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We've set a few records there - 75 million tourists in 2014, according to this:

https://share.america.gov/75-m...

I guess we don't need any more.

Ah I see, it's your opinion - hence the redefinition of "fact".

So you feel the only reasonable standard is one a business can meet without difficulty, regardless of the external costs to everyone else. Which of course would mean there'd be no pressure to develop new technologies that meet these higher standards (such as catalytic converters or electric vehicles), and LA would look more like Beijing.

It's obvious that not ALL companies are cheating (Tesla certainly isn't), and there's certainly no evidence that consumers are ignoring these standards either - if they were, VW wouldn't have been faced with such a huge public scandal.

If looked at through a high school mentality, I imagine you have a point. But I never went to either highschool or middle school -- although I do have a couple university years behind me and I still keep trying.

Your comment irritates me for several reasons. I'll try to explain:
As an examination of current government criteria befitting the terms "terrorism" and "extremism" will show (feel free to follow some of the links in the article), a growing and arguably dubious array of views are steadily being appended to them. Chomsky, who happens to be generally opposed to war -- at least the "for profit" variety presently popular -- by the the very rhetoric of the departments, bureaus and agencies redefining these terms, at best lingers on the edge. According to my readings of his work, and citing the government itself, he indeed falls into the category of "Conspiracy Theorist".
See: [Economic section.]
I struggle to imagine Noam getting along and agreeing with such government sponsored agencies as Haliburton, BlackWater (Academi) or Serco. I also struggle to imagine Noam going along with the military's pretense for wars like Iraq, which have brought about thousands upon thousands of civilian casualties. If I am correct, this would effectively make him "anti-war" in the eyes of an incorrigible administration.

So when I suggest someone like Noam Chomsky when speaking too freely might be perceived as a threat, I say so only in accordance with official theory.

Perhaps somewhere along the roads of our writing careers we might meet and you can impart more elaborate lessons in journalism. Until then, thanks for what you've given so far.

Actually... no.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks
More than 90 countries lost citizens in the attacks on the World Trade Center.

http://www.america.gov/st/washfile-english/2006/September/20060911141954bcreklaw0.9791071.html

The trend is downwards:

In 1912, former president Teddy Roosevelt's third-party candidacy took more than 27 percent and split the Republican vote, allowing Democrat Woodrow Wilson to win the presidency. In more recent times, George Wallace in 1968 and Ross Perot in 1992 took significant percentages of voters from both major parties in the general election. Many people believe that the 2000 Nader campaign took enough votes (2.8 million) away from Democratic candidate Al Gore that it caused Gore to lose the Electoral College election to George W. Bush. For that reason, Nader's repeat candidacy in the 2004 election was closely watched by both major parties, but he won less than 1 percent (.38 percent) of the popular vote.

from http://www.america.gov/st/washfile-english/2007/August/20070820180912lnkais0.4578668.html

It should be pretty obvious to anyone that you can't have a democracy when the media is controlled by the person in power. It's also quite well documented on how the media in the countries I've listed has been taken over by the government or their freedom otherwise suppressed.

This is from just a quick Google search. The concept of freedom of the press and democracy goes back to the founding of the United States where the press is often referred to as the 4th branch of government or the 4th pillar of democracy. One needs a free press in order to expose corruption and provide an informed electorate which is vital for a healthy democracy.

It's well known among journalists in Russia that reporting on certain things is a good way to end up dead. In Venezuela almost all (if not all by now) of the major TV stations have been taken over by the government and spew pro Chavez propaganda without providing an outlet for the opposition.

http://www.un.org/democracyfund/XNewsSGFreePress.htm
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/21452
http://www.america.gov/st/democracyhr-english/2008/June/20080630215145eaifas0.6333842.html
http://www.atlanticphilanthropies.org/news/press-freedom-pillar-democracy-mzilikazi-wa-afrika
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51587-2005Feb24.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7321168.stm
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20100430/158814432.html
http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,443543,00.html
http://www.advancingafreesociety.org/2010/12/14/russian-style/
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meetdocs/2004_2009/documents/fd/droi20071001_russia_004/droi20071001_russia_004en.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_press_in_Russia

Where's USAID in Chechnya?

Providing support for the IRC to help farmers, small businesses, and vocational training?

Where's USAID for Palestine (oops, sorry, the "Israeli Palestinian Occupied Territories")?

Funding improvements in infrastructure, schools, agriculture, hospitals, and water distribution in both Gaza and the West Bank?

where are the FUCKING WMDs THE US WENT TO WAR OVER IN THE FIRST FUCKING PLACE?

They weren't there. Even Bush admitted it -- several times. Or perhaps you missed out on that point?

Yes, I could. I could dig up links to the actual cables directly on Wikileaks. Or you could just use Google. Something tells me, though, that this is a ruse. You'd like me to offhandedly suggest something here or there so you can reveal a brilliant rebuttal about how that doesn't meet some minutia to your satisfaction. Am I right?

I'll do just one, and we'll see how it goes from there. On 11/09/10 Obama said, in a speech:

In Afghanistan, we continue to work with a coalition of nations to build the capacity of the Afghan government to secure its future. Our shared interest is in building peace in a war-torn land — a peace that provides no safe haven for violent extremists, and that provide hope for the Afghan people.

However, as early as June of this year it was known to the government that one of their tax-funded subsidiaries was sponsoring rape parties for the Afghan security forces.

As a point of fact, the cable says:

Atmar reiterated his insistence that the U.S. try to quash any news article on the incident or circulation of a video connected with it.

Did you see it in the news last June? It seems that I did not.

So what hope, then, are we offering the children of Afghanistan? The hope that when you're butt raped in secret that at least it will be at a well funded party???

That's just ONE. Do some searches. There are more.

I'm calling bull on your rhetoric:

Average daily juror pay: $22 (approximately 25 percent of daily per capita income), Average length of jury trial: five days for criminal trials, four days for civil trials, Average length of jury deliberations: four hours for both criminal and civil trials

Data is from 2009

---

Step up and be an American!

Most everybody participated. Americans give a HUGE amount to charity.

Here is one report:
http://www.america.gov/st/washfile-english/2007/June/200706261522251CJsamohT0.8012354.html

If you want more you can google it yourself. I'm not here to spoon feed you because you've been too lazy to pay attention for the last several years.

before someones says 'source or it didnt happen' or what ever the meme is - here is the link to an article detailing how a national emergency number was used to find survivors http://www.america.gov/st/develop-english/2010/February/20100219131612berehelleK5.066395e-06.html

Plus people are pretty damn ignorant about it. Fluoridate your water already.

If you don't want to make your own choice fine with me but don't force to to follow your lead. If you want to jump of the Empire State building go ahead, but I won't. Nor do I want fluoride in my water or food. I buy purified because I don't want chemicals in my water. Here I have to pay to have chemical added then I have to pay to remove them.

Not have a country wide education programs mean poor states and counties have an efen worse time educating people.

The most importants document in the US are the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the USA neither one says anything about any federal government education department, The fact it doesn't but you want it to doesn't mean it does. If you want, it provides a method to change it, by amending it.

Don't just treat either documents as toilet paper.

"What's crazy for scaling back the US Government to its constitutional limits "
it is within in constitutional limits. The problem is you have no clue about the constitution.

No, you are the one that is wrong. Currently the US federal government is out of it's constitutional limits. The Constitution puts limits on what the government can do, if it does not say the government can do something it can not do it. Paper after paper says so. The principle writer of the Constitution, James Madison, wrote "The powers of the central government are few and explicitly defined, while those of the state governments are several." If the Constitution gave the federal government unlimited powers then states would not have ratified it. To think anything else is delusional. And to try to convince others otherwise is corrupt.

Falcon

A good, and fairly impartial summary is here. A more detailed guide (PDF) is here. However, perhaps the most salient stat is: "Only 5 in 5,000 compounds that enter the preclinical testing phase actually make it to human testing. One of these five drugs tested in people is approved." As for trials, a good break-down of costs is found here. I work in pharma as a scientific researcher, and I find the costs terrifying - especially as my salary appears to be the only thing smaller than six-figures...

I think you're missing the point. If they required every passenger to arrive at the airport naked, cavity searched them before allowing them to board, and allowed no luggage of any kind, we wouldn't need to spend billions outfitting our airports with these high-tech scanners. Where do you draw the line where human dignity, process efficiency, and common sense outweigh a totally unproven security measure?

Meanwhile, twelve times as many people die of the flu each year -- that's the plain, old, ordinary, non-swine flu -- than died on all the planes and buildings on 9/11 combined. Twelve 9/11s, every single year. I don't see anyone clamoring for us to outfit buildings and airports with anti-microbial spray booths, do you?

These scanners are hand-waving, nothing more. There's nothing to prove that they're doing anything to improve security in the skies ... nothing to prove that me emptying my pockets completely makes you any safer than me merely removing a perfectly ordinary, functioning wristwatch. It's all a load of government contractors getting rich by selling gizmos to the government. We, the people, get inconvenienced; we get degraded as human beings; and we get to pick up the tab for it. It's total bullshit.

Here's an article from the State Department's America.gov site that describes the genesis of the interstate system (and the political compromises that made it possible) pretty thoroughly.

Voter testing was a form of vote suppression in the black south. A high level discussion. Of course it gets much more involved than this article discusses.

You have a right to vote no matter what. No Matter What (I don't even agree with removing the right to vote from felons).

How you choose to use your vote is up to you just as it is everyone else. If too many other people are voting uninformed or underinformed, then it's your responsibility and the responsibility of the people running for office to educate them.

Other gov sites broadcast video just fine without using cookies: http://www.america.gov/multimedia/video.html?videoId=8789243001

That site set a session cookie on my browser as soon as I showed up. How do you know they don't use it for tracking?

Because your browser destroys it when you close your browser. Duh.

Why can't whitehouse.gov?

Youtube is the cookiemonger here, not wh.g.

ATT is spying here, not the NSA. That guy screening me at the airport is a contractor, so I don't have to listen to him.

Yeah right, it's still the government.

Other gov sites broadcast video just fine without using cookies: http://www.america.gov/multimedia/video.html?videoId=8789243001

That site set a session cookie on my browser as soon as I showed up. How do you know they don't use it for tracking?

Why can't whitehouse.gov?

Youtube is the cookiemonger here, not wh.g.

When people start trying to regulate the presentation layer of all this data, they're asking for way more trouble than they know. Please stop it before greasemonkey gets turned into a munition or something insane like that.

The only reasonable way to look at this issue is that YOU are the client and YOU are running software that went to wh.g, and then YOUR software went to youtube and youtube asked it to save a cookie which it did because YOU allow it to.

Other gov sites broadcast video just fine without using cookies: http://www.america.gov/multimedia/video.html?videoId=8789243001

Why can't whitehouse.gov?

Well yes - and by what criteria are these people (their names, really) getting on the list in the first place? If it's a simple name match, no biographical details, no biometric data - what was the point of US-VISIT, the program to collect biometric data from foreign travelers crossing our borders?

According to Stanford's website, Ibrahim was a doctoral candidate in construction engineering, and her resume details her bachelors and masters in architecture. Ibrahim's doctoral thesis was about organizational disorganization - perhaps the very thing DHS is suffering from with the No-Fly list.

Outward indicators show she's a well-educated, upstanding member of society. I mean, if she had some sort of criminal or terroristic background to justify being on No-Fly, wouldn't the government have presented that in their defense of the suit? A quick read of the court's findings show the defense seems to be about jurisdiction and standing.

Nobody is claiming there aren't genetic differences between populations, or that the differences can't be quantified

At the same time, there is an important distinction to be made: You can take any two arbitrary groups of people, say Ohioans and Indianans, and probably find quantifiable genetic differences between them. But that doesn't mean that someone in Ohio has anything in common, genetically, with his neighbor.

Burnitdown and the AC posting above (probably the same person?) argue that the statistical variations imply that those within each group are genetically the same. I would guess that we all share genes with many, many groups. I probably share gene A with group X, and genes B&C with group Y, etc. etc. Most of all, we share most of our genes with most of humanity, not to mention many non-humans.

In fact, they also want to say that genetic commonality leads to political or social commonality. Humans share 96% of their DNA with chimpanzees [1]. I expect Burnitdown/the AC will join PETA next.

There seems to be other things that influence the math score too. The following article points to a corrolation between equal rights and math score.
http://www.america.gov/st/educ-english/2008/June/200806091508371CJsamohT0.8132898.html

Interesting read.

.haeger

We are proud of the U.S. role in reducing the threat to innocent civilians of landmines left in the ground after conflicts end. Since 1993 the U.S. has provided close to $1 billion dollars for these efforts. As the conferees in Nairobi mark this progress, there is important work that remains to be done. Eliminating civilian landmine casualties requires a comprehensive approach addressing landmines of every type that remain hazardous after a conflict has ended, including the larger anti-vehicle landmines that are not covered by the Ottawa Convention.

The United States' landmine policy increases funding for humanitarian mine action substantially. It includes an unconditional commitment that U.S. military forces (despite worldwide treaty commitments and major ongoing operations) will cease the use of all persistent landmines, anti-vehicle as well as anti-personnel, by the end of 2010. The United States will also eliminate from its inventory all non-detectable mines, which pose an extraordinary risk to civilians and deminers.

The U.S. applauds the initiative and commitment of those gathering in Nairobi, and we reiterate our commitment to work with the international community to accelerate progress toward an end to the humanitarian harm caused by persistent landmines. We encourage states participating in the Review Conference to:

* Increase funding for humanitarian mine action, and harmonize their efforts with other key mine action programs worldwide.

* Examine their own policies on the continued use of persistent anti-vehicle landmines, which pose substantial dangers to innocent life yet are not covered under the Ottawa Convention.

* Agree to negotiate, at the Conference on Disarmament, a ban on the sale or export of all persistent mines, including anti-vehicle mines.

* Eliminate all non-detectable landmines, which pose a particular hazard to deminers.

New Vaccination Technique May Work for Dengue Fever. There's no commercial vaccine yet, but working on one seems a safer bet then mass-releases of genetically modified insects.