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The research funding dictated who had a voice.

And those with the voice, can get more research funding. Is not it nice, when the government is picking winners?

Climate science has a harder problem to address, but is as rigorous as is reasonable in the circumstances.

I wonder, what you mean by "rigorous" here. Lysenko, for example, rigorously persecuted adherents of the reactionary Mendelian genetics. And, when their activities endangered the favor he held with the government, denounced them as "enemies of the people".

Something that could never happen in a free country. Right?

Is it really a reliable scientific theory, if police are called on to silence its opponents?

S.F. to see $99 million budget deficit next year, as pension costs soar
The US Debt Just Exceeded $19 Trillion.
Household debt at highest level since 2010
Student debt load growing, so are delinquencies

The people that taught you we're wealthy are idiots. Stop listening to idiots.

Well, you're simply wrong about that. It has been a thing for many years. It is without problems.

Wanna bet?

http://www.fox13news.com/news/...

http://dailysignal.com/2016/01...

http://globalnews.ca/news/2546...

https://allisonslaw.wordpress....

That took about 10 seconds to find. Give me 10 minutes and I'll have a hundred of them.

You are wrong based on the facts in evidence.

To protect young girls and women from perverts, rapists, etc etc who would certainly use the opportunity to legally enter the opposite sex's restrooms?

Just as a matter of curiosity, is this actually a problem in places which don't have laws of this type?

Again:

http://dailysignal.com/2016/02...

I'll add in those disorders: XYY syndrome and Klinefelter (XXY) syndrome. The latter can really mess with a person's gender (and sexual) identity, as even those that are 'male' can develop distinctly female sexual traits (e.g. breasts). As you can imagine, this does a number on their body chemistry as well.

It's rare, but I do know someone with Klinefelter that was born with both sets of reproductive parts. She eventually identified as female and had the appropriate surgeries sometime in her 30's. I'm curious how these black and white lawmakers would handle someone like this.

Even more rare are the XXYY, XXXY and some others, see the second link for more info.

They don't handle it because they're ignorant of it. But this whole episode should be laid at the feet of the looney left as far as I'm concerned, because what you're seeing is a semi-legitimate backlash to their insistence that anybody be able to use any restroom. I'll post this again:

http://dailysignal.com/2016/02...

The vast majority of people (probably 99% or more) do not want that to be legal. It's difficult to write a law that makes that illegal while not causing harm to your acquaintance. I hate to say it, but we were doing fine before the loonies started pushing for total acceptance of transsexuals.

DNA absolutely specifies sex for the vast majority (around 99.9% last I looked) of the people out there.

Ah, so you think that because NC's new law only discriminates against 10,000 NC citizens with what you'd judge to be a legitimate reason, that it's ok?

It doesn't truly discriminate against them because they are already using the restroom that fits their physical look. Take the WNBA player, for example. She's a woman but with XY chromosomes. Still a woman, looks like a woman, uses the ladies' room. Nobody's going to care. Is she breaking this law? Her birth certificate says "female". But the point is that nobody cares.

On the other hand, we *need* to "discriminate" against people like this:

http://dailysignal.com/2016/02...

Hey look, in other news, the largest solar install is proving unworkable:

Here’s the story so far. Ivanpah:
- is owned by Google, NRG Energy, and Brightsource, who have a market cap in excess of $500 billion.
- received $1.6 billion in loan guarantees from the Department of Energy.
- is paid four to five times as much per megawatt-hour as natural gas-powered plants.
- is paid two to three times as much per megawatt-hour as other solar power producers.
- has burned thousands of birds to death.
- has delayed loan repayments.
- is seeking over $500 million in grants to help pay off the guaranteed loans.
- burns natural gas for 4.5 hours each morning to get its mojo going.

Source: http://dailysignal.com/2016/03...

The level of arrogance and ignorance in both your post and the grandparent would be astounding if it wasn't for the fact that it appears to be all-too-common. That "landlocked Asian minor country" has the largest coastline of any nation in the world. They are in the midst of rapid deployment of technologies to exploit the resources and opportunities of the arctic region including many new icebreakers in an effort to open a northern sea route (which may become very viable if the global warming predictions come true). Further, their current military campaign in Syria has proven remarkably effective, especially in contrast to the anemic actions of the United States and our western allies before they entered the conflict. They have demonstrated the capabilities of submarines being able to fire missiles while submerged to the effective use of some of their most modern fighters (as opposed to our failed F-35) and effective long range cruise missiles. They are growing increasingly capable while we appear to be stagnating.

It should also be noted that Russia has been signing major deals with some of the world's largest nations at the same time that we seem to be alienating our friends here in the United States. Far from being a needy border-line-third-world-nation, Russia seems to be showing us up time and again. Twice now the United States in the past few years, the United States has been forced to back down when Russia asserted their will in Syria, and despite economic pressure on Russia over Ukraine, they have not backed down at all. A lot of talk has been made over how Russia has a shrinking cash reserve and yet everyone seems to forget that _they_actually_have_a_reserve. Further, their foreign debt is currently decreasing at the same time our national debt has just reached $19 trillion. When one considers that our proposed defense budget is as large at the combined total of the next 8 countries and yet we have a fighter that cannot fight and a high-tech destroyer that cannot float, I don't think we have much room at all to speak of Russian corruption (though it almost certainly exists).

Given current trajectories, it seems to me that our country is more likely to face a future of irrelevancy than the Russians right now. Our press is very selective about what they cover, but reality has a nasty way of asserting itself and often in very painful ways.

The referendum was a complete sham. For example: http://dailysignal.com/2014/05/07/real-numbers-leak-15-percent-people-crimea-voted-join-russia/

Wrong. The whole point of surge pricing is to only offer taxis to those who can afford it, screw the non-rich folks. That's gouging.

But for some reason, you haven't broken into an art gallery and stolen a Picasso to give it to some of those non-rich folks. And before you tell me that a taxi is different because it's a basic necessity, 1) there is already a federal almost-ban on surge pricing during disaster events, 2) Uber isn't a monopoly, 3) there is a difference between limited surge pricing and absolutely no surge pricing, which you have failed to address, 4) did I mention Uber isn't monopoly, which is typically a pretty damn important component of price gauging?

And look, I can link to articles too. Here's one:

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ub...

Hey, look at that, even the NYC council isn't considering completely banning surge pricing, only limiting it:

http://dailysignal.com/2015/09...

And even that seems to be dead in the water:

http://legistar.council.nyc.go...

That's funny

This is my first link

http://dailysignal.com/2015/07...

But hey, I can understand people that think protecting the integrity of the voting system is less important than deciding who can buy cigarettes. /sarcasm

Because the protections are not needed but typically act as an effective barrier for the already disenfranchised. Some people think it's more important to help the disenfranchised participate than to protect against a problem that does not exist.

300 voter fraud convictions

http://thf_media.s3.amazonaws....

Are you sure you know what the word exists means ?

That's funny

This is my first link

http://dailysignal.com/2015/07...

But hey, I can understand people that think protecting the integrity of the voting system is less important than deciding who can buy cigarettes. /sarcasm

Because the protections are not needed but typically act as an effective barrier for the already disenfranchised. Some people think it's more important to help the disenfranchised participate than to protect against a problem that does not exist.

That's funny

This is my first link

http://dailysignal.com/2015/07...

But hey, I can understand people that think protecting the integrity of the voting system is less important than deciding who can buy cigarettes. /sarcasm

How about the time US Attorney General Eric Holder's ballot to vote was offered to total stranger? You say this is an occasional occurrence. I say we're catching only a small sample of a more systemic problem. How do we know who's right without audit controls in place to verify the integrity of the record?

Just because the public records recorded someone's name as voting, it doesn't mean that person actually did the voting, as in the Holder example above. And therein lies the heart of the problem. I cannot trust the integrity of the public records, because no one is verifying the integrity of the people.

As for concrete examples, here's a few. http://dailysignal.com/2015/05/22/ydont-believe-voter-fraud-happens-heres-some-examples/

On the other hand, privatized fire departments actually work

No they don't.

That will come as a surprise to the people who live in the Elk Grove district of rural Illinois.

It may be that, in your opinion, privatized fire departments are not a good idea. But it's just lazy to claim that they "don't work". They do work, or else the places that have them would do something else.

Everyone suffers from pollution coming from fossil fuel power plants.

A classic tragedy of the commons example. It's free to pollute, until you cross some arbitrary threshold, so you might as well dump as much crud into the air as you like as long as you stay under that threshold. And bribe your Congressman to make sure the threshold stays as high as possible.

The libertarian solution would be to make sure that it somehow costs money to pollute like that: a direct tax, the more you pollute the more you pay. Then let the market work itself out. Personally I'd like to see coal plants have to pay for dumping coal ash into the air. Natural gas and nuclear would look more attractive if the external costs of coal ash pollution were more fairly placed on the coal burners.

If you want to clean up the coal plants, don't have the government run them. The armed forces buy $600 hammers, the VA hospitals let people die and lied about it, and whoever is in charge of cleaning up the power plants would no doubt find ways to lie about the progress.

The US/Canada/Australia are currently free riding on the rest of the world by emitting way more greenhouse gases per capita than the world average.

I refuse to consider carbon dioxide to be a "pollutant". The testable predictions from the global warming alarmists have not panned out; we are outside the 95% confidence interval of the computer models from 15 years ago. Those are the models that said carbon dioxide is a problem.

There is so much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that the greenhouse effect is at least 99% of maximum possible. Adding more carbon dioxide has a small effect. The models that claimed otherwise have not proven out.

But never fear. Decades of government reports haven't led to very much in the way of change, but solar is getting super cheap. Solar will be used more and more in the near future, because it finally will save money. Companies like Tesla will make practical and affordable electric cars, and people will buy them. It will all happen on its own without needing any help from government.

"Perpetual war" driven by business is a load of bull. Eisenhower's words, though wise as a warning, only serve to underline the failure of the "MIC" as an explanation for events. All you have to do is look at military spending as a portion of GDP to see that. The long term trend is decline. If the portion of the economy devoted to military spending is in long term decline (which is even sharper if you go back to 1945) then it is hard to argue that the "MIC" is a powerful agenda driving force.

Do you have any other frame of reference, any other analytical framework to view the confrontation with the Communist bloc / Warsaw Pact / Soviet Union other than as a selling opportunity for the defense industry? If not I suggest you have a highly deficient view of events.

Mere bombs and tank offensives aren't sources of lasting change. Perhaps you should look into the events of the Allied occupation of Germany following its defeat in WW2. It wasn't completely "trouble free." The difficulties in Iraq and Afghanistan were multiplied by exactly the mindset you seem to have - only do tank battles and bombs, not interested in anything else. You don't always have much say in the wars that are inflicted on you. As to the tolerance of the American people, it was manipulated by the news media with the whole "another grim milestone" narrative. How do you think that would have played out in WW2? The total combat deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan represent a minor battle in WW2, not an epic tragedy.

I'm not surprised about your beliefs about Romney and his advisors given the limited perspective you have about the conflicts in general, and the whole "perpetual war" as business opportunity meme. It is nonsense.

First, let me be clear. This is not 47% of the entire population, it is 47% of the working population, a key point.

---

In 2013, it was 43.3% according to this web site:

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org...

And I suppose it depends on if you count FICA taxes or not. Since those go to three specific programs, I personally don't count them (SS is your own savings, Medicare is your health care, and unemployment is for you if you need it), but you might choose to do so.

http://www.politifact.com/trut...

In 2009, it was indeed 47%, but of course that was a bad year.

---

It is worth noting who DOES pay the taxes around here:

http://dailysignal.com/2014/04...

The top 1% pays on average 19% of their income in taxes and pays 37% of all federal income taxes.

Interestingly enough, it is the top 10-25% who pays the lowest percentage of taxes, 11%, followed by the bottom 50%, at 12% of their income. But that 12% pays only 2% of the federal taxes.

So the bottom 50% of the entire working population is paying only 2%. Frankly, they should shut up about taxes, they have only one way to go for them, which is up. But the bottom 50% tends to be uneducated, ignorant about such things, and low information voters who listen to soundbites.

You are mistaken.

What prompted this law was a bakery in Oregon was driven into bankruptcy because they declined to make a wedding cake for a gay wedding.

They were willing to sell the couple a different cake but that wasn't acceptable to the couple. They wanted to compel the bakery to make their wedding cake or face financial penalties.

THIS is why religious freedom laws are needed.

LK

Unless it happens to be fossil fuel production and usage. Then we tend to pretend positive externality doesn't exist.

Actually, it's the opposite. Both sides recognize that oil gets rewarded a lot for externalities. The alternative fuel side point out that energy has a long history of being subsidized (thus their green energy should get subsidized too)

Meanwhile, the oil side point out that by cost per kilowatt hour, oil gets less subsidies (so people should get off their backs)

The ones who pretend oil has no positive externalities are ones with political agendas. Namely, an agenda favoring oil. They'll pretend to be libertarians or fiscal conservatives, saying "nobody" should get subsidies. But they don't want the oil subsidies to be cut. So they pretend oil has no positive externalities thus aren't getting subsidies and thus there's nothing to cut from oil - only cut everybody else's subsidies!

This behavior isn't limited to oil of course. It's an American tradition. Though the rest of the world does it too, America is exceptional here, what with its obsession to freedom.

Why not just ring the White House with a fucking minefield?

They might need to if Obama goes through with his executive-order amnesty for illegal immigrants.

Oregon Voters Reject Giving Driver’s Licenses to Illegal Immigrants

At the polls Tuesday, Oregon voters overwhelmingly rejected a law passed by the state legislature last April that granted driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants residing in the state.

The measure was put to voters after Oregonians for Immigration Reform, an immigration enforcement group opposed to the driver’s license benefit, initiated a citizen’s referendum and successfully collected the 50,000 signatures required to get it on the ballot. Voters rejected it by a margin of 68 percent to 33 percent.

“The ballot measure was a direct response to the legislature moving forward to providing driver’s licenses on its own,”

That's 2-to-1 against. In reliably-Democratic Oregon.

Ah, yes, Judith Faulkner:

http://dailysignal.com/2011/08...

A major donor to the Democratic Party has received favorable treatment from the Obama administration, including a choice appointment to a federal advisory committee, and lavish praise from the president himself.

Yet health information technology vendor Epic Systems Corp. opposes a key administration position on health IT. Its founder, Judith Faulkner, has spoken out on numerous occasions against “interoperability” in electronic medical records technology.

So why was Faulkner appointed to a 13-member panel charged with recommending how $19 billion in stimulus money be spent? One can’t help but notice that Faulkner and other epic employees have given nearly $300,000 to Democrats since 2006.

Read the rest of it.

You people and your protestant work ethic. I just don't get it.

Neah, I'm a USSR-raised atheist, thank you very much.

Clearly the hundreds of billionaires we have in this country couldn't possibly afford to fund this kind of utopia

The cost of the "War on Poverty", since Lyndon Johnson first waged it 50 years ago, is 22 trillion of 2012-vintage dollars. That's more than all of the Republic's actual (as in military) wars cost combined. I don't think, the hundreds of billionaires could shoulder that kind of expense. They'd need help from thousands of millionaires — and millions of the rest of us. And even that would be insufficient — you'd need to borrow money from abroad...

But whoever wants to help others work less than their spending requires, is welcome to do it. My objection is to spending tax-monies (you know, the funds collected at gunpoint) on it. For it is not only stupid, it is also un-Constitutional — according to an educated opinion of one of the document's very authors:

“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.”

—James Madison

people that otherwise couldn't afford it

Because for a person born and raised in America to be unable to afford Internet service (as well as a phone, vehicle, decent shelter, and food) is a shame. Millions of immigrants here — legal and even illegal ones — manage to not only do well for themselves, they are also able to support extended families back home. That's despite the culture shock, not knowing the predominant language very well, and — in many cases — dubious legal status.

But if you feel like continuing the failed "War on Poverty" for another fifty years — go ahead. Just don't force me at gunpoint (via the IRS, that is) to join you.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-G...

http://dailysignal.com/2012/10...