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But given that the USA's largest employer is using the government subsidized process

Instead of trying to alleviate this travesty with a new one — minimum wage — why not undo such subsidies? If somebody does not pay "enough" for your goods or services (including labor), people look for another buyer. And if they don't, then the pay is enough — by definition.

The government inserting itself between private parties willingly engaging in a lawful transaction is an abomination. That it is done under the pretext of fixing, what it broke in the first place, makes it worse.

This is a destruction of liberty and path to totalitarianism:

• We must help the poor!
• We must force everyone to be helping the poor.
• Now that we are helping the poor, we must control their lives to prevent them from doing "stupid" things. Depending on the kind of Statist in power, these may include:
  • no working for "too small" a wage
  • no drugs, tobacco, or alcohol
  • no sex out of wedlock
  • forced sterilizations and abortions
  • no usage of encryption to prevent monitoring your life
  • no driving "too fast"
  • forced medical treatments

All under the excuse, that we — the Collective — pay you, so you must do as we say. And, no, you can not opt-out either — our compassionate bleeding hearts would not allow you to make that stupid thing either.

As the definition of "poor" expands, the government's control of us all solidifies. Mandatory minimum wage is no different from NSA-spying and other manifestations of Collective (Glorious) trampling the rights of the Individual (cantankerous and unreasonable) — both are imposed on us "for our own good" by the people, who consider themselves our betters.

I really dislike both Whole Foods and the politics and pseudo-science of its founder, and basically avoid it entirely.

Besides, they don't call it "Whole Paycheck" for nothing.

Computers have moved on to more intellectually challenging games . . . like Jeopardy.

Don't forget Rock, Paper, Scissors.

...conservatives anywhere say some really dumb shit sometimes.

Yeah really, they should take a queue from the golden wisdom that liberals say all the time.

Right, because without tasers, no one has ever been killed or injured while resisting arrest.

I'll ask again - would you rather be tased (unpleasant, but no lasting damage in the overwhelming majority of people) or be restrained by force (unpleasant, also commonly end up with cracked ribs, dislocated shoulders/fingers, concussions, broken limbs, other bruises and other contusions) as a result of resisting your arrest?

Stop pretending like these people are standing around doing nothing when cops walk up and taser them out of the blue for shits and grins. They're being arrested, and they're resisting the arrest. At that point, the cops have two choices: tase the person, or pepper spray them, slam them to the ground, wrestle them into handcuffs, and hope they're not severely injuring or killing the person in the process. Neither way is gentle, or 100% guaranteed safe. You don't want to be tased? Don't get arrested; if you DO get arrested, comply immediately with the officer's instructions - the time to argue "wrongful arrest" or any other bullshit is IN FRONT OF A JUDGE, not on the roadside, or in the middle of a crowd of 50 other people.

A rump steak through the heart is rumored to be quite effective. http://thestir.cafemom.com/food_party/133095/man_eats_at_heart_attack

The Super Bowl will take as much power as a medium sized town. Good news for those Texas doctor's offices and schools who got power outages of 2-3 hours. Clearly we're not as important as JerryWorld.

>If you think ruining a guy's life just because they drove after drinking 2 beers is good for society, then we disagree.

First of all, you are setting up a straw man here. I don't care how many beers someone has drunk. All that matters is whether or not they are legally intoxicated.

Secondly, if someone is legally intoxicated and operating a vehicle, they are running a very real, very serious risk of ruining other people's lives. There have been countless cases of drunk drivers killing and maiming innocent people because their intoxication prevented them from safely operating a vehicle. People who willfully do this should be punished very harshly. It is no different than playing Russian Roulette while pointing a firearm at innocent bystanders.

People who drink and drive are satisfying a purely selfish desire, and in so doing putting other people at great risk. This should be punished most harshly, in my opinion.

In my view, if you kill someone while driving drunk, it is murder. And if you are caught before you kill someone, it should be attempted murder.

>I personally prefer non-arbitrary laws to determine what "drunk" means. If drinking impairs our driving so much,
>then .000001 should be illegal. Why is it ok to be .079 BAC, but not .08? Is there good science to back that up?

I doubt the BAC to be considered intoxicated was arrived at in an arbitrary manner. In any case, you have to have a metric by which you can use to enforce the law. This metric has been set.

I direct you to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Relative_risk_of_an_accident_based_on_blood_alcohol_levels_.png

I want you to read this article:

http://www.cafemom.com/journals/read/208318/Ever_held_a_child_s_decapitated_head

I agree. The paranoid parents are going to ignore this, not get their kids immunized, and thereby put them at real risk for neurological damage from measles.

Sadly, this won't even balance out the recent discovery that Poul Thorsen, one of many scientists disputing the link between autism and vaccines, was a fraud. Figure one: a random blog post on the subject reheadlined "The vaccine autism link is real".

So one study and one researcher disputing the link has been invalidated, there are many more that remain, and there are plenty of studies claiming a link between vaccines and autism that have been shown false.

It's kind of like those leaked global warming e-mails. They didn't show that global climate change was a fraud, but that's what people wanted to hear, and that's what they remember, not boring things like the facts or court findings.