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Lets burn the lawyers offices down.

The lawyers are powerless without the courts. It's the Court orders, backed by ... wait for it ... men with guns that make this environment possible.

Do you know why everybody is so jumpy and the cops are doing summary executions now? Because everybody is a criminal, everybody is a suspect, and the cops and the courts enforce these absurd laws rather than than defend the Constitution as a co-equal branch.

Hell, the Constitution didn't even make it past 1803 intact in design, and FDR accepted the Supreme Court's final surrender in 1937 from Chief Justice Hughes as a settlement to his plan to expand the Court with its cronies. Overnight, SCOTUS began finding all of Roosevelt's programs suddenly Constitutional even concluding that growing wheat for your family farm is part of "Interstate Commerce" and suddenly of Federal providence.

The problem now is that it's impossible for the People to know what the Constitution says because (supposedly) it doesn't mean anything until SCOTUS tells us what it means, which might well be the opposite of what we "think" it means (that is, the plain English meaning). The catch is that the Constitution is what authorizes the government in the first place. If the People aren't competent to understand their agreement with that government, then they weren't competent to create it in the first place and the grant of power is void.

How much is this really. As a comparison, our football stadium was supposed to cost $400 million in today's dollars. It actually cost closer to $600 million, also in today's dollars. About $350 million of that is paid by extorting fees from visitor to the city. I can't imagine how making visitors pay for something they have no use for makes, sense, but there it is.

This reminds me of people who complain about the $400 million cost to launch the Space Shuttle. The same amount of a high end movie. But what does a movie give us?

Modern society as of 2008?

"I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman," the future President said. "For me as a Christian, it is a sacred union. You know, God is in the mix."

Obama and Miss California aligned on same-sex marriage?

Great pattern you've discovered for a rebuttal.

Step 1. Ad hominem attack.
Step 2. Make vague references to vast numbers of rebutting examples without actually supplying any.
Step 3. More ad hominem.
Step 4. Ignore actual citations (like in Tart's latest book).
Step 5. Claim area is under study by reputable people without naming any.
Step 6. Profit? :-)

== Some links related to healthy democratic education reform

BTW, from 2006, not that I agree with most of their business-oriented recommendations:
"To fix US schools, panel says, start over"
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/...
"That's the conclusion of a bipartisan group of scholars and business leaders, school chancellors and education commissioners, and former cabinet secretaries and governors. They declare that America's public education system, designed to meet the needs of 100 years ago when the workplace revolved around an assembly line, is unsuited to today's global marketplace. Already, they warn, many Americans are in danger of falling behind and seeing their standard of living plummet."

Reform in what direction? We didn't get where we are today in public schooling without a hugenumber of powerful interlocking factions, as explained here:
https://www.johntaylorgatto.co...
"This is not to say sensitive, intelligent, moral, and concerned individuals aren't distributed through each of the twenty-two categories, but the conflict of interest is so glaring between serving a system loyally and serving the public that it is finally overwhelming. Indeed, it isn't hard to see that in strictly economic terms this edifice of competing and conflicting interests is better served by badly performing schools than by successful ones. On economic grounds alone a disincentive exists to improve schools. When schools are bad, demands for increased funding and personnel, and professional control removed from public oversight, can be pressed by simply pointing to the perilous state of the enterprise. But when things go well, getting an extra buck is like pulling teeth."

Chris Mercogliano, previously of the Albany Free School, is an example of a true reformer, with 30+ years of success including with some of the toughest kids rejected by mainstream schools, a success almost almost totally ignored:
http://www.chrismercogliano.co...

Or on homeschooling:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...
"During this time, the American educational professionals Raymond and Dorothy Moore began to research the academic validity of the rapidly growing Early Childhood Education movement. This research included independent studies by other researchers and a review of over 8,000 studies bearing on Early Childhood Education and the physical and mental development of children.
They asserted that formal schooling before ages 8-12 not only lacked the anticipated effectiveness, but was actually harmful to children. The Moores began to publish their view that formal schooling was damaging young children academically, socially, mentally, and even physiologically. They presented evidence that childhood problems such as juvenile delinquency, nearsightedness, increased enrollment of students in special education classes, and behavioral problems were the result of increasingly earlier enrollment of students.[9] The Moores cited studies demonstrating that orphans who were given surrogate mothers were measurably more intelligent, with superior long term effects - even though the mothers were "mentally retarded teenagers" - and that illiterate tribal mothers in Africa produced children who were socially and emotionally more advanced than typical western children, "by western standards of measurement."[9]
Their primary assertion was that the bonds and emotional developm

Poaching and wanting H1-B rules relaxed means I.T. workers whose knowledge is perishable in the marketplace as technology evolves are getting screwed from the tech billionaires. Been that way for decades, and if that's not enough to make you puke, young Zuckerberg and his buddies even started a PAC to lobby on their behalf.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Innov...

Really, I'm just shocked every time I read about the UN doing *anything* productive. In truth, the UN probably does a lot of good throughout the world. For instance, I applaud them for keeping their election observers on the ground in Afghanistan, whereas two other groups are withdrawing theirs after the Kabul hotel bombing (the withdrawal of foreign observers is quite clearly one of the Taliban's goals).

The underlying story may be this:

1) We don't know what actually happened between Costco and the testing facilities and suppliers. Even though samples were tested, there could be a concern that there were problems in the food that was not tested. Costco has not handled the public relations about this incident in a sensible manner: Costco officials did not return telephone calls seeking comment.

2) Costco has become poorly managed since James Sinegal is no longer CEO.

Ten years ago, Costco was wonderful. It was easy to make decisions about buying anything we saw at Costco, because someone else had been careful to stock only reputable products, products that people would buy if they had done serious research. Now we have to do our own research.

Costco employees still praise James Senegal. They sometimes criticize the poor quality of items that Costco now stocks.

I worked on this:

http://www.csmonitor.com/1980/...

It was a hacked GM X-car with batteries in what was the transmission tunnel, and most of the rest of the underside of the car. And, in fact, it had a full under-pan.

I don't recall it being touted as a safety feature, but instead, it was there to help reduce wind resistance.

I think the major hazard was the potential for chlorine leaks. It leaked on The Today Show. "Oh, that? It's just chlorine, just like in your swimming pool..."

Tell that to the Madison Height, Mi. fire department! (We had them out a few times...)

- If Mozilla keeps him, they'll get backlash from the gay lobby (for lack of a better term.)

Hmmm. What could a better term for "people who care about fair treatment of their fellow human being" possibly be?

How about most Americans?

It's unpopular if you look at the entire country, and not just California. It's most definitely very unpopular among the developer and other techie demographics.

I found this article in the Christian Science Monitor to be very plausible. That was on March 18, when they were still looking all over the place for the plane, and it's a scenario that still holds up. Basically, something went wrong, the pilots started to head for the nearest airport, but then passed out. http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Asia-Pacific/2014/0318/Malaysia-Airlines-Flight-370-Why-some-pilots-point-to-mechanical-error-video

This isn't what IBM says it's doing...

"IBM layoffs expected. Instead, IBM adds 500 positions."
http://www.csmonitor.com/Busin...

I guess it's time for the yearly Communication Workers of America local 1701 to try to unionize IBM again under the name "Alliance@IBM". Don't they usually wait until March for this same old song and dance? Why's it early this year?

One way to put material into orbit is a large rail gun, powering it would require a major
hydro electric dam or reactor, or something on par.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Scien...

One method talked of using a vacuum tube to eliminate initial friction inside the launch tube.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

This idea has been around awhile.

I think it would be good for sending back HE3 canisters from the moon
to power HE3 fusion reactors like the one at University of Wisconsin.

http://fti.neep.wisc.edu/resea...

http://fti.neep.wisc.edu/galle...

The Malaysian National Space Agency (MNSA) and its Department of Islamic Development held a two-day conference in April [of 2006]. They invited 150 scholars, scientists, and astronauts to discuss "Islam and Life in Space."

Five times a day (before sunrise, at midday, in late afternoon, after sunset, and at night), earth-bound muezzins call Muslims to prayer. A spaceship traveling 17,400 miles per hour orbits the earth 16 times in a day. Does that mean praying 80 times in 24 hours?

If interrupting work to pray is not possible, the astronaut may practice a shorter version of the prayer or combine midday and afternoon prayer times, or the evening and night ones.

The next problem: Where is Mecca?

Muslims on Earth face Mecca, in central Saudi Arabia, when they pray. The MNSA suggests that the astronaut pray toward Mecca as much as possible, or at the Earth in general. But if it becomes necessary, the astronaut may simply face any direction.

How does an Islamic astronaut face Mecca in orbit?

The conference went on to discuss a broad range of concerns. To sum up: The rituals of the Islamic faith are meant to focus the believer's attention on his relationship with his God. They are not an exercise in puzzle-logic and they do not require a geometric or technological solution.

Moving on.

In January 2014, former German astronaut Ulrich Walter strongly criticized the project for ethical reasons. Speaking with Berlin's Tagesspiegel, he estimated the probability of reaching Mars alive at only thirty percent, and that of surviving there more than three months at less than twenty percent. He said, "They make their money with that [TV] show. They don't care what happens to those people in space...

Mars One

Captain John Smith ran a tight ship and had no use for the Virginian colonist whose plans were based on magical thinking and not careful planning, adequate material and financial resources and a rigorous internal discipline.

He published a list of supplies he believed to be the minimum requirements for survival on the frontier: essentially a year's supply of all consumables and durable goods, and allowing for a generous margin of safety.

New France saw one or two supply ships a year, which may give you some idea of the expense. New France, remember, had an economically viable export trade in furs and unflinching support from the crown. Those ships would be coming, hell or high water. Other colonies were less favored.

Smith's budget has no allowance for a healthy communal and social life. Entertainment, education, religion and so on.

No successful American colonial settlement ever began with a base as small as twenty or bound to a space that is at once so physically confined and isolated. I would expect to see alcohol as a problem. I would expect to see suicide as a problem.

I've heard of states (or counties or cities) giving breaks to corporations for income, property, or other taxes, but I've never heard of an arrangement where the company is allowed to keep any withholdings from employee's payrolls as you claim... do you have a concrete example you could share?

No problem. Reuters says there are at least 2700 companies with such arrangements.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Comme...

http://thinkprogress.org/econo...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

What the sock puppets seem to have missed was the complexity of:
"Anonymous unmasked: hacker ringleader turned FBI informant"
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/J...
"Jeremy Hammond: FBI directed my attacks on foreign government sites"
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...

http://www.csmonitor.com/

Robbing the nation to provide pork to your constituents back home ...

I realize we have to flog Sarah Palin at every opportunity we get, but If you are talking Washington politics, which is where the money for those bridges was to come from, the "bridge to nowhere" was the baby of Ted Stevens and Don Young, not Sarah Palin. Sara Palin was a state official, not a member of Congress that had a hand in the funding.

Alaska's 'bridges to nowhere'

Two Alaska Republicans with clout in Congress, Sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young, are pushing for funds that could send the Anchorage suburbs leapfrogging into those hinterlands.

Alaska 'bridge to nowhere' funding gets nowhere / Lawmakers delete project after critics bestow derisive moniker

1) that was 2012, which was 2 years ago. 2013 just ended, but early estimates show China over 33%.
2) re-read what it says. They are looking to cut their smog and will cut coal consumption in the worst smog regions. It does NOT say that the nation will cut coal consumption. In addition, the chinese gov. stole GPE's tech, BUT, one company is working with them so as they can manufacture pre-made plants and sell them elsewhere.
3) and yet, it absorbs less than 1% of 1% of what they generate.
4) China makes MANY MANY promises. For example, they have a treaty with Japan that says that they will put pollution control on all of their plants. Sadly, Japan forget to require China to turn them on. FEW of the coal plants actually run pollution control. Then look at the deal that Clinton and WTF made with China. In 2005, they were suppose to allow their money to be free market. In addition, their 90 tariffs were to go to less than 20. They are now close to 500 tariffs. China makes MANY MANY promises, and regularly break them. As it is, their plans leave no doubt that they have ZERO chance of dropping their emissions at all by 2020. In fact, by 2022, it is expected that China will account for 1/2 of all emissions that man has EVER DONE.
5) Other than hydro, China's AE plans are not about increasing their own. It is first about taking it from the west and then doing it local. They do not want to buy anything from the west.

One new thing is Mozilla pushing updates at me while I am using their product. As It is Saturday night, and I work in IT, i found my self working. Ok. Happens. While I am working feverishly on browser-access-to-console stuff, my browser locks up. Oh.. I was suppposed to know it was time for an update? Another is Java. Was take a remote/virtual training when the Java powered screen scraper (which worked great!! thanks NX for the Fedora compatible version!) decided that the JVM was not current (1.7_45 vs 1.7_51) and quit. SO I lost 20 minutes of class while I scrambled for a fix. Any cloud/Interweb based service could change how it works at any second,. Is this acceptible to businesses that think the sugary sweet cloud is so dreamy, but in reality its so far from a secure and predictable platform. Now this blatant demonstration of how the unwiting user is riding a rollercoaster in the dark, and fed chuff by and advertising machine that feels obligated to clamp ones eyes open like that scene from Clockwork Orange. The latest is now Verizon's Anti-Neutrality powers - http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Saving-Money/2014/0116/Net-neutrality-ruling-How-Verizon-decision-affects-consumers Used to be that the Internet was a path to good information, it seems as comfortable/predictable/business-ready as a funhouse..... thats not too fun. Can we start a new internet?

Yeah, it's already happening, but it seems to not be happening fast enough to actually reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Perhaps Republicans can propose eliminating subsidies to the fossil fuel industry to help alternative energy sources compete with fossil fuels on cost.

Snowden played this excessively smart, and that's the only reason he's sort of free now.

I don't think Snowden is that smart or free. Today he does what the Russian government allows him to do. But consider the Russians have protesters in Moscow, protesters in Kiev, and suicide bombers in their midst. How long will the Russian government tolerate an icon for freedom from surveillance, especially given their history? I believe Snowden is in considerable danger.

Another reference: Sergei Guriev

Also Mikhail Khodorkovsky

As for Snowden, I still think we know 10% or less of the story. There is a lot that does not make sense.

That's not that case AT ALL. Take a look at California which has a very wealthy population, the rich there lean more to the left. The rich put Obama into office. Also in the South, Republicans tend to provide the people with most of their jobs since Republicans are very heavy on defense spending. Most military bases and recruitment are in the South and with the US spending nearly 3/4 of a trillion dollars each year on defense the South gains the most.

I'm assuming you're referring to the US. If I understand you correctly, you either question or don't think there are (or could be?) any foreign spies, or associates or members of terrorist groups running lose in the US?

One recent famous case: How the FBI Busted Anna Chapman and the Russian Spy Ring
FBI Investigating Possible Russian Spy Recruiting In U.S.
After the Cold War, Russian Espionage in the U.S.
Russian spying at cold war levels, say experts

China's Growing Spy Threat
Spy case patterns the Chinese style of espionage

Senator’s memo shows Iran links in Homeland Security’s troubled immigration program

Cigarette Smuggling Linked to Terrorism - (From 2004, but the problem remains.)

Smugglers with ties to terrorist groups are acquiring millions of dollars from illegal cigarette sales and funneling the cash to organizations such as al Qaeda and Hezbollah, federal law enforcement officials say, prompting a nationwide crackdown on black market tobacco.

The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has more than 300 open cases of illicit cigarette trafficking -- including several with terrorist links -- up from only a handful five years ago, ATF sources said.

"This is a major priority for us," said Michael Bouchard, assistant director of the ATF. "The deeper we dig into these cases, the more ties to terrorism we're discovering."

Those links above are only a drop in the bucket, especially where China is concerned.

There is a process for properly releasing classified information. Broadcasting it on CSPAN without prior coordination and clearance generally doesn't conform to that.

I think there are a bunch of links in this Slashdot discussion claiming otherwise. On the surface, it makes sense: shut down nuclear plants, and what else are you going to do? Solar just can't produce that amount of power (yet).

To confirm this, I just did a quick Google search for "Germany Coal Nuclear Solar":
https://www.google.com/search?q=germany+coal+nuclear+solar&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
which seems to confirm the increase in coal burning, although the Poland connection seems to be false.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Country-Profiles/Countries-G-N/Germany/
"More than half of Germany’s electricity was generated from coal in the first half of 2013, compared with 43% in 2010." but it says nothing about the shutdown of nuclear reactors.

http://cleantechnica.com/2013/02/05/debunking-common-myths-about-nuclear-coal-power-in-germany-this-time-repeated-by-the-guardian/
"coal (including lignite) is up around 5%...have nothing to do with nuclear in Germany."

http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2013/0716/The-dirty-coal-behind-Germany-s-clean-energy
This sites the 5% figure but doesn't mention why. "Germany has managed to be praised by environmentalists more than any other developed nation and yet is building more coal plants than more or less any other developed country" but it has no specifics.

http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/green-energy-bust-in-germany
This one claims the same thing.
"Germany is indeed avoiding blackouts—by opening new coal- and gas-fired plants. Renewable electricity is proving so unreliable and chaotic..."

http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/57035
"they are now building coal-fired electricity generation and shuttering nuclear power plants..."

I don't know what to believe now. Ultimately, we would need to see the energy mix numbers from the German power companies/government to know for sure. Just pointing out that new coal plants are being built doesn't mean much. They might be replacing existing ones, or making cleaner/smaller ones.

Or are you saying that al-Nusra is not radical Islamist?

Depends on whether or not you're a radical Christianist.

Since you bothered to post, you could have the decency to post a link...

http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/04/world/americas/mexico-radioactive-theft/

http://abcnews.go.com/International/mexican-police-find-stolen-truck-radioactive-cargo/story?id=21091737

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Security-Watch/2013/1204/Hijacked-radioactive-material-found-in-Mexico.-How-dangerous-was-it

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2013/12/4/-extremely-dangerousradioactivetheftinmexicoiaea.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/the_americas/stolen-cobalt-60-found-abandoned/2013/12/04/7d3fe3f8-5d42-11e3-8d24-31c016b976b2_story.html

Because previously, those "cheap" plans covered almost nothing and were pure profit for insurance companies:

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/Decoder-Wire/2013/1029/Millions-losing-health-plans-under-Obamacare.-Did-president-mislead-video

People are now paying for coverage they should have been previously receiving.

I clearly remember a science project where some teenager bred bacteria that could break down plastic bags in about three weeks. It won somebody's science fair project and everything.

That would have been this guy. Other people have made similar claims, such as here and here. I've no idea why they haven't made it to mainstream processing yet, but it wouldn't be the first time there was a problem scaling something up from a small lab-batch process to an industrial sized continuous one, or a problem finding a way to make it commercially viable either.

Oil Subsidies That Should Be Removed

First, let’s take a look at oil subsidies that are obvious and unnecessary. Congress should eliminate the following subsidies: Government R&D. The Department of Energy (DOE) has spent taxpayer dollars on oil research and development, including funding for unconventional oil, gas, and coal. Although President Obama’s FY 2012 budget request significantly cuts funding for the Office of Fossil Energy, decreasing its size by $417.8 million below the FY 2010 appropriation, it does not go far enough. The only funding in this area should maintain the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, for which the President’s budget requests an appropriate $121.7 million. Eliminating all other fossil energy funding would save $399 million.
Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) Tax Credit. Oil producers receive a 15 percent tax credit for costlier methods and technologies, such as injecting liquids and carbon dioxide into the earth. Many EOR processes are no longer in use, and the tax credit applies only when the price of oil falls below a certain level.
Marginal Well Production Credit. Marginal wells produce 15 or fewer barrels of oil per day, produce heavy oil, or produce mostly water and fewer than 25 barrels of oil per day. The marginal well production credit is another safety-net tax provision. This is another preferential tax credit that Congress should repeal.

Applied research of any kind—not just oil research and development—is better left to the private sector. The private sector should not be subsidized because of market conditions, as happens with the so-called safety-net tax credits that kick in if the price of oil falls below a certain level.

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2011/05/whats-an-oil-subsidy

Except that's attributed to Gandhi(who likely never said it at all), when it actually came from a American union leader, Nicholas Klein, who never actually won the strike he was pushing.

News to me, but a quick google search backs you up. At least Klein said it in 1914 before Gandhi became internationally famous so it's not a recent misattribution.

Really? I wouldn't be too sure.

You ask ANY of the guys that are actually in the streets, or people that live in edge neighborhoods... crime is going up and going up rapidly.

Perception of crime may be going up. Fear of crime may be going up. Actual crime is going down.

--this is probably, however, simply a function of the aging of the population rather than the effects of policies. The largest component of crime is teenagers and early twenties.

99% of what you hear from your local,state or federal government is 100% BS to simply calm you down.

Unfortunately, when you dismiss all data that disagrees with what you have already decided to believe, you can never learn anything.

http://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2012/june/crimes_061112/
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2010/0524/US-crime-rate-is-down-six-key-reasons
http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/29/justice/us-violent-crime/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-dimond/crime-reduction_b_2878003.html

If crime rates are going down, then why is my local police getting military grade equipment and gear? Cripes for the last sports event here they had M16 machine guns in the open and wearing full military armor.

The equipment used by police departments has no relationship to the amount of crime.

Not too sure of this. In 2012, the US reached an 18 year low, so emissions were around the 1994 level. The US does not have a Kyoto commitment since the protocol was not ratified, but it did sign on to 7% below 1990. So, if this year we cut around 9% from last year, we could make it. But I'd guess we'll be more than a year late (Kyoto commitment period was 2008 through 2012) and several percent short. http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2013/1022/US-carbon-emissions-fall-to-18-year-low.-What-s-behind-it

"... Blackwater? They seemed pretty good at shooting civilians."

Obama is good at hitting civilians]

Obama jokes about it: "I‘m Really Good At Killing People"

For example: Not one word about the anti-NSA protests in US media. Still.

Your news gathering skills are....poor to say the least.

USA Today: Anti-NSA rally attracts thousands to march in Washington http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/10/26/nsa-dc-rally/3241417/

Huffington Post: NSA 'Stop Watching Us' Protest Draws Thousands In Washington http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/26/nsa-stop-watching-us_n_4166640.html

US News and Word Report: Edward Snowden Endorses D.C. Protest Against NSA in Rare Public Statement http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/10/24/edward-snowden-endorses-dc-protest-against-nsa-in-rare-public-statement

Christian Science Monitor: NSA Washington: March against surveillance and a call from Edward Snowden http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2013/1026/NSA-Washington-March-against-surveillance-and-a-call-from-Edward-Snowden-photos

CNN: Anti-NSA rally targets Washington http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/10/26/anti-nsa-rally-targets-washington/

Fox News: Hundreds rally in DC to protest NSA http://video.foxnews.com/v/2772548586001/hundreds-rally-in-dc-to-protest-nsa/

NBC News: Hundreds march at anti-NSA rally in DC http://www.nbcnews.com/video/nightly-news/53383405

CBS News: Protesters March For Investigation Into Mass NSA Spying http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2013/10/26/protesters-march-for-investigation-into-mass-nsa-spying/

ABC News: NSA Spying Threatens to Hamper US Foreign Policy http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/nsa-spying-threatens-hamper-us-foreign-policy-20689770

Washington Post: Techies concerned over NSA surveillance will march in D.C., proclaiming ‘Stop Watching Us’ http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/techies-concerned-over-nsa-surveillance-will-march-in-dc-proclaiming-stop-watching-us/2013/10/25/5bedb546-3da7-11e3-b7ba-503fb5822c3e_story.html

This is where I get tired of pasting, but I assure you the list goes on and on.

Germany's green jobs are very heavily subsidized by the government. Jobs are certainly being created, however the cost is enormous to their economy. The latest figures show Germany has spent over $130 Billion dollars for 6000 green jobs. That is a cool $20 million per job created. Each consumer subsidizes these jobs to the tune of an extra $260 per year making German electricity among the most expensive in the world. To quote that hard core leftist site Slate

Moreover, this sizeable investment does remarkably little to counter global warming. Even with unrealistically generous assumptions, the unimpressive net effect is that solar power reduces Germanyâ(TM)s CO2 emissions by roughly 8 million metric tonsâ"or about 1 percent â" for the next 20 years.

...
In the meantime, Germans have paid about $130 billion for a climate-change policy that has no impact on global warming.

The one thing that they were really doing right, nuclear energy they voted to get rid of once the Greens got in power. Now since even Germany can't run everything off of renewables the net effect is that Germany is massively ramping up building more coal power plants. So, how about those Germans?

I tried android for a couple of weeks to see what I was missing. I asked all my android owning friends "OK, what should I check out that I can not do on my iPhone". About the only useful response I got was wifi scanning tools. That was it. Which i don't use my phone for anyway.

Then your friends either aren't very smart, or are simply happy with their stock Android and have never wanted to change it.

Homescreen widgets, a decently-sized screen, NFC file sharing, third party keyboards (or a physical one if you prefer), custom launchers, completely customizable app icon placement (including whitespace where you want whitespace), ability to add a huge micro sd card to double your storage size (or swap it if you're bored with the media on this card and want something different for a road trip), ability to add and remove arbitrary files directly to/from the phone over cable without having to use iTunez spyware to do so, ability to go to pretty much any store and pick up a replacement charger/data cable for $5, support for a pointy stylus (on some models) instead of trying to use a marshmallow-on-the-end-of-a-stick capacitive stylus, etc., etc., etc.

Not to mention being able to take a video in any orientation and have it display correctly (i.e., not rotated 90 degrees) on any system...but from your comments, I'm guessing you partake of the entire apple pie, so you may not have seen this particular defect before if you only view your vids in your phone or on your Mac or via your Apple TV box. Oh, I didn't even know this one: apparently you can't email anything but a photo or video using the stock iPhone email app...huh. Guess you'll have to use the GMail account for business stuff, then...other Android advantages such as haptic feedback are pretty 'meh' for me, as I just turn them off anyway.

Looks like Apple is finally allowing homescreen widgets (?er, maybe? looks like you still need to buy an app?), so that's *one* thing off the list...once developers catch up and start providing more widget types, that is.

All that without having to root or 'jailbreak' the phone. If you root it, sky's the limit. True, most of the things you can do if you root the phone are things that your average Joe won't care much about (custom ROM's, complete bit-wise phone backups, ability to software-switch more system settings, ability to remove the stock apps instead of just disabling them, etc.), but to the tinkerer, they are delightful :)

Do you have any thoughts on these incidents?

Times Square car bomb: Pakistani Taliban 'claims responsibility'

With Nidal Hasan bombshell, time to call Fort Hood shooting a terror attack?

I just thought I would ask since I had them handy. I'm pretty sure I could find more if I had to.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/2013/1007/LG-designs-flexible-screens-for-curved-smart-phones

$100 bills are the most popular bill counterfeited in the world. however, $20 bills are the most popular bill counterfeited in the US.

the new design is going to piss off North Korea because they counterfeit US $100 bills like crazy: http://www.csmonitor.com/World/2013/1008/New-100-bill-why-North-Korea-won-t-be-very-happy-video

You seem to think it's not. Ignorant little dumbass, aren't you?

http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Energy-Voices/2013/0930/Government-shutdown-threat-sends-oil-prices-near-three-month-low

Here you go:
CS Monitor, "Government shutdown: Offers that would reopen national parks rebuffed by Feds"
Washington Times (op-ed), "The cheap tricks of the game"

The CS Monitor's article has more meat: interestingly, the state of Arizona and local businesses near the Grand Canyon offered fund a reopening, but the Park Service refused. Local coverage at Grand Canyon News, "Tusayan businesses fight to reopen Grand Canyon National Park"

One message that may come of this shutdown is that some functions of the government currently ruled "non-essential" are of sufficient demand to states and private entities that they could well be administered without federal help, and that the states, municipalities, and private entities that value those functions would be better served by taking on responsibility for them rather than delegating them to the federal government, especially as the federal government has, through the vicissitudes of politics, become increasingly unreliable. It may be in the best economic interests for the Arizonans to push for control over their parks, which became federal properties back when the local population was lower and less able to administer that land and had less incentive to do so. Devolving the "non-essential" onto other bodies (as in the case of the Grand Canyon) or privatizing them (as the space program has been moving to do anyway) may prove a common-sense solution to meeting citizens' needs and reducing federal expenditure. The power federal politicians gain from being able to close down such functions, however, stands in the way of that.

Hear, hear! Health care should be completely decoupled from employment. That would be pro-business, and I'm always amazed it hasn't been promoted as such. It works for Canada and many other countries.

If we based our views only on what we are generally told during these discussion on Slashdot we would have to believe that nationalized medical care is a bountiful panacea with no drawbacks. For some reason we seldom hear about the problems. Pretty much every nationalized healthcare system has it's problems, often significant ones.

For example, although many Britons are proud of the NHS for the high standard of care they feel it provides, it does have its critics and issues. The same is true for Canada's system, and those of other nations. An honest appraisal should include both sides of the story when they are being advocated.

Americans pay more, it is true, but they don't end up in the long queues for treatment that often exist in those systems. There are various other implications as well in terms of available treatments, and who the system is willing to treat.

The Canadian Patients’ Remedy for Health Care: Go to America!

. The annual study “Paying More: Getting Less“ produced by the Fraser Institute, a Canadian think tank, found that government-run monopolies established in each province of Canada (simultaneously barring private operators from competing for the delivery of public health services) produce rates of growth in government health care spending that are “not financially sustainable through public means alone.” Each province’s policy of insulating consumers from price signals, such as premiums, co-payments and deductibles, has naturally led to over-consumption of medical treatment. Thus provincial governments, encountering fiscal restraints, must resort to long queues and the rationing of care.

And wait patients must. A hospital survey of five countries (United States, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and Australia), conducted by Robert Blendon and colleagues in Health Affairs found that “waits of six months or more for elective surgeries were reported to occur ‘very often’ or ‘often’ by 26–57 percent of executives in the four non-U.S. countries; only 1 percent of U.S. hospitals reported this. Half of all Canadian hospitals reported an average waiting time of over six months for a 65-year-old male requiring a routine hip replacement; no American hospital administrators reported waits this long. --- more

The Ugly Truth About Canadian Health Care
The Canadian Patients’ Remedy for Health Care: Go to America!

Patients facing eight-hour waits in ambulances outside A&E departments
'Cruel and neglectful' care of one million NHS patients exposed
British healthcare in crisis despite massive investment
'Right to die' can become a 'duty to die'

Not only is the anecdotal evidence pretty strong, but now we have scientific evidence: we've burned so much gas in so many combustion engines over the past century we can now measure the effect or "leftover" from that at every corner of the globe. The science tying climate change to [anthropogenic] means however, is far from bulletproof and the report itself cannot say it is anything more than "likely".

What? What other species runs combustion engines? The last sentence seems to contradict the rest of the paragraph.

Anyway, if you're going to welcome the warming you'd better be well-protected from the pests, famines, wars and refugees. You might want to check this out:

https://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-positives-negatives-intermediate.htm

And this:

http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/Global-Warming/2013/0917/New-climate-change-map-adds-a-new-factor-people

Well, I think if wind farms needed to pay the same costs and penalties as other systems I wonder what the ROI would be then? We could start with the $200,000 - $500,000 fine per bald eagle -- not to mention someone going to jail for the sheer amount of endangered birds destroyed.

Study: Wind Farms Killed 67 Eagles in 5 Years

Don't see nuclear plants slaughtering animals on this scale.

Why wind farms kill eagles with federal impunity

... Oil companies are prosecuted when a bird drowns in a waste pit. But the Obama administration has never fined or prosecuted a wind-energy company for similar protected bird deaths. An estimated 573,000 birds are killed by US wind farms each year.

Gore might have been a bit pessimistic, but that doesn't necessarily make him wrong: Arctic ice continues to thin, and thin, European satellite reveals. Also reported last week by the Beeb.

The difference between your son and his pony versus al Qaida and their goals is that they are willing to kill large number of people to get what they want. They have destabilized multiple countries and posed a genuine threat to the governments.

In one sense it really doesn't matter if they are going to win or not, but rather that they will continue to fight, and kill, and destabilize.

Your claim that, " al-Qaida has virtually no ability to strike the West with any force" is proved false by the terrorist attacks in London and Madrid, not to mention the Bali bombing, that occurred after 9/11. The British intelligence services are very concerned about the threat there. There have been many more attempts that could have caused mass casualties, including in the US. In the US there have been multiple attempts to use vehicle bombs to attack various cities, including audiences at public events. It's a minor miracle that none of the big bomb plots have succeeded. However, there is the Fort Hood attack, misleading labeled "workplace violence," and the recent Boston Marathon bombing.

I give you credit for tackling the material, but I don't think you've quite got a grip on all the implications.

Numerous Irish women are doing it now because the constitution of the country has been amended to make it legal.

Was this supposed to be a counter-argument?..

There's always freedom of movement - and an authoritarian government is far more likely to deny it.

There is nothing "authoritarian" about Romney in general nor in his views on abortion in particular. Though I don't share this opinion myself, various cultures world-wide believe, life begins at conception — heck, the entire China counts people's age from that point (however approximate).

you with your libertarian views will join the gays, the openly atheist and other "subversives" in the camps.

What camps? Michael Moore is still alive, free, and enjoying his substantial wealth made by criticizing and mocking the government... No one raised an eyebrow over calls to kill Bush, but simply mocking the President now may lead to the offender's losing his livelihood. NSA's surveillance blossoms, as does TSA's abuse of travelers (spilling already from airports to train stations). IRS is used — with Obama's knowledge if not outright direction — to suppress opposition. Are you sure, it is the Republicans, who are the "authoritarian" ones?

As for armed/disarmed, if you're not willing to use the guns to protect your liberties - and you here are explicitly arguing that you'd be willing to trade off a lot of them for lower taxes, more or less - then what use are they?

There may be a point, in a not-so-distant future, when the government is not quite yet able to openly use officers to kill, beat-up, and otherwise suppress opposition, but is already able to send pro-government "enforcers" to do the job, while the officers are ordered to look the other way. It happened in Côte d’Ivoire, it happened in Zimbabwe, it happened in Chicago, and in Philadelphia. Being able to resist that kind of threat is why citizens should be able to arm themselves without much ado.

"Socialist" countries with more personal liberties - like Western Europe - are doing far better than authoritarian countries with more economic liberties, in terms of how well off their citizens actually are.

Citation needed.