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Provably by the same standard that all other political discussions are proved -- based upon available data.

That was my point -- just like the metric of "how many people smoke pot" there are no good data on charitable giving. Consider, though, that a synonym for "liberal" is "generous" (liberal portions) and a synonym for "conservative" is "stingy". Of course, that's only one of many differring synonyms for each word.

Collecting 100% of the income from the rich, would not come close to eliminating the deficit.

True. It shows that spending cuts AND more taxes are needed. Unless they get in another war or spending frenzy, revenue goes up in boom times because the more people are employed, the more they're paying taxes. We're paying for two of the longest wars in our history right now, which is the principal cause of the defecit; notice the budget was balanced until 911?

I wouldn't want to see taxes as high for the rich as they were under Truman, but 15% for a stock market gambler in a safe air conditioned office is WAY too low, considering a roofer risking his life in the hot sun and actually creating wealth rather than shuffling it from hand to hand pays far more in tax is insane.

Your Heritage Foundation link is firewalled off for "politics/opinion". Perhaps you have a less biased link? Like the New York Times ("By this measure, federal taxes are at their lowest level in more than 60 years") or CBS News ("High Taxes? Actually, They're at a 60-Year Low"). In fact, look at results from Google, with a few exceptions like dailykos, they're all highly respected mainstream outlets.

The Reagan tax *rate* cuts (and loophole elimination) greatly increased federal tax revenues

Think about that for a moment. Rate cuts reduce revenue. It was the loophole elimination that increased revenue.

Over two years (2010 and 2011), Romney's total income was $42.5 million. He paid $6.2 million in taxes in gave away $7 million to charity.

What he gave to charity has no bearing on his taxes, except that he can deduct it (and note this in his religion, he is demanded to tithe 10%, as opposed to most Christian faiths that merely suggest 10% and demand nothing). He said himself (you probably saw the clip youself) that he never paid less than 13% in the last ten years. He, himself said he paid 13%.

Also, don't forget that most of that income was capital gains, which are the funds that drive economic expansion. Sounds more than fair to me.

That's right. How are you going to expand economically without the roofer creating that wealth he's investing (or gambling, unless they are investments that are being held). Selling your stock does nothing to drive economic expansion, buying it does. Yet you don't get the break from buying, you get the break from selling. Taxing capital gains as income would reduce the incentive to simply be a parasitic gambler and ionstead be an incentive for long-term investing. These guys that buy 1000 shares of PG&E on Monday and sell them at a profit on Tuesday (or even a second later) are parasites.

Why do you think it's more moral to take money away from those that earned it rather than letting them keep it?

How do you consider gambling "earing your money"? I consider someone either producing wealth (the fry cook, programmer, roofer) or someone in a related, non-producing but necessary job (the IT staff, upper management, accountant) as earning their money.

When a guy buys a lottery ticket and wins, I don't consider that "earning". If a talented professional poker player comes home from the casino with $10k, he didn't earn it, either. The day trader is no different.

If you want to stimulate investment, reward the buying of shares (perhaps with a tax credit or dedu

Hi, welcome to the US where we have massive unemployment and employer-based health insurance. Most people have zero choice in their healthcare provider.

You identify another problem, caused by government. Perhaps tying healthcare to employment wasn't the brightest idea. So we do we continue it?

I looked at your cite, which says nothing about wasting money to keep people alive.

Except the line I quoted that specifically stated "about 27% of Medicare's annual $327 billion budget goes to care for patients in their final year of life."? Would you like more cites?

http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-18560_162-6747002.html
"Last year, Medicare paid $55 billion just for doctor and hospital bills during the last two months of patients' lives. That's more than the budget for the Department of Homeland Security, or the Department of Education. And it has been estimated that 20 to 30 percent of these medical expenses may have had no meaningful impact. Most of the bills are paid for by the federal government with few or no questions asked. "

http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_19905093
The federal government estimates that 70 percent of health-care expenditures are spent on the elderly, 80 percent of that in the last month of life -- and often for aggressive, life-sustaining care that is futile. Think what America could do if it invested that $140 billion a year in other arenas. By comparison, the 2012 budget request for the National Institutes of Health, the largest supporter of biomedical research in the world, is $31 billion.

The United States spends nearly twice as much per capita on health care costs compared with most Western nations, yet it leaves millions of people with no health insurance at all. The bubble of end-of-life care is one reason.

How much are a few extra months worth? A few extra months with my family? A few extra months with my wife? A few extra months to say good-bye? Sometimes even just a few extra minutes are everything... Of course, that argument just bounced right off of you.

No, in fact it did not -- because I measured it against all the good that money could have done (say, for all the people without healthcare, or all the diseases we can't cure because we have no room in the healthcare budget to spend on research). YOU apparently live in a bubble where whenever you need more money you just stroll over to the wall safe and pull it out. I, on the other hand, live in reality where we're forced to prioritize . And yes it sucks, and is a hard and painful decision, but spending millions and millions of dollars giving terminal patients an extra month is not worth the sacrifices our society must endure to provide it. Ever wonder why the European systems have healthcare costs that are far cheaper than ours? And why everyone throughout the system is healthier as a result. It's because they let terminal patients die rather than spending every last penny to give them just a few hours more. I would gladly give up 2 months at the end of my life to provide healthcare for so many: babies, children, poor working single mothers, etc, etc -- if my death 2 months early saved even one young life, it would be worth it.

Wow. Just wow. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. The kind of mental pain and anguish necessary to build such solitary callousness... I'm sorry.

And I'm sorry you're so far offbase that you apparently like in a world of naivety, where nothing has a cost and we can give everyone everything with a snap of our fingers. You must be young.

It appears the giant Tiger Shrimp, from the orient...is invading the gulf coast of the US...the much larger variety could endanger the native, smaller (and very tasty) gulf shrimps.

So, I get it...the govt is trying to introduce these larger shrimp, to use their larger and more plentiful shells to get more Uranium!?!?!?

Energy at the expense of our seafood!!!

:)

Couldn't Apple have payed their wage slaves better so they wouldn't want to risk their jobs by thieving?

Right, because well-paid people and employees never steal from anyone.

For the "person" making the real threats, set their address to be one of your neighbors.

Hmmm, defamation of character and libel? Since you like experiments maybe a neighbor can use your address and mention you're a sex offender and see what happens! (For the record I don't advocate this.)

Since no real people (only your fake sock poppets) can see any of this stuff, if you see a SWAT team show up at your neighbors' house, then we can surmise that Facebook does indeed allow the government to monitor private communications there.

Facebook employees can. The phone company can (or whomever you get your internet through). Also you may note that all of these companies respond to subpenas... so yes "private" information may be monitored. Regarding Facebook specifically this is mentioned in the legal terms you wantonly clicked through when creating an account (See Safety 7, 10, 12 and how they relate to your experiment) I say wantonly since you obviously aren't sure about their Privacy Policy specifically the "Some other things you need to know" section addressing "Responding to legal requests and preventing harm". In a related note you may find the following interesting:

The fact is that Facebook members own the intellectual property (IP) that is uploaded to the social network, but depending on their privacy and applications settings, users grant the social network "a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License)."

Facebook adds, "[t]his IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it."

While the social network does not technically own its members content, it has the right to use anything that is not protected with Facebook's privacy and applications settings. For instance, photos, videos and status updates set to public are fair game. article

Considering information you broadcast private? It's the exact opposite.

Christianity isn't a death cult. There aren't pervasive allegations of priests murdering children. The problem of sexual abuse by clergy is a drop in the bucket compared to sex abuse by teachers.

Consider the statistics: In accordance with a requirement of President Bush's No Child Left Behind Act, in 2002 the Department of Education carried out a study of sexual abuse in the school system.

Hofstra University researcher Charol Shakeshaft looked into the problem, and the first thing that came to her mind when Education Week reported on the study were the daily headlines about the Catholic Church.

"[T]hink the Catholic Church has a problem?" she said. "The physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100 times the abuse by priests."

So, in order to better protect children, did media outlets start hounding the worse menace of the school systems, with headlines about a "Nationwide Teacher Molestation Cover-up" and by asking "Are Ed Schools Producing Pedophiles?"

No, they didn't. That treatment was reserved for the Catholic Church, while the greater problem in the schools was ignored altogether.

As the National Catholic Register's reporter Wayne Laugesen points out, the federal report said 422,000 California public-school students would be victims before graduation — a number that dwarfs the state's entire Catholic-school enrollment of 143,000.

Yet, during the first half of 2002, the 61 largest newspapers in California ran nearly 2,000 stories about sexual abuse in Catholic institutions, mostly concerning past allegations. During the same period, those newspapers ran four stories about the federal government's discovery of the much larger — and ongoing — abuse scandal in public schools. -- Has Media Ignored Sex Abuse In School?

If you think that sex abuse by clergy is an enormous problem, practically demanding blood, what will you do about the much larger problem of abuse by teachers and the education system that covers for them? Or does the outrage and interest fade when the object isn't the church, but agents of the state?

Educator Sexual Misconduct: A Synthesis of Existing Literature

1) Naomi Wolf has been following this case since 2010:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/post_1435_b_797188.html ...long enough to look up all the Swedish law and case histories she doesn't already have, particularly since the article above contains the news: "Well, I was in Denmark in March of this year at a global gathering for women leaders on International Women's Day, and heard extensively from specialists in sex crime and victims' rights in Sweden." ...that's March of 2010, nearly 30 months ago.

2) Unusual case, indeed, but nothing about its unusual-ness relates to whether the original complaint merited charges, not after the original prosecutor declined to charge and a prosecutor clear across Sweden took the very, ahem, unusual step of deciding to re-start a case from outside their normal jurisdiction (it's federal, so they *could*, but it's very...unusual).

3) She is hardly accusing "the entire Swedish political elite", she just notes the Rove connection without drawing conclusions. The Rove story has been very hot in Sweden, because Rove is considered by many to have won elections in his past by abuses of the legal system, including, it is said, planting a bug in his own office and getting an investigation of his client's opponent started on the basis of it; and involvement in the framing of an Alabama politician for corruption, as reported by 60 minutes:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/21/60minutes/main3859830.shtml

It's quite normal for Karl Rove to have no provable connection at all to things that happen when he's around - like his old law partner starting the swift boat organization. People have generally started to regard him as smoke and start looking for fire.

I might add - it's funny for you to regard Naomi Wolf as unable to comment on Swedish law because she's American, but regard as obvious that Swedish politicians would look to an American for electoral advice in their very different system (no state-level, no third branch of government, no electoral college - it's a constitutional monarchy with a parliament).

Sweden is a democracy, can't argue with that one. It's just a democracy that helped with extraordinary rendition of suspects to where they were tortured - so you can kind of understand somebody's reluctance to hand themselves over to their tender mercies; the rendered guys never got that day in court of which you speak.

Is is that you didn't look or just aren't willing to?

CBS News

Here is one example. of a banker who most would consider "good". Two observations: 1. It's news that a banker is good. 2. It's a very small bank.

See link

Sig doesn't ship their rifles in cardboard boxes. It would have come in a blue hard sided case. That is an airsoft. It shoots nice 6mm plastic pellets, and likely neither he nor the Police have handled either an airsoft sig nor a real one to know the difference. Now if it really is a firearm then the company that sent it to him violated the 1968 Gun Contral Act and is going to lose their licenses. That is if it wasn't from Eric Holder's Fast and Furious Program

Sorry, coffee is one of the plants severely affected by global warming.
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-502303_162-20121250.html

Perhaps you weren't aware of the latest numbers?

For a site that lives and dies by its unique visitors a 4.8 % drop in 6 months could be...unsettling.

To which you said: "Um.... Looks like the same thing to me." Which of course is complete sophistry, since you never bothered to find equivalent statements from Obama or show how's he's donated to right wing homophobic hate groups.

BULLSHIT! I gave links to the quotes I was referring. You pointed to something to which I was not referring. Basically, this is what you did:

Me: Dave Cathy and Obama said the exact same thing. They both said they think that marriage is between a man and a woman.
You: Liar! Obama said, "Michelle, I want to stick it in your pooper and have a beer." Dave Cathy NEVER said that, they did NOT say the same thing.

See, I said they both said that marriage is between a man and a woman because that is what the liberals are protesting about. If you think they are protesting about something else, like I said, you need to take it up with CNN.

Let me take you provided from me and clarify it for those that are too stupid to understand:

Did you vote for Obama in 2008? Remember, he said the EXACT same thing that the Chick-Fil-A CEO said, that marriage was between a man and a woman and the same people protesting Chick-Fil-A today were falling all over themselves to campaign and vote for Obama just four years ago.

From you:

Which of course is complete sophistry, since you never bothered to find equivalent statements from Obama or show how's he's donated to right wing homophobic hate groups.

Wait! Now you are saying that it's "right wing homophobic hate groups." Now it's a fallacy of "moving the goal post". Earlier, you were demanding "Unless you can find a source saying that Obama believed that God would be angry with us for redefining marriage." Doesn't matter as they are both red herrings. I never said any of those things. Here, let me state it one more time and if you don't get it this time, you are too fucking stupid to post on the Internet:

BOTH CATHY AND OBAMA SAID THEY BELIEVED THAT MARRIAGE IS BETWEEN A MAN AND A WOMAN. When Obama said it, liberals voted for him. When Cathy said it, they called him hateful and protested his business.

Oh, and since you are so quick to call others liars and projecting, I thought I should point out that you have lied, which means you are projecting when call me a liar, especially since I have proven that I did not lie:

Here, you said:

Which of course is complete sophistry, since you never bothered to find equivalent statements from Obama or show how's he's donated to right wing homophobic hate groups.

First, I never said that Obama donated to any groups at all. I said he believed a marriage is between a man and a woman (got that yet?). But since you imply that Chick-Fil-A has donated to "hate groups", I looked up what that could mean. I found that they were accused of donating to a group trying to get Uganda to outlay homosexuality. Then, I found out it was complete BULLSHIT.

But again, that is not really the subject. The fact is that BOTH CATHY AND OBAMA SAID THEY BELIEVED THAT MARRIAGE IS BETWEEN A MAN AND A WOMAN. When Obama said it, liberals voted for him. When Cathy said it, they called him hateful and protested his business.

Especially when thinking of what tractors like this can do to cars.

Chick-Fil-A wasn't attacked because of the CEO's political opinions, it was attacked because of their donations to hate groups, particularly the one that is pushing quite successfully for Uganda to make homosexuality a capital crime.

Really? Then why did they start protesting only after Cathy made his comment? And if the uproar was over donations made by Chick-Fil-A, then maybe you should notify CNN and every other news outlet that thinks this is about what Cathy said. Here is a quote from a CNN story:

The controversy came about after an interview with the fast food restaurant chain's president and COO, Dan Cathy, appeared in The Baptist Press on July 16 and he weighed in with his views on family.

"We are very much supportive of the family -- the biblical definition of the family unit," Cathy said. "We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that."

Strange. No mention of Uganda at all.

Oh, and the whole Uganda story is bullshit anyway.

Is the BBC turning into The Onion? Or is the author just plain daft to start with?

Substituting the words "mini-livestock" in place of "dead insects"? What the fuck are these Brits smoking?

I know crushed-up insects may pass for a semi-decent gourmet meal by British culinary standards, but here in America I'll stick to my 97% lean ground beef and REAL pork chops, thanks.

The other 3% being made up of god knows what of course (in addition to the expected fat):
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=2507910n
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sLmJ_-Ygaww
http://www.businessinsider.com/watch-mcdonalds-workers-kick-around-a-dead-rat-like-its-a-soccer-ball-2012-6
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/kfc-says-sorry-for-dead-caterpillar-941451

livestock [lahyv-stok] Show IPA
noun ( used with a singular or plural verb )
the horses, cattle, sheep, and other useful animals kept or raised on a farm or ranch.
source:http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/livestock

No reason not to use the words mini-livestock when talking about insects bred on an insect farm, for example, that would be sold as food.

By the way, if you're going to be offensive you should at least get your shit straight before vomiting it up on here and embarrassing those of us Americans that don't want to look like complete idiots.

There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me -- because they want to give something back. They know they didnâ(TM)t -- look, if youâ(TM)ve been successful, you didnâ(TM)t get there on your own. You didnâ(TM)t get there on your own. Iâ(TM)m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)

If they paid taxes, and most of those people would have, then they have already given something back. If they contribute to charity and I bet most of them have to some degree, then they've given something back. Why does Obama claim otherwise? Once again we have a block of reasonable sounding prose (though no real reason for saying it) with little controversial phrases spicing it up. Seems part of a pattern to me. Like he meant to say what he said.

And while there are probably a small number of people who think they did it all, I doubt most people wealthy or otherwise have that illusion. So why pull out what looks to me like a straw man?

Let's get back to the original statement. Even if we grant that he really was just referring to infrastructure, what's the point of saying it? The business may not have built that infrastructure or made it happen, but neither did Obama. It was the work of a lot of people and it was paid for by a lot of people. Technically, no one person or entity made it happen.

The business contributed by paying taxes. And they might even have helped make it happen by building some component of the infrastructure in question. Here, I see insufficient gratitude here on the part of Obama, even if we assume he meant what you and he claim he meant.

Frankly, it looks like a classic Friday surprise propaganda trick. The leader says something controversial while speaking to the base on Friday (July 13 being coincidentally a Friday and the group being Obama supporters). It hangs in the newspapers for a couple of days over the weekend, and then his spokespeople spend Monday cleaning up ("What he really said was...").

If done well, the speaker gets the best of both worlds. He appears hard core to his base while retaining the appearance of a more central politician to everyone who doesn't watch or read news over the weekend and just reads the correction on Monday.

In my view, it didn't work this time because the statement was just too blatant. In summary, I think Obama meant to say what we think he said. It's part of a pattern (that even shows up a second time in the speech).

Obviously this sampling will reflect only the aggregate opinion of people involved with Twitter. Which way do you suppose that bias will lean?

Better than fabricating a polling bias, anyhow. Especially since it isn't likely to appear as a credible in mainstream news.

Exactly what I mean by abuse. I don't recall an asterisk after the First Amendment leading to:

* Unless some random judge says you don't have the right to free speech.

There was a particularly egregious case in Kentucky recently, where a teenage girl was almost charged with contempt (and probably would have been, if not for the press attention), for daring to name her rapists in public.

You would do well to research the 'Fast and Furious' background more before you peddle your ideological tripe. The fact is that gun shop owners are not the unscrupulous enablers or pathetic imbeciles you make them out to be. They were actually reporting this suspicious activity to the BATFE, and they wanted to stop selling guns to certain people, but as part of the 'Fast and Furious' operation, the BATFE instructed them to continue the sales. Several gun sellers were deliberately acting irresponsibly under the advisement of BATFE agents! Some sources.

He does not care about America workers

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57472444-503544/new-obama-ad-mocks-romney-singing-america-the-beautiful/

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2012/07/25/super-pac-rolls-out-olympics-themed-attack-on-romney/

Just becasue there are issues that it can be used to make a bomb, should not stop countries such as the US developing it for its nuclear power plants. I would agree that the facilities to process it should be licenced and monitored and we should keep it out of the hands of rogue states such as Iran

Gosh, with platitudes like that, you should run for office! It is very easy for politicians, who don't actually live in the same reality as the rest of us, to make such simplistic statements without offering any concrete or realistic suggestion as to how they would accomplish those ends.

Gov. Romney: If we re-elect Barack Obama, Iran will have a nuclear weapon. And if we elect Mitt Romney, they will not have a nuclear weapon. [Nov 12, 2011, GOP Debate in Spartanburg, S.C.]

Inquiring Media, fellow candidates, anyone with half a brain: How will you accomplish that, exactly?

Gov. Romney: [crickets]

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57477857/study-finds-high-tech-shark-skin-swimsuits-do-not-affect-speed/

Also... commercial != high quality

Hmm... it seems that one shouldn't judge the quality of something based on cost/price as that can be (and usually is) manipulated artificially to make things look more valuable than they actually are. Look at the shenanigans that retail stores pull on a daily basis. That's not even considering the entire advertising industry as a whole...

Use him

Drugs with side effects trigger attachments. Caffeine is just as dangerous as Alcohol in that respect

Except that "attachments" are not dangerous. Coma and death are dangerous, brain damage is dangerous, liver damage is dangerous, and the typical doses of alcohol are frighteningly close to such adverse effects -- whereas the typical dose of caffeine is nowhere near that point.

Go to a coffee stand (or at work) and watch some people with their hands shaking so hard they can't hold the coffee in the cup.

Which may be scary, but is not a sign of any permanent damage to that person's mind or body. Caffeine withdrawal is tough, but it is not life threatening, and a person who is committed to it can get through the symptoms at home (maybe with the help of close friend) in less than a week. Alcohol withdrawal, on the other hand, can be so dangerous that it requires medical supervision.

That is a sign of a drug addiction beyond the persons ability to control.

Yet the drug abuse and dependence treatment programs that emerged from clinical psychology (read: science) are based on teaching people how to take control and avoid harmful behaviors.

Prescribed drugs can be abused but at least someone is trying to limit the effects

Really? A typical Adderall prescription (d,l-amphetamine salts) is for 10-20mg, two-three times per day, for a month. That is well above a lethal quantity, and a person could easily give themselves brain damage by taking a large fraction of their month's supply. People who abuse Adderall and related medicines (other amphetamines, Ritalin, etc.) can have psychotic episodes; see, for example, this recent NY Times article (sorry for paywall) about prescription stimulant abuse among high school and college students:

https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/10/education/seeking-academic-edge-teenagers-abuse-stimulants.html?_r=1&hp

It's not just psychiatric drugs; prescription opiates are also readily abused, and people get high by using the prescribed amount of those drugs. Some pharmaceutical opiates are more potent than heroin, and abuse is an ever-present concern with those drugs; Rush Limbaugh abused prescription opiates:

http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-201_162-1561324.html

Here is the problem with the war on drugs: recreational drugs need not be any more dangerous than prescription drugs. Pharmaceutical methamphetamine is safer than "truck stop" methamphetamine, not because it is a different drug, but because the production is much better controlled. Many of the dangerous of recreational methamphetamine stem from the adulterants that are left over from poor production techniques.

So in a sense, I agree with you: we need better regulation. That means legalizing recreational drugs, and requiring that legal sources adhere to standardized and regulation production and distribution methods (I do not think anyone can argue that a 14 year old should be buying recreational drugs). When someone buys cocaine, they should not have to worry about what is mixed into the drug; when someone buys MDMA (ecstasy), they should not worry about having actually received methamphetamine mixed with caffeine (a well known trick on the black market). There will still be problems with abuse, but when someone visits their doctor, they should be able to tell their doctor what drugs they have been taking, and in what doses -- which is basically impossible if you are buying some mystery powder in an alley somewhere.

In America, we too have VERY few massacres.

How do you define "VERY few"?

July 2012 - 12 dead, 50 wounded - Aurora, CO
May 2012 - 6 dead, 1 wounded; Seattle, WA -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Seattle_cafe_shooting_spree
April 2012 - 7 dead, 3 injured - Oikos University, Oakland, CA
Feb 2012 - 3 dead, 2 wounded - Chardon, OH
Aug 2011 - 8 dead, 1 wounded; Copley Township, OH -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Copley_Township,_Ohio_shooting
July 2011 - 8 dead, 2 wounded; Grand Rapids, MI -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Grand_Rapids,_Michigan_shooting
Jan 2011 - 6 dead; 13 wounded - Tucson, AZ -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Tucson_shooting
Jan 2010 - 8 dead; Appomattox, VA -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Appomattox_shootings
Nov 2009 - 13 dead, 30 wounded; Ft. Hood, TX -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Hood_Shooting
April 2009 - 14 dead; 4 wounded - Binghamton, NY -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binghamton_shootings
Mar 2009 - 11 dead 6 wounded, Samson, AL -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_County_massacre
Feb 2009 - 4 dead, 1 wounded; University of AZ -- http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-201_162-527308.html
Dec 2008 - 9 dead, 3+ injured; Covina, CA
Sept 2008 - 6 dead, 2 injured; Alger, WA -- http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008153942_webshooting02m.html
Dec 2007 - 8 dead, 5 wounded; Omaha, NE
April 2007 - 32 dead; Virginia Tech
Oct 2006 - 6 dead, 5 injured; Nickel Mines, PA -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish_school_shooting
Jan 2006 - 7 dead; Goleta, CA -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_San_Marco
March 2005 - 7 dead, 4 wounded; Brooksfield, WI -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Ratzmann
March 2005 - 10 dead, 12 injured; Red Lake HS, Minnesota
October 2002 - 10 dead, 3 injured; Washington DC (sniper attacks over 3 week period) -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beltway_sniper_attacks
July 1999 - 9 dead 13 wounded; Atlanta, GA -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_O._Barton
April 1999 - 12 dead; Columbine HS
Dec 1993 - 6 dead, 19 wounded; Long Island Railroad -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Island_Rail_Road_Massacre
May 1993 - 2 dead, 3 wounded; Dearborn, MI --
May 1993 - 3 dead; Dana Point, CA
July 1993 - 9 dead, 6 wounded; San Francisco, CA -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/101_California_Street_shootings
Nov 1991 - 4 dead, 6 wounded; Royal Oak, MI -- http://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/15/us/ex-postal-worker-kills-3-and-wounds-6-in-michigan.html
Oct 1991 - 4 dead (1 by samurai sword); Ridgewood, NJ -- http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/a-former-postal-worker-commits-mass-murder
Oct 1991

So http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704630004576248600469362440.html and http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-202_162-646126.html and http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5g_eEAC03XCJX2eCY9xSIDd4qDzdA just didn't happen?

They can't retain enough air marshals to do the job. Most people won't keep a job where they have irregular hours, are cramped up in a coach airline seat every other day and can not reliably get home to be with their families, can't maintain a reasonable sleep or workout schedule, and have to eat crappy airline food all the time. Reportedly, the agency is also horribly run, as is attested to by former air marshals.
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500202_162-6162291.html
http://www.propublica.org/article/air-marshals-dogged-by-discrimination-complaints-in-field-offices-201

It would be cheaper, easier, and provide more consistent coverage to allow passengers to carry concealed weapons.

Actually, you're wrong. The national debt was roughly $10T when Bush left office in 2008. It's now pushing $16T, three years and six months into Obama's term.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57400369-503544/national-debt-has-increased-more-under-obama-than-under-bush/

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

Not only that, almost all the debt added under Bush II was done after Democrats took control of the House and Senate in 2006.

The Pelosi/Reid/Obama debt is about HALF the entire US debt.

Actually, you're wrong. The national debt was roughly $10T when Bush left office in 2008. It's now pushing $16T, three years and six months into Obama's term.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57400369-503544/national-debt-has-increased-more-under-obama-than-under-bush/

http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

It's not changing my feelings towards McDonalds in general - mostly towards that one location.

Agreed, if by location you mean Paris, rather than this particular outlet.

I record everything I see and hear..using organic video and audio sensors, onto a storage medium consisting of neurons and synapses. Does this mean they would throw me out, too?

Perception and memory are notoriously unreliable.

You leave McDonald's with no clear picture of what happened there.

From the simplest of magic tricks, parlor games and puzzles, to elaborately staged classroom exercises in law and psychology, the basic principles have been known and understood for generations.

Eyewitness: How Accurate Is Visual Memory?

I can't help but think that the geek's ever-recording electronic eye is an obscene intrusion into the life of others. When augmented reality meets the real world expect "the almighty augmented" to take some hits --- from this direction at least.

It's important to clarify (as I had to RTFA to realise this), that he claims he was assaulted by 3 employees of McDonalds

This wasn't a random assault by other customers at some shady McDonalds at 3AM, nor was it an assault by a typical skinhead -- from the photos the alleged perpetrators were McDonalds Management.

He's not the first person to claim McDonalds staff in France assault their customers.

Just because the WHO says the girls haven't been poisoned doesn't mean they are not being attacked. Girls have had acid thrown in their faces repeatedly. And when you're face is scared for life, there's no dispute that it happened:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/14/world/asia/14kandahar.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/14/world/asia/14iht-kandahar.1.17822365.html
http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-224_162-4631708.html

1. Ensure that registered voters have unrestricted access to their polling place.

You have already missed an important step - ensuring that nefarious groups aren't preventing eligible voters from being allowed to register [1], and that they aren't caged [2], or summarily invalidated from being registered [3] (the main problem with this is that people are prevented from getting IDs in the first place by virtue of being homeless, etc).

Let's not forget the time honored tradition of just jailing your political opponents or threatening their death if they stand for election is yet another way for the formalities of democracy to be observed while gaming the end-result. You can have completely "clean" elections but still have a thoroughly corrupt output.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/28/us/restrictions-on-voter-registration-in-florida-have-groups-opting-out.html
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caging_(voter_suppression)
[3] http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57467195-503544/stringent-voter-id-law-in-pa-could-prevent-750000-from-voting/

khipu put plenty of facts forward, and 2 minutes on google would confirm everything he says.

Here you go, some facts with references:

Cut a secret deal to kill the public option, while campaigning on its behalf
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/miles-mogulescu/ny-times-reporter-confirm_b_500999.html

Granted waivers for 30 companies, including McDonald's, exempting them from health care reform
http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/2010-10-07-healthlaw07_ST_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip

Continued renditions of alleged terrorists to countries where they could be tortured
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/us/politics/25rendition.html

Blocked the release of photos documenting the torture and abuse of detainees by the US military
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/05/president-oba-5.html

Continued the practice of indefinite detentions for alleged terrorists
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/21/AR2009052104045.html

Extended the Patriot Act without making any reforms
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2010/0301/Obama-signs-Patriot-Act-extension-without-reforms

Pushed for mandatory DNA testing of those arrested for crimes, regardless of whether they have been convicted
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0310/34097.html

Dramatically increased government secrecy, blocking more FOIA requests in 2009 than Bush did in 2008
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/16/obamas-broken-promise-fed_n_500526.html

Cut a deal to exempt abortion services from health care reform
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/03/21/deal-struck-on-abortion-clears-path-for-health-care-passage/

Announced a $60 billion sale of arms to the Saudi Arabian dictatorship, the largest arms deal in history
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-20016181-503543.html

About 6 minute's worth

I wouldn't say nobody in .com land is going out there...

Don't forget about these guys.

The only way to ensure complete privacy is to stay offline and stay indoors. Oh, and probably keep all of your curtains closed too, now...

This whole thing about immigration (legal or not) is simply ridiculous.

Like most industrialized nations, the rate of population growth of the US is declining. We would be under replacement rate already were it not for immigration.

The population growth rate is in decline even with the current rate of immigration, which is at historically unprecedented levels (about twice as many as the early 1920's).

Illegals make up a disproportionally large segment of the prison population, but overall, violent crime is way down. (Blacks also have a disproportionally large prison population.)

Thinking that the country cannot sustain the influx, or that these people will somehow reduce our standard of living by requiring more services, or increase the crime rate is simply not supported by the evidence.

Then there's the innovation. Jobs come not from existing businesses, but from starting new businesses, and from new-ish businesses growing large. Immigrants tend to make the most of their opportunities by inventing new things, starting new businesses, and encouraging their children get educated and become successful (source).

Then there's the infrastructure. Illegal immigrants don't contribute to the infrastructure by paying taxes (as much), but at the same time they become a burden on the infrastructure by avoidance. They avoid the hospitals until something becomes an emergency, they don't alert the police to minor situations before they get out of hand, and so on.

Then there's the exploitation. Illegal immigrants have no recourse when their employer abuses them.

It would almost seem, from a completely neutral viewpoint, that just allowing illegals to become citizens would be a win all around.

I'm not entirely sure what the problem is.

Perhaps someone can craft a reasonable sounding "what if" scenario that outlines the sophistry for me? I'm not having any luck identifying any evidence-based reasons.

Here's a "60 minutes" episode where they compare chickens with dinosaurs (stand, arms, and feet are similar). http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5658449n

As a young kid, I always wondered how people could NOT notice this. Look at dinosaur feet in cheesy old movies, and look at the feet of most birds. They're so ridiculously similar.

Of course, as a young kid, I kind of had it backwards and thought that the dinosaur puppet makers in the old movies were being lazy and using chicken (or other bird) feet for their puppets and that maybe dinosaurs had totally different feet. When someone explained to me the evolutionary link (and that of course, those old movies were basing the feet off known fossils), I basically just said, "Well yeah, that makes more sense then."

Here's a "60 minutes" episode where they compare chickens with dinosaurs (stand, arms, and feet are similar).
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5658449n

If the US passes a bill requiring ISP's to retain the data it would mean that their data (US Congress) would also be retained and possibly be subject to FOIA requests. I doubt that many in Washington DC want their data held for any longer than it takes to complete the http request.

Congress commonly exempts itself from complying with laws, since prosecutable offenses are for the little people usually.

In 1994/5, the Republican-led (under Newt Gingrich) Congress changed that somewhat by passing the Congressional Accountability Act, but once the Republicans were out of power the Democrats resumed business as usual.

To be fair, though, the Republicans probably would have done the same, if only a little slower, and no one made any moves to every fix up the insider trading issues back then, either. And Congress has always been exempt from FOIA requests and other petty laws that as an employer I could have been heavily fined for if I ignored.

Confirmed American plagiarists U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin are still enjoying successful careers. So it seems that at least in the U.S. plagiarism is somewhat tolerated.

Why stop at Biden, Obama seems to have his hand in it occasionally as well... How does that saying go again: great minds think alike, but fools seldom differ... My guess is that most politicians fall into the later camp...

Because that's how much it would cost to make a PC if the factories that make the parts were in the US, dealing with US Environmental Regulations, US Taxes and having to pay US Workers who expect to be able to afford a McMansion and Porsche Cayenne for working in any aspect in the Tech Sector and would likely Unionize overnight

I think many of them would settle for a living wage (where I live that would be about fifteen bucks an hour) plus health care benefits. As far environmental regulations go, Chinese externalitles will have an effect. One of many articles about this.

But that company's lawyers can and do reproduce, to the detriment of all humanity:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110330/04055413695/monsanto-sued-organic-farmers-who-dont-want-to-be-accused-patent-infringement.shtml

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/monsanto200805

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/26/eveningnews/main4048288.shtml

Given the way that some high schools treat their students [like little children] it's no wonder that so many young people today have such a hard time taking care of themselves after they graduate.

If you want to see something truly disturbing, check out the documentary The War on Kids . It is currently available on Netflix; I just watched it a few days ago and was totally disgusted. The section on the over-medication of our children is especially troubling, and the coverage of the full SWAT raid at a South Carolina High School at the behest of the administration (which turned up absolutely no drugs at all) is both infuriating and chilling at the same time.

Much of the documentary focuses on the testimony of kids dealing with the rise in police involvement in our schools, not to mention the ineffectiveness (and outright insanity) of zero-tolerance policies. The kid's themselves know it's a complete joke, all the anti-drug programs like D.A.R.E., plus the teachers talking about kids looking like fucking lobotomy patients after a change in meds, literally drooling...

I can tell you emphatically, there is no way in hell I'm going to allow my child to go to a school that even kids themselves cannot differentiate from a prison (they actually do an experiment with children in the documentary examining just that). I will be home-schooling my children, no matter what it takes. My kids will not be drones. They may not be able to diagram a sentence, but they'll damn sure know their rights.

Based on the number of times I've heard Republicans scream about 'States Rights' lately, I bet if that same situation were to come before the Republicans of today, a fair number of them would vote to allow slavery because "government just gets in the way" and "regulations stifle innovation" and "the government which governs least governs best". Look at the hard work going on in conservative America right now to roll back labor laws, all the comments made by people like Newt Gingrich about how we should put the young to work rather than 'forcing them to get an education', the concerted effort in state legislatures all over the country to dismantle unions, the relaxation of environmental regulations (Republican Representative Joe Barton even apologizing to the head of BP in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster)...

You really don't see how the two parties have pretty much completely flipped in ideology since the mid-1800's? Come on.

They perform >30% better at academic subjects across the board: Dr. Brian Ray, Strengths of Their Own: Home Schoolers Across America, National Home Education Research Institute, Salem, OR, 1997. They also do better in college, and are more likely to be active in the community and to vote as adults: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505145_162-37242551/can-homeschoolers-do-well-in-college/