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Ah, I should clarify - I did not mean to imply most of the budget isspent on the military, but most of the DEBT Americans owe went towards the military - specifically IRAQ and Afghanistan wars alone are estimated to be around 3 or 4 trillion... plus the interest on that debt, and of course, yearly military spending (not that I don't think our military is important, but we do spend more than all other nations on Earth combined... and our Navy alone is larger than the next 7 largest Naval fleets combined.)

http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/27/...

Um... Climate Change?

Here is what the sitting Dem President has to say: “I refuse to condemn your generation and future generations to a planet that’s beyond fixing.” - President Barack Obama, June 25, 2013" https://www.whitehouse.gov/ene...

Here is what the Dem candidate for President in 2016 says: "Clinton began her remarks at the National Clean Energy Summit by laying out the problems climate change is already causing today, including extreme weather and droughts. “[These are] the most consequential, urgent, sweeping collection of challenges we face,” she said. “No matter what deniers say.”" http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/hil...

Here is what the last Rep President had to say: " In 2001, President Bush decided to pull out of the negotiations for the Kyoto Protocol, a worldwide agreement to try to keep greenhouse gases down. Environmentalists were aghast. The president said he had his reasons. "That I felt the Kyoto Treaty was unrealistic. It was not based upon science. The stated that mandates in the Kyoto Treaty would affect our economy in a negative way."" http://www.npr.org/templates/s...

And here is what a Rep candidate for 2016 has to say about it: " Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, questions whether global warming is real, arguing that the "data are not supporting what the advocates are arguing." "The last 15 years, there has been no recorded warming. Contrary to all the theories that – that they are expounding, there should have been warming over the last 15 years. It hasn't happened," said Cruz." http://politicalticker.blogs.c...

So, yeah there are real differences between US political parties, particularly on the subject of this article, Climate Change

I Think that just goes to show that they target different members of the population, not that they have real meaningfully different agendas. They almost always vote the same on things like domestic spying, invading foreign countries, etc. The only thing they really fight over is how to slice the pie.

Um... Climate Change?

Here is what the sitting Dem President has to say:
“I refuse to condemn your generation and future generations to a planet that’s beyond fixing.” - President Barack Obama, June 25, 2013"
https://www.whitehouse.gov/ene...

Here is what the Dem candidate for President in 2016 says:
"Clinton began her remarks at the National Clean Energy Summit by laying out the problems climate change is already causing today, including extreme weather and droughts. “[These are] the most consequential, urgent, sweeping collection of challenges we face,” she said. “No matter what deniers say.”"
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/hil...

Here is what the last Rep President had to say:
" In 2001, President Bush decided to pull out of the negotiations for the Kyoto Protocol, a worldwide agreement to try to keep greenhouse gases down. Environmentalists were aghast. The president said he had his reasons. "That I felt the Kyoto Treaty was unrealistic. It was not based upon science. The stated that mandates in the Kyoto Treaty would affect our economy in a negative way.""
http://www.npr.org/templates/s...

And here is what a Rep candidate for 2016 has to say about it:
" Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, questions whether global warming is real, arguing that the "data are not supporting what the advocates are arguing." "The last 15 years, there has been no recorded warming. Contrary to all the theories that – that they are expounding, there should have been warming over the last 15 years. It hasn't happened," said Cruz."
http://politicalticker.blogs.c...

So, yeah there are real differences between US political parties, particularly on the subject of this article, Climate Change

Were that the case then the woman would not have custody of the child.

Again it all comes down to the welfare of the child. If the child has never seen his father, then ripping the child out of the home of its mother would not be in the best interest of the child. You can look at a court case, or talk to a lawyer and you'll see that in this case the father would almost certainly be held liable for support, regardless of whether or not he was involved in the life of the child. And even if the father is involved, he would not likely be granted sole custody just because the mother lost her job, or was otherwise on state assistance. That would just be ridiculous in cases where the mother was, for instance, a stay at home mom prior to a divorce or separation.

If the sperm donor can be positively identified, yes they can go after him.
Kansas, last year. Lesbian couple want a child. They enlist a male friend to provide the sperm.
A couple years later, the female couple breaks up. The custodial mom applies to the state for financial aid. The state goes after the sperm donor for recompense. And gets it in court.
http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/23/...

I believe there was a similar case in Sweden a couple of years ago.

You later get divorced, presently childless. She decides to try again and the implantation is successful. Can she come back for child support?

Yes, she can and she will. At least, you produced the sperm while still her husband and would-be father of her children.

If a sperm-donor can be hit for child-support, you would have not a chance. And not just in Kansas, Illinois too only makes exceptions for sperm donated "through medical channels involving a doctor".

It may work the other way too — a donor may get parental rights after an artificial insemination.

Presumably, with the rights comes a child support obligation as well — the two better be inseparable.

I don't get this whole voucher thing, because currently, there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING preventing you from putting your child in whatever school you damn well please. Schools can and do compete and try to get more students, because more students = more funding. Vouchers are a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

You apparently don't understand how education works in the USA. In the USA schools
are funded by taxpayers. Mostly by property tax. Yes, if you can afford it you can
pay to go to a private school or even sometimes pay to go to a public school outside
your district but most people can't afford that. Let me mention again that it's paid by
property tax so the rich neighborhoods get more money and have much nicer schools.
People have been thrown in jail for falsely enrolling their kids in a different district even
if it's just enrolling them under their grandparent's address. This is a separate but equal
crap that needs to end. School vouchers would help stop this segregation between the
rich and the poor. Yes, the rich can send their kids to any school they want, that's not
what the vouchers are for. The vouchers are for the lower middle class families that
can't afford to pay for private schools but would be willing to drive across town to get
their kids to a better school.
20 years in prison for using a friend's address: http://www.alternet.org/story/...
another one where it was the grandparent's address instead of the parent's: http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011... Let's lock those parents and grandparents up so they don't hurt society!!!

So, no, unless you can afford to move and/or afford to pay for private, you can't put "your child in whatever school you damn well please"

Your body cannot "make" you eat something. You have a brain. Different diets can cause different cravings and you may not have the willpower to override your cravings, but that's your own problem.

The facts are facts: weight loss is a matter of calories in vs. calories out, and you absolutely can lose weight eating twinkies. More to the point, this professor did it as a demonstration of this fact (he took a multivitamin, ate some celery, etc to make sure he got his essential nutrients, but the vast majority of his calories came from twinkies and other junkfood).

It has RDA of calories, and if you're drinking soda, then 100% of the calories are from sugar (or corn syrup, for most soda in the US). There is no RDA for sugar specifically because there are no scientific guidelines, not because the FDA is part of some grand conspiracy to keep it a secret.

Well, the WHO tried to set very specific and LOW limits on what human daily sugar consumption should have been a few years ago. The US sugar consortium had our govt basically tell the WHO to remove such bad and low recommendations or we'd withhold our funds and a lot of that language was stricken from the WHO recommendations.

There was apparently an attempt to lower sugar recommendations from The McGovern committee to study food and the US.

Here

And interesting video on the report too HERE.

Here's a little of what WHO was proposing

. Give this movie a watch, it is free to stream on Netflix, called Fed Up . It has some very interesting insights into sugar and its impact on society from since about the 70's...

Yes,

http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/2...

But would you trust a chef who won't eat their own food?

Here are a couple culled from his Wikipedia page

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/HE...

http://briandeer.com/wakefield...

Frankly I would like to see the psychopathic bastard banged up in jail for the fraud.

And no, I don't mean that YOU think it was illegal, or some judge said was 'probably' illegal. That a Federal court found it to be illegal. It's been over 2 years so this should be easy. I'll wait.

There's this. And this. And there's also this. Yep that was easy. I hope you didn't have to wait too long.

So now "terrorism" basically means any kind of activity that might undermine the state's supremacy of power. Mark Rowley's candid admittance is perfectly in line with how, for instance, Missouri's police forces refer to protesters as "enemy forces". And of course, if you're not helping with enforcing this supremacy, actively betraying your own principles in the process (and, no Mr officer, saying 'Some days, I hate my job' while you break into an innocent's home and plunder their stuff, does not exonerate you in any way) then you are with THEM.

Exactly.

Far too often people in authority are willing to use these results as cover for their own biases - they have a gut feeling that someone is guilty, but since that's obviously not scientific they seek a way to mask their bias in pseudoscience.

Here's the story of how FBI 'profiling' was invented out of bogus results.

The problem with DNA matches(bad application of statistics) leading example being a black man and a white man who came up as the 'same' person.

Then there is the use of drug-dogs that don't detect drugs, they detect subconscious (and sometimes conscious) cues from their handlers.

Also, the latest bogus fad - micro-expressions as a form of lie detection. The TSA has spent a billion+ dollars on it with zero useful results.

Seems to me that the constant push to mechanize judgment is commendable but misguided.

"Normal people" are not sufficiently technically skilled (probably you included) to be able to "know" except by appeal to authority, ...

That's how this whole controversy started - by fraudulent science by Dr. Andrew Wakefield. What are people supposed to do? Say nevermind, I'll wait for his studies to be peer reviewed and in the meantime, I'm going to risk my kid's health? And don't get me started on Jenny McArthy's total irresponsibility and our society's worship of celebrity.

And regular folks see how something is "bad" for you and then "good" for you and then "bad" again and on and on and on. Science reporting in the general media is irresponsible and I really think the scientific community needs to be a little more careful in their announcements to the public. Actually, I do not think reputable scientists should announce their findings directly to the public. It's one thing if a science reporter sees a paper in a journal, it's another when the scientist(s) calls for a press conference. And they should follow that guideline to protect their own reputations - does anyone remember the first Cold Fusion announcement? Those guys ended up with a lot of egg on their faces. That wouldn't have happened if they waited for the peer review.

Remember that there would have been no charges filed in the Walter Scott case had there not been any video that conflicted with the official police story. I'm all for more surveillance _of_ police, so long as it's not kept secret.

Whoosh?

They didn't stop telecoms from merging either.

U.S. Moves to Block Merger Between AT&T and T-Mobile
T-Mobile Antitrust Challenge Gives AT&T Little Recourse

They didn't stop any of the airline or bank mergers that we have seen since 2009.

US government seeks to block American-US Airways merger
U.S., Filing Suit, Moves to Block Airline Merger

They didn't reign in the massive control that the insurance industry has over the consumer (indeed they gave the industry more power)

BLUE CROSS BLUE SHIELD OF MICHIGAN AND PHYSICIANS HEALTH PLAN OF MID-MICHIGAN ABANDON MERGER PLANS: Decision to Abandon Deal Follows Justice Department's Decision to Challenge the Acquisition
The Minimum Standards all Health Insurance Plans Sold on and Off the Exchange
Federal Insurance Office Act"
the 2010 Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

This seems highly unlikely given the pro-monopoly stance that...

U.S. Moves to Block Merger of 2 Theater Ad Companies
FTC Sues To Block Sysco-US Foods Merger
U.S. Sues to Block Big Beer Merger
3M Drops Avery Dennison Unit Buyout Amid Antitrust Worry

etc

You mean like the iPhone...Oh, wait, that was a rushed piece of [bleep] as well.

Especially if you held it "wrong".

http://dontholditwrong.tumblr.com/

That's not "a" study, it's from a metastudy.

Yeah. a metastudy by a doctorate candidate. So brilliant, no one has heard of her neither before nor after, and the only reason we have heard of her at all, is that she manipulated the numbers to show, what progressives wanted to see.

Where are you getting that quote from the paper?

Those words are from the article you linked to. The popular text describing the paper.

There absolutely are some very demonstrable differences in certain psychological regards

Oh, wow. Great. Now, if psychology is affected — and we also know, that muscles are — could there not be other differences, subtle and otherwise? Could those hormones, that cause women to dress more provocatively and buy provocative clothes during fertility periods, be also having an effect on work and other pursuits?

We are approaching the question with different axioms — and come to different conclusions. You say: "Genders are equal, therefor any sign of differences proves sexism". I say: "There is little to no sexism, therefor the observed differences prove, genders are different."

Some of our arguments (all of yours, actually) are simply variations of the above...

Oh please, you're not seriously going to pretend that there weren't tremendous pressures in Victorian society for women to not be involved in STEM-style careers

Queen Victoria died in 1901. According to NPR, female participation in programming was on par with men until 1984. I don't buy NPR's explanations, but I believe their facts. Whatever the reason for females losing interest in mid-80ies, blaming "Victorian era" for it is stupid today and was stupid 30 years ago. Find yourself something else to blame...

But if you continue to insist, it is American "parochial" ("bigoted", "backwards", "retarded") attitudes, that are to blame, then you must first explain, why women in the even more parochial countries (like all of the ex-USSR) are doing better, rather than worse.

"I'll see your 50% and raise it to 100%" - how does this even make sense?

Here is how it make sense. You wrote: "one can decide that having 50% of the human population having a solid interest in the sort of careers most valuable to the improvement of the human condition is a good thing". I still think, having the entire 100% of the human population — both sexes, that is — having that "solid interest" is an even better thing.

This ridicule is what you get for speaking in (other people's) slogans, instead of your own sentences.

Nobody is talking about disinteresting men from pursuing STEM careers

Why, TFA is talking about exactly that: "for excluded male students by [...] a companion all-boys school that would emphasize English Language Arts". So, did I just catch you lying, or you didn't even read the write-up before posting?

"Are there laws or even customs, that prevent girls from entering a STEM field and excelling in it" - it's like you didn't even read my post.

I read it, and I still don't know, what you are talking about. "Victorian era"? Must be it...

And if one person wastes their time trying to become a physicist when they'd have made a better fry cook? Well whoop-di-freaking-doo. The world is still a better place.

No, the world is a worse place, if you force a would-be brilliant singer, designer, or a CEO into becoming

You mean like the iPhone...Oh, wait, that was a rushed piece of [bleep] as well.

Especially if you held it "wrong".

If people double my pay, I would not CARE if it was a publicity stunt. In fact I would HOPE it was a publicity stunt and that it works out for the company. That way I will stay longer in a functioning company.

And this is salary. Not "just" a bonus of 9.400USD for 14.600people from Porche.

So please sign me up for the publicity stunt. (That with the knowledge that in Europe they can't lower your pay, even if you get a lower job at the same company.)

And for those caring for a fucking article, here is one on the subject.

Well he sounded kinda crazy/Japanese to begin with, but according to Wikipedia adjusted well upon return to high density urban living in a technologically advanced country. And to new-found fame, publishing an autobiography "No surrender, my 30 year war". He died last year at the age of 91, suggesting that genetics and not diet might be responsible for characteristic Japanese longevity and/or that 30 years of eating Jungle fodder is equally healthy. http://edition.cnn.com/2014/01...

trying to put together some sort of scandal or conspiracy, or even flat out making things up ("Obama is coming for your guns!")

Whatever your views on the issue, I find it curious that of the laundry list of nasty things the Rs said/did to smear Obama's campaign, you pick the one that was, by all metrics, objectively true.

His views prior, and up to his bid for president contrasted to...four days ago The same man who in 2008 promised among other things to increase government transparency, eliminate domestic spying, and not to go after guns...did what again? Did his part to make government more opaque, tolerated if not tacitly endorsed increased domestic spying, and went after guns at every major opportunity (often impotently).

THE Halliburton who's exec Obama golfs with and to whom he gave a no-bid contract ??

I guess since it's not Bush and Cheney(aka Darth Vader) in-bed with Halliburton but now, but rather Obama and Biden(aka Jar Jar Binks), everything's A-OK!

Funny, but when Democrats cuddle with cronies like Halliburton (friends with who ever is in power, because they are crony capitalists) Republicans' big complaint is that this is hypocrisy (given the way Democrats screamed about it when it was the other team) and press (who self-identify as approx 90% Democrat) are giving it 1/10th the coverage. When Repubs huddlled with Halliburton, however, Democrats shrieked that the underlying acts were EVIL. For progreessives, the ends justify the means and there are no absolutes - and hypocrisy is just another means th their ends.

One should also remember that government employees with privileged access are people, and people can misuse the access they have.

We should recognize that the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution was created to prevent this exact scenario. Law abiding people encrypt sensitive information to protect it from misuse by criminals, but the information can be misused by ANYONE with access.

Dividing a backdoor key between multiple parties simply creates a requirement that all parties agree to access the information before it can be accessed. It doesn't guarantee that the access will be lawful.

Microsoft: We're not vulnerable to DDoS attacks

http://www.networkworld.com/co...

PERTINENT QUOTE/EXCERPT:

"At Microsoft we have robust mechanisms to ensure we don't have unpatched servers. We have training for staff so they know how to be secure and be wise to social engineering. We have massively overbuilt our internet capacity, this protects us against DoS attacks. We won't notice until the data column gets to 2GB/s, and even then we won't sweat until it reaches 5GB/s. Even then we have edge protection to shun addresses that we suspect of being malicious."

---

Why attackers can't take down Amazon.com:

http://money.cnn.com/2010/12/0...

PERTINENT QUOTE/EXCERPT:

"So Amazon (AMZN, Fortune 500) has spent years creating and refining an "elastic" infrastructure, called EC2, designed to automatically scale to handle giant traffic spikes... But Amazon's entire business model is built around handling intense traffic spikes. The holiday shopping season essentially is a month-long DDoS attack on Amazon's servers -- so the company has spent lavishly to fortify itself."

---

Investing in one of THESE is a big help:

DDoS Appliances:

http://www.google.com/search?s...

Because DDoS/DoS CAN be stopped (Microsoft & Amazon are setup PERFECTLY vs. it in fact, read on below on that note)!

---

Use of CDN *might* help too - to distribute loads & "attack surface area" which helps also! Use of TCP vs. UDP (vs. DDoS by DNS Amplification attacks *may* help, but it doubles your overheads).

* There's also LOADS of settings that I know of (for Windows systems @ least) that help mitigate this as well & SHOULD be part of 'security-hardening' vs. such attacks also.

APK

P.S.=> There's plenty you CAN do vs. DDoS, but you've got to have the coin/dead-presidents to setup such a network (per AMAZON & MS above) ...

... apk

I just keep adding these low-value (as in, user content) TLDs to blacklists, particularly for email. I'm sure I'm not the only sysadmin doing that

You are not the only one taking such a stance, however a couple years ago it became clear that a whitelist method will be far easier, quicker, and softer/fuzzier to your sanity.

There are currently 1300 active english gTLDs added and active in the past 16 months alone.
There are over 7000 unicode gTLDs for other languages and alphabets.
There is no end in sight for those numbers to stop rising.

http://newgtlds.icann.org/en/program-status/delegated-strings
http://money.cnn.com/infographic/technology/new-gtld-list/

Here at work I whitelist the following: .?? (aka two letter ccTLDs - though not really a safe assumption any longer) .com .net .org .edu .gov .mil .int .arpa - and for now .info

Be aware that along with .info were a few other restricted gTLDs in the initial batch that may be safe: .info .biz .name
(and I think .pro was restricted too, but I've never seen it used nor been asked to whitelist it here)

Ones I do not allow here, but others should be aware were in the same second-gen gTLD batch are: .pro .bank .aero .museum .mobi .post

Anything else came in the third-generation batch and should be blocked/ignored if you don't do international business (and in most cases, even if you do)

YMMV

Title II will stop actual problems happening right now, not some hypothetical future.

http://money.cnn.com/2014/08/2...

1. There's a siege mentality in modern law enforcement, manifested as "I'm going home to my family, no matter what it takes." Do you have to worry about getting shot at your job? Probably not. LEOs have to worry about that every single time they pull someone over. Is it a soccer mom, a businessman, or a three strikes felon who doesn't want to go back inside? They don't know.

I might agree with you if it weren't for the fact that in this case it appears that the police officer shot someone who was fleeing from him. I can't imagine why the officer would be thinking to himself "I'm going home to my family, no matter what it takes." Do police officers really fear people who are fleeing from them? Perhaps we need to do a better job of psychologically screening candidates for the police force?

4. There are a handful of people in law enforcement who have no business being in law enforcement, or any other field that requires them to interact with human beings as a matter of course. They have chips on their shoulders, the stereotype is the kid that got bullied a lot in high school, now he has a badge and a gun, so don't you dare fuck with him. These people are a minority, out of the dozens of LEOs I know I can only name one that falls into this category. Short tempered and thin skinned are bad personality attributes for LEOs.

DING! DING! DING! I think this is the real answer right here. I can think of one or two times I have encountered a LEO who made me think to myself "Ya know, maybe law enforcement is just not your thing, sir". I didn't say it out loud, of course. Instead I just gave him the "yes, sir, no, sir" treatment. Luckily, I'm a lily-white male from suburbia, so that usually mollifies them. I can only imagine how much grovelling a black male would have to do to get through an encounter with one of those assholes.

5. Reinforcing #1, the media and body politic never make a story out of LEOs doing their jobs correctly. They only make the news when they screw up. There was a police shooting captured on body cam a few months ago. It was a clean shoot, so naturally it got perfunctory treatment by the national media, not the 24/7 coverage that we would have seen had it been unjustified.

The reason why the screw ups make the news is because they are (thought to be) relatively rare. Imagine how screwed up our society would be if "police officer does job correctly" became a truly newsworthy headline. I guess in that sense it means there is potentially some hope that we can tackle this problem.

These stories of police corruption come from north and south, from many different cities and neighborhoods.

This isn't police corruption, it's police brutality, which is a separate issue. I have friends and family members who are police officers, the lion's share of them are decent people, but knowing them and the small handful of their colleagues who aren't decent people I can proffer a few opinions on what drives behaviors such as these:

1. There's a siege mentality in modern law enforcement, manifested as "I'm going home to my family, no matter what it takes." Do you have to worry about getting shot at your job? Probably not. LEOs have to worry about that every single time they pull someone over. Is it a soccer mom, a businessman, or a three strikes felon who doesn't want to go back inside? They don't know.

2. Modern media reinforces #1, by making line of duty deaths/injuries more accessible than ever before. Follow the "Officer Down Memorial Page" on Facebook; there's a line of duty death in the United States nearly every day of the week. Statistically speaking law enforcement is safer today than it has been in a long time, but in a large country statistically rare occurrences happen with distressing frequency and modern media ensures that we know all about them.

3. The War on Drugs provides such a profit motive that criminals are encouraged to arm themselves and resist violently, which in turn drives the militarization of law enforcement while reinforcing the siege mentality. The War on Drugs also alienates the police from our poorest and most vulnerable communities. The same thing happened during prohibition, this is not a new societal phenomenon. Nor can you blame the police, they enforce the law, legislators write it.

4. There are a handful of people in law enforcement who have no business being in law enforcement, or any other field that requires them to interact with human beings as a matter of course. They have chips on their shoulders, the stereotype is the kid that got bullied a lot in high school, now he has a badge and a gun, so don't you dare fuck with him. These people are a minority, out of the dozens of LEOs I know I can only name one that falls into this category. Short tempered and thin skinned are bad personality attributes for LEOs.

5. Reinforcing #1, the media and body politic never make a story out of LEOs doing their jobs correctly. They only make the news when they screw up. There was a police shooting captured on body cam a few months ago. It was a clean shoot, so naturally it got perfunctory treatment by the national media, not the 24/7 coverage that we would have seen had it been unjustified.

Regarding racism, I haven't met any genuinely racist LEOs, even from category #4 above. I have encountered a certain level of cynicism, best demonstrated by a quote I heard from a LEO friend, "Law enforcement is a customer service orientated business; unfortunately, all of the customers are assholes."

Islamic countries have allowed men to divorce their wives over SMS since, at least, 2003.

The US is so backwards...

Please, don't hate.

(Lrf, guvf vf n gebyy.)

Do you have evidence that they were pursuing The Bomb in violation of Clinton era agreements? [...] all the information I can find seems to show the entire thing went into a rapid "build a nuke quick" tailspin only after Bush called them part of the Axis of Evil

First of all, according to the timetable in the above highly "informative" post, NK started to demand compensation from the US on pain of having their nuclear program restarted in 2000 — before Bush even got elected. They increased the demands and threats by June 2001 — three month before 9/11 and the very coinage of the "axis of evil" term (January 2002). That takes care of any accusation, Bush's rhetoric was somehow responsible for aggravating the gentle hearts of the North Korea rulers.

Do I have evidence of them continuing their nuclear-weapons work after promising to suspend it in 1994? Of course — that they were confident in making the above-mentioned threats is the evidence, they kept on the work. And that they were able to test a nuke shortly afterwards is proof.

What *was* Clinton's damage?

His fault, if we must, once again, lies in supplying North Korea with foodstuffs and energy, which helped (if not allowed) the regime to continue nuclear-weapons work and hastened the work's completion. But whether or not Clinton was stupid is not so relevant now — for Obama certainly is.

The naivete was and remains astounding — who, but a pampered Westerner could believe, a belligerent hermit like North Korea or Iran would ever stop trying to arm itself over a piece of paper?

Iran has seen, what happened to North Korea, which fooled the West, and to Libya's Qaddafi, who came clean. Both lessons are clear and expecting Iranians to be dumb enough to not make the right conclusions is to exhibit racist anti-Persian bigotry.

No, I am trying to explain human nature to you.

You're doing a piss-poor job of it, since you've gotten it all wrong.

People aren't as stupid and violent as you seem to think they are.

What is the color of the sky in your world?

http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/03/...

Kenya, the US, Europe... people are human, everywhere in the world... Human beings are not the peaceful beings the UN is telling you they are.

The incentive for them not to trash the vehicle is there

Drunk people or people high on drugs don't make rational decisions. Anyone older than about 16 should know this...

Electric cars (the ones you can get right now) are terrible when it is really cold or really hot.

Really? Were you aware that Norway is one of Tesla's best customers. I think Norway is a cold country? Here is blog about someone's trip across the US in winter. Here is a video of a Tesla P85D passing pulled over SUV's after a bad snowstorm. I don't see any blankets.

Oh, and Californians buy many Tesla cars. California is kind of hot, isn't it?

The owner of a now-offline "revenge porn" website based in California was sentenced Friday to 18 years in prison, the San Diego office of the state's attorney general said.

Kevin Christopher Bollaert, 27, had been found guilty in February of six counts of extortion and 21 counts of identity theft. He faced a maximum of 23 years in prison.

Here's the story.

Here is the timeline on NK, do you just make shit up or are you gonna claim that CNN is part of a vast left wing conspiracy to call out your bull?
http://www.cnn.com/2013/10/29/...

1998
August 31 - North Korea fires a multistage rocket that flies over Japan and lands in the Pacific Ocean, proving the North Koreans can strike any part of Japan's territory.

November 17 - The U.S. and North Korea hold the first round of high-level talks in Pyongyang over North Korea's suspected construction of an underground nuclear facility. The United States demands inspections.

1999
February 27-March 16 - During a fourth round of talks, North Korea allows U.S. access to the site in exchange for U.S. aid in increasing North Korean potato yields. U.S. inspectors find no evidence of any nuclear activity during a visit to site in May.

September 13 - North Korea agrees to freeze testing of long-range missiles while negotiations with the U.S. continue.

September 17 - President Bill Clinton agrees to ease economic sanctions against North Korea.

December - A U.S.-led international consortium signs a $4.6 billion contract to build two nuclear reactors in North Korea.

2000
July - North Korea threatens to restart its nuclear program if the U.S. does not compensate it for the loss of electricity caused by delays in building nuclear power plants.

2001
June - North Korea warns it will drop its moratorium against testing missiles if the U.S. does not pursue normalized relations with North Korea. It also says it will restart its nuclear program if there is not more progress on two U.S.-sponsored nuclear power plants being built in North Korea.

2002
January 29 - President George W. Bush labels North Korea, Iran and Iraq an "axis of evil" in his State of the Union address. "By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger," he says.

October 4 - U.S. officials, in closed talks, confront North Korea with evidence that they are operating a nuclear weapons program in violation of the 1994 nuclear agreement. Specifically, the U.S. has proof that they are operating an uranium enrichment facility. North Korea admits that is has been operating the facility in violation of the agreement. The information is NOT made public.

October 16 - The Bush Administration first reveals that North Korea has admitted operating a secret nuclear weapons program in violation of the 1994 agreement. They have NOT, apparently, admitted having any nuclear weapons.

December 22 - North Korea says it has begun removing IAEA monitoring equipment from nuclear facilities.

December 31 - North Korea expels IAEA inspectors.

2003
January 10 - North Korea withdraws from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

But let's be very clear that much of what the NSA is illegal, unconstitutional, and against various international treaties.

Let's be very clear that the real situation is that you wish that much of what NSA does is illegal and unconstituional. Unfortunately the law, courts, and Congress are against you. Your wish is just that, a wish, and it isn't coming true any time soon.

ORLY? http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/16/...

That was literally the first hit on Google for 'Judge Rules NSA Illegal'. Do you even Internet?

Nobody is lining up to give poor people professional baseball teams, or choice executive positions at energy companies. Nor does a poor working stiff who just finished a hard day of running pipes or installing drywall open his motel door in the middle of the night to see women looking to have sex with him.

So is opportunity just getting what you want?? Or is it having a specific income level??

It's not being willfully obtuse as to how this country, and capitalism in general, actually works.

With laws like these I find the best approach is to abstract them and ask the simple question of: should it be legal for to people to be complete raging assholes to each other while not committing any other offense against each other? To this question I would have to answer yes so supporting a law like the Indiana one makes sense as all it seems to be doing is codifying that being an asshole is not a crime. This same logic also works well in you example of insulting Muslims in an Islamic country, and in this example we find that Islamic countries have made being an asshole illegal.

In the case mentioned in the summary with Texas we would need to modify our question and have it be: Should the state be able to be a raging asshole to a citizen of that state? As this best represents that situation in general. Here though I would find that my answer should be a definitive NO since we are dealing with the state which shouldn't be an asshole to its citizenry. In addition to that the Texas case seem to be promoting a specific set of religious values over another, especially considering that a fairly major branch of Christianity just voted to allow it.

That said there are still laws and constitutional amendments dealing with similar discrimination issues applying to other groups. If people were being honest in this debate they would instead seek to make LGBT individuals another protected class under existing law. This I feel is the correct debate to have and given that they are born that way, much like being born black, Romanian, Jewish, etc. it seems like they should be included.

You mean the same people that endlessly promote utter nonsense?

http://www.cnn.com/TECH/9705/2...

How's that coming along? You space fanbois are either extremely naive, stupid, or masochistic. Probably all three.

But wait! There's a much closer one! How's the Solaren deal with PG&E working out?

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/3019...

2016!

LOL!!! You guys are nuts.

Umm, yeah. To say she "only" lost by 10% is charitable. She lost by a million votes in which the winner only got 5.2 million votes. She has a horrific reputation for incompetence in leadership after tanking HP (Infoworld called her the "anti-steve jobs"-- HP lost half its value when she was in charge) and walked away with a golden parachute of $20m as a reward. The day she left, HP stocks jumped about 7%. There would be no end to the number of HP employees at every level dying to go after her in the press.

After being forced to resign from HP and then personally dumping $6.5 million of her own money in her Senate race, she lost... along with Meg Whitman who lost the governorship to Jerry Brown after spending even more... in what was otherwise a gigantic tea-party big-Republican sweep nation-wide. That was five years ago. Since then, she's done what? Appear on Bill Maher's show and too many episodes of Sunday talk shows (where she speaks authoritatively for no reason)?

It would be amazing entertainment if she had a chance to win the R nomination. But I find it very very very very very very VERY unlikely.

"The stock is up a bit on the fact that nobody liked Carly's leadership all that much," said Robert Cihra, an analyst with Fulcrum Global Partners. "The Street had lost all faith in her and the market's hope is that anyone will be better."

In case of thie flight, it would have helped if the captain had a code that would have opened the door regardless of it being locked from the inside.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/27/...

But then the copilot might have just killed him first, before diving the plane to the ground.

"But" is always the problem with reactionary policy.

Yeah, that House letter was such a petty stunt.

367 House lawmakers warn Obama on Iran

A veto-proof, bipartisan majority of House lawmakers have signed an open letter to President Barack Obama warning him that any nuclear deal with Iran will effectively require congressional approval for implementation.

A group of bipartisan senators have penned a bill mandating that any deal be reviewed and approved by Congress, but the House letter notes that lawmakers have another way to halt an agreement — by refusing to roll back sanctions.

So, that's 414 of 535 members of the House and Senate who think Obama's transparent and childish need for a nuclear deal with Iran NOW!!!!! is a bad idea.

Got the balls to count how many Democrats signed up?

I bet the answer to that is, "No."

STOP EATING PROCESSED "food". Start with completely cutting out junk, no cookies, cake, donuts, candy, nothing from a box.

You should eat right anyway for good health, but if your goal is simply to lose weight, you don't have to give up processed junk food.

"No such discussion is complete without a link to the Twinkie Diet."

There really is no such thing as a "bad food," it's all about getting the essential nutrients and keeping calories in check. Read Dr. Saltman's University of California San Diego Nutrition Book, it cuts through the misconceptions and mythology and covers the science behind each essential nutrient from knowledge gained by developing total parenteral nutrition (intravenous feeding).

The police who created all these unecessary swat teams for some extra cash and cooler toys to play with. There is just no need at all for so many of them, no need at all to have them available everywhere all the time. Its all just a jobs program, and usually one run by private interests (here in MA the MA police chiefs, a private org, both writes the opposition statements to marijuana legalization AND owns the swat teams that raid homes).

The primary reason for swat teams based on real calls, is going after hippies growing pot in their basements. Hardly a reason to endanger the entire community with a bunch of trigger happy yahoos who have no fear of prosecution even if they toss a flashbang in a baby's crib: http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/07/...

You know....as if they even need flashbangs in the first place to serve their no knock warrants on unarmed people with plants.

Edward Bellamy, cousin of Francis Bellamy who wrote the Pledge of Allegiance along with prescribing its Nazi-like flag salute, wrote Looking Backward in 1888 which included a prediction of "almost instantaneous, Internet-like delivery of goods". Well, that quote was from Wikipedia. Because the book predates Mickey Mouse, the full text is available on gutenberg.org:

But, Mr. West, you must not fail to ask father to take you to the central warehouse some day, where they receive the orders from the different sample houses all over the city and parcel out and send the goods to their destinations. He took me there not long ago, and it was a wonderful sight. The system is certainly perfect; for example, over yonder in that sort of cage is the dispatching clerk. The orders, as they are taken by the different departments in the store, are sent by transmitters to him. His assistants sort them and enclose each class in a carrier-box by itself. The dispatching clerk has a dozen pneumatic transmitters before him answering to the general classes of goods, each communicating with the corresponding department at the warehouse. He drops the box of orders into the tube it calls for, and in a few moments later it drops on the proper desk in the warehouse, together with all the orders of the same sort from the other sample stores. The orders are read off, recorded, and sent to be filled, like lightning. The filling I thought the most interesting part. Bales of cloth are placed on spindles and turned by machinery, and the cutter, who also has a machine, works right through one bale after another till exhausted, when another man takes his place; and it is the same with those who fill the orders in any other staple. The packages are then delivered by larger tubes to the city districts, and thence distributed to the houses. You may understand how quickly it is all done when I tell you that my order will probably be at home sooner than I could have carried it from here.

Try "thousands", if the movement is built in-house and has more than a couple of complications. Ah, hell; try hundreds of thousands for a custom watch movement with more than a handful of complications--mostly due to engineering costs of designing the movement, which can take years. And when you get to the extreme high end of the watch movement market, they start becoming small analog computers, such as this Patek Philippe pocket watch, which has a complication which calculates the sidereal day, and was constructed in 1933. Or this Jaeger-LeCoultre, which consists of over 1400 individual parts and 26 separate complications.

CNN Money goes to more detail on how the money will be distributed.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/19/technology/security/target-data-hack-settlement/
(tldr -- lawyers are the winners)