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Other important questions: how many of those 7.1 million have actually paid for the policies, and how many just went through the web site? Also, how many of these policies are insuring the previously uninsured, and how many are insuring people who lost their previous insurance due to the ACA?

I don't have those numbers. Nobody seems to have those numbers... Kathleen Sebelius has said "we don't know that" (see YouTube link below).

I have a suspicion that if the numbers were good, somehow they would have the numbers.

The DailyMail article says that a RAND Corporation study estimates that the number of previously uninsured people who have actually paid for their policies is: 858,000 (well under a million!). I haven't found a source for this. I believe they computed this number themselves, by reading the RAND report and by using the percentages in that report.

Avik Roy read the same report, and reports the number as 1.4 million +/- 0.7 million, i.e. 700,000 people to 2.1 million people, 95% confidence.

I believe this is the RAND Corporation study being discussed: http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR600/RR656/RAND_RR656.pdf

References:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2594309/President-plans-victory-lap-strong-Obamacare-enrollment-Sebelius-faces-unpopular-law-blank-stare-tough-questions-remain-whos-signing-up.html

http://money.cnn.com/2014/01/30/news/economy/obamacare-premiums/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXDdmRaJy2c

http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2014/04/09/rand-comes-clean-obamacares-exchanges-enrolled-only-1-4-million-previously-uninsured-individuals/

I'd say we've got a pretty big freaking problem.

Yeah, and 95.6% of all Fortune 1000 CEOs are male.

Regarding the gender gap in college: Boys get lower grades than girls, and report liking school less, not because girls are naturally more studious or because schools aren't "boy-friendly" enough, they write. Rather, "our research shows that boys' underperformance in school has more to do with society's norms about masculinity Boys involved in extracurricular cultural activities such as music, art, drama, and foreign languages report higher levels of school engagement and get better grades than other boys. But these activities are often denigrated as un-masculine."

There is, however, still a significant gender gap in STEM careers, with most positions being held by men. So, yeah, there is a problem, but the problem isn't related to educational opportunities for men. There is gender inequality in STEM careers and women aren't usually encouraged to pursue those kinds of careers. So offering a subsidy to teachers who make a point of enabling girls to pursue STEM careers isn't discrimination, exactly ... it is an effort to correct discrimination that is already occurring.

If you are interested in some of the reasons that might cause men to have higher rates of homelessness, or to attend college less frequently, this documentary is probably a good place to start.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/25/politics/supreme-court-preview-obama/
June 26, 2013

President Barack Obama once believed marriage only was for one man and one woman.

He then backed civil unions for gay and lesbian couples, granting them many of the same rights and privileges as married heterosexuals.

Now he is firmly in support of a constitutional right that has put him at odds with many social conservatives.

People are outraged, just not the people you were thinking.

The legislature quickly remedied that. http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/07/...

If we did accept your argument, then we would also have to accept that it would be a violation of free speech to film film young girls in a dressing room or to take covertly film women going up an escalator so we can see up their dresses. In both cases, this is not acceptable, and the former is is not only because of age issues.

Actually... Upskirting is apparently currently legal.

What if he said that he though black people were inferior and used the 'N' word?

Or said that "Christianity is a religion of losers"?

It's funny that no one stuck up for Ted when he said that.

And this isn't religious freedom: this is about using the state's power to force religious values on others. That's what the ban on gay marriage is about: forcing Iron Age Jewish moral values (Biblical) on a modern secular society.

There is absoultely no logical reason to ban gay marriage - none. The reason it is banned is because some folks insist on following ancient morals that were put in place for god knows what reason - maybe to make sure that the tribe keeps producing babies; which is hardly the problem in this World.

I know this thread is dead, but I can't help noting a couple of recent developments:

On the Yee story, CNN has managed to avoid the question of whether or not to disclose his party affiliation by not reporting on the story at all. Seriously. Check this. As of this writing the most recent story on him is from 2011.

In terms of more anecdotal evidence that I'm sure will be written off as confirmation bias, there's a new classic here from the Associated Press (via the Washington Post). An interesting summary article noting that Charlotte mayor Partick Cannon is just the latest of six mayors around the nation caught up in scandal. Most relevant to the thread here, none of them have their party affiliation mentioned. How many of those six do you think are Democrats?

The cycle of incitement continued this week as Democrats frustrated with the debt-ceiling deal equated the tea party with terrorists, just weeks before the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

But that's from one of those whacko conservative blogs.
Oh, wait. It's from CNN.

Sadly all these people are hoping for in their "revolution" is the enforcement of the existing Constitution.

With the shuttering of 23andme.com, forced by the FDA, we no longer have the ability to have our genes sequenced on our own prerogative.

Thanks federal government.

Actually, you can get all that data and it is still ONLY $99.

https://www.23andme.com/

What the gubblemint did was prevent the sharing of their OPINION on that data. So instead of commentary from a relatively neutral party, there are oodles of services popping up to interpret that data for you! Since that is automatable task, the cost can trend to zero, and it may just become a marketing opportunity buried in the fine print. At least with 23andme.org, I knew they wanted my $99. Now, they still get that but someone else may have to get my data (when I want it re-analyzed, not much point now since it was done pre-free-speech ban in 2013).

I guess there are open source opportunitites to run the analysis at home too. But I far preferred having a single organization with the freedom to do both.

With the shuttering of 23andme.com, forced by the FDA, we no longer have the ability to have our genes sequenced on our own prerogative.

Thanks federal government.

But you didn't get ripped off and thats not what happened.

Did the original kick starters get what they paid for? (Dev units I expect?) If so, how did they get ripped off?

It's not what they're saying.

But some others agrees with you, namelly Nicholas Negroponte.

Let's see what time has to say about it.

Kickstarter is not an investment website, its a donation website. Not really sure how they got ripped off other than you don't like Facebook (me either!)

Yes and no. People does donate with something in mind. And they want this state of mind enforced.

You don't donate money to homeless if they're going to buy booze, do you? Most of us don't donate money to them even if we're sure they're going to buy food. Why?

With Kickstart it's the same thing. The guys can be right under the Law, but they have to face the public opinion about the matter. Kickstarters are feeling ripped off, and since they were the very simple reason Oculus managed to get a 2 Billion USD company, it's God Damned Good to spend a good fraction of this money trying to explain themselves - and perhaps, giving something interesting back to these guys.

Bad P/R can be good just to politicians.

Steve, when questioned about why someone would buy an ebook on iTunes for $14.99 if they could buy it on Amazon at $9.99, advised that the "prices will be the same".

True enough... while we are both obviously even-tempered and rational, many others are not ;-). My conservative parents often say things (or more often, forward me emails) that make me want to cringe. It's not a one-sided thing though; for every person that thinks Obama is a secretly Muslim Kenyan, there's probably someone out there that thinks GWB planned 9/11. Reminds me of a Winston Churchill quote: "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute discussion with the average voter."

I agree with you on the Pauls... sometimes I think they're the only sane ones out there, but then in other areas they really redefine crazy. I mean, just think if GWB suggested that he had the authority to unilaterally order the assasination of American citizens---but Obama does it, and Rand's the only one that makes fuss. But then I look at some of his other positions, like foreign policy, and I really wonder.

I didn't know that about M&M colorings... scary. On the other hand, the EPA hasn't done a lot to make people trust it lately, like this and this and this. I think the liberal vision would be fine if government could be trusted to always be efficient and impartial, and the conservative vision would be fine if business people, while seeking to maximize profit, agreed to always play by the rules when doing so. But obviously neither of those conditions is anywhere close to being true in reality.

I've enjoyed our conversation as well, thanks!

You must have missed the automatic assumption by some airlines that men are molesters.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/08/14/...

[John]

What if it's not pure bullshit? More to the point, the danger with limiting political speech based on libel and slander is that the government decides what libel and slander is. If Country X has a law that what politicians do in private is private, and that revealing those private actions is a form of libel/slander, then do you support the ban?

How far off am I? According to CNN Erdogan said the leaked material he's apparently trying to suppress was "immorally edited." He also said "Freedom is not invading someone's privacy."

What I don't get is why anyone outside of Turkey gives a crap if they block twitter. I get that some people are sad to see this so-called Islamic democracy turning into a failed state, but that's been going on for years. Twitter was the final straw?? Okay..

Seriously, this entire organization encompasses everything wrong with the Federal government. Massive privacy overreach, complete incompetence, and a literal NIGHTMARE BUREAUCRACY! This is one of the worst aspects of the Bush legacy, and "The One" has not done anything to curtail its power: http://www.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL...

How about 6 corporate overlords, as practically everything is a wholly-owned subsidiary of a handful of companies?

That's hyperbole. Just take the Fortune 500 for example; as a rule it excludes "U.S. companies owned or controlled by other companies, domestic or foreign, that file with a government agency."

There are no such illusions with the corporation

Who wants an illusion?

Anyway, just so I'm clear: I don't want to get rid of the government. It has its role. At the very least, it is beneficial by keeping check on corporate monopolies (in theory at least... if we could reduce or eliminate corporate lobbying, maybe it wouldn't just be theory).

You'd be surprised. See Stephen Gandel's story from two years ago about lookalike books on Amazon.

Not everybody is me. Not everybody is you.

If an expensive high status car has a problem, it's news.

No, if it's an electric car, it's news.

No, and also no. If an electric car has a problem, it's nerd news. If an expensive high status car has a problem, it's news. See also: Porsche. If you don't keep up with car news, don't try to hold forth on car news.

Re submarine command around the world?
'Vacuum causes $400M damage to nuclear submarine" from USA
http://security.blogs.cnn.com/...
"Fire breaks out on Russian nuclear submarine" from Russia
http://www.reuters.com/article...
"Navy warship accidentally fires torpedo at nuclear dockyard" from UK
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fin...
They seem to be having they own dock related issues?

Sometimes I just wish Clancy would read Conrad's "The Secret Agent" from around a century ago and either give up in despair or take it as inspiration to improve.

That would be quite a feat. Guess you missed the the news of Clancy's death last year.

They don't. Data collected in the US can only be touched with a search warrant.

Sorry, reality is much more boring than the conspiracy theories.

Until, of course, reality surpasses conspiracy theories.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/11/...

Or do you think the head of the Senate Committee on Intelligence is making a baseless accusation, even when such an accusation makes her sound like a hypocrite?

Problem is, the value of BitCoins exceeds the market demand / use for them. This means it is well into "speculation" arena, and will remain so, until there is a large thawing of coins by the people currently hording them. As these people age, their goal of making a fortune will diminish as "unrealized" profit becomes lost to Bitcoin dustbin.

The problem with hording, is that the value is gone once the person who hid it is dead, and nobody knows it even existed. But unlike Gold, bitcoins burried will be lost forever if there is nobody to remember the password for the wallet.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/25/...

Once BitCoin starts to become viable alternative currency, actively traded for goods and services, then I'll become a believer in the value. The problem right now, the only people using BitCoins, are traders. It may end up being just a tool to hold accumulated wealth, and that would be a shame.

To be honest, AMERICAN culture doesn't either. Is why celebrities, athletes, and entertainers are paid dump truck loads of cash while the really intelligent folks ( scientists, reaearchers, you know folks who actually create the world as we know it today ) are compensated at a much lower level.

If this were true the why are there no celebrities, athletes, and entertainers on the Forbes Billionaires List(I didn't actually look past #800)? That list is stacked with people running businesses with either new or old money. They own or hire the celebrities, athletes, and entertainers to promote their products.

To top it off theFortune 500 isn't littered with companies that directly hire celebrities, athletes, and entertainers.

I can guarantee you that the average and top engineers makes more than the average and top celebrity/athlete/entertainer.

O RLY

Yes, really. But that's OK, let's keep defending those who want to hide themselves behind patents and threaten litigation for even hinting to peek behind the curtain. Yes, I'm sure that we'll find in 5 years that all other GMOs are perfectly safe too, and that spike in cancer isn't related at all...

The factors driving growth in cancer cases are pretty well understood and documented. http://edition.cnn.com/2014/02...

Including the fact that if you adjust for the aging of America, the cancer rate and cancer mortality in America is actually declining notably.

Maybe you should check again: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medline...
"Exercise not only helps your immune system fight off simple bacterial and viral infections, it decreases your chances of developing heart disease, osteoporosis, and cancer."

http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH...
""Nutrition plays an important part in maintaining immune function," explains George L. Blackburn, M.D., Ph.D., associate director of the division of nutrition at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts. "Insufficiency in one or more essential nutrients may prevent the immune system from functioning at its peak.""

People with weaker immune systems are more likely to contract diseases and have them for longer and so spread them around more.

So, again, now that you know this, why not lock up those who eat junk food and who don't exercise, or force them at gunpoint to eat vegetables and do push ups? Such people otherwise pose a health risk to everyone else. That is a fact based on what people at the NIH and Harvard have said.

The same for the other things I mentioned which all affect the immune system. See also:
http://www.webmd.com/cold-and-...

Many things make contracting and spreading disease more likely (poor diet, lack of exercise, lack of sleep, lack of vitamin D, lack of iodine, lack of nursing, sending kids to public school, going into a shared workplace every day, etc.). Why do you call at least some of those "an individual choice that does not affect the well-being of others" when clearly they all increase the risk of disease transmission? All of these choices affect the well-being of those around us. What of the immuno-compromised child who is going to die because your kid spread around the flu contracted in part by vitamin D deficiency, too much sugar, and not enough exercise?

Also, the fact is, vaccinations at best only protect to some degree against catching specific disease. These other things protect against catching almost any disease whether there is a vaccine for it or not. If forcing people to get vaccinated against their will for the public good is a good idea, why not force people to do these other things too?

For example, since people who eat poorly have a greater risk of contracting almost any communicable illness and spreading it around, why allow people to pick what food they want to eat each day for example? Clearly a government appointed dietitian (backed by gun-wielding police) would do a better job of deciding what you should eat each day than you could and thus do a better job of protecting the public health against widespread illness, injury, and death, right? Likewise for those who do not exercise enough. Cops should force people to exercise at gunpoint if needed, right? No less than the NIH and Harvard provide the supporting evidence,

Not laughing enough also is bad for you immune system.
http://www.mayoclinic.org/heal...
"Negative thoughts manifest into chemical reactions that can affect your body by bringing more stress into your system and decreasing your immunity. In contrast, positive thoughts actually release neuropeptides that help fight stress and potentially more-serious illnesses."

So, people who do not laugh enough are a health risk to those around them. It would seem then that people thus have no constitutional right to be dour sour pusses, since that puts everyone around them at health risk. So, why not set up a police force who force people to laugh by watching funny websites? Or do laughter yoga? And otherwise incarcerate them if they don't comply?

Although, like anything, I guess that could go too far:

Because, you know, this is slashdot. We won't believe something is dead until netcraft reports it...

Didn't RFA, summery saying; " Unity is proprietary just like Flash was — 'don't worry, we'll be around forever!"

They all think that way

http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9709/...
The Funeral of Princess Diana
Elton John performs "Candle in the Wind"
4 min. VXtreme streaming video

This maybe available with WMP, but I've never allowed that program to run (many reasons).

But I'm going to say it's dead as a VXtreme search on http://www.netcraft.com/ crashes the browser window taking me to about:blank (Opera 12), or just takes the page away (FireFox 27.0.1), flash enabled.

> Microsoft has had some really good ideas since
> Gates left, like OneNote and the Tablet PC.

Gates predicted in 2001 that "the tablet PC will be the most popular form of PC sold in America" and Microsoft introduced their OS for tablets the same year. Tablets were released by Compaq and others at the time. Gates had stepped down as CEO a year earlier but he was still around (serving on the board and giving keynotes and whatnot -- still very much the public face of MS) and it's not like MS made the tablet overnight once he wasn't CEO. The Tablet PC of the early 2000's was very much from Gates.

> The fact that MS has so many innovative products that
> do not sell well speaks to some kind of serious problem
> within the upper levels of their corporate campus.

MS Office makes tons of money. The Office guys wouldn't let the Tablet guys do anything really innovative or unusual with their baby. MS Office isn't anything special when you add a stylus but obviously it could have been. It just had some really basic pen features tacked on. Having given away the market, they're now struggling to catch up.

You have to understand that Ukraine is not even a country.

Define "far too many". Scumbags like the 21-year-old father of six that maliciously attacked those people at SXSW might qualify as someone the world doesn't need hanging around. On the other hand, countries that have people starving to death are being caused by civil strife, not lack of food resources (cite). So, for now, we can support the global population...just need to figure out the geopolitical and logistics nightmare, brb.

Ukraine is not much further than where the plane might have ended up.

If some rogue state, such as one in political chaos, with access to a military base and airbase, decided to equip such a plane with a nuclear device ...

As Truman famously said, The Buck Stops Here. The president is the head of the executive branch and the commander in chief of the armed forces. He absolutely has authority over his personal security. My opinion? Take a queue from the Queen and take public transit. Or from the Pope and walk. Even heads of states who have boots on the ground in Afghanistan fly commercial. Nothing supports a culture of fear more than a leader who doesn't have enough faith in his people to travel among them.

Now, if you want to justify real-time transmission, check out the amount of (incidentally not paid for by the airline) search gear that has been diverted from Malaysian, Chinese, and other sources to looking for the debris. Whole bunch of ships, airplane and helicopter overflights, diversion of what, 10 satellites? That starts to make the $100k look like savings.

Well, the cost is $100k if you know ahead of time exactly which plane is going to go missing and outfit the device on just that single plane.

Obviously the real world doesn't work like that. You don't know ahead of time which plane will go missing, so you have to outfit all of them with this device. The best estimates I could find on Google were that there are about 15,000 commercial airliners in operation globally, so you're looking at a total cost of $1.5 billion.

Suddenly all the ships, airplane and helicopter overflight, diversion of 10 satellites seems like an absolute bargain. For reference, the multi-year search for AF447 and recovery cost about $40 million.

Article about it here.

Dueling citations! Here's one from the same time frame that claims the exact opposite: Nursing Grads Have Lowest Unemployment Rate.

Nursing for one. It used to be that you could graduate with a BS in nursing, basically throw a dart at a map, and find 2-3 hospitals/doctors in that random town willing to fight over you. From what I understand, that is no longer the case, and a lot of nurses (particularly new graduates) are actually having to work to find a job these days. Article about it here.

Blame the bean counting MBAs running the hospitals and focusing solely on the bottom line - profit over patient care. If you've been to a hospital during the past five years you've seen the results of nursing shortages. In the case of most fields the employers demand experience so new graduates or recent graduates need not apply. Hell even highly experienced people cannot get an interview these days in many fields. At least nursing is a quasi-professional role whereas anything in IT/CS is basically a laundry list of constantly changing products and version numbers instead of asking for skills.

Nursing for one. It used to be that you could graduate with a BS in nursing, basically throw a dart at a map, and find 2-3 hospitals/doctors in that random town willing to fight over you. From what I understand, that is no longer the case, and a lot of nurses (particularly new graduates) are actually having to work to find a job these days. Article about it here.

They do actually sometimes fatten cattle with "candy, hot chocolate mix, crumbled cookies, breakfast cereal, trail mix, dried cranberries, orange peelings and ice cream sprinkles."

http://money.cnn.com/2012/10/1...

And they never have the ability to shoot anyone who isn't actively killing people?

Police never have the AUTHORITY to shoot anyone who isn't actively attempting to kill people. That's the important issue here: authority, not "ability." Without authority, the use of force is criminal.

You're mistaken. Arkansas cops recently opened up on a guy who was driving away from them, allegedly because because they soberly considered the situation and decided that the odds of him killing somebody were high, but probably because some rookie panicked and the vets decided riddling the dude was the popular thing to do; yet none of them has been charged with a crime. It's likely none will ever be charged with a crime. The wrongful death lawsuit from the driver's family is almost certainly gonna get thrown out by the Supremes.

The victim wasn't actively trying to kill anybody, he was actively trying to get the fuck away and in the process he was likely to kill somebody. His girlfriend/passenger was also totally innocent of intending to kill anybody. And due to the magic of prosecutorial discretion, even if the Supremes change their minds and rule the deaths were not justified nobody will ever go to jail for the crimes.

The second is simply false, because the authorities can shoot lots of people who aren't currently actively attacking anyone. You'll note that Federal troops...

Are you really too stupid to know the difference between police and the military?

Keep in mind that the military actually have fewer powers to use force on civilians then the police do. The posse comitatus act that allowed the KKK to drastically reduce the south's black population in the late 19th bans them from almost all law enforcement duties. But that act only applies within the 50 states.

As for powers to kill, they're quite similar. If you're in the military and you're not in a war-zone you don't get to shoot. Period. It doesn't really matter whether you hit your target, if you're on a base in Germany and you open fire on the local Imam you're going to Leavenworth. If you're in a war-zone you have to be able to prove you had some good reason to believe every shot you made wasn't heading towards some innocent person. It's generally easier to satisfy the brass that you had reason in the war-zone, because they wouldn't be giving you the extra pay if they didn't expect somebody to shoot at you, and they don't have the resources to investigate every single shell fired, but that doesn;t mean the legal theory is any different.

Now we've got many fewer enemies, and the process for finding them is much more complicated because they don't all wear the same shirt, but that just means that there's a lot of internal process the Executive branch has to go through before OKing the target.

The government also has to abide by the Geneva Conventions. Either the target is an enemy soldier and the Geneva Conventions apply, or he is not a soldier and US criminal law (including the 5th Amendment) applies. There is no other category. Obama (and GW Bush before him) might have claimed there was, but both of them are war criminals.

Dude,a treaty? Seriously?

Without an enforcement mechanism a treaty is a press release. This is because treaties are agreements between sovereign states, and sovereign states are allowed to do anything they want. That's the definition of sovereign. For example, they can re-define words. If Obama decrees Al Awlaki is an enemy combatant, because American English the name "Al Awlaki" has always been a synonym for "enemy combatant," it doesn't matter that that's ridiculous BS. Under international law, as Head of State of a Sovereign nation, he can do that, and the only people who can argue the point are other

Why would he have to move/hire protection? I guess I can see that he might be paranoid enough to think it's necessary, but why would it be actually necessary?

Read it and weep:

http://money.cnn.com/2014/03/0...

Too late, the feeding frenzy has begun -- http://money.cnn.com/2014/03/0...
He is better off wearing a sushi suit in a shark tank.

Why? They may employ what amounts to slave labor to build their products, and skirt the edge of legality to avoid paying taxes on profits, but by God they care for our environment!

You might want to check your percentages:
1) deaths by gunfire in US in 2013: > 12000
2) gun owners: roughly 20% of US population, i.e. roughly 60 Million people

Therefore the fraction of irresponsible gun owners in 2013 is around 12 000 / 60 Mill = 0.02%. This is an order of magnitude more than you claimed. The number is certainly not negligibly small as you seemed to try to suggest.

The number is going to shrink a little if one factors in events were several people were killed, but then 12000 is a lower bound to begin with. Taking into account the duration of gun ownership (it doesn't matter whether the killing happens in the first or the twentieth year of ownership) and non-lethal encounters (also irresponsible), we're almost certain to gain another order of magnitude.

restricting the rights of the 99.999% of the people who did nothing wrong.

You might want to check your percentages. More than 12000 people died due to gunfire in 2013. Roughly 20% of americans own guns, i.e. some 60 Million. I.e. the fraction of gun owners abusing their guns: roughly 12000 / 60 Mill = 2e-4 = 0.02%, which is an order of magnitude more than you claimed.

According to today's press release, "Facebook will provide public education ad space targeted at users interested in firearm-related content to ensure they know about the laws related to gun sales." Perhaps among those targeted by Facebook for education will be Facebook's own CEO - FORTUNE indicated Zuckerberg was interested in firearms ("Zuckerberg has learned to hunt, according to people close to him. He got a hunting license and recently shot and killed a bison.")

FORTUNE: When he's not too busy connecting people across the universe, Mark Zuckerberg is pursuing a new "personal challenge," as he calls it. "The only meat I'm eating is from animals I've killed myself," says the Facebook founder and CEO...Zuckerberg's new goal came to light, not surprisingly, on Facebook. On May 4, Zuckerberg posted a note to the 847 friends on his private page: "I just killed a pig and a goat."

even older CE will still be supported. http://money.cnn.com/2014/03/0...

I am not a bit coin fan boy by any stretch. I have no vested interest in it whatsoever. From a cultural perspective I find the phenomenon fascinating and I follow it closely along those lines. The government has been kicked from behind enough that I would not put it past them to come up with multiple projections for how the bitcoin situation could play out over a long time period. The US Government has been short sighted in the past, I think they have learned and if just one projection is negative, they will say fuck it lets bring it down now just in case. In case you have been sleeping under a rock, the United States government is beyond out of control and it's only getting more extreme.

This lawmaker wants it banned

Seems here that the government is over all apprehensive about it

Further Googling reveals we are seeing an about face from this article.

At least we may see some form of sensible regulation. even if not 100% official

Conservatives don't like Apple.

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/20...

Perhaps it's time to take a page from one of these books, and apply the same restrictions on a state-wide level, rather than bitching about San Francisco in particular, since San Francisco has no legal ability to regulate foreign ownership.

Bigotry is so interesting. Here, we go from a bunch of people wanting cheap rent to foreigners bad without any logical connection between the two.

You reordered the sentence to put the conclusion before the supporting evidence, so of course it sounds bigoted; that was pretty clearly your intent, when you went out of your way to edit the markup language so you could take those sentences out of order.

Out of 6 offers I made on houses in San Francisco - houses I fully intended to live in, not merely hold as investments or use as rental properties or "flip" in the new real estate bubble - all six were bid out by over 25% at the last second by all cash offers from foreign investors.

Was the property at that 25% premium still a good investment? If so, then perhaps you should bid more next time or snipe those auctions just like the pros did. If not, then a foreign investor just donated to the US economy. Send him a thank you letter.

Was it worth another 25%, and the extra effort to make an all-cash offer? It depends... there are three dfferent ways of looking at the word "investment" in this context:

(1) As a place to live... definitely "no"; the house was priced about market value to begin with, and all the bids were coming in close to that by 1-2%; certainly nothing close to a 25% premium, until the last minute.

(2) As a property intended to be held for ~5 years to appreciate, and then flipped as an actual investment property? It's very iffy. It depends on whether you believe that the current speculation bubble in San Francisco is the result of an actual depressed valuation, or whether you believe it's being driven by external influences (as I do). Certainly, we are not seeing an upswing in actual owner occupied homes, which means that it is in fact an investment bubble. If you believe the bubble will last that long, then yes.

(3) As a foreign investor using a purchase in excess of $500,000 to qualify under the EB-5 Immigrant Investor program as a fast track means of getting a green card? Clearly, it's a great investment. It's half the cost of the in excess of $1,000,000 that they'd have to invest otherwise. See http://www.uscis.gov/i-526 "U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services form I-526, Immigrant Petition by Alien Entrepreneur".

As the CNN article says, four states accounted for 58% of all foreign sales: 23% Florida, 17% California, 9% Arizona, 9% Texas. See the CNN article here: http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/0... It's interesting that these are also the states with currently accelerating "recovery" in the real estate market.

If Apple were in the least interested in taking a morally guided path, they wouldn't leave one in five of their users exposed to hackers;

So which bugs has Apple refused to fix by this supposed stop to Snow Leopard fixes?