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I'm curious, why do you take this as a confession, on the part of Assad's regime, that they were responsible for the August attacks?

At the end of the day he's still a dumb American liberal that will believe whatever the government says. FYI, he bought the Iraq WMD story too and voted for Obama twice.

Except the Iraq WMD story was a conservative brainchild, dipshit.

You fucking brain-dead, pap-regurgitating fucking useless wanker.

That must be why Bill Clinton bombed Iraq in 1998:

CLINTON: Good evening.

Earlier today, I ordered America's armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq. They are joined by British forces. Their mission is to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors.

Their purpose is to protect the national interest of the United States, and indeed the interests of people throughout the Middle East and around the world.

Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons. ...

A somewhat vocal minority think the government has gone too far in its war on terrorists. Perhaps you remember the TSA's short-lived attempt to relax restrictions. My local news never has any trouble finding a member of the public willing to say how much safer they feel each time a government agency proposes a new search method or new restriction.

Slashdot is a libertarian-leaning echo chamber and not representative of America.

What would be more interesting is to take a big enough sample so that the proportion of bitcoins that can be traced to drug purchases can be determined. Is it higher or lower than the proportion of US dollar bills with traces of cocaine on them?

There really are no mutually unintelligible varieties of English

There are plenty of mutually unintelligible TERMS in different variations of English. There just happens to be enough compatibility that foreign English speakers can take some time and explain (in English) the bits of the language you don't at all understand.

10 English terms/phrases you would not understand without explanation:

http://travel.cnn.com/mumbai/life/10-indianisms-652344

So supposedly the US and British found evidence that Syria had used sarin, but refused to divulge the details

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/09/03/happening-now-lawmakers-grill-obama-officials-on-syria/

2:45 p.m. ET - Sen. Bob Menendez: "We know that chemical weapons personnel from the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center – subordinate to the regime’s Ministry of Defense – were operating in the Damascus suburb of ‘Adra from Sunday, August 18th until early in the morning on Wednesday August 21st near an area the regime uses to mix chemical weapons including sarin and human intelligence as well as signal and geospatial intelligence have shown regime activity in the preparation of chemicals prior to the attack, including the distribution and use of gas masks.

We have multiple streams of intelligence that show the regime launched a rocket attack against the Damascus suburbs in the early hours of August 21st and satellite corroboration that the attacks were launched from a regime-controlled area and struck neighborhoods where the chemical attacks reportedly occurred clearly tying the pieces together. That is what we know in terms of who may have deployed these weapons.

Racism is still a big thing in America.

Indeed. According the the testimony in the trial, the only person that used a racial slur was Trayvon (see this article. But, that was barely reported. Instead, everyone assumed Zimmerman was racist because Trayvon was black.

That's wonderful. There is NO evidence that George Zimmerman ever confronted Trayvon Martin and some evidence that suggests that Trayvon Martin confronted George Zimmerman (including the testimony of Rachel Jeantel).

Jeantel testified that as he neared the home of his father's girlfriend, Martin tried to lose Zimmerman.

"And then he said, 'That N-word is still following me now,'" said Jeantel. "I asked him how the man looked like. He just told me the man looked 'creepy.' 'Creepy, white' -- excuse my language -- 'cracker. Creepy [expletive] cracker."

Jeantel says she heard Martin talking to Zimmerman in the background of the call.

"He said, 'Why are you following me for?' And I heard a hard-breathing man say, 'What you doing around here?'" said Jeantel.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/26/justice/zimmerman-trial

Right there in the testimony you cited she notes Zimmerman following Martin and gets close to him while breathing heavily. If he Zimmerman had simply been standing around his car, he wouldn't have been out of breath.

BTW, random-bolding doesn't say what you think its says about the strength of your argument.

Perhaps these two will get even bigger asteroids!

We can name some ice chunks in Saturn's belt after all of the black kids beating up and killing white people over Treyvon.

The sad thing is that the President has already declared it his right to initiate the war unilaterally and he has plenty of cheerleaders, including in the supposed opposition party, who will support action even without Congressional approval.

    The long, strong arm of the NSA
    July 27, 1998
    Web posted at: 4:15 PM EDT
    http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9807/27/security.idg/

    [..]

And nothing has changed in at least the last 15 years;

    Revealed: how Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages
    The Guardian, Friday 12 July 2013 03.53 AEST
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-collaboration-user-data

    ---

    The files show that the NSA became concerned about the interception of encrypted chats on Microsoft's Outlook.com portal from the
    moment the company began testing the service in July last year.

    Within five months, the documents explain, Microsoft and the FBI had come up with a solution that allowed the NSA to circumvent encryption
    on Outlook.com chats

    A newsletter entry dated 26 December 2012 states: "MS [Microsoft], working with the FBI, developed a surveillance capability to deal" with
    the issue. "These solutions were successfully tested and went live 12 Dec 2012."

    Two months later, in February this year, Microsoft officially launched the Outlook.com portal.

    Another newsletter entry stated that NSA already had pre-encryption access to Outlook email. "For Prism collection against Hotmail, Live, and
    Outlook.com emails will be unaffected because Prism collects this data prior to encryption."

    Microsoft's co-operation was not limited to Outlook.com. An entry dated 8 April 2013 describes how the company worked "for many months" with
    the FBI – which acts as the liaison between the intelligence agencies and Silicon Valley on Prism – to allow Prism access without separate
    authorization to its cloud storage service SkyDrive.

    The document describes how this access "means that analysts will no longer have to make a special request to SSO for this – a process step that
    many analysts may not have known about".

    The NSA explained that "this new capability will result in a much more complete and timely collection response". It continued: "This success is the
    result of the FBI working for many months with Microsoft to get this tasking and collection solution established."

    A separate entry identified another area for collaboration. "The FBI Data Intercept Technology Unit (DITU) team is working with Microsoft to
    understand an additional feature in Outlook.com which allows users to create email aliases, which may affect our tasking processes."

    The NSA has devoted substantial efforts in the last two years to work with Microsoft to ensure increased access to Skype, which has an estimated 663
    million global users.

    One document boasts that Prism monitoring of Skype video production has roughly tripled since a new capability was added on 14 July 2012. "The audio
    portions of these sessions have been processed correctly all along, but without the accompanying video. Now, analysts will have the complete
    'picture'," it says.

    Eight months before being bought by Microsoft, Skype joined the Prism program in February 2011.

    ---

Emphasis mine (and the NSA's).

I wonder if their list includes SSH

OpenSSL came from SSLeay, which was created outside of the US specifically for this reason.

Its not a technical attack in the first round;

    The long, strong arm of the NSA
    July 27, 1998
    Web posted at: 4:15 PM EDT
    http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9807/27/security.idg/

    [..]

    It's gotten to the point where no vendor hip to the NSA's power will
    even start building products without checking in with Fort Meade first.
    This includes even that supposed ruler of the software universe,
    Microsoft Corp. "It's inevitable that you design products with specific
    [encryption] algorithms and key lengths in mind," said Ira Rubenstein,
    Microsoft attorney and a top lieutenant to Bill Gates. By his own
    account, Rubenstein acts as a "filter" between the NSA and
    Microsoft's design teams in Redmond, Wash. "Any time that you're
    developing a new product, you will be working closely with the NSA,"
    he noted.

    [..]

    Clearly wary of granting the government supervision over its products,
    Microsoft has stubbornly refused to submit a data-recovery plan, even
    though the Redmond giant already includes a data-recovery feature in
    its Exchange Server.

    "The Exchange Server can only be used when this feature is present,"
    Rubenstein said. "Because we haven't filed a product plan, it's harder
    for us to export this than for companies that have filed plans."

    [..]

Holder: Pakistani Taliban helped direct Times Square plot
Pakistan Taliban arrive in Syria, and more are to come, CNN told

Wha'da yea know?
Second link: "The commander of the Pakistan Taliban, Abdul Rashid Abbasi, has told CNN that the first batch of fighters has arrived in Syria and established a command and control center to launch operational activities alongside Syrian rebel fighters."

Remind me please: what side US is about to join in this conflict?
Assuming the rebel side will win, what are the chances they'll change for the better their attitude toward US?

Holder: Pakistani Taliban helped direct Times Square plot
Pakistan Taliban arrive in Syria, and more are to come, CNN told

Wha'da yea know?
Second link: "The commander of the Pakistan Taliban, Abdul Rashid Abbasi, has told CNN that the first batch of fighters has arrived in Syria and established a command and control center to launch operational activities alongside Syrian rebel fighters."

Remind me please: what side US is about to join in this conflict?
Assuming the rebel side will win, what are the chances they'll change for the better their attitude toward US?

This might help you out.

Holder: Pakistani Taliban helped direct Times Square plot
Pakistan Taliban arrive in Syria, and more are to come, CNN told

I don't think the Workers World Weekly has enough space to cover all the news. I can understand how you must miss some of it.

In the long run, no, they wouldn't stay at home. The radical Islamists are also imperialists that want to take over the governments of all nations, and bring about religious conversion of all people to Islam. It may not make sense to you, and you may not believe it, but they do. It is what they believe that counts, since that is what determines their goals and actions.

This might help you out.

Holder: Pakistani Taliban helped direct Times Square plot
Pakistan Taliban arrive in Syria, and more are to come, CNN told

I don't think the Workers World Weekly has enough space to cover all the news. I can understand how you must miss some of it.

In the long run, no, they wouldn't stay at home. The radical Islamists are also imperialists that want to take over the governments of all nations, and bring about religious conversion of all people to Islam. It may not make sense to you, and you may not believe it, but they do. It is what they believe that counts, since that is what determines their goals and actions.

I'm sorry to hear about the issues of your brother... though things like that can happen when one chooses to be uninsured.

So what's changed?

He could still lose his job because he is sick depending on whatever employment agreement or state laws are in place.

At least at my company, while the premiums have remained the same, the actual out of costs expenses have gone up significant.

You complain of paying $12k a year for premiums in '09... but failed to mention what you are paying today. Are you actually suggesting they have gone down?

Thanks to Obamacare, we have:

UPS dropping sources from insurance: http://money.cnn.com/2013/08/21/news/companies/ups-obamacare/index.html

California is expecting to see premium prices increase by 64-146%: http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/05/30/rate-shock-in-california-obamacare-to-increase-individual-insurance-premiums-by-64-146/

Even the head of the AFL-CIO (a group and leader who both campaigned hard for Obamcare) acknowledges that the law is actually encouraging employers to cut hours: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhmqLB3B5yA

I am fortunate that at my company... rather than increasing premiums, they simply raised the out of pocket expenses like many others: http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/01/12/insurance-analysts-obamacare-to-increase-out-of-pocket-premium-costs-despite-lavish-subsidies/

So again... what is to grand about today?

Much of this is moot though... this is still early in the unleashing of this monstrosity. Even if successful in having everyone have coverage... how easy do you think it will be to get the treatment you need and when you need it given the built in disincentives for those you expect to treat you?

Yellow cake was a lie? News to me and Canada that bought 500 tons of it from Iraq.

Perhaps if you spent less time making up lies you would be more believable. The rest of your rant is invalid since your cliam is Bush lied and it appears your entire post is lying about Bush.

Your mainstream press at work again...

...and so you link to the Washington Times, and completely destroy any credibility you might have had.

Two problems. One, the mainstream press did cover the story. Two, old rocket engines and old chemical weapons shells in dumps and scrapyards tell us only that Iraq used to have WMD --- never a contentious point.

The conclusion that Iraq had no WMD at the time of the American attack isn't some liberal media (ha!) conspiracy, it's the conclusion of the gorram CIA.

Bush lied, and the Fox "News" set continues to lie, about Iraq.

http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/south/02/05/binladen.transcript/

Q: Let's get back to what happened in New York and Washington. What is your assessment of the attacks on America? What's their effect on America and the Muslim world?

BIN LADEN: The events of Tuesday, September the 11th, in New York and Washington are great on all levels. Their repercussions are not over. Although the collapse of the twin towers is huge, but the events that followed, and I'm not just talking about the economic repercussions, those are continuing, the events that followed are dangerous and more enormous than the collapse of the towers.

The values of this Western civilization under the leadership of America have been destroyed. Those awesome symbolic towers that speak of liberty, human rights, and humanity have been destroyed. They have gone up in smoke.

...

I tell you freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people and the West in general will enter an unbearable hell and a choking life

If you read the whole interview you see that he does briefly mention his earlier demands that the US leave Saudi Arabia, but in this interview he focuses more on Palestine and the death of Muslims from American bombs. He mentions many times that 9/11 was justified as payback for American wars in Muslim countries. Nowhere does he mention annexing North America and imposing Muslim law which would be a ludicrous goal in any case. If that was so important to him I wonder why he left it out in such a high profile interview with Al Jazeera.

And yet, it can fix broken juvenile brains

You voted against helping children like this:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/07/health/charlotte-child-medical-marijuana

I disagree, and so does this young child and her parents:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/07/health/charlotte-child-medical-marijuana

I agree, same thing with music, movies, and probably anything. You remember the highlights, not the mundane, average, everyday shit. For every Woodward and Bernstein uncovering watergates, you have ten thousand reporters dutifully transcribing whatever it is the press secretary or other spokesperson tells them and handing that propaganda over to the consumers. We remember the great ones who stand out, the rest are forgotten. That can be misinterpreted as assuming that all the past reporters were good. Same thing if you look back on the movies of yesteryear, you only keep the ones that are good, it can be tempting to compare the classics to the shit currently in theaters and conclude that only good movies were made decades ago and only shitty movies are made now.

The good news is, it's ALWAYS happened, so it's not like civilization is crumbing. Journalism has pretty much always been this shitty, so we're not heading into a dark age. At least, not because of that. Also with the internet, that's something that actually can change journalism and is. So it's not getting worse, and it could get better.

I'm very optimistic, and I think I have good reason for that. For example, before the internet this story would have stood on its own. Rumsfeld making a blatantly hypocritical statement, without the "journalist" bothering to note Rumsfelds hypocrisy, would have been just out there for people to read without any crosstalk. The comments on it point out that problem, and perhaps the article will get updated or corrected. Not likely, but more likely than it would have been 20 years ago.

At age 10, I sure as hell expect kids to watch out what they put in their mouth.

Natalie Giorgi's experience caused me to reconsider this position. When you consider the risk caused by both cross-contamination and by unlabeled products, "sure as hell expect" quickly becomes a life-risk. The "Peanut Butter table" seems like a very small price for my child to pay to help protect the life of a classmate. I have used this as an excellent example for teaching my child human compassion and how they can look out for others.

For what it's worth, CDC data supports your observation that allergies are on the rise.

At age 10, I sure as hell expect kids to watch out what they put in their mouth.

Natalie Giorgi's experience caused me to reconsider this position. When you consider the risk caused by both cross-contamination and by unlabeled products, "sure as hell expect" quickly becomes a life-risk. The "Peanut Butter table" seems like a very small price for my child to pay to help protect the life of a classmate. I have used this as an excellent example for teaching my child human compassion and how they can look out for others.

For what it's worth, CDC data supports your observation that allergies are on the rise.

Among the volunteers are al Qaida fighters. Happy? Not everyone volunteering to fight in Syria against the government is al Qaida ... which reminds me. The Taliban are becoming a global menace. So now both the Taliban and al Qaida are fighting in Syria.

Pakistan Taliban arrive in Syria, and more are to come, CNN told

Agree, just wanted to drop this info here:
  http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/20/news/economy/occupy_wall_street_income/index.htm

I ask this because according to the Tea Partiers, Libertarians, and Fox News, those were the people the IRS was singling out for investigating their non-profit status.

So, counselor, in your estimation - is the IRS Inspector General a Tea Party Libertarian employed by Fox News, as well?

Because the IG report basically confirmed what you're trying to hand-wave away - that organizations were targeted for "special" processing which imposed unnecessary burdens on them - for no other reason than their name, or chosen policy positions (e.g., a focus on "government spending").

From the report:

WHAT TIGTA FOUND
The IRS used inappropriate criteria that identified for review Tea Party and other organizations applying for tax-exempt status based upon their names or policy positions instead of indications of potential political campaign intervention. Ineffective management:
1) allowed inappropriate criteria to be developed and stay in place for more than 18 months,
2) resulted in substantial delays in processing certain applications, and
3) allowed unnecessary information requests to be issued.

Although the processing of some applications with potential significant political campaign intervention was started soon after receipt, no work was completed on the majority of these applications for 13 months. This was due to delays in receiving assistance from the Exempt Organizations function Headquarters office. For the 296 total political campaign intervention applications TIGTA reviewed as of December 17, 2012, 108 had been approved, 28 were withdrawn by the applicant, none had been denied, and 160 were open from 206 to 1,138 calendar days (some for more than three years and crossing two election cycles). More than 20 months after the initial case was identified, processing the cases began in earnest. Many organizations received requests for additional information from the IRS that included unnecessary, burdensome questions (e.g., lists of past and future donors). The IRS later informed some organizations that they did not need to provide previously requested information. IRS officials stated that any donor information received in response to a request from its Determinations Unit was later destroyed.

The lesson? Sometimes, the government really *is* wrong when Fox News reports they did something wrong.

Terrorists try changes after Snowden leaks, official says

For example, if I decide to boycott my cell provider, I can either forsake cellular service altogether

People survived before cellular service was avoidable, but that's becoming more difficult with pay phones disappearing. I limit my exposure to cellular evil by buying a $100 per year voice-only plan and using it only for occasional calls to arrange rides and the like.

I'm sure the timing of the neologism is just a coincidence.

Back in 2005, Carly Fiorina took $21 million to walk away from HP:
http://money.cnn.com/2005/02/09/technology/hp_fiorina/

It's not just her, it every CEO! If you're a fuck up and CEO, they pay you a fortune to go away.

AS for the rest of us peons, well too bad.

I'm sure the timing of the neologism is just a coincidence.

Back in 2005, Carly Fiorina took $21 million to walk away from HP: http://money.cnn.com/2005/02/09/technology/hp_fiorina/

I know! That's why we never heard of Constitution on Chest Guy, Little White Boy with Terrorist's Name & Friends, Veteran with Too Much Implanted Metal or TSA Pen. Tester Guy. The media just isn't interested in the plight of the white man.

A typical liberal response, always making excuses and tolerating laziness in both themselves and others instead of taking charge of their own lives, working hard and creating their own success. Those who can do and those who won't complain. Which one are you?

Like I said, social darwinist bullshit. You need to equalize education and opportunity before you start bleating and blathering about how it's all individual merit. Joe Blow doesn't have hot women show up at his hotel room offering him steamy sex because his dad is an assistant manager at a Burger King and the women's employers are looking to score some coupons.

I have wondered over the last few years why more big-name general news sites around the world don't just shut down their comment systems. The comments attached to virtually any major TV news network site or newspaper site tend to be filled with content that does little if anything to actually further any sort of discussion or dissemination of knowledge about the topic at hand.

I have noticed recently some of the sites I follow daily have started to only selectively permit commenting on stories. Stories which are likely to bring out the trolls and bigots seem to have commenting disabled more and more. However, I'm not sure why these news sites don't just bite the bullet and dismantle the comments attached to stories. Nobody seems to ever benefit from them.

(Obviously, something like /. which is centred around discussion and commenting is a somewhat different beast. I am specifically talking about general news outlets like CBC News, The Toronto Star, or CNN.com, and others like them. /. naturally also has the benefit of community-driven moderation to limit trolling, flamebait, and spam).

Yaz

While this is hardly the sole culprit, in 1998, the the National Institute of Health adopted a new definition of overweight. That is responsible for at least part of the increase shown since that time.

The lifetime risk of contracting certain types of cancer rose slightly for a small group of people because they were exposed to radiation from the nuclear disaster, the WHO said Thursday.

The notable exception was young emergency workers at the plant, who inhaled high doses of radioactive iodine, probably raising their risk of developing thyroid cancer. But since the thyroid is relatively resistant to cancer, the overall risk for these people remains low, the report said.

Otherwise, any increase in human disease after the partial meltdown triggered by the March 2011 tsunami is "likely to remain below detectable levels," the WHO said in its report.

So basically the tsunami and resulting devastation from the tsunami's aftermath are what the people in Fukushima are really concerned about...not growing extra arms or dying of cancer any sooner than they already would have. The real question for people there is whether or not they are willing to pay double price for their power and be safe from the apparent nuclear menace that is destroying lives...I'm betting people like cheap power.

Is that the same Iceland that was talking about banning Internet porn in March this year? (That's just the first example I found after 10 seconds on Yahoo search.) And according to Wikipedia is "45th out of 138 in terms of freedom of the press"?

Nowhere's perfect. I grew up in New Zealand and happen to think it's pretty darned spiffy as a country. Other people with different priorities don't like some of the recent moves against piracy (I think piracy is unethical, immoral, and just plain wrong, so I don't particularly care). I had some very different perceptions about the USA until I moved here and started living here. Now I also think it's a pretty darned spiffy country, albeit with a load of problems. It might even appear to have more problems than many other countries until you realize it's strikingly similar to the EU with 50 different states, each vehemently espousing their state's rights where they want them to trump federal government rights, and is a freaking massive country with a third of a billion people living here.

Welcome to 2013, the terrerists are still winning without having to lift a finger.

"I tell you, freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in -- and the West in general -- into an unbearable hell and a choking life."
    -- Osama bin Laden, Al-Jazeera interview, (21 October 2001)

Seriously 10 more years of this shit and we'll be back 1980's Soviet erra style control unless people get the fuck off their ass and so something unless you're a fucking retard like this http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/19/us/cable-outage-911-calls

Re: Yeah I hate how much influence the IRS has in Germany these days.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/national_world/2013/07/06/Germany-strikes-deal-to-help-U-S-catch-tax-evaders.html
It could be same hold as the IRS has over the Swiss banks?
http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2013/05/30/swiss-bank-accounts-irs/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2013/07/09/swiss-banks-reveal-americans-u-k-deal-sputters-and-germany-embraces-fatca/

I think you missed the point. This was about marketing, not advertising (advertising is just one small part of marketing).

So you're blocking advertising, great. But what if the fact you have an adblocker installed on your machine (which is generically trivial to detect, BTW) means you automatically pay 10% more for everything? That's the world the author of the original study is warning us of. That the data collected via widespread tracking can be used to penalize one class of customers for fuck-all reasons.

It's already begun. There have been cases of Orbitz presenting higher prices to Mac users. Or some of the pricing slipperiness Amazon has engaged in.

This sort of "different pricing for different people" is already somewhat pervasive in society, even in B&Ms. As a member of a particular grocery chain's frequent shopper program I get special coupons every three months in the mail. Those coupons are custom-printed for me, and are different than the coupons somebody else on the same program would get, because they're based on my shopping habits and demographics. At what point does that start heading into becoming discrimination and/or "unfair"?

For anyone to state with a straight face that there are enforceable anti-monopoly laws in 2013 America needs to blah, blah, blah...

Yeah, you're right
http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/news/2013/08/13/justice-american-us-airways/2647545/
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/06/21/apple-ebook-antitrust-summations-2/
http://www.vedderprice.com/US-Supreme-Court-Decides-Pay-for-Delay-Patent-Antitrust-Case-Briefed-by-Vedder-Price-2013-06-18/

Parts of the United States tried similar ideas to reduce the future numbers of poor people. These attempts are now considered to be an atrocity.

Ah yes, the slashdot mods are hating on the truth again.

"These Moderator Points Paid For By The Department of American Propaganda."

Sadly, the facts are not in favor of the moderators today. $1.2 billion a year has bought the egyptian military a lot of democracy! And finding out what Reagan did is just an google away. But hey mods... don't let your blind patriotism get in the way of a righteous down-modding. Afterall, being critical of your own government supporting re-directing billions to kill peaceful protesters is a very democratic thing to do... unlike, say, providing food stamps, which presently has a smaller budget than the money we're giving to Egypt right now to kill its own citizens.

-1, Truthful.

Wall Street Journal:Nearly 100 dead.
USA Today: Nearly 100 dead
CNN: 95-200 dead
NBC: At least 95 dead
Fox News: Nearly 100 dead

But don't let reality get in the way of your bizarre conspiracy theory.

First of all, my profession has nothing to do with this. I have that .sig so that nobody is stupid enough to to take anything I say as legal advice. My former employer required me to have such a disclaimer whenever posting on any forum where there was any chance that people could misconstrue what I say as legal advice. We often discuss legal topics on Slashdot, so I adopted it. I'm no longer with that firm, but it's not a bad idea, so I kept the .sig.

That said, since you call my qualification into question, I'd be willing to bet I have more actual training in criminal defense and constitutional law than you, though you are correct that I don't practice in those areas of law. (On that note, I am well aware of Terry v. Ohio, which is the law NYC is using to justify these stops. They are absolutely doing it wrong when 90% of the people they stop are not doing anything. Terry requires reasonable suspicion of criminal activity.)

Regarding Gates, he claims that the only thing he did was politely and repeatedly ask Officer Crowley for his name and badge number. Officer Crowley claims that as soon as he showed up, Gates got belligerent, started saying that Crowley was harassing him for being "Black in America," and was immediately verbally abusive. Perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between and they were both partially in the wrong. Maybe Crowley overreacted in arresting him for disorderly conduct (but sorry, when he went outside, he was in public). None of that matters to the GP's allegation that Gates was just some random, well-dressed black guy happily going about his business when he was profiled by the police. I can acknowledge that it's not a simple issue. In fact, that's really my whole point.

Regarding Obama, perhaps you missed where he immediately jumped in and said Crowley "acted stupidly," defended Gates as being in the right, and then made it a racial issue. http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/07/22/harvard.gates.interview/. It was only later when he held his stupid "beer summit" that he took a more even-handed approach. He's done the exact same thing with Trayvon Martin. He has consistently lionized Martin and villainized Zimmerman at every turn, made it 100% about race, and failed to acknowledge that there are nuances to the issue. He is a deeply racist person. He's also a lousy president, but that's only partially related to his racism.

And I'm sorry, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are sticking up for my rights as a citizen? No. They are doing nothing of the kind. They are doing everything they can to keep impoverished black people stirred up and angry about the white man putting them down so they can build their own little kingdoms on the backs of those impoverished black people. They do not make the world a better place for anybody.

it's only the top 10% that carry their own weight.

Nonsense. As Buffet repeated recently, his tax rate is still less than his secretary's.
http://money.cnn.com/2013/03/04/news/economy/buffett-secretary-taxes/index.html

US taxes are regressive, not progressive.

Actually the corporation that pays the highest US taxes (both effective tax rate and total taxes paid) also happens to be the ones that Democrats hate the most: Wal-Mart.

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2010/news/1004/gallery.top_5_tax_bills/

Apple pays more total tax dollars, but that goes to other countries during transfer pricing, not the US. And no, it isn't other corporations combined - Exxon for example pays more than twice as much in total taxes than Apple does with Chevron coming in second place, and Apple third.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2013/03/17/companies-paying-highest-income-taxes/1991313/

Wal-Mart doesn't have the luxury of transfer pricing, so as long as they're as large as they are, they'll always be paying very high taxes. And as you said, the US tax rates are unreasonable as hell, which is why everybody goes out of their way to avoid them.

Ignored by who? till when? There are up to 5 millon people with access to that data, a lot of them belonging to for-profit companies, any of them can use that information for whatever they want. Blackmailing, stealing intellectual property (even before gets published/patented/whatever), using it out of context to put you in jail, or just sharing your hot conversation for fun, or as tools for political prosecutions are just a few of the possible consequences.

Remember that what you say today could stay forever in the net, and that happens too with private and apparently anonymous communications in the NSA world. They could use what they intercept today as evidence for the new defined crimes of tomorrow (and as they are weaponizing internet, all you did there could be end being a crime, including posting something as anonymous that could be seen as offensive in 10 years)