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Reminds of various stories where fans were disappointed:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nba/2016/12/15/lebron-james-no-show-stings-fans-grizzlies-cavaliers/95460652/
https://www.cleveland.com/cavs/index.ssf/2017/03/lebron_james_kyrie_irving_defe.html
https://news.abs-cbn.com/sports/12/15/16/nba-lebron-james-fan-left-disappointed-after-cavs-rest-star

There's no doubt that automation makes things cheaper but only if you stay employed at a constant wage. If you look at the US the median wage, like what a typical employee will make that has been flat for 50 years. Now tons of jobs have been automated since the 60s, why haven't the wages skyrocketed? Because it's supply and demand, your typical worker is barely able to keep the purchasing power he has. You see the top 5% and 10% are pulling ahead, never mind the top 0.1%-1% but those that aren't on the gravy train feel left out. Intelligent automation is not going to make this any better, those who create advanced systems and have unique skills become more valuable while routine work suffer wage depression. Even if that particular job can't be automated, there's too many people who want jobs of a moderate complexity compared to what's on offer.

That said, I don't think we're heading for a collapse because the rich and super-rich will give us just enough to keep the peace, it's not the French or Russian revolution where people are starving in the streets. With smarter technology the burden of providing non-productive members of society with the basics should get easier and easier. But if it goes in cycles with serfs and feudal lords, workers and factory owners then I don't think we're heading for utopia but more like another age of huge economic differences. Maybe not quite Elysium but Jeff Bezos got a hundred billions and they're multiplying faster than anyone's paycheck. You get a pittance to afford robot McDonald's, he makes his way to a trillionaire. I guess it's a win-win, but I know who's winning the most...

The Cuyahoga River Gorge Dam is going to be removed, which is great for the river ecosystem. But, instead of spending money on wind turbines it would have been more economical for producing electricity to turn the dam into a run-of-the-river dam.

How can that possibly cost more than the almost weekly vacations previous presidents took to Hawaii and Africa?

That is a lie, and you are a liar.

Your own link proved yourself wrong. Again, traveling to your own property is not a "vacation" anymore than going to your own backyard is a "vacation". The link you posted said he was going on vacation because he traveled to his own property. That is not a vacation.

How can that possibly cost more than the almost weekly vacations previous presidents took to Hawaii and Africa?

That is a lie, and you are a liar. Trump has gone on more vacations so far than any president in history. Further, it doesn't much matter where he goes; the principal cost is security, which costs about the same amount whether he goes to Mar-a-Lago or Hawaii. Further, Trump is paying himself to stay at Mar-a-Lago, so he's actually just defrauding the American People by staying there every weekend. AFAICT it's his plan for getting out of debt. Just keep paying himself for vacation time.

I would guess that Netflix did in fact do this, in part due to the USPS consolidation of sorting operations a number of years ago.

In Ohio during Netflix's disc peak my mail carrier looked like a Netflix delivery agent, with an armload of red envelopes every day.

Netflix opened new centers to reduce turn-around time (it worked, too). The one nearest me was in Toledo.

Now all of Ohio's mail is sorted in Columbus, Cleveland, or Cincinatti. There's no reason to maintain any Ohio facilities outside of these locations.

http://www.cleveland.com/open/...

There is little if any connection between the wealth of any particular wealthy person and the daily struggle of the typical poor person or family. Sudden wealth bestowed on poor people doesn't tend to make their problems go away for very long. The typical lottery winner is poor again within a few years.

Why do 70 percent of lottery winners end up bankrupt?
Government programs are not a panaceas, they can make problems worse:

President Obama Admits Welfare Encourages Dependency

As far as I have seen there are very few people that have complaints about the simple existence of aid programs. There are many complaints about badly structured one, unsustainable ones, ones that are subject to waste, fraud, or abuse, or that create perverse incentives that ultimately harm the participants.

As far as job creation goes, your thinking doesn't really account for many types of startup companies. They are developing a product and have nothing to sell. There is no direct income to be gained by adding employees as there is in an established company that is expanding. The only way many startup companies get the product created is to hire staff and do the development work. Then, maybe a couple of years later they may make big money based on their product. Now if the people that signed on to that company become rich, how is that stealing from someone that was a high school dropout that is sweeping floors in the school across town?

Job creating entrepreneurs aren't a myth, you just don't like the idea. I don't think it sits well with your socio-economic views and the role of the state. On the other hand I know several people that have created a number of companies that grew to employ hundreds of people.

Engineers have fixed those issues by such technology as "not sneezing into your test tubes" and "freezers" and "not storing DNA in sunlight."

If your DNA is out in the open collecting dust and microbes, you're asking for it to be contaminated. DNA is more than stable enough to work on without using so much as gloves. Consider that Lincoln's DNA from when he was assassinated is still readable despite having been stored at room temperature for over a century in non-sterile conditions. RNA? Sure, that would get shredded pretty rapidly. DNA though is extremely robust. The people at microsoft and twist biosciences aren't stupid.

Nucleases are everywhere, but you wouldn't be rubbing data DNA on your shoe prior to working with it. They're not going to "evolve" to counter anti-nuclease activity because the DNA is going to be kept away from the bacteria with the nucleases.

> He's also telegraphed every company that the way to be on his good book is jobs...

Lol. Not even close.
He gave Carrier $7M tax dollars in order to replace people with robots.

What he's "telegraphed" is that the way to be on his good book is to say great things about him because then he'll say great things about you.

Also, "A guy calls me a genius and they want me to renounce him? I'm not going to renounce him."

So yeah, if you want Donald Trump to like you, all you gotta do is praise him like a puppy.

The next big hit will be the trucking industry. Everyone thinks Google's self driving cars are pretty cute, right? Fewer accidents, vision impaired people can get to the grocery store, your car can drive your drunk ass home from the bar safely? All good, right?

Two things about that. First thing, they want this for the trucking industry. Don't tell me they're not working on it because they absolutely are. First article, second article.

Second thing. Truck driver is the most popular profession today. First article, second article.

The USA is set to lose 3.5 million jobs, just as soon as we get this tech ironed out. And it doesn't matter who the president is. Trump, Hillary, Vermin Supreme - it'll happen no matter what. It has nothing to do with politics, NAFTA, any of it. It's progress, it's capitalism, and it's going to happen.

People need to look a little farther afield than simple manufacturing to see how automation will affect the economy.

With Verizon, they don't even know how much data you're using, but they'll be glad to charge for more.

http://www.cleveland.com/busin...

In this case, zero. Verizon reversed the data charges, no explanation.

link

The $600 may have legitimately been in the contract. New phones are subsidized, and you risk these fees by accepting a phone like that. (I personally recommend just buying one outright and getting a cheaper carrier.) Either way, I have no great argument against that, unless it wasn't spelled out.

The $9100 is ridiculous. Your max monthly charge for something like that should be spelled out and likely no more than a simple multiple of your base cost, such as 5. If they have to cut your data usage to avoid exceeding it, then fine, but you should see in your contract that your max cost for data is $MAX_COST and that after using $MAX_GB your done.

Standard contracts like this should have risks to consumers bounded in some mutually understood way. The companies certainly bound their risks with all the binding arbitration clauses. That should be both ways. That the company reversed the charges is good. That a bill was even printed with those charges is not. If they had auto pay that would have resulted in a complete mess and a non trivial amount of damage to their credit.

link

A real link to the real article instead of the crappy URL

Why not link to the source article instead of a summary? It has a lot more detail on what supposedly happened.

Subject-change detected — the usual tactics of Kremlin bots.

You mean projection

So, you are denying having changed the subject? Fine, let's recount: I started this thread pointing out Russia being a dangerous aggressor and it is therefor dangerous to be buying gas from her. You and boredwithpolitics "counter" that by saying, US is more of an aggressor... Sorry, but USA was not even in the picture — buying gas from the US is not an option for Germany.

The only reason to bring US into the conversation at all was for you two Kremlin-bots to shift attention from the topic you'll immediately lose to the one, where you can usually fight to stalemate.

But I recognized your subject-change — before moving on — and called it out.

You're comparing an anthill to Mt. Everest.

I'm comparing American efforts to propagandize freedom and Capitalism to Russia's armed invasions: into Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine to name just the most recent ones. Yes, one of them is an ant hill and the other — a mountain. Only it is not the side you are backing, hater.

Radio America, heard of it?

What of it?

How many governments around the world has Russia - and even the USSR - overthrown

Let's see — and, unlike you, I'm going to stick to known facts of military invasions not unsupported accusations of "foreign influence":

1. Ukraine in 1917
2. Lithuania in 1918 — unsuccessful
3. Poland in 1919 — unsuccessful
4. Poland together with Hitler — successful
5. Finland — partially unsuccessful
6. Estonia
7. Lithuania
8. Latvia
9. Moldova
10. Hungary
11. Czechoslovakia
12. Afghanistan

    That was USSR. Now comes modern Russia: Moldova, Geogrgia, Ukraine. Again, the above are only the military invasions by Russia. Subtler things — like poisoning of Ukraine's presidential contender — aren't included for brevity.

    Notably, your bombastic accusation includes neither a link to the video, nor transcript of the actual words.

    Like asking for a citation that water is wet. [youtube.com]

    There is still no transcript and the video is nearly 9 minutes long. If you can not find the transcript — as would've been customary for text-based debates — perhaps, you can link directly to the section of the v

From the first reference:

"People should not assume that the Apollo lunar soil samples remain representative of soils found in the natural environment of the moon, especially if they have been exposed to air," she told Space.com via email. "In addition to particle size distribution, other geotechnical properties (such as strength and cohesion) must also have changed. Also, for example, water found in the sample might be taken to be lunar in origin when in fact it is the result of contamination."

If samples stored in nitrogen

"Based on other evidence, it's possible that even the samples stored in nitrogen may be compromised," Cooper said.

If samples stored in nitrogen may be compromised the what samples are definitely not compromised?
From the second reference:

Although this material has been isolated in vacuum-packed bottles, it is now unusable for detailed chemical or mechanical analysis – the gritty particles deteriorated the knife-edge indium seals of the vacuum bottles; air has slowly leaked in.

It does not matter what gas the samples were stored in if air leaks in. The air will mil with the gas and contaminate the sample.
How about this one;

The various rocks and soil samples were placed in “rock boxes.” These were sealed at 10-12 torr on the Moon, only to be found to be at 1 atmosphere
when opened in the Lunar Receiving Lab (LRL) at Johnson Space Center in Houston. [Author L.A. Taylor was in
the LRL at that time.] The presence of the ‘clinging’ lunar dust had made the indium, knife-edge seals fail. This
dust was so pervasive that no lunar rock boxes from any of the 6 Apollo missions to the Moon ever maintained their
lunar vacuum -- they all leaked.

Notice this NASA paper also makes no mention of nitrogen.
How about this one;

Another indicator is that all of the environmental sample and gas sample seals failed because of dust. By the time they reached earth the
samples were so contaminated as to be worthless.

Maybe you should learn to use Google before attacking someone.

One of the effects of body cameras is complaints against the police go down:

http://www.sandiegouniontribun...

http://www.cleveland.com/cityh...

http://www.policeone.com/offic...

Policing involves dealing with people who are motivated to lie; lie to the police and lie about the police. All cops hear all day long are lies lies lies and some of those lies get pointed at them. It's true that cops are less likely to abuse their position if they know they're being recorded but that also holds true for citizens lying about cops' conduct.

The net effect is complaints go down, but there are two forces giving rise to that effect; it's not just the police changing their conduct. Just sayin'

From an article here: http://www.cleveland.com/world...

the Israeli model worked because Israeli agents “try to detect behavior or people’s patterns” by asking them questions.

Israeli officials say that any passenger trying to board El Al is subject to questions from security agents.

“Everybody gets asked, who you are, where are you traveling to,” one Israeli official said, speaking on grounds of anonymity because he did not want to speak publicly about the security measures. The agents asking the questions, he said, “are very well trained. Depending on what you say, they will put you through an additional screening.” Baker said: “Israeli agents focus on the traveler’s country of origin, their profession, visas that are stamped in their passports, places they have visited, people they know and the color of their skin. If you say you’re a Renaissance art scholar, they’ll ask you if you know who Titian is.” Mica maintained that the Israeli system was not profiling. “Someone is trained to do it with people who warrant further scrutiny,” he said. Some travelers say they would rather go through a full body scan than the system at Ben-Gurion airport. “My experience leaving Tel Aviv was by far and away the most unpleasant encounter I’ve ever had with airport security officials in the decade,” said Matthew Yglesias, a blogger with the Center for American Progress who said it took three hours last month for him to get from the initial security check at Ben-Gurion to the food court. “As best I could tell, things went pretty smoothly as long as you were Israeli, traveling with an Israeli or traveling with some kind of well-established tour group.” Yglesias was traveling with a group of journalists. “The African-American woman in our group was taken off to be questioned. A bunch of us were told we couldn’t bring iPads on the plane,” he said. He said that the Jewish member of his group “had the easiest time; the black woman had the hardest time.”

I'll just leave this here... http://www.cleveland.com/darcy...

Well, I started out thinking there wasn't a law on the books yet, but here is some of what was done. I guess sealing the record is one thing.

http://www.cleveland.com/open/...

and

  http://www.ideastream.org/news...

Huh? Cleveland and Detroit are both the definition of rustbelt and urban sprawl, heck Youngstown was ranked 175/221 for worst urban sprawl in the smart growth 2014 report.

We could power all our electricity needs, 24/7 with solar. It would probably take about 10 years and 30 billion dollars.

Do you happen to feel like Dr. Evil demanding "one-million-dollars"? I'm guessing you meant 30 trillion dollars.

The largest solar plant Ivanpah cost $2.2 billion and can generate close to 400 megawatts. I don't think 13 or 14 of those is going to cut it.

$30 billion would probably be enough to build 7 nuclear plants. Assuming the cost would be similar to the cost of the Watts Bar 2 reactor Considering Watts Bar 2 will produce close to 3 times what Ivanpah can, it's going to be a little more than a couple billion.

I misread that. I was hoping this was a startup that had some innovative, cheap way to repair potholes. Some of us have to deal with some really awful potholes even in June, well past the end of winter.

Unfortunately this will hit teenagers the most. Contrary to what the supports of the home cherry pick, those who earn minimum wage have the least amount of experience.

Did you know that in the 1980's you could make minimum wage and pay for rent, food, and your college tuition? In fact, minimum wage in the 1980's was around twice the average college bills for in-state tuitions. (While the article I linked was for Ohio, it holds true for most of the country at the time and certainly in WI where I went to college).

Imagine being able to work a minimum wage job part time through college and come out with a degree and little or no debt. While it sounds ludicrous in today's world, this was the reality of America only 30 years ago.

There are some meteorologists who disagree, I'm pretty sure they're not paid shills.

Climate models are also pretty shitty. They really are. They are missing so much information on how the world works because we're still learning new - and big - things. For example, a few months ago there was a story on Slashdot about how pine trees produce an aerosol-like compound that cools the atmosphere. Not a small amount, either. The effect is apparently significant.

How many climate models included that information? None, because until then, nobody knew!

Obviously we can't have the idea of the fringe Left engaging in political violence floating in polite company. After all, what would that do to the "peace" movement?

Bridge bombing case: Appellate court upholds the sentences of 4 terror suspects

The men had pleaded guilty in federal court in Akron to conspiracy to use a weapon of mass destruction and other weapons charges.

A federal jury convicted a fifth man, Joshua Stafford, of similar charges. Dowd sentenced him to 10 years in prison in October.

When they installed fiber around here, they didn't tear up the streets. They used something that looked like this to go under streets. http://blog.cleveland.com/busi...

Weather Underground: William Ayers' forgotten communist manifesto: Prairie Fire

Kent State tape indicates altercation and pistol fire preceded National Guard shootings (audio)

WTF is that Kent State link? The author of the linked article muses on the speculation that a gun-toting, paid FBI informant was the instigator of the Kent State shootings. Are you saying that FBI COINTELPRO has culpability in the Kent State massacre? If so, I think that goes way beyond "heavy handed"

Right before it, you post a link to an article that's not really about the Weather Underground (as labeled), but is an opinion piece that attempts to smear Obama with the alleged sins of William Ayers.

What a clumsy, disjointed post. Dude, is everything OK? You're usually a lot more adept at getting your authoritarian apologist ideas expressed in writing.

This is a useful reminder that government can be heavy handed. The group that did this made careful plans, took a big risk, and the results are still being talked about and referenced today. It contributed to reform. COINTELPRO is regularly referenced in Slashdot discussions, relevant or not.

Although COINTELPRO is remembered, few bother to remember the other side of the equation, which is the conduct of the radicals. There were those that went past legitimate protest, past civil disobedience, and turned to violence: bombs, arson, shooting. One famous example, the Weather Underground.

Weather Underground: William Ayers' forgotten communist manifesto: Prairie Fire
Kent State tape indicates altercation and pistol fire preceded National Guard shootings (audio)

Sometimes there's a BBQ http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2011/04/would-be_copper_thief_electroc.html/ Rumors were they couldn't be sure of the victims sex without an autopsy.

Just feed the receiver with the right frequency to tell it how fast you want it to read. Imagine the look on the cop's face when you scream by at 100+ and the gun reads "55".

They don't need the radar gun reading to ticket you for speeding - if you ever go to court, you'll find that all police claim to be "trained in visual speed observation", and will back up the radar evidence with their professional judgement of how fast you were going. And the judge will accept their estimate because they have the training to show that they can make accurate estimates.

absolutely not true.

The courts (at least some courts) disagree:

http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2010/06/police_officers_visual_estimat.html

I learned this from first hand experience when I tried to fight my first ticket. I read all of the books (this predated the modern internet) and came up with a perfect defense to impinge the accuracy of the radar unit in heavy traffic, along with pictures and other visual aids to show how the radar gun likely picked up the much bigger target of the car in the other lane rather than my motorcycle.

The somewhat bemused judge listened to my whole spiel and he congratulated me on putting together such a fine defense, but said "The officer testified that he visually ascertained your speed to be 65mph, so even if the radar's 67mph reading was inaccurate, I accept the officer's sworn testimony". But he ended up charging me 64mph to save me some money and points.

The most amusing thing about it now is that this was in a small southern town and the judge was exactly like the judge portrayed by Fred Gwynne (aka Herman Munster) in My Cousin Vinny

if you ever go to court, you'll find that all police claim to be "trained in visual speed observation", and will back up the radar evidence with their professional judgement of how fast you were going. And the judge will accept their estimate because they have the training to show that they can make accurate estimates.

At least Pennsylvania and Nebraska courts require more than just a visual speed estimate. A quick search hasn't turned up a comprehensive list.

It's been upheld in Ohio:

http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2010/06/police_officers_visual_estimat.html

But even in PA and NE:

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2010/06/visual_speed_estimates_by_poli.html

The number of states that use that standard could not be determined Wednesday. Pennsylvania and Nebraska require more than just a visual speed estimate, though officers in those states have leeway to say a vehicle was traveling at an unsafe speed.

So they may not get you for "speeding", but instead "traveling at an unsafe speed".

if you ever go to court, you'll find that all police claim to be "trained in visual speed observation", and will back up the radar evidence with their professional judgement of how fast you were going. And the judge will accept their estimate because they have the training to show that they can make accurate estimates.

At least Pennsylvania and Nebraska courts require more than just a visual speed estimate. A quick search hasn't turned up a comprehensive list.

It's been upheld in Ohio:

http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2010/06/police_officers_visual_estimat.html

But even in PA and NE:

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2010/06/visual_speed_estimates_by_poli.html

The number of states that use that standard could not be determined Wednesday. Pennsylvania and Nebraska require more than just a visual speed estimate, though officers in those states have leeway to say a vehicle was traveling at an unsafe speed.

So they may not get you for "speeding", but instead "traveling at an unsafe speed".

I agree with most of your points but there's still the issue of public data sets that the governments either provide for a fee or are required to provide open access to by law. For example in most states when you buy a car, your state's department of motor vehicles will sell that information to anybody willing to pay for it. Oklahoma and Ohio ando other states for example sells residents personal data, along with your birth dates etc. to pretty much anyone to generate revenue. In most cases you can't opt out. Now if you take one of those anonymized data sets, like the census which includes economic and other demographic data it's pretty easy to tag somebody by name, what your home is worth, how much you make and so on. That's not conspiracy theory it's a fact and companies like Spokeo and Intelius make a lot of money mining public information that anybody can access for a nominal fee. Another area of big concern are license plate scanners which effectively catch every license plate they can, not just scofflaws with parking tickets or criminals and the data collected on your movements. Since it's local government agencies keeping that data, they know who you are. If you carry a cell phone along with that I could take that anonymous data and correlate your position from what the GPS tracked license plate scanner says and come up with a very, very close approximation of your location and what you do day in and day out. The problem is most of these enabling technologies are both a blessing and a curse and where your data privacy is concerned it' as you point out, like living in a small town where everybody knows your business. The problem is you don't know who's doing the talking behind your back or what they're talking about where you're concerned. Marketing is one thing but having my government track me just because I'm going about my daily, lawful routine is only 1 degree of separation from a totalitarian state. Cheap access to data and better and better mining techniques and algorithms are making this all possible, it's just that our legislators have either not kept up with it or have ignored our privacy in lieu of padding the coffers of the state or in the Federal governments case the "War on Terror" which also now means "The War on Drugs" ... and "The War on you."

The only way to stop it is to start enacting a privacy bill of rights and start to hold the assholes in the Federal and State Governments accountable for keeping your private data truly private. The NSA needs to be abolished, completely; there is no level of public trust that can be re-attained by an agency of guys thinking that they're James T. Kirk.

Either something is legal or it isn't. As idiotic and possibly dangerous as porn is (Ariel Castro, the Cleveland basement kidnapper, recently admitted to an "addiction to porn", whatever that is) censorship just covers up societal problems and redirects the issue so that politicians can point to it and say they're doing something about it. Good on these Pollack ministers for doing the right thing.

The initial round of drilling is only half the problem. Disposal after fracking isn't mentioned, but should also be studied. Fracking fluid disposal is prone to problems like spills at the surface level, which will contaminate an aquifer. Fracking fluid disposal has also been shown to cause earthquakes. http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2012/03/shale_gas_drilling_caused_smal.html

I think you misunderstood, who do you think reports to the NHTSA the information they use to post on the web for us to see?

Manufacturers, government agencies, independent safety review boards, and of course, the consumers themselves.

If the company owned all the dealerships, I think the argument could be made that they might be more willing to cover up and recall related issues.

If auto manufacturers were the sole source of safety information, I'd agree, but they are not (see above for short list).

FWIW, the government is currently considering issuing a recall on 192,000 Chrysler vehicles due to a stalling issue that was reported by owners, not the manufacturer. Then there's the whole Toyota "unintended acceleration" debacle from a couple years ago...

As schools become larger (cost saving), some students get lost in the shuffle. Some are lost because they choose to be lost, and some just cannot connect to the environment. In place of knowing all of the students, these Texas principals have chosen to track them. They are not unique, just cutting edge. I have worked with few principals through the years who roamed the halls and knew the community. Our modern schools are statistical exercises. How much do we have to spend to ensure that the majority of the population receives enough education (standardized tests) so that the district cannot be questioned and can still justify administrative salaries? Currently we have numerous students taking remedial classes at colleges; this article: http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2013/01/students_can_avoid_remedial_co.html puts the number at 42%. And while it might be a good idea to better prepare students for university, Ohio has decided that that a 430 writing score is sufficient to deem a student ready to produce college level work in an Ohio collegiate English class (that is a 54% SAT score.) In the end the RFID tags are nothing more than a symptom of our current educational woes. They may solve the problem of the student who cuts class, but do not address the problem of what are we going to do with the students in class that will better prepare them to live a quality adult life whether or not they they choose to go on to college.

Funny - but, do you realize how frigging BIG a tooling facility would have to be, to machine a block of aluminum that size?

Here is one of the biggest presses in the world, and it's not big enough by a long shot:
http://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2012/02/alcoas_50000-ton_ready_to_go_b.html

A couple of years ago there was news that women didn't need regular mammograms.

http://www.cleveland.com/healthfit/index.ssf/2009/11/annual_mammograms_not_needed_u.html

Then there was the report that men didn't need to get PSA tests:

http://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/health-med-fit/health/paul-donohue/psa-screening-no-longer-worth-the-risk/article_92d1d8ba-ee74-5a7a-9702-888396c95e66.html

Now suddenly it is vaccinations. All of these things have been proven effective at catching disease early or prolonging lives. Now the media, the government and (Insurance Companies) come up with all these things that surely means an early death for many people.

I am not really one for conspiracy theories, but this is getting a bit suspect.

Actually, its pinned not only on the whole religion, but on "religion" as a concept.

I have this crazy theory. It goes like this, "If people had the sense to reject the blind faith advocated by priests, they would also have the sense to reject the blind ideology advocated by politicians."

This is what I meant earlier when I suggested that religion and Communism are just two exploits of the same mental bug. I don't see a distinction between what's depicted here and what's depicted here. None at all. And that's without even dragging North Korean juche symbolism into the picture.

Regardless of whether I'm personally taking the comparison too far, the idea that the Stalinist purges were done in the name of "atheism" is at once incomplete, insulting, desperate, and silly. Allowing it to stand unchallenged is unacceptable.

I disagree with your assessment. Here is a good read.h

I think you miss the point. When Joe Sixpack doesn't have to pay for Product X, he doesn't care whether Product X costs $10 or $10,000,000.

Health insurers pass the cost on to employers, who have to keep paying the increased premiums to keep their employees happy. If Joe Sixpack had to pay for their own health insurance, then he would object when they doubled the premiums to cover those $10,000,000 products that could have been bought in a free market for $10.

Maybe you've been out of the job market for a while, but where are these happy employees?

Employers Push Higher Health Insurance Costs Onto Workers

Employees Get Pinched: Health Insurance Costs More

Workers paying more for health insurance as costs rise

New State-By-State Report: Employer Health Insurance Premiums Increased 50 Percent From 2003 to 2010; Employees' Share of Premiums Increased 63 Percent

Employers shift health insurance costs onto workers

If you don't like the TSA, you can travel a different way

Sure, as long as you also don't want to travel by car or train or subways or ferries

I guess that still leaves by foot (as long as you don't go in a subway tunnel) and maybe horse. I guess we really shouldn't complain.

Actually, the CFPB really is all about the people. The problem is that the government created them and then proceeded to do everything they could to keep them toothless when, holy shit, they were actually trying to protect consumers.

Most Senate Republicans have said they would block Cordray's nomination – or any other – unless the president agrees to changes that would replace the director with a panel, let Congress more easily cut the agency's budget and allow an oversight panel of banking regulators to more easily override bureau rules.

http://www.cleveland.com/consumeraffairs/index.ssf/2011/07/elizabeth_warren_leaving_the_c.html

Congress wants to have "oversight" on the commission so they can basically tell it "no" anytime it wants to enact some sort of serious protections for us. Richard Cordray seems like a good choice, but we won't really know until the Commission starts making policy.

By "draconian" you mean

By "draconian", I mean disenfranchising thousands of people across the country in pursuit of a problem invented by partisan hacks for the sole purpose of vote suppression. Denying people the right to vote because of petty bullshit like VA-issued identification cards being rejected because they don't have a home address on the card:

86-Year-Old U.S. Veteran Paul Carroll Denied Right to Vote

A Portage County World War II veteran was turned away from a polling place this morning because his driverâ(TM)s license had expired in January and his new Veterans Affairs ID did not include his home address.

And "free" voting ID's that cost $200 for retirees living on a fixed income:

Voter ID becomes law of unintended consequences
Local leader faces first election in 60 years without a right to vote

Ruthelle Frank was born on Aug. 21, 1927, in her home in Brokaw.

Though Frank never had a birth certificate, the state Register of Deeds in Madison has a record of her birth. It can generate a birth certificate for her -- for a fee. Normally, the cost is $20.

"I look at that like paying a fee to vote," Frank said.

And for Frank, that might not be the end of it. The attending physician at Frank's birth misspelled her maiden name, which was Wedepohl. To get a birth certificate that has correct information, she will have to petition a court to amend the document -- a weekslong process that could cost $200 or more.

You're denying tens of thousands of their voting rights because of less than a dozen provable cases of vote fraud in the whole damned country.

And if you think permitting fraudulent registrations does not fundamentally undermine the election process then there is just no debating with you.

Did you think about that for two seconds before posting? You could have a billion Mickey Mouses on registration forms and it matters not a whit if none of them actually, you know, vote.

By fraud I was more referring to cases like

Cases that can be looked up on Google? Looks like there are some details that you left out of the Daily Caller storyline:

McLean and his fiancee Leach admit to participating in early voting in the 2008 election. Unsure about the process on Election Day, they said they went to the polls to make sure their vote counted.

"I was confused and did not know," McLean said. "This is my second time voting for a president in my life."

Leach said she even told a poll worker about it.

"We told her we had already early voted, and we just wanted to make sure it counted," Leach said. "She said, 'If you have a ballot, then go ahead and vote.' And that is what we did. We did not think anything of it."

Huh, I wonder why those facts were left out of the storyline?

And let the 2000 elections go.

Who do you think you're kidding? Conservatives impeached a Democratic president for getting a blow job - what would they do if a Democratic president stole an election, sat on his ass as 3,000 Americans were killed, lied us into a war, doubled the national debt, and shredded the Constitution?

Two independent reviews (well 1 was run by Democrats) of the felons list found no foul play just some asinine short cuts taken by a company trying to save some money.

Again, who do you think you're kidding? The Secretary of State of Florida was Bush's co-chair, and

This is one of those instances where I wonder if the drug repurposing is good or bad. The side effects seem to be typical, but as the article points out:

Experts said that the results were promising, but noted that in the past successful drugs in mice often failed to work in people.

So what I am trying to figure out is this an instance where Pfizer or someone else is backing the study. It looks like Easi isn't backing this but is someone else backing the work trying to keep a drug repurposed.

As I think about this I also wonder what happens to the plaque that is removed...so is it reabsorbed into the body?

Regardless, I think this is definately something useful and helpful if the human studies pan out.

In the case of the Kent State shootings, I remember reading about how they found that a handgun was in fact fired before the National Guard opened fire. Of course, the article I was reading was suggesting that someone was purposely firing it to get the National Guard to begin firing on them. Aha! I found the article!