot & humid in July/Aug and bitter cold in Dec-Feb.

2. Show up being able to at least run a mile with little effort and do 20 "real pushups". They'll train you up from there, but those first 2 weeks will be brutal if you can't do either on day 1.

3. It's all about paying attention to (mostly meaningless) details. This is to prepare you to not being lazy and learn your most innocent mistakes can get someone killed. So it appears "stupid" early, but you'll see it's importance later.

The public also voted in a Republican House majority and flipped Ted Kennedy's seat to prevent a filibuster proof Senate majority to essentially prevent Obamacare being implemented without amendments.

Yet, it was "deem and passed" and here we are. Power to the people?

Since these is not typically a political discussion forum, at least outline your "overwhelming" factual evidence.

Let's leave it at this "It hasn't had a single minute of downtime". So with the shutdown does your Organizing For America paycheck still clear?

I hate to pile on, but this just came across my Twitter feed.

"The federal government will take down a critical part of HealthCare.gov, the Obamacare web portal, for a portion of the coming weekend as programmers feverishly work to fix major glitches that are impeding enrollment and marring the debut of the centerpiece of President Barack Obama's health care reform law."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/04/obamacare-website_n...

You've made a bunch of hyperbolic (reads more like B35T W3BS1TE EVAR!) and unsupported statements in that reply.

There has been no official release of how many people have signed up for actual plans -- Jay Carney said as much at his daily press briefing today.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/10/04/1244260/-Briefing-b...

Considering the "patient zero" cause celeb from yesterday who supposedly signed up for a plan without a hitch was essentially caught in a lie:

http://www.ajc.com/weblogs/political-insider/2013/oct/03/one...

Forgive me for being a bit skeptical that actual plan signups are a small fraction of your claimed 2.4 million.

They hid all of that complexity behind an essentially non-functioning website....genius!

I think you missed the rather insightful point he was making entirely.

The DEA's use of NSA intercepts "sounds" a whole lot more sensible (catching 'drug dealers') than what may be potentially 1000s of other horrific uses the government is also using this data for.

You asked for "evidence". Obviously, this evidence requires further investigation.

He said that on March 30, 2012, NOM became aware that the Human Rights Campaign, the pro-gay rights group, obtained confidential information of its donors and posted the information without redacting the names. That information later appeared on websites like the Huffington Post. NOM discovered another document with redactions that had been posted. A computer analysis, after removing the document's redaction layer, discovered the document had "originated from within the IRS itself." He said the group found the header of each page read: “THIS IS A COPY OF A LIVE RETURN FROM SMIPS. OFFICIAL USE ONLY." And that was proof that the leak originated from the IRS.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/06/04/National-...

Were you not the first person to inject "conservative" into the thread?

It also enrages me how they dismiss the metadata as a "nothing burger".

Does it occur to anyone how much leverage you can exert with that information alone in such areas as finance, divorce proceedings, opposition research, leak investigations, and good old fashioned blackmail?

To add to it, they don't even need a court order or oversight to do the metadata searches per Feinstein (today).

A top secret program that the President of the United States has made extensive public remarks about:

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/06/07/transcript-what-oba...

De facto de-classification.

Apparently, even the NSA has a FOIA process:

http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/foia/submit_foia_request/foia...

If they don't have to respond to discovery, they certainly are legally required to respond to this.

If they play the "national security" or "privacy" card, this defendant has a strong case to appeal any conviction considering that the existence of this database has been essentially "unclassified" by POTUS with his public acknowledgements.

Is the existence of the phone "metadata" classified anymore after national media debate and the public acknowledgement by POTUS? And unless this suspect is under a national security investigation, I can't see how his specific phone records can be classified in "subset".

It's not like Sweden is a surveillance state or something

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/FRA_law

Considering the scope of the domestic monitoring, the definition of adversaries is disturbingly close to ordinary citizens.

Uhhh, "old school" Houston and Dallas metro areas are #1 and #2 respectively in job growth in the nation.

While Austin may be an "exciting" center of research and technology, it's hardly a "job creation" engine -- at least not directly.

I actually hoped my comment would actually spark a discussion on the actual substance of the quote.

Apparently, I've seemed to have only succeeded in flushing out the pro and anti-Ayn Rand camps. My mistake.