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Pro-tip: The Associated Press is a thing that exists. News organizations will often buy stories from the AP when they need filler.

Now that you know a little bit more about how the press works, maybe you too can be a little less of a conspiracy nut.

"Russian anti-virus CEO offers up code for US govt scrutiny"
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/s...
"... ready to have his company's source code examined by U.S. government officials"

Study...
http://interactives.ap.org/201...

(numbers for specific metros pulled out here)
http://www.chron.com/news/nati...

And this was also interesting...
http://www.thedailybeast.com/5...

You overstate your point about refineries.

Refineries are confined to a highly specific area (mostly the ship channel area).

If you drive an hour north or east, you are in hot muggy forested areas.
If you drive an hour west, you are in dry but wooded farm and ranch land
If you drive an hour northwest, you are in hill country with lots of 30' trees and tons of wildflowers in the spring.
If you drive an hour southwest, you are at the beach. (it's not nearly as pretty as other beaches due to silt from the mississippi and the waves are tepid but it's a beach and even uncrowded (almost desolate) only 15 miles further out.

Let me try to state your point better.

The area around houston is flat for 100 miles in all directions. Other than day tripping for antiques there's not a lot of tourist activity. While there are several state parts that are very nice in the spring and fall, they are pretty hot and miserable during the summer. The gulf is silty and not pretty blue and transparent to the bottom (about 1' transparent on average and 2' on a good day) and has small waves. But it has good fishing.

The areas along almost all the major freeways are unpleasant and fairly ugly with business sprawl and too many billboards.

The city center and is vibrant, well serviced by public transportation, has a vibrant night life, and expensive. Areas just east of the city center are undeveloped and old 1930's shacks.

The lack of zoning allows the city to constantly renew itself. There are no empty, unusable buildings "trapped" by zoning. There are no fat cat developers getting zoning exceptions to put up ugly buildings in residential areas (that has to piss people in zoned cities off to coronary levels).

Houston is unbounded geographically and it has a problem with urban sprawl but that is reflected in lower housing prices. Houston has a problem with flooding. But it has no tornadoes of note and no earthquakes. Roughly every 2 decades it gets wallopped by a hurricane which messes it up for a week( or two for a bad one (longer for a direct hit by a bad one which is about every 50 years)). Smart people get out of the way of hurricanes.

If there is ONE point I would like to make is that people who bring outdoor concerts to houston in the summer are idiots. They could come here in april/may/early october and it would be very pleasant. Even June wouldn't be ridiculous. But July and August- it's an oven. It's still hot at 11pm at night and the high humidity means swamp coolers/misting water won't work well.

Obama Fails on Government Transparency

“The American people were promised a new era of transparency with the Obama administration. Unfortunately, this promise has not been kept. To be clear: the Obama administration is less transparent than the Bush administration.”

US gov't sets record for failures to find files when asked

The Obama administration set a record for the number of times its federal employees told disappointed citizens, journalists and others that despite searching they couldn't find a single page requested under the Freedom of Information Act, according to a new Associated Press analysis of government data.

In more than one in six cases, or 129,825 times, government searchers said they came up empty-handed last year. Such cases contributed to an alarming measurement: People who asked for records under the law received censored files or nothing in 77 percent of requests, also a record. In the first full year after President Barack Obama's election, that figure was only 65 percent of cases.

The White House Guess List: How Obama Pulled a Fast One on the American People -- in the Name of "Transparency"

The White House is still holding back "tens of thousands" of visitor logs, according to congressional testimony last week by Tom Fitton, President of Judicial Watch, who also added that "the Obama administration is less transparent than the Bush administration."

We also know that some of the most important presidential visitors don't even walk into the White House. The administration meets K Street lobbyists at Caribou Coffee, and holds secret meetings in Jackson Place townhouses where there are no visitor logs.

The visitor logs that have been released are problematic, because they are simply lists of names, with no way to verify whether a specific name belongs to a particular person.

She's thoroughly in the pockets of the mega wealthy and would have carried on crapping on ordinary people. http://bigstory.ap.org/article...

You could say that about any technology. Most of the hand wringing over AI taking everyone's jobs is the same sort of paranoid response we've had to every technology improvement. We've seen this play before. Back in the 1970s everyone was convinced industrial robots were going to take their jobs tomorrow. Robots did become an important tool but it took decades and most of the displaced workers found new employment in comparatively short order. And plenty of people are still employed on the assembly lines right next to those robots they worried about.

Talk to the millions of workers still displaced by technological advances in manufacturing about how those 1970's fears were unfounded. The only reason we aren't seeing more resistance to this problem is some politicians have convinced them outsourcing is the cause of their problems and not automation. This is a stark contrast to the actual research into their plight, which estimates the vast majority of the lost jobs — 88 percent — were taken by robots and other homegrown factors that reduce factories' need for human labor.

the threat is it will increase productivity rapidly enough to replace 20%+ of workers quickly enough that new jobs won't be created fast enough to offset the losses.

While I think your numbers are suspect, this is the only rational argument worthy of concern. There is literally an unlimited amount of work to be done but it takes some amount of time for people to adjust to new economic realities. I think that people are vastly overestimating the risks involved here but fast increases in productivity make for short term dislocations in the work force. Some people have a hard time keeping up.

In the first industrial revolution it took generations for workers to recover from crippling job losses due to new machinery. These are not short term dislocations. There may be a nearly unlimited amount of work to be done, but not an unlimited amount of work which produces enough economic value to support someone financially. I would like someone to clean my home office, for instance, but I'm not paying $15/hr for it.

No one is making predictions without strong historical and current indicators showing there is already a problem. We already know new jobs are almost never created fast enough to help displace workers. We have just been lucky enough that only small sectors of the economy has been affected at once in the past, so we can easy ignore those who suffered.

The vast majority of human history, at least 99%, was of a world where nearly everyone was in poverty by modern standards. Thinking that our current shared prosperity is somehow the status quo which can be sustained with minimal effort is ridiculous.

> I'd say both have been into unethical behavior equally,

I'm sorry but no fucking way.

Clinton's "unethical behavior" was so huge that when the AP reported on her malfeasance they spent 11 paragraphs on the 'scandal' of when Clinton tried to help Muhammad Yunus a former Nobel Peace Prize winner who’s also the recipient of a Congressional Gold Medal and a Presidential Medal of Freedom. When the NYT reported on her ethical failures, they spent nearly an entire story on the "expose" of how she arranged for Bill Clinton to rescue political hostages from North Korea. Meanwhile the Clinton Foundation received top scores from Charity Navigator and Charity Watch.

The only reason people think trump is at all equivalent to clinton is because trump's olympus-sized pile of shit caused outrage fatigue and the media tried to do its false balance reporting schtick by digging for bottom of the barrel stories on Clinton to somehow even out the coverage in the name of being 'objective.' But that's only a valid approach when they are actually equal.

Is AP good enough? There's multiple articles since August of this year that expand on that number.

I never understood their decisions...why disable the phone when you can redesign the battery to not blow up and just swap batteries? I mean the battery is a removable part.

They actually gave the battery angle a look for a quick fix, but since they had abandoned the easily removable battery, the initial solution was to limit recharging to 60% of maximum via update.

Now, is the ingrained ability to limit charging capacity a little suspicious?

So you're just completely ignoring the Obama shooting targets that suddenly got popular both times he got elected, not to mention the people who actually hanged and burned his likeness hundreds of times, during the widespread protests?

A few 'interesting' news clips over the last two election cycles about violence targeted at people for their opinions:

A Thousand Oaks man got his finger bitten off by someone who didn't like the Anti-Obamacare Protesters.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.co...

Democrat tried to run down Republican with his car.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOL...

Left wing nut flies plain in to building.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02...
(interesting to note that he was 'originally' reported as a right-wing nut because... Texas. After his "note" was found, it was clear he was a left wing nut)

Man beaten and robbed by democrat thugs because he supports Trump.
http://www.cnn.com/videos/poli...

High school girl attacked for supporting Trump:
http://nbc4i.com/2016/11/11/vi...

To be fair, there were also these bits:

Muslim women in CA and LA attacked by Trump supporters.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article...
Oh wait... no witnesses or injuries -- and one admits to lying about it entirely and is going to be charged for filing a false police report.

Trump supporters paint "Die Blacks Die" during protest:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016... (foxnews, but associated press provided).
Oh wait... it said "Die whites die". So silly of me.

How quickly people forget.

Yes... and how willingly they ignore what's under their nose...

Not one links to an actual investigation showing proof that even a single citizen was unable to vote because of voter ID laws.

Don't, worry, the courts are blocking those impediments.

It's almost as if they're being prevented from malfeasance by some unknown means.

Just like calling Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece & Spain the PIIGS to concisely call out the 5 weakest countries in the eurozone financial crisis. That's not perjorative either right? It's just a simple acronym. Nobody was offended by it right?

Oh wait..
"The term is widely considered derogatory .."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

But your right Daesh is just an arabic abbreviation; and nobody is offended by it...

"The term âoeDaeshâ is strategically a better choice because it is still accurate in that it spells out the acronym of the groupâ(TM)s full Arabic name, al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham. Yet, at the same time, âoeDaeshâ can also be understood as a play on words â" and an insult. Depending on how it is conjugated in Arabic, it can mean anything from âoeto trample down and crushâ to âoea bigot who imposes his view on others.â Already, the group has reportedly threatened to cut out the tongues of anyone who uses the term."

https://blog.ap.org/announceme...

"Several residents in Mosul, Iraqâ(TM)s second-largest city which fell to the extremist group in June, told The Associated Press that the militants threatened to cut the tongue of anyone who publicly used the acronym Daesh, instead of referring to the group by its full name, saying it shows defiance and disrespect. The residents spoke anonymously out of fear for their safety."

So it seems you're actually interested in equating the collective effect of freedom of association with industry and government employment blacklists. They're simply different things. One is enforced by a centralized authority and makes it impossible to be hired regardless of the politics of a company's customer base, the other is simply an effect of decentralized freedom of association and as I've said, would require strict controls on freedom of association to prevent. It doesn't prevent someone from working with a customer base that agrees with them - Palmer Luckey could get a job managing a Trump hat production fac- uh, final assembly plant right now.

Branding the intent of those who choose not to fund people who contribute to political efforts they find abhorrent as evil, hatred and an attempt to hurt is (like,) just your opinion (, man). I, for one, think the things that Brendan Eich and Palmer Luckey support are evil, hateful and hurtful. What now?

They're releasing an update in Korea that limits charging to 60% capacity.

Samsung plans to issue a software update for its recalled Galaxy Note 7 smartphones that will prevent them from overheating by limiting battery recharges to 60 percent.

Here is a story AP published that turned out to be fiction. It originated with Jon Ralston and was quickly picked up by AP and then other major media outlets. No corroboration ever materialized for the story, despite there being 3000 cameras in the room, and those that streamed live told a different story. The only media outlet to retract the story was NPR, and PBS fired Ralston.

Note also that this is the story that the DNC leadership instructed its members to pass around "without attribution", i.e. covertly smear Sanders with it. It's also the email that Assange has singled out as the most damming.

And also remember that much of the brouhaha over the leaked DNC emails was over collusion with the media.

In short, if you aren't yet skeptical of mainstream media this year, you need to start paying closer attention.

Um, no. This is basically putting your fingers in your ears and yelling la-la-la-la-la to avoid hearing the actual science.

Unfortunately, there are too many knee-jerk reactions like yours that are based on an ignorance of science.

Well, according to the Brazilian official Mario Andrada, "..chemistry is not an exact science". Direct quote.
Bottom line, agreed upon by many experts: they screwed up what should've been a fairly straightforward fix - algaecide and chlorine, not hydrogen peroxide.
How many other Olympic pools have had this issue in the past 25 years?

Wow. A human being, in a free country with free speech, is going to speak at a public event. *Why* is this news?

It's news because so few human beings want to speak at this event. They're having trouble finding people willing to show up.

Sarah Palin is staying home. Ted Nugent has turned down invitations to appear. Lynyrd Skynyrd and Kid Rock are going to be in Cleveland but are "too busy". They almost snagged Mike Ditka but he chickened out. A spokesman for Ben Sasse from Nebraska announced "Sen. Sasse will not be attending the convention and will instead take his kids to watch some dumpster fires across the state."

The glory days of Clint Eastwood yelling at an empty chair are long gone- he isn't going either.

This morning's NPR coverage of this story started that the driver was watching one of the Harry Potter movies while the autopilot was engaged. No wonder they didn't see the truck.

Confirmed, third paragraph:

http://bigstory.ap.org/article...

boils down to: the Secretary of State bucked the rules of her own department.

No, the requirements for government employees to keep records of all their communications, so that people can FOIA them, are not State Department rules. They are laws governing all government employees; see here.

Oh look, there's news today. Judicial Watch has proof that Hillary Clinton deleted some work-related emails.

Before providing her correspondence, Clinton and her lawyers withheld and subsequently deleted tens of thousands of messages that she claimed were personal, such as emails about her daughter's wedding plans, family vacations, yoga routines and condolence notes.

With the new release Monday, more than 50 work-related emails sent or received by Clinton have since surfaced that were not among those she provided.

The previously never seen emails have Hillary Clinton worrying about who can see her documents and emails.

"I have just realized I have no idea how my papers are treated at State," Clinton wrote to Abedin and a second aide. "Who manages both my personal and official files? ... I think we need to get on this asap to be sure we know and design the system we want."

The audit also cited a then-unreleased copy of a November 2010 email Clinton sent Abedin in which the secretary discussed using a government email account, expressing concern that she didn't want "any risk of the personal being accessible."

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/775550d62ef8487a975a2a1c1c8b1100/more-clinton-emails-released-including-some-she-deleted

If you want us to buy your theory that she just set up her email server to provide better security, can you find any quotes from any of her released emails where she discusses the issue of email security?

The only place I am aware of where Hillary Clinton was worried about email security was the memo that went out with her signature on it, warning that State Department employees must not use private email. Note, she was using private email at that time.

Jun 3, 1:31 PM EDT

UN ASKING EXPERT PANEL TO ASSESS ZIKA RISK AT RIO OLYMPICS
BY MARIA CHENG
AP MEDICAL WRITER

OLYMPICS NEWS

LONDON (AP) -- The World Health Organization's chief says she will convene an expert committee to consider whether the Rio de Janeiro Summer Olympics should proceed as planned, following concerns raised about the threat of the Zika virus.

In a request last month, U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen asked WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan to evaluate whether the Rio games this year should be delayed or postponed. Chan said in a letter released by Shaheen on Friday that WHO has sent senior scientists to Brazil four times to assess the risk of Zika to the approximately 500,000 athletes and visitors expected to attend the Aug. 5-21 games in Brazil.

Follow the linky for the rest of the story.

Really? I didn't know that pine coffins were so expensive.

There's something wrong with your reply on the surface. I haven't looked at the costs, but that "it (routinely) costs more to execute someone than not?" Assumptions, cost measurements, or what: SOMEthing's wrong with that line. Doing a Google search now. Ahh, phrasing: you mean the cost of the legal proceedings, long and drawn out as they are for kill vs non-kill cases while I literally mean the cost to kill them, period; not the previous "set up" costs that must be incurred. Good point, they are different.

If the death penalty was replaced with a sentence of Life Without the Possibility of Parole*, which costs millions less and also ensures that the public is protected while eliminating the risk of an irreversible mistake, the money saved could ...

I hadn't considered that. And it does solve the 100% sure thing, as you don't kill someone, you just effectively "take their life away over a long period of time."

So we'd need more jails if (as?) we get more permanent jail residents. Oh, and don't forget health care, even if they want to change their sex. And visitation rights, and guards, alarms, upkeep, training, and what-now.

Vs an "Escape from New York" setup.

So you take someone, put them in "The Big House", locked up with bars everywhere, ordered around all of the time, take care of them (not being sarcastic here) for as long as they live? I originally was going to say THAT sounds like "cruel and unusual punishment," just like living on death row for 20 years -- see Nathan Dunlap. But Food, AC, heat, dry, bedding, security, and medicine all provided? The more I think about it the more I think I want to go there myself -- everything's all done and provided for me. All I have to do is be there and complain if I'm bored. And as a bonus I even get to take out someone that I absolutely abhor? Depending on who it was: forget being regretful about it, if it was the right person I could have nice dreams about that every night.

So once I cross some magic threshold all you can do to me is lock me up and feed me? For someone serving concurrent or even sequential life sentences: maybe that's all the judge can do, but it's ridiculous non-the-less. So James should have shot more, more "bang for the buck" as it were, right?

And that permanent "without parole" line is so harsh, shouldn't we think of the poor victimized prisoner in the years to come?

Taking someone life against their will should NEVER be an easy, dried and cut thing. That doesn't mean that you don't do it, though. And: let's ask the opinions of their victims. Oh wait, we can't. Their life was cut short -- do we "owe" them anything?

Not all of them would agree with me, though. She's a better person than I.

Then again you've got mob rules, but that's no good either.

Hmmm ... Santa keeps a list of people, I guess I'll have to ask Jason if he's keeps one as well.

-----

NO I'm not going to go out and kill anyone. I don't hate anyone that much. If they do irritate me I just usually get away from them, or irritate them enough so that they move away from me.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. Even if is "cheaper" and nicer to keep most killers alive, it still seems l

Russian security official Alexander Bortnikov says "in all likelihood it was a terror attack" that caused EgyptAir Flight 804 from Paris to Cairo to crash into the Mediterranean early Thursday with 66 people on board.

http://bigstory.ap.org/fc727f9...

The overwhelming fact about American general elections right now is that white male voters just aren't as powerful as they used to be.

Celebrate diversity, right? Democrats could not convince the electorate of their ideas, so they changed the electorate — by diluting it with a heavy dose of people from countries, where the government is the source of what little wealth there is.

They don't mind big government, and are happy to receive "free" help from it. The dilution is ongoing — while the same Administration fought tooth-and-nail to deport refugees from a rich country, who fled over homeschooling...

At the Correos de Cuba and the hotels, you have access to practically all news websites such as lemonde.fr, bbc.com, El Nuevo Herald (a Miami-based Spanish-language daily) and even to dissident sites. This is also the case for government employees with a computer and Internet access.

“I haven’t opened Granma for years,” says Luis, who works for the culture ministry. “I get my news from Google and the BBC website and I have never had any problem getting to websites operated by government opponents.
In fact, of all the news stories I wanted to read on the Internet, only one has been blocked.

North Korea:
I don't know what really happens in N. Korea. All I know that I hate Kim Jr Il hair style, his chubby face the same as I hate gangnam-style. But, while some N. Korea stories seem to be a propaganda's productions, the horrible stories about S. Korea are real: they covered mass killings, abuse, for "preparation for Olympic 1988", or disable-slaves in salt farms, which:

Although 50 island farm owners and regional job brokers were indicted, national police say no local police or officials will face punishment, despite multiple interviews showing some knew about the slaves and even stopped escape attempts.

Vietnam:
this country just got out of wars in 1991.

and if it weren't for the super delegate system, he would be very close to winning the nomination.

Sanders is behind Clinton in pledged delegates, 1,428 to 1,189. There's no way to spin that as "Sanders is close to winning"; Clinton is undeniably closer.

If you eliminated unpledged delegates entirely, Clinton's target would be 2,113; she'd need less than 700 of the remaining 1,646 delegates to win.

The only way Sanders could achieve a win would be for him to inspire the superdelegates to change their minds between now and the election. He's hoping somehow to thread the needle, denying her a majority of the (pledged + superdelegates) just with her pledged delegates. That's pretty deceptive. She's winning the pledged delegates; she's winning the superdelegates; she's winning the popular vote.

Another source:

http://bigstory.ap.org/article...

It sure looks like Hillary Clinton engaged in a conspiracy to migrate classified information off of the secure network and onto her insecure email server. She instructed subordinates to summarize information and send it as new emails, which of course were not marked as classified.

She's not dumb and she's a lawyer, so she knew what she was doing was illegal.

In the first e-mail, Clinton curtly instructs Sullivan, "It's a public statement. Just email it." Minutes later, Sullivan responds, "Trust me, I share your exasperation. But until ops converts it to the unclassified email system, there is no physical way for me to email it. I can't even access it."

"ops" means the "operations" group in the State Department, where apparently Hillary Clinton had people reading emails on the secure system and then sending a summary to her insecure server. "converting" to the unclassified email system.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/423417/hillary-staffer-wary-sending-classified-info-just-email-it-andrew-c-mccarthy

http://nypost.com/2016/01/24/hillarys-team-copied-intel-off-top-secret-server-to-email/

Some of the emails were "SAP" classified. Some were "HCS-O".

http://bigstory.ap.org/e19abf78b6fe43e7b7719f059901630d

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3413033/Hillary-s-emails-contained-classified-information-HUMAN-SPYING-State-Department-says-won-t-meet-deadline-publish-emails.html

If that last story is correct, Hillary Clinton's personal email server could have lead to disastrous consequences or death for real human beings. We're way, way beyond anything excusable.

I know that people call him racist, but he has been against "illegal" (which is not a race) and urges caution in terms of Islam (once again, not a race, but a religion that creates more than 90% of terrorists).

Has he said something else that I have missed?

Donald Trump: "When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." So being a Mexican immigrant means you're either a drug dealer or a rapist according to Trump. That's racism.

Donald Trump: "But you have people coming in and I'm not just saying Mexicans, I'm talking about people that are killers and they're coming into this country." And that's xenophobic.

Donald Trump: "Likewise, tremendous infectious disease is pouring across the border." Linking a community with disease. Where did I hear this before?

Donald Trump: "I’ll take jobs back from China, I’ll take jobs back from Japan. The Hispanics are going to get those jobs, and they’re going to love Trump.” Treating hispanics like dogs he can throw a bone to, that's racist too.

Donald Trump: "No surprise that China was caught cheating in the Olympics. That's the Chinese M.O. - Lie, Cheat & Steal in all international dealings." Note how he said it's the "Chinese modus operandi", not the "Chinese *government* M.O.". Claiming 1+ billion people are liars, cheaters and thieves, just for their ethnicity or the country they live in is racism.

Has Trump ever actually issued a call for violence? If so, I must have missed it.

Well he certainly did against protestors at his rallies.

But more importantly, "Donald Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States." and "Donald Trump said that he would 'absolutely' institute mandatory registration." So he says he will use the force of law to discriminate on the basis of religion. In other words he is against freedom of religion and against the bill of rights.

While those are not direct threats of violence, it's already too much for someone who wants to be the chief of the world's most powerful army.

I don't know how they can claim the water is OK, when they are not testing it.

Other people haven't been as lucky as the people you quoted. Even the best quotes you could find are hardly ringing endorsements. One day of "gross" water out of 60 means that the water is probably dangerous most, if not all of the other days. E.coli can be dangerous at much lower levels than someone could detect it through the taste of the water.

Wake up. You live in a shithole.

Aerosmith frontman asks Trump campaign to stop using song
Adele tells Donald Trump to stop pinching her songs for his campaign

When politicians use music without asking permission

Err... I can't believe you're asking for citations? Really? I can understand some healthy skepticism but there are actually SCIENTIFIC PAPERS published on this. But, let me help you out... I searched first for "china scientific fraud" and found that there were papers on this subject but I clicked on the first, non-scientific, paper:

http://www.ibtimes.com/chinas-...

The money quote:

Just last month, BioMed Central, an open-access publisher based in Britain, retracted 43 papers, most of them from Chinese researchers, after discovering that reviewers who had supposedly signed off on the studies were made up by agencies hired by the original authors.

I liked their phrase better, so I searched for "china scientific credibility" and figured that I'd find you some more information though, to be honest, I've no idea why you want it as it's obvious you're not actually a scientist or following science with any great enthusiasm...

Here's one about the "credibility paradox" that China faces. Zhang is Chinese, by the way.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

It's so prolific that China had to BAN dishonesty in scientific research... Ban it, by law... They just banned it recently, as in very recently. Who knows if it has actually had any real-world results? I'm thinking that "probably not" is a good answer. That should not be misread to make it seem as if I'm claiming this research is fraudulent. See below as to why I'm a bit skeptical about it having any major, real-world, long-term, impact. The link to cite that for you too:

http://bigstory.ap.org/article...

It baffles me that you have no idea and would ask for citations. They've plagiarized a ton of stuff, fabricated stuff, and made stuff up out of whole cloth and, by most accounts, that's actually due to governmental pressures. Some are inclined to believe that it is cultural. Being a bit of a pragmatist, I don't see why it can't be both. However, that's not my area so I probably am not qualified to speculate as to the reasoning.

At any rate, WTF are you going to actually *do* with a citation? This is Slashdot, not Wikipedia, and you're not a scientist - I know because this is endemic across the entire board of studies, you'd know about it if you were a scientist or even just an enthusiast. Either way, there's a whole shit-ton more articles (and actual published research) on China's reputation in all things science.

If you can't pay your court fines, then you're supposed to be in jail in the first place.

Wrong. In the USA. being unable to pay fines due to poverty isn't an arrestable offence. (as opposed to having money and refusing to pay)

Of course, that doesn't stop many towns from ignoring the law. There are many ongoing lawsuits about this:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/kendal...

http://bigstory.ap.org/article...

c) Can we be sure that the manufacturer isn't lying? ... Doing the due diligence is a huge pain in the ass, you're going to see non-compliance all over the place.

The shrimp industry is a good example of this:
http://bigstory.ap.org/article...

Unless you are doing independent audits on every part of your supply chain - which is COSTLY - there will be misses.

Authorities in New York City said they received the same threat but quickly concluded that it was a hoax.

Really? Every time some punk sends a stupid email, you're going to shut down an entire city?

First, there is no reason to take this stuff seriously. US deaths by terrorism is still in the ballpark of people dying of lightning strikes. If you insist on taking it seriously, give a 10% annual bonus to any teacher with a concealed carry license plus appropriate training. Problem solved.

Those Arabs who despise ISIS call them "Daesh" and it's insulting enough to make them cut your tongue of if you use it so perhaps it's what we all should use at least colloquially to refer to Daesh.

Like, for instance, the railroad that Obama's 1%'er buddy Warren Buffett owns. I'm sure there's no connection there, though.

Oh, and is it cleaner to transport by rail?

http://bigstory.ap.org/article...

Nope.

There is no connection, but since other posters have already addressed that, I'll simply address your other erroneous claim.

After a pipeline, rail is by far the most safe, efficient and clean way to transport oil over land. In some situations, rail has proved better than even pipelines.

James Conca addresses this in an article - article at Forbes (not behind a paywall):

"Crude oil is moving around the world, around our country, around pristine wilderness, around our cities and towns. It's going to keep moving, will undoubtedly increase during our new energy boom, so what is the safest way to move it?

The short answer is: truck worse than train worse than pipeline worse than boat (Oilprice.com). But that's only for human death and property destruction. For the normalized amount of oil spilled, it's truck worse than pipeline worse than rail worse than boat (Congressional Research Service). Different yet again is for environmental impact (dominated by impact to aquatic habitat), where it's boat worse than pipeline worse than truck worse than rail."

See the article for the details.

What happens when the train derails?

http://bigstory.ap.org/article...

You act like if the pipeline isn't built we'll just quit using oil.

"The decision comes as no surprise to the oil industry, and they've been busily working on other ways to transport the oil."

Like, for instance, the railroad that Obama's 1%'er buddy Warren Buffett owns. I'm sure there's no connection there, though.

Oh, and is it cleaner to transport by rail?

http://bigstory.ap.org/article...

Nope.

And is it going to cut carbon emissions? Are we pretending that Canada's just going to leave it in the ground if we don't buy it?

That's strange, the oil fields, which ISIS has illegally sold the oil to Turkey, one of the most important resources of ISIS, still operated during the U.S and NATO bombing, and now stopped by Russian.
That's strange, ISIS never had to cut their beard and masked as women to flee to Arab Saudi, Turkey, until Russian bombs them.
That's strange, when Russian didn't bomb Al-Quaeda/ISIS, the Al-Quaeda claimed Syria will be Russian graveyard.
That's strange, while the West try hard to play down the role of Russia in Syria, the people in the region love Putin.
That's strange, MH17, there is no U.S satellite data, but the 9268 case, they quickly released the data of "heat flash" detected by satellite.

Of course, any conclusions right now could be considered "conspiracy". And I do NOT blame any NATO/U.S for "suspected bombing" of 9268, but I think this the opportunity to press on Putin plan on Syria, may shape public opinion about anti-bombing campaign in Syria among Russian population.

Got any idea how many cops have been decertified and/or imprisoned in the US lately? Police work, like the intel services, ATTRACT PEOPLE WHO ARE UTTER DOUCHEBAGS. Maybe MOST people are just average Americans, with a tendency to defend freedom - but you've also got a bunch of douchebags.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article...

Don't call her Trigger or she'll pull it on you.

Further, some background about why this case is in the 3rd Circuit (which covers NJ) and not the 2nd (which covers NY): "the Associated Press reported that the New York Police Department sent plainclothes officers to Newark (NJ) businesses owned or frequented by Muslim people, took photographs of 16 mosques and mapped them."

The lawsuit, by New Jersey citizens over actions conducted in NJ by the NYPD, was filed in the 3rd Circuit District Court, and then appealed to the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals.

Some further background on the NYPD Intelligence Bureau and its extra-jurisdictional activities:

- http://www.ap.org/media-center...
- http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/...

Lots of words, means nothing.

Iran is allowed to take their own soil samples.

Syrian "red line"? BWAAA HAAA HAAA!!! Yeah, right.

To be fair, digging holes is about the most we can expect out of the Iranians. Gotta let them do something.

Lots of words, means nothing.

Iran is allowed to take their own soil samples.

Syrian "red line"? BWAAA HAAA HAAA!!! Yeah, right.

So as I predicted many times, USA economy cannot survive at interest rates even as high as 0.25% (even though the current range that the Fed is maintaining is 0-0.25, they are normally around 0.13 or so).

Every American is already getting a ton of 'free money' from the actual productive societies around the world that are giving the USA the stuff they make for the fake money USA prints.

You think more of that will help the USA economy? Wrong! That's what destroyed the USA economy in the first place - defaulting on the gold dollar in 1971 and creating giant inflation since then, growing all types of government spending based on this inflation and new debt and new taxes.

The correct solution to the problem of people not being employed is not to punish those who are still providing employment opportunities and cheap products that people need but to allow people to save money again and to start their own new businesses and this requires removal of all government intrusion into business, labour, economy and money in general.

Your idea is the exact opposite of what is needed and the reason you believe in it is because you genuinely do not understand the actual underlying problem, so it seems to you that it makes sense that those, who are still productive should be subsidising those who are not, but that's the road that crushed so many economies and societies around the world and throughout the history that it is a little discouraging just how ignorant people are of all of the preceding teachable moments even today.

People who are benefiting from increased productivity are people who are investing their savings to be more productive, those are people with savings that let them automate the jobs away. You are forgetting something: businesses exist to make money for the owners of the business, not to employ anybody, not to do anything else but to provide profits for owners.

What you want is more owners, not less, what you need for that is more savings, not less, what you need for that is sound money and a real productive economy. USA is not a real productive economy and the fact that the Fed didn't even move their goalpost from 0-0.25% interest rate range to 0.25-0.25 proves it very well.

The next thing that will come from Yellen will be QE4, not a rate hike. Rate hike was never going to materialise with this collectivist system.

Don't worry though, the Postmaster General says they only keep the data for 1-4 weeks.

2015 - 1977 = 38 years

The Interior Department said the U.S. Board on Geographic Names had been deferring to Congress since 1977, and cited a 1947 law that allows the Interior Department to change names unilaterally when the board fails to act "within a reasonable time." The board shares responsibility with the Interior Department for naming such landmarks.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/f60262f7cb8a4363b3a38b7a035ed66b/white-house-says-mount-mckinley-be-renamed-denali

God, really! There is a much bigger story already in progress

Let's just keep it simple: the entire story about a spontaneous demonstration and a mob angry about some video on YouTube was completely fabricated. They knew it wasn't true, and that's been obvious since the day it happened. Today's email dump makes it even more clear.

If you've found an email that substantiates any of this it would be news to everybody.

Purposeful, deliberate lying about the death of an ambassador and other Americans, all in the name of tamping down some prospectively unpleasant buzz that wouldn't resonate with the "Al Qeda is on the run!" narrative.

Even if this were true, even if you could establish intentional, premeditated lying, it's not illegal, nor am I sure it's in violation of any statute or guideline, unethical, or even just plain morally wrong. It was clearly established that everyone's talking points were based on reported intelligence at the time. That was over a year ago.

We've gone from "Hillary ordered SPECOPS to stand down!" to "We have an email (which I won't cite) where they weren't talking about Innocence of Muslims..." It's all just so dopey, even the Republicans in congress probably don't wanna keep investigating but they can't let it go because of all the dweebs at home passing around creepy conspiracy emails about Vince Foster. Boehner probably gave the job to Trey Goudy specifically to get him out of his hair and hopefully make some kind of career-ending overreach.

Paying a middleman for content that is freely given at the source is stupid and offensive. As is defending the profits of "newspapers" that buy their stories and then charge viewers a premium for rehosting them with their logo at the top of the page.