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The Main Problem With Patented GM Food Is The Patent, Not The Fact That It's GM

Roundup Cancer

Genetically Monetized Food

And my own skepticism. Genetically modifying food on the molecular level is not the same as breeding. You will never see in nature where mechanical and chemical means are used to cross species like it's done in the lab.

So, those of us with concerns about GMO crops have legitimate skeptical and informed reasons for being so. And I realize that there are some great things about GMO crops..

So, comparing us to uninformed ignorant people who don't want to hear the actual facts is completely unwarranted.

No, he is more than likely referring to Clinton's remarks. It sounds very very close to comments she actually made, especially the part about putting more minorities in jail.

But, thanks for trying to deflect the truth.

No one seems to have detected any apology from Trump.

It's worse than that... he actually doubled down on it. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

That doesn't imply that these people have been found guilty in a court of law through due process and can have their rights taken away from them. It is a list that you can be put on with questionable information.

-we have more allies than just Israel. and most of them were alienated by bush the lesser, and those relationships repaired by Obama.

W put together a coalition of 48 countries for the Iraq war. Most of those contributed little but they were signed on.

I'm really interested to hear which countries were alienated by W and when the alienation occurred. I Googled for "George W Bush alienated" and found this, which is an article saying that President Obama's administration is doing such a horrible job that it makes the W administration look good.

-our military is in NO WAY in shambles

http://www.ibtimes.com/us-navy-doesnt-have-enough-ships-send-marines-crisis-zones-may-borrow-foreign-vessels-1990659

https://news.usni.org/2015/11/04/navy-half-the-carrier-fleet-tied-up-in-maintenance-other-5-strained-to-meet-demands

https://news.usni.org/2015/11/19/report-navy-and-marine-corps-strained-to-breaking-point-second-forward-carrier-in-the-pacific-could-help

https://military.id.me/aircraft/marines-forced-raid-military-museum-aircraft-parts/

"The U.S. Air Force is now short 4,000 airmen to maintain its fleet, short 700 pilots to fly them and short vital spare parts necessary to keep their jets in the air. The shortage is so dire that some have even been forced to scrounge for parts in a remote desert scrapheap known as 'The Boneyard.'"

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/05/14/wiped-out-air-force-losing-pilots-and-planes-to-cuts-scrounging-for-spare-parts.html

http://dailysignal.com/2015/12/04/is-the-obama-administration-trying-to-wreck-the-military/

-labor participation is dropping regardless of anything any one does. it has to do with the boomers retiring, not the economy.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/louisefron/2014/08/20/tackling-the-real-unemployment-rate-12-6/

http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/sorry-but-the-real-unemployment-rate-is-9-8-not-5/

-inequality is horrible, but its not thanks to the current occupant, but rather the past several decades of structural issues in the economy

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/11/income-inequality-obama-bush_n_1419008.html

-maybe you forgot, but the economy crashed a few years ago. of course stamps are up, and will remain up until people get back to where they were. that's what they are for

As a candidate, and then as President, Mr. Obama was quite willing to blame W for the economy. Mr. Obama didn't cut W any slack on the economy; why should I be more forgiving toward Mr. Obama than he was toward his predecessor?

And a robust economy helps people... "a rising tide lifts all boats." The Obama recovery is the worst economy recorded in modern times. It's nearly flatline.

Before 9/11/2001 we didn't have this list of terrorists to watch and we all saw what we ended up with. What prevents another 9/11 from happening is not the lists but installing hardened locking cockpit doors and actually locking them which has been done. Also now when some barely functional terrorist (seriously I'm surprised these guys don't choke on their own tongue) tries to light his underpants on fire the passengers on the plane seem to be more than willing to try and turn him into a grease smear on the carpet.

Even in this case the Orlando shooter was known to the FBI beforehand and had been provided additional information on him before this attack. The government seems to get lost in all the noise that they are gathering so they miss things like this douche nozzle.

As far as the number of people on the list it is kind of hard to tell but it sounds like there are probably some where well over a million people on the watch list which seems to be a pretty big fucking list of people to keep an eye on. The no fly list looks like it may contain somewhere around 50,000 people with a couple of percent being Americans. Now since it is a simple name matching thing those ~1.5% on the list who are Americans will likely affect a much larger portion of Americans who happen to share a name or have a similar name, not to mention those on the list who are not American citizens.

Also it looks like getting on the list while sounding good is open to abuse from those 2 sources. So saying that there have been some fuck ups seems like an understatement as I did a bit of searching and I haven't found a case where someone was caught because of the no fly list, so I will lump it in as being as effective as the TSA is at catching terrorists, or about as effective as the jar of mayonnaise in my fridge at the same task. So please tell me again why we should deny someone their right because their name is similar to one on a list that you can be put on without any due process by the whim of some unknown bureaucrat, that has been shown in the past to have some pretty egregious errors. If you want that how about we also deny these people's right to free speech as they could go and incite other to take action.

Well considering that some nukes are single man operable devices and that the supreme court has ruled that weapons used by the military are protected by the second amendment it seem that one should be able to own a nuke. But back to the topic at hand the 9th and 10th amendments as well as other parts of the constitution make it clear that the government can only do the things laid out in the constitution. If you want to make a claim that the commerce clause allows the federal government to regulate my movement or how I can transport my self around the country they you are welcome to do so but keep in mind what that allows and as that is a very slippery slope as has been shown in court case after court case since the Wickard v. Filburn case. I mean we had to pass the 18th amendment to ban alcohol but now it is done all the time with other drugs by regular federal law, or even being on a FDA list.

Sam Harris had a podcast which contains an audio clip of an imam teaching that it's OK to kill gays, that it was the compassionate thing to do. I got the impression from the 'cast that the clip was from an imam in the Orlando area, and that it was taken a week or so before the shooting.

(I can't link the specific podcast at the moment because the site that I read it at is temporarily offline.)

We have often thought that the right to practice religion is absolute, but I'm wondering now if it should be.

Does being a religion give you a license to say anything you like? We have laws against hate speech even though we have free speech in general, and we have laws against speech that encourage a specific crime.

We guarantee freedom of religion, but we also guarantee freedom of life.

Which one has priority?

Maybe it's time to prioritize freedom of life over the freedom of religion. Maybe we should say categorically that you *can't* preach that it's OK to kill people of a certain class, whatever the class might be.

This would apply to any religion, even Christian ones ("thou shall not suffer a witch to live"), and it would apply to all cases: people who leave the religion are free to go unmolested (Islam, Scientology), people that the religion dislikes would be free to go unmolested (Christianity, Islam, Hinduism), and so on.

So for example, I would cite The Westboro Baptist church claiming that gays should be put to death, or evangelists calling on their flock to assasinate abortion providers.

As a country, I think we might legitimately say "not in this country" to these extreme views, and in these specific cases maybe intervene and say "no, you can't preach that even if your religion believes it".

Personal safety should be absolute, and the right to religion isn't more important.

In the aftermath of the Orlando shooting, imams haven't stopped teaching that gays should be killed.

Perhaps they should.

They started stealing from debit cards. Do you think they aren't already planning to do the same to your bank account via NFC?

The law already permits prohibiting weapons ownership at all for people who are felons, let alone prohibiting owning certain classes of weapon.

Not if the NRA gets its way:

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

In most countries, you'd be right to heap scorn on anyone feeling threatened by an emoji or an email.

But this is the US, where guns are easy and cheap to get, and people get routinely shot over the dumbest shit. Dude might be a bit of scaredy cat, but he's certainly not insane.

Gun violence is at an all time low
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...
http://www.cnsnews.com/comment...

I know, pesky facts. Who cares about'em

Would seem to me a pretty simple National Education Initiative to develop and keep up to date a set of core curriculum texts and videos.

While I agree, this would be an excellent use of U.S. Department of Education resources. I'm afraid such a program would only become highly politicized like the Common Core The U.S. congress is simply too dysfunctional to perform this simple task. Some politician will declare the text books invalid because they don't have a grasp on the concept, or they simply don't agree with it. The program would eventually get scrapped.

Does Trump have a uniformed private army patrolling the streets and violently suppressing Democrat aligned organizations?

Replace "a uniformed" with "an uninformed" and the answer becomes yes. See "Donald Trump Encourages Violence At His Rallies. His Fans Are Listening." by Sam Stein and Dana Liebelson.

There aren't many. Unlike most gun control laws, the prohibition on mixing guns and drinking dates way back to 19th century, and similar laws for other weapons existed before then. Basically, it is something that was born of repeated experience with the kind of fuckery that happens when you let young males carry weapons, get drunk, and start a fight.

Consequently, unlike the more recent legislation (a good chunk of it dates to Jim Crow, ironically; have a look at this map as of 1986 - the states that are red prohibited both open and concealed carry of firearms - notice any geographic patterns?), the idea of repealing those laws didn't exactly have much popular support, even among NRA etc.

Nevertheless, here's a recent example to the contrary. More will probably follow in the usual places where you'd expect them.

Personally, I have no problem with ban on carry in establishments where people get drunk, provided that the appropriate signs are mandated by law, so that no-one could do that by mistake (and yes, I do carry).

In fact, Republicans stand for the status-quo. i.e., standing for big oil, big gas, big electricity or big (insert your favorite lobbying group here).

Is that why a Republican President (along with Republican-dominated Congress) allowed the fuck-ups like Enron, MCI, and Lehman Brothers to collapse, while a Democratic one bailed out GM, Chrysler (not the first one), and AIG?

I used to think Scott Adams was an intelligent and insightful man.
Now I'm not so sure.

Yes, Trump has had a tremendously sexist mysoginst past.

Yes, Trump also has a racist past.

His kids have appeared on white nationalist radio.

yes, you've analyzed your problem correctly.
now how about the post you were replying to?

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

Scott Adams has an interesting take on things.

tl;dr? People suck at predicting the future and are irrational, so people making predictions about a Trump presidency are going to suck and be irrational. Great. I guess Scott Adams wouldn't mind spending a night alone with Charles Manson. Oh, right, there's "not perfectly capable of predicting the future", there's "world events are much more complex than 'and then the US President made X happen'", and then there's "it's not irrational to have an opinion based upon past behavior" (although one could argue that all of the negatives of Trump as a person might be good as Trump as a president, but that's really a side discussion (possibly worth having)).

My only question is---if Trump is so racist, sexist, and prone to violent reactions--why hasn't that popped up in his past? Discrimination lawsuits?

Donald Trump Was Once Sued By Justice Department For Not Renting To Blacks

Sexual harassment cases?

Exclusive: Inside The $125 Million Donald Trump Sexual Assault Lawsuit

Workplace violence or intimidation? Anything like that?

Employment Lawsuits Have Plagued Donald Trump - "The various lawsuits that have been filed by hundreds of Trump’s employees levy a variety of allegations, including union intimidation, ..." And yea, not likely what you meant but then two out of three ain't bad, right?

I mean everything that comes out about him basically makes him seem like a mild-mannered Steve Jobs or Zuckerberg...

Steve Jobs was an asshole. Zuckerberg? Haven't read enough about him, but let's presume he's an asshole too. Neither would be good as US President. Neither would Bill Gates. (Neither would Steve Wozniak for basically the opposite reason.) And just to make it a point, the issue per se that you can't have an asshole as a good US President. But being CEO or similar as a result of being an asshole is NOT the approach to being good at any sort of diplomacy or relations with other countries. But being an asshole to become a Senator? That might actually be the right approach, even if you can't otherwise stand the person. In any case, like I said, it's not per se about being an asshole. It's just that + CEO really tells you what sort of asshole you're dealing with.

As far a celebrity children, his don't seem particularly bad nor attention-seeking (which IMHO speaks well for him).

Uh, fuck his children? I mean, unless he's pimping his children out to get votes (more than the rather meek "he'd be good for the job" BS everyone in politics has their kid say)... And I'm tempted to say the same of his really shitty wife-swap-marriage life, since see above about assholes.

In what way is it racist to call out people who say they want to kill you?

It's not. I don't think I said "Donald Trump is racist because he calls out people who say they want to kill him", but I'll go ahead and re-read what I wrote just to make sure.

OK, I re-read it, and sure enough, I didn't say that. So I'm not sure why you're asking me. Maybe you replied to the wrong person.

So in what way is Trump racists.

Other than that time when David Duke endorsed Trump, and Trump said he didn't know enough about the KKK to say that he didn't want to be endorsed by them? How about the time when the justice department sued Trump for not renting to black people? What about the second time the justice department sued him for not renting to black people? Or maybe you're looking for some other examples. If you'd like to do your own research also, feel free.

By the way being Muslim is not a race.

You're right, that's just standard xenophobia. I like how you threw that in, though. "So, how is he racist? And don't mention the Muslim thing."

The UCLA shooting triggered a massive police response, with hundreds of officers and thousands of people affected. By any objective measure, it was a significant story.

There are likely eleven murder-suicides every week that get about as much coverage as your drug story.

There are lots of issues in what gets traction and what doesn't in media coverage. But things are much more complicated than "they like drugs".

Among the performances was a topless dancer wearing giant wings who soared over orange-suited dancers as they crawled on the ground below.

At another point, humans dressed like bales of hay were seen swaying on a flatbed before running around on the floor.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

Don't forget, this is Europe where people are not scared stiff by topless women and worry that their children become sexual predators because seeing a pair of nipples.

Among the performances was a topless dancer wearing giant wings who soared over orange-suited dancers as they crawled on the ground below.

At another point, humans dressed like bales of hay were seen swaying on a flatbed before running around on the floor.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

It seems more likely

Wait, so you are making an argument based on your own dubious guesses at probability without evidence, but you ask HIM for evidence?

And no, his claim isn't bigger than yours.

You're making claim about threat from terrorists
He's making a claim about threat from big government

For evidence to back my assessment that your claim is bigger, I point to how few people actually die to the terrorism in the developed world, vs all the government oppression we see day to day either in person (people in the US had to file their taxes a couple months ago) or through the new (oh look, the courts declared an accused rapist to be innocent again)

Twitter has a long standing problem with harassment too, with several high profile names quitting the service.

Twitter has a long standing problem with harassment because most of its users are harassers. They can't cut down on harassment without cutting off large chucks of their userbase, without which they don't have a product to generate revenue for them.

A lot of high profile names didn't quit because some small group of trolls from 8chan or whatever making some kind of coordinated harassment campaign. They quit because they got swamped by unwanted attention from the masses that naturally form mobs. Masses that had nothing better to do but shower attention over some trivial thing, like Alec Baldwin flipping over American Airlines

Masses who get offended easily and so they scream and yell and harass and think they're somehow promoting social justice, like what they did to Ashton Kutcher for daring to defend somebody involved in a sex abuse scandal, and the Internet gave him flak for it

Or as covered by slashdot, Stephen Fry quit because the mob couldn't handle him making a joke to his lady friend.

Both of those services were valued at many billions of dollars based on their large user bases. If they get a bad rep and people start going elsewhere or not signing up, it devalues them.

As above, twitter's (and facebook and most other social media) bad rep didn't come from people who speak "hate speech". Their bad rep comes from their main audience being a bunch of nosy gossipy busybodies who would dogpile and harass people and think they're somehow promoting social justice. They like to say freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from consequences, apparently harassment is a valid consequences for them to dish out.

The Feds are planning to raise interest rates at their next meeting in June.

From a previous post, you seem to be in touch with economics and financial matters. Here's a question for you, and I'm not trying to be snarky.

The fed lent out money at 0% interest for the last 7 years or so, in an attempt to kickstart the economy.

The loans went out to big banks, and I remember at the time that a lot of the loans were going to foreign banks, especially in Germany.

Question 1:

Many of those banks turned the money around and lent it back to the US at higher interest. This just about doubled the national debt over that period.

If we were giving out 0% loans, why couldn't we have repurchased our own debt with 0% loans? The amount of money would have been the same, but instead of profits going to the banks, we could have reduced our debt burden and increased net revenue for government spending.

Question 2:

We're told that social security will go bankrupt in a few years, in our own lifetime, due to a temporary glut of baby boomers retiring. We have to adjust by accepting smaller payouts and working longer.

Why can't we just give the SSA a 0% interest loan to cover the shortfall for a few years? Social Security has almost always taken in more than it spends yearly, and if it can work through the glut it would become solvent a few years later.

I'm trying to understand economics, but I don't have the benefit of the standard curriculum.

Can you tell me why these things aren't just that simple?

Nice wording. By phrasing it so that a link needs to quote him specifically saying something you specify, you narrow legitimate potential replies, but lets take a look at what the interwebs are saying:

9 Outrageous Things Donald Trump Has Said About Latinos

• "The Mexican government is much smarter, much sharper, much more cunning. And they send the bad ones over because tehy don't want to pay for them, they don't want to take care of them."
• "Sadly, the overwhelming amount of violent crime in our major cities is committed by blacks and hispanics [sic] - a tough subject - must be discussed."

And then there's this headline "5 QUOTES THAT PROVE DONALD TRUMP HATES MEXICANS"

Now, I don't think Trump actually hates Latinos but I do think he's trying to capture the votes of a lot of people who either fear or hate Mexico and illegal immigrants. I think he panders to the lowest parts of our society by carefully selecting rhetoric that gives them the idea that he agrees with them and feels the same ignorant hatred they do.

It's a politician's trick. You say something that sounds good to people you don't want to actually be caught agreeing with while carefully avoiding actually saying you agree with their opinions.

For most voters, sadly that's enough. People are flocking to Trump in droves because he represents the golden trinity of an electable candidate. 1 - He is running on one of the two parties tickets, 2 - He has a strong claim to being an outsider angered by the insiders, 3 - He stays in the headlines.

Say what you like about the man, but he's good at getting people to support him. The fact that he uses short small words to make emotional impact makes him sound silly and sometimes irritating to me, but it sticks in people's minds and gives them things they can quote and feel opinions about. He's being compared to historical villains who did the same thing, but really there have been all sorts of politicians who have done the same thing. To me he often sounds stupid, but when he's not pandering to the masses and actually speaking like a normal person, I've heard him sound like a sensible human being. That makes me think it has to be intentional.

You can make jokes but she has a point...why would I give a shit about the GPL if I'm a company if I can just take the parts I want and claim fair use?

Why sould I worry about laws against murder? I can just shoot you dead and claim self defense.

That's Florida's Stand your ground laws. They work it would appear. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

Yeah yeah - I know - Huffpost

One of the many things that points to how "Rules-for-thee, Not-for-me" this still is:

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

Specifically: "In recent media interviews, Lazar claimed he had easily hacked into Clinton’s controversial private email server. But the Justice Department statement did not confirm this claim, and a law enforcement official said investigators did not find evidence to support the claim."

They're trying to pass this off as nothing bad happened, so it's no big deal. Except she wiped the server before turning it over - OF COURSE they aren't going to find evidence of hacking now, after the evidence has been destroyed.

So you think the guy who got famous by bragging about the "hacks" he did (really just logging into email by guessing the answers to security questions) was able to hack into Clinton's server. A completely different skillset.

And then after hacking into this server he found the email of Hillary Clinton, the acting US Secretary of State, by far the biggest target he'd ever hacked, and having found his biggest scoop yet.... he didn't bother to tell anyone because he thought it wasn't interesting.

OF COURSE he didn't hack Clinton's email.

I'm not saying no one hacked in, it's a definite possibility, but Guccifer's story is obvious BS.

One of the many things that points to how "Rules-for-thee, Not-for-me" this still is:

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

Specifically: "In recent media interviews, Lazar claimed he had easily hacked into Clinton’s controversial private email server. But the Justice Department statement did not confirm this claim, and a law enforcement official said investigators did not find evidence to support the claim."

They're trying to pass this off as nothing bad happened, so it's no big deal. Except she wiped the server before turning it over - OF COURSE they aren't going to find evidence of hacking now, after the evidence has been destroyed.

What people find "sexy" is mostly culture.

As I said before, it's not that different societies can have different ideals of beauty or "sexiness", it's that what is "sexy" is almost always exaggerated secondary sexual characteristics. That's what's programmed into us. Interest in phalluses, pudenda, butts, and breasts, is pretty much universal. (Straight male primates are interested in other males' penises too, FWIW.)

No, interest in breasts is not a uniquely western thing (see Kama Sutra, see ancient Chinese figurines and art, medieval Persian art, etc.), for the obvious reason that stimulation of breasts produces an erotic response.

Amongst humans, breast size, penis size, and butt size have all been sexuality selected for. That's evolution for you.

Which is biologically wrong, as the semen of the first one is killing the semen of the following ones. Humans have three kinds of sperms, sperms that fertilize the egg, sperms that build a cocoon like buffer in front of the womb to prevent "enemy sperms" to get in and killer sperms that actively hunt "enemy sperms".

Thus the belief that the "shovel" shape of the human penis is design to scoop out the previously present semen. See, e.g., http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/02/penis-shape-explanation_n_1642613.html

Getting aroused like that much more likely leads to orgies in a tribe like society where everyone has sex with his/her spouse when some one started it.

Interesting, I've never read that speculation (well, other than in Clan of the Cave Bears--the sequels at least) nor read about any precedent in any extant human societies. Could be logical. Give the above belief about the physical structure of the penis, I would still be more inclined to go with the "ready for action" theory.

In general, so I suppose all of the rest you listed is illegal too: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

People are just ticked that we did it playing God in a lab this time, rather than playing God with controlling natural selection.

No, people are ticked that this God demands payment. Not only for the seed, but for its progeny.

A very real problem is that genetically modified plants spread and outfight the existing varieties, leading to less diversity

None of the crops humans plant for food are their original state

Yes, but their progeny are free for anyone to use. As opposed to the progeny of many generically modified plants spreading and outfighting the existing varieties, which are not.

Clearly, the diversity of owners is reducing - Monsanto is increasingly the only owner.

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

'However, the committee acknowledged the âoeinherent difficulty of detecting subtle or long-term effects on health or the environment,â they wrote in an accompanying statement.'

---

One thing people need to be aware of however. Many pesticides are currently a non-renewable resource. The more crops/people/pesticide use, the fast we use up the non-renewable manufacturing sources. At some point, we will need the crops to do the job. It's unavoidable and likely to occur within the next 70 years.

Another issue is that insects are going to adapt to it. But maybe perfect robot workers can crawl the field catching insects and killing them manually?

WUT!?! UN-POSSIBLE!! .6 seconds to type letters and press "search". In other words, if you did try I suggest a full lobotomy and castration.

Trolls and shills never apologize, so I have very low hopes.

And to be very clear for the innocent bystander again, the dozen lawsuits a year number is for US lawsuits only. Monsanto does this in several dozen countries, so don't let the "but it's a small number" gag food you. Monsanto pays shills, trolls, traditional PR/Marketing firms, and loads of money for lobbying every year.

do we really need to subpoena someone who knows how to effectively calculate mirror images?

Of course we do! Aren't you aware of the dangers posed by the Al Gebra terrorist network?! I'll bet you're one of them!

>The only rape culture in the US is in the prison system

Guess you don't read much do you ?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/11...
Those are just the top-two links on a simple google search. Rape culture is the way society constantly tries to excuse rapists.

>It's good that you support ending this atrocity,
Oh, you do have sane thoughts sometimes.

>but I'm confused that you've mentioned it when describing 'the war on women'.
What men experience in prison - is the entire WORLD if your'e a woman.

>Asking a rape victim (or claimed rape victim) challenging questions is not victim blaming
"Were you drinking ?"
"What were you wearing ?"
And similar are not challenging questions and they are NEVER relevant to a rape case. If the girl was drunk that CONFIRMS guilt on the accused's part (so if the law was followed there is no way a sane defence attorney would ever ask that question anyway - that they do, that alone proves rape culture). Even if she showed up naked that does NOT constitute consent. Those questions are the epitomy of victim blaming.
Here is the only question you can ask a rape victim that is relevant to a trial: "Did you say you wanted it to happen ?" You can ask related questions to test whether the victim is lying (unlikely) but that's it. It's the only thing that has ANY legal relevance to the trial. NOTHING the victim could POSSIBLY do is relevant to the defense. Even if a girl is giving somebody a blowjob it's STILL rape to penetrate her unless she consents to being penetrated. If she says "only with a condom" and you stick it in without one - that's rape because she did NOT consent to sex without it.

>But I guess you don't want justice.
At MOST 1 in 8 rapes are ever reported, and the conviction rape is unbelievably low. So it's unlikely more than one in 20 rapists ever get punished. Justice is exactly what I DO want. Rape culture is why we can't get it.

For more on Amazon's approach to employees, there is this 6,000 article: The Life And Death Of An Amazon Wharehouse Temp.

I work late shift right now and I like it. I worked graveyard shifts before and loved them. Sadly they were taken away "for the employees' benefit" (read: "because it was more expensive").

Graveyard shift is actually killing people

This would say you're wrong: http://www.nydailynews.com/lif... and so would this: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

Hillary MAY have received more total votes - which may just have something to do with the Democrats having two viable candidates and the Republicans starting with around six, all splitting votes...

But it's hard to say how that will factor in because Democrat turnout is down this year and 44% of Sanders voters will vote for Trump.

Keep pretending Hillary is fine, I'm sure that will work out well just like it did for every other Republican candidate.

Some official statistics may look decent, but the labor-force participation (a figure not prone to fudging like politically redefined unemployment) is the lowest it has been since 1978.

With over 94 million not even looking for work — and thus not included in the unemployment statistics — we can afford less and less non-necessities.

With the constantly rising food-prices and the incomes of those still working stalling, expect further declines.

Socialism — measured as the part of the GDP spent by government — sucks.

Starvation being the most likely outcome since cost of living rarely comes down without it. So many people will die needlessly, crime will rise significantly needlessly, and society as we know it crumbles again needlessly.

Shifting gears here - Keeping in mind that I was Poe-ing, you are right. As America further runs though it's wealth extraction efforts, we are going to have to come to the realization that you just cannot have it both ways. You can't have wealthy producers and impoverished serfs being ruled by them.

Because the end game of that one sided paradigm will be the wealthy producers starting to cannibalize each other. You can't take money from the useless poor. They're starving and have none. So you have to go after your own kind.

Now I really don't expect that scenario to happen, because right now, the Producer outlook has gone a tad pathological, to the point where people like Martin Shkreli are worshipped by many.

As well as horribly reviled by many - which is a good sign that there are at least some limits of greed that people are willing to put up with. Trump even had some nasty stuff to say about this modern American Master of the Uniiverse. http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-....

Arrested for a shell game he was playing.

The H1-B program is a sham, it probably started with a noble goal like bringing another Einstein to the country, that is all it should be for. That is not what most H1-Bs are though. They have no special skills and we're enabling this process without getting anything in return.

What we need to be afraid of is a brain drain, where Americans end up going to other countries where there might be better opportunities. We're not there yet, but some day? Something like 6 million smart people by some counts . https://newrepublic.com/articl...

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

But don't worry - it's those egghead scientists who believe wrong things. That last was sarcastic.

Don't knock it. Bookmark the link and use it any time an Illiberal sneers at you with something like "reality has Liberal bias".

Well, it looks like the movie "Idiocracy" is a documentary.

Ignorance is good while knowledge is elitist.

We should at shame them. And it goes for religious beliefs too. It's one thing to believe in a god - even though historical evidence shows that it was made up by people - but it's another to ignore or dispute scientific evidence because your book of myths says something different.

"And that cost trillions of dollars and thousands of lives."

Often people in the U.S. count only the lives of U.S. citizens lost in the violence of the U.S. government. Actually, more than 500,000 have been killed. However, other estimates seem more accurate: 1,455,590 have died violent deaths.

Also, the destruction is far greater than the number of Iraqis killed. Iraq is no longer a stable country.

The problem is, you can only fund a "subsidence dividend" at the expense of medicare

Patently false. The till is OASDI, unemployment insurance, food stamps, and HUD housing assistance (17.2% of the total taxed income in 2013) converting into a 17.0% base, plus 1.4% of AGI covering a public aid system (food stamps, UI, OASDI, HUD) only applicable to children and naturalized citizens. That's 100% Federal initiative.

The total from 18 to 82 amortizes over 20 years to just a little less than OASDI (i.e. it pays the same as OASDI from 62 to 82, if you save 100% of it), without adding additional taxes. The plan in total I've designed actually lowers taxes further at most income levels; and besides, even reliable interest-based accounts exceed the performance of OASDI.

That's all without touching any healthcare services, at all. It's enough for 225 square foot of apartment space in most low-income areas, even in California and New York, although such small spaces are usually marketed as luxury apartments instead; plus food, personal care, clothing, and utilities.

That means a single individual actually gets enough to survive. I've got a lot of risk reserve built into that--I used a $1/sqft model for apartment rent (real world is between 60 cents and $1.20 for 1br), but allocated $1.33/sqft, and did similar for the other categories--and the proportional costs drop as technology expands and lowers cost-per-income-per-capita of the various goods. Over time, the poorest of poor get richer by exactly the per-capita marginal technological growth.

There's also an intentional fault in my particular plan: it's aimed to cause a labor shortage crisis. The target is ~118% employment (negative 18% unemployment), at which point we have to make everyone 20% poorer by amending the Fair Labor Standards Act to define full time as 28-32 hours per week. That cuts back working hours per person and the attached income, settling us at 5.6% unemployment--right back where we started, working 1 day less, with the same buying power, although everyone making under ~$625k is a bit better off in it.

The buying power guarantees also smooth out the market a bit (economic downturns aren't so sharp), so you have a more stable economy which can afford more risks--more effort toward technological growth, creating more wealth in shorter time spans while protecting the economy from rising unemployment (humans are slower to replace and faster to re-employ because we pay them an income-tax-sourced Dividend rather than a minimum wage, and because certain payroll taxes are lifted off the cost of employing a human; technological unemployment thus has a blunter edge and a shorter recovery time).

So... yeah. Slow the loss of jobs from every source, speed the eventual creation of replacement jobs, and eliminate all homelessness and hunger by replacing our hardly-functional welfare system. 50 million Americans living without continuous access to enough food; 75% of families qualified for HUD assistance go on a waiting list and NEVER receive it; and Unemployment Insurance relies on continuously cycling people out of jobs and then back into them at fixed intervals (jobs are created by consumer buying power, and the dynamics of technological growth guarantee continuous creation of transitional unemployment, while scarcity and population growth guarantee an unemployment baseline).

We can fund America's welfare system, today, now, as it stands, with a 20% increase in *everyone's* taxes; or we can cut out payroll taxes, reduce business income taxes slightly, and replace all our welfare taxes with an earmarked 17% Dividend tax that accomplishes the same purpose and *much* more, redu

Another reason is that many states cannot afford to have the tobacco companies lose too much revenue. After the Master Settlement Agreement between the tobacco companies, the FDA, and the states was agreed upon, many states underwent a securitization process of the anticipated future revenue from the settlement. They issues bonds that were backed by the future payments from the tobacco companies, which are determined a some percentage of those companies' revenue. The emergence of e-cigs has put a much larger dent in tobacco company profits than expected, hence the required amount of their payments under the MSA has dropped. This means the states are now on the hook to pay the interest to the bond-holders to the tune of billions of dollars. The states are actually rooting for the tobacco companies to be more profitable so that they can get off of the hook.

I can't wait for the War On Chicken Sandwiches

Close enough? http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

I would happily take a President Camacho over having to deal with a Hillary Clinton. The woman has little chance of beating Trump. She's at a huge disadvantage because she triggers a very negative reaction at the genetic level in the vast majority of males. She sounds like that nagging aunt that you wanted to slap around when you were young. That along with her insane stance on trying to push gun control will doom her by pushing a good number of Democrats over to Trump.

While I think you accurately portray the emotional feelings that some (or even "many") have to Clinton, I don't think you have accurately captured the feelings of the electorate overall. Maybe people are lying to the pollsters or somehow the pollsters are doing everything wrong, but Clinton's favourability ratings have been much higher than Trumps since he entered the Republican race, and that does not seem to have changed much:

http://fivethirtyeight.com/fea...

http://elections.huffingtonpos...

Now, I am not saying that any of this guarantees a Clinton win, but I think we need to be careful to not project our own feelings about the candidates onto what "the masses" are feeling. Of course being brilliant, insightful individuals with superior congnitive skills, "the masses" SHOULD feel like we do, but often they somehow don't seem to. Strangely enough, on contentious issues like gun control, abortion, ecconomic policies, and everything else - a large fraction of the population DOES NOT AGREE with our right and proper views! That is why they are contentious issues.

Sure, things are likely to change over the course of the campaign, but right now more people dislike Trump (58%) than dislike Clinton (50%) and more people like Clinton (42%) than like Trump (33%).

Here is some more combined polling data from a few weeks back, which seems to be even more extreme:

http://heavy.com/news/2016/04/...

It may be hard (or almost impossible) to understand WHY so many people do not share our good and correct feelings about these candidates, but to think that Clinton "triggers a very negative reaction at the genetic level in the vast majority of males" is just wrong unless "vast majority" means something different than what I think it means - the data just doesn't support it.

And to top it all of, Cruz accidentally punches his wife and elbows her while giving a hug onstage.

It's completely accidental, all of us have done the same thing at some point in our lives, and I hate that this is what's going to be all over the news tomorrow.

I'm a big fan of rational political discussion, and this media circus makes me sick.

A Guide to White Privilege For White People Who Think They’ve Never Had Any http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

Sorry but
1. It is from the the Huffingtonpost

2. It is essentially a book review from a biased author.

3. White privilege implies that it is something bestowed on someone by other people. If you want to treat people equally then stop separating people based on ethnicity.

4. I am not an American. I am a Canadian and a first generation immigrant who happens to be "white" but I experienced discrimination from the "English" when I was in my early grades in school. I also did not grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth. My parents worked hard for what we had.

Basically, this white privilege stuff is an American invention. You guys need to get out of the 18th century already.