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The Trumpeters have always been full of jokes. One needs a sense of humor in that environment.

Funny How Trump Was Cool With Ted Nugent Joking About Killing The President

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-ted-nugent-donald-trump_us_592f1ec9e4b09ec37c31577e

Here's how much you didn't read:
1) The population is growing, not declining. The growth rate is declining. That doesn't mean it won't go negative at some point.
2) The effect of the change in population growth takes a minimum of 18 years to bear out.
3) The really big drop started in the 90's. That generation are just now getting settled into their careers while boomers are retiring.
4) We're in unprecedented territory. The last time population growth slowed this much we were in the great depression. And war was the only thing that turned that around.

Let's see. They responded to a pro-marijuana legalization petition http://blog.norml.org/2011/10/29/white-house-response-to-normls-we-the-people-marijuana-legalization-petition/, and to this one related to the Westboro Baptist Church https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/03/white-house-westboro-baptist-church_n_3540814.html. If you want to argue that their responses were generally dismissive or lacking content, then sure, but I already acknolwedged that in my initial post.

Here's six of them.
"(not counting 2 trillion dollars and 4000 lives in a war over oil)

Intangible drilling oil & gas deduction ($2.3 billion)
Excess of percentage over cost depletion ($1.5 billion)
Master Limited Partnerships tax exemption ($1.6 billion)
Last-in, first-out (LIFO) accounting ($1.7 billion)
Lost royalties from onshore and offshore drilling ($1.2 billion)
Low-cost leasing of coal-production in the Powder River Basin ($963 million)

As subsidies age, they start to look less like subsidies. They start looking like fixed features of the landscape, like mountains or rivers, rather than choices we are making. They just look like the status quo.

In terms of permanent tax expenditures, fossil fuels beat renewables by a 7-1 margin:"

https://renewnd.areavoices.com...

In the 2015-2016 election cycle, oil, gas, and coal companies spent $354 million in campaign contributions and lobbying and received $29.4 billion in federal subsidies in total over those same years â" an 8,200% return on investment.

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

"A 2016 study estimated that global fossil fuel subsidies were $5.3 trillion in 2015, which represents 6.5% of global GDP.[3] The study found that "China was the biggest subsidizer in 2013 ($1.8 trillion), followed by the United States ($0.6 trillion), and Russia, the European Union, and India (each with about $0.3 trillion)."[3] The authors estimated that the elimination of "subsidies would have reduced global carbon emissions in 2013 by 21% and fossil fuel air pollution deaths 55%, while raising revenue of 4%, and social welfare by 2.2%, of global GDP."[3] According to the International Energy Agency, the elimination of fossil fuel subsidies worldwide would be the one of the most effective ways of reducing greenhouse gases and battling global warming.[4] In May 2016, the G7 nations set for the first time a deadline for ending most fossil fuel subsidies; saying government support for coal, oil and gas should end by 2025.[13]"

https://www.huffingtonpost.com...

"Oil Change International has released a new study this week that evaluates the progress that G20 nations have made toward phasing out these subsidies. The results are not pretty. No subsidies have been eliminated since the pledge was taken in 2009, and even more disturbingly, G20 countries are simply changing the definition of what subsidies are in order to claim progress.

In short, the G20 is cooking the books and cooking the planet. As the graphic below shows, there is likely more than $1 trilion annually provided for the production and consumption of oil, gas, and coal. Thatâ(TM)s a lot of money to be wasting and hiding, and it could be put to far better use for education, hunger, poverty, renewable energy, and many many other uses. "

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Ga...
"I have posted frequently (most recently in a three-part series that starts here) on the topic of underpricing of energy in the United States, but we are not the only offender. Many countries around the world subsidize consumer energy prices in ways that bring them to levels even lower than what U.S. consumers pay. These policies burden the rich and the poor alikeâ"rich countries like Saudi Arabia and poor ones like Egypt, and within each country, both rich and poor citizens.

Who subsidizes fuel prices and why?

Many countries around the world subsidize fuel prices. A recent

milking the internet herd for 100's of billions is legendary, and ongoing for decades.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com...

"ISPs took billions in taxpayer-funded government handouts because they bitched, pissed, and moaned they didn't have enough money to build out infrastructure."

You're late. ISPs, before they WERE ISPs, were telcos. And they promised to use fiber-optic technology to enhance telephone service, eliminate toll calls, and deliver television in competition with cable systems at lower costs. Many,k such as New England Telephone, laid fiber but failed to actually use it, billing ratepayers, and then making deals to transform this paid-for fiber into something new, the Internet thing, at ratepayer cost again...

And this happened all over the US.

Now, decades later, more fiber has been laid, but not much to your home, or even near it. It's much more profitable to use what already exists, and for the former telcos, now ISPs, they of course have copper pairs going to your house, mostly. So DSL it is, with the severe limitations involved. Cable companies have a coax line that offers them some advantages, and they also built systems that could accommodate this new use. Reselling the same line over and over, a profit model.

But in much of the US there is no effective competition for Internet services, as has been belabored here and elsewhere, no need to go back to that. My point is that these billions were spent for telephone service that never materialized, and the Internet came along, fortuitously, to make that stuff insanely important and profitable, more so than telephone would have ever done. And many of us paid for it, receiving nothing but the opportunity to pay again and again, for substandard service and poor practices.

"ISPs took billions in taxpayer-funded government handouts because they bitched, pissed, and moaned they didn't have enough money to build out infrastructure."

You're late. ISPs, before they WERE ISPs, were telcos. And they promised to use fiber-optic technology to enhance telephone service, eliminate toll calls, and deliver television in competition with cable systems at lower costs. Many,k such as New England Telephone, laid fiber but failed to actually use it, billing ratepayers, and then making deals to transform this paid-for fiber into something new, the Internet thing, at ratepayer cost again...

And this happened all over the US.

Now, decades later, more fiber has been laid, but not much to your home, or even near it. It's much more profitable to use what already exists, and for the former telcos, now ISPs, they of course have copper pairs going to your house, mostly. So DSL it is, with the severe limitations involved. Cable companies have a coax line that offers them some advantages, and they also built systems that could accommodate this new use. Reselling the same line over and over, a profit model.

But in much of the US there is no effective competition for Internet services, as has been belabored here and elsewhere, no need to go back to that. My point is that these billions were spent for telephone service that never materialized, and the Internet came along, fortuitously, to make that stuff insanely important and profitable, more so than telephone would have ever done. And many of us paid for it, receiving nothing but the opportunity to pay again and again, for substandard service and poor practices.

That CRP land is still maintained, just no crop is taken from it. For land to "rest" means it's got a coverage of some kind of plant life but the nutrients are not removed in the form of crop and chaff.

Yeah and I'm also a little ahead of my knowledge on this one. In school, we had government and political science classes in which they told us the USDA pays farmers to not grow crops so as to stabilize prices, otherwise we get crop oversupply; I've been researching this lately, and it's not a thing. When I got down to the USDA's actual literature, I got different explanations of the CRP than what was written on other resources: the CRP leaves those lands wild to act as environmental barriers, catching run-off and cleaning contaminants before they hit rivers and aquifers.

I want to target reserve agriculture land, not land used for environmental management. Reserve agriculture land is important, because...

This is why central planning of an economy will never work, we'll have government know-it-alls telling farmers that have lived on the same land for 100 years on how to best manage their crop.

...farmers today can grow more on less land, and so fertile farmland is often sold off to developers, who pave over it and build cities. Clearing out the development costs an enormous amount of money and takes years; it might be a GDP-breaking practice, considering the sheer cost to demolish, haul away, and landfill or repurpose the debris. We put a lot of effort into protecting our reserve agricultural lands.

If you cover fertile land with solar panels the plants that hold the soil in place will die.

Actually, a lot of cover crop grows in low-light conditions just fine. Sunlight reflects, and we don't create a pitch-black wasteland below our solar arrays. Panels have tilt for optimal performance, and so have space between them so no panel is in another's shadow. As a result, solar farms are full of wide open spaces and light infiltrates under them pretty readily.

Apparently you haven't been keeping up on the news: https://www.huffingtonpost.com...

They're a real treat.

Many people who commit themselves 100% to eliminating debt and saving money find that a certain joylessness creeps in after a while. The same thing happens to dieters who deprive themselves of all their favorite foods for months, and then cave to late-night binges.

That's not a way to live, and that's not what I advocate. Austerity, yes; deprivation, no.

The key is to include spending on fun things in your budget. Set aside a manageable percentage every week in a fund that will let you splurge with cash. Go out for lunch, get your hair done, or use your fun money to go on a vacationâ"do whatever you want, as long as you pay for it outright. This way you can enjoy your splurges without feeling guilty!

Or is he specifically saying that haircuts = good but coffee = bad for some reason?

To support AC's point:
http://www.dollarsandsense.org...
https://www.energyandcapital.c...
https://www.huffingtonpost.com...

From the first one, discussing the US defense-related costs as just one aspect: "Put all these numbers in perspective: The price of a barrel of oil consumed in the United States would have to increase by $23.40 to offset military resources expended to secure oil. That translates to an additional 56 cents for a gallon of gas, or three times the federal gas tax that funds road construction. If $166 billion were spent on other priorities, the Boston public transportation system, the âoeT,â could have its operating expenses covered, with commuters riding for free. And there would still be money left over for another 100 public transport systems across the United States. Or, we could build and install nearly 50,000 wind turbines. Take your pick."

But there are many other external costs to fossil fuels like health care costs (the legacy of leaded gas is still taking a tremendous toll on our society, but air pollution in general is a killer). For example:
https://thinkprogress.org/here...
"The average cost of a gallon of gasoline in the U.S. right now is $2.47. If that cost took into account the environmental and human health costs of burning the gasoline, however, it would more than double, according to a new study. The study, published this week in the journal Climatic Change, created models for the âoesocial cost of atmospheric release,â a method of determining the costs of emissions beyond their market value. According to the study, accounting for the social costs of burning gasoline would add an average of $3.80 per gallon to the pump price, raising the price to $6.27. Diesel has an even higher social cost of $4.80 per gallon. The study also measured the social costs of other fossil fuels not used at the pump. Coal, for example, would jump from 10 cents per kilowatt hour to 42 cents per kilowatt hour, the study found. And natural gas, which has emerged in recent years as a cheap source of fuel, would see its price rise from 7 cents per kWh to 17 cents per kWh."

And on the legacy of leaded gas (and how it has contributed to the USA's huge prison populations): http://www.motherjones.com/env...

A related essay I wrote in 2009 on "Why luxury safer electric cars should be free-to-the-user":
https://groups.google.com/foru...
"This essay explain why luxury safer electric (or plug-in hybrid) cars should be free-to-the-user at the point of sale in the USA, and why this will reduce US taxes overall. Essentially, unsafe gasoline-powered automobiles in the USA pose a high cost on society (accidents, injuries, pollution, defense), and the costs of making better cars would pay for themselves and then some. This essay is an example of using post-scarcity ideology to understand the scarcity-oriented ideological assumptions in our society and how those outdated scarcity assumptions are costing our society in terms of creating and maintaining artificial scarcity."

But the real answer (if maybe not politically acceptable) is not to subsidize electric cars. It is to tax *all* the externalizes of fossil fuel use at the point of purchase, bringing the cost of gas to, perhaps, US$10 a gallon or more. The tax could be redistributed as a basic income to everyone.

Perhaps the deepest irony about all this (mentioned in the above essay) is mentioned here by B

I'm not "plugging in" a syringe when I receive a tetanus booster shot in my arm.

And yet, the injection is highly beneficial to you and "blocking" it is generally considered dangerous and even evil in some quarters.

Chrome provides frameworks by which developers can "plug in" third-party code

Even when does not provide official means for an addition, the addition can still be useful — indeed, life-saving. And the other way around — adding poison will kill you even if you use the "official" orifice designed for it (your mouth).

Thus, the distinction you outlined is without difference and we are back to spin. And the intent of the creators of the additions, however their creations are added.

That's kind of the point: their time is never completely served

So you are making the return to meth dealing the best option for the convicted meth dealer. Saner countries actually rehabilitate people, as opposed to the U.S. which prefers to be tough rather than effective on crime.

"Treat people like dirt, and they will be dirt. Treat them like human beings, and they will act like human beings."

they're not allowed to vote

Why. I've never seen anyone articulate a reason for why convicts shouldn't be able to vote while they're in prison, much less released from it. It's not like they don't have to pay taxes and be subjected to public policy. And what are they going to do anyway - pool their efforts and get Lex Luthor elected president?

they're not allowed to own a gun

That one at least makes some sense, at least for the convicted meth dealer. Doesn't explain why he shouldn't find a decent job working construction or working for FedEx, though.

You don't somehow think that all of the missiles that North Korea has been firing were somehow summoned by magic since the start of the Trump administration, do you? They were obviously being worked on during the Obama administration. What we are seeing is the flowering of Obama's work. (Or do you blame Her?)

For what? North Korea wasting their limited resources on a tool that's only useful when you want to provoke an ill-tempered boob who will go off on freak out over them, then erroneously claim to send an aircraft carrier to deal with it?

So what you're saying is that at best, he's par for the course. "Par" is not what we were told to expect.

Trump hasn't even been in office for a year yet and he already has far more rigorous sanctions in place than Obama achieved, has China cooperating, and missile defense is getting a big boost in funding.

Except it turns out those sanctions are a failed policy that only harms the innocent North Korean people, China is, as usual, lying, and putting money into missile defense has been a favorite way to waste tax dollars since the Reagan years.

He seems to be making progress that Obama couldn't.

So far, your examples are only repeated examples of waste, fraud, and failure.

That's not a common definition of progress. Admittedly, to somebody trying to sabotage America, it would seem different.

Lets see what happens between now and the end of the eighth year of the Trump administration.

Let's see what happens between now and the end of the next year.

I'd say this year, but eh, you won't have any results.

You don't somehow think that all of the missiles that North Korea has been firing were somehow summoned by magic since the start of the Trump administration, do you? They were obviously being worked on during the Obama administration. What we are seeing is the flowering of Obama's work. (Or do you blame Her?)

For what? North Korea wasting their limited resources on a tool that's only useful when you want to provoke an ill-tempered boob who will go off on freak out over them, then erroneously claim to send an aircraft carrier to deal with it?

So what you're saying is that at best, he's par for the course. "Par" is not what we were told to expect.

Trump hasn't even been in office for a year yet and he already has far more rigorous sanctions in place than Obama achieved, has China cooperating, and missile defense is getting a big boost in funding.

Except it turns out those sanctions are a failed policy that only harms the innocent North Korean people, China is, as usual, lying, and putting money into missile defense has been a favorite way to waste tax dollars since the Reagan years.

He seems to be making progress that Obama couldn't.

So far, your examples are only repeated examples of waste, fraud, and failure.

That's not a common definition of progress. Admittedly, to somebody trying to sabotage America, it would seem different.

Lets see what happens between now and the end of the eighth year of the Trump administration.

Let's see what happens between now and the end of the next year.

I'd say this year, but eh, you won't have any results.

FCC tries to regulate the internet (2008-ish)
FCC gets shot down by courts, FCC doesn't have authority to regulate internet (2010)
FCC rebrands ISPs under Title II, then asserts right to regulate. (2015)

Verizon fought to be regulated under Title II when it was convenient for them.

What does your rant have to do with reality?

Bitcoin Releases Version 0.3
Posted by kdawson on Sunday July 11, 2010 @09:09PM from the nobody-to-prosecute dept.
Teppy writes
"How's this for a disruptive technology? Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer, network-based digital currency with no central bank, and no transaction fees. Using a proof-of-work concept, nodes burn CPU cycles searching for bundles of coins, broadcasting their findings to the network. Analysis of energy usage indicates that the market value of Bitcoins is already above the value of the energy needed to generate them, indicating healthy demand. The community is hopeful the currency will remain outside the reach of any government."
Here are the FAQ, a paper describing Bitcoin in more technical detail (PDF), and the Wikipedia article. Note: a commercial service called BitCoin Ltd., in pre-alpha at bitcoin.com, bears no relation to the open source digital currency.

WikiLeaks, Money, and Ron Paul
Posted by Soulskill on Sunday December 12, 2010 @01:16PM from the headlines-that-will-make-some-people-mad dept.
Another day, another dozen WikiLeaks stories, several of which revolve around money. PayPal has given in to pressure to release WikiLeaks funds, though they still won't do further transactions. Mobile payment firm Xipwire is attempting to take PayPal's place. "We do think people should be able to make their own decisions as to who they donate to." PCWorld wonders if the WikiLeaks' money woes could lead to great adoption of Bitcoin, the peer-to-peer currency system we've discussed in the past. Meanwhile, Representative Ron Paul spoke in defense of WikiLeaks on the House floor Thursday, asking a number of questions, including, "Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on WikiLeaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?" The current uproar over WikiLeaks has prompted Paul Vixie to call for an end to the DDoS attacks and Vladimir Putin to break out a metaphor involving cows and hockey pucks.

Online-Only Currency BitCoin Reaches Dollar Parity
Posted by timothy on Thursday February 10, 2011 @06:59PM from the computationally-intensive dept.
IamTheRealMike writes
"The BitCoin peer to peer currency briefly reached exchange parity with the US dollar today after a spike in demand for the coins pushed prices slightly above 1 USD:1 BTC. BitCoin was launched in early 2009, so in only two years this open source currency has gone from having no value at all to one with not only an open market of competing exchanges, but the ability to buy r

Of course warrants should be mandated. Without monitoring and checks, the victims of police have little or no protection or legal recourse. To prevent abuse the police should be monitored and checked constantly in every way feasible while on the job. Here are just a few of the recent examples of police corruption and abuse.

- In Denver, the police are stealing cars.

- In New York, police handcuffed and raped a teenager. Then over a dozen other cops threatened the victim to prevent her from reporting the crime.

- Police steal more than criminals.

- In Utah a cop who assaulted and arrested a nurse for objecting to his inappropriate demands to draw blood from a suspect.

- In Los Angeles a cop was caught by his own body cam planting drugs on a suspect.

Seems like Google power is peaking

In all likelihood Google is about to find itself negotiating with Comcast et al. to stay in the "fast lane." I'm pretty damn sure that if Google occupied some apex of Rockefeller-like power they wouldn't be letting that happen.

Google tried, by aligning itself with the Democratic Party and the "permanent Democratic majority".

Ooops.

Besides, it's really, really hard to get to "Rockefeller-like power" - I've seen estimates that old John D. owned something like 3 or 4% of the entire US before he started giving his fortune away. He likely gave away well over 90% of his fortune, and his great-great-great grandchildren are still born multimillionaires.

Unfortunately, you can't fix stupid. No amount of despotic decrees by the government against the companies allowing you to purchase addictive cancer is going to fix people's stupidity. It, however, will set a precedent for stupid despotic decrees for propaganda.

Mr. Mackey: "LSD's bad, mmmkay?"
I wonder what the cost to society would be if all the smokers dropped the tobacco this instant and started to microdose LSD.

They closed the entire DMV for several years in order to prevent people from acquiring an ID?

No, they focused heavily on the offices that minorities could conveniently use, which was kinda revealing.

The freaking blog you pointed to is a lie,

Identify one falsehood in it. Go ahead.

there are a lot of other things going on into making those decisions, you can get an ID at the post office, from the DMV through the mail or online.

Yes, racists are practiced at finding excuses for their behavior, literacy tests and poll taxes were usually defended under those same terms. Including you know, misinforming the public about the situation.

But hey, if you want the state to mail out ID to everybody, go ahead and propose it.

You need an ID to buy booze, medicine and cigarettes, you're saying no black person buys booze, medicine or cigarettes?

Actually, I've found that sales clerks will rarely bother me about booze or cigarettes even if they are supposed to get ID, but I understand some people do have complaints about that process, medicine is somewhat different, but then, there are problems with pharmacists denying people's prescriptions. And don't even get my mother started on the way they hassled her about her diabetic testing strips refill, then tried to bill her after they FAILED to give her the number of strips she needed the first time when she asked for more. She gets quite irate at them.

If you close 31 DMV offices you do not "save only $100,000" ... argh, there is just so much wrong with this that it's not even worth pointing out. If it isn't obvious that this is partisan bullshit grasping at straws to make a point then you're dumber than you realize..

Sure man, you come right after an accusation that relied on false counter cries of racism and bigotry to ignore actual racism and bigotry, and you think it's other people who are full of partisan bullshit.

Sorry man, there's a reason it keeps being revealed.

And it gets worse as apparently it was Bentley's paramour behind it.

Crickets, eh? Interesting sound they make.

I heard ZERO indictments of him about his political leanings

https://qz.com/1055466/the-alt... basically calls him a liar when he denies being 'alt right'.

Then there are the suspicious string of articles all basically going, "Damore is an alt-right [hero|martyr]":
https://www.theguardian.com/co...
https://www.usatoday.com/story...
https://www.recode.net/2017/8/...
https://www.huffingtonpost.com...
https://www.vox.com/culture/20...
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
http://www.newsweek.com/who-ja...
http://nymag.com/selectall/201...

Maybe that was just because there was too much material to get to boring stuff like that in his 15 minutes of fame.

No, it's because his political leanings are by all accounts very much aligned to the people trying to demonise him, hence the multitude of articles trying to position him with the people they don't like.

I hesitate to say 'conspiracy' but it sure as fuck doesn't look like independent and honest reporting to me.

Look, you are clearly from the UK and have no clue WTF you are talking about. Please stick to topics to which you have knowledge.

Just so you don't make a complete fool of yourself next time, here are some statistics. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-t...
    Note that African Americans make up 15% of the population while accounting for ~2500 out of 5700 murders. There is clearly a sub culture of violence there that does not extend to the other minorities or indeed the other 85% of the population.

Considering you live in the UK, unless you served in the military, your only experience with guns has been TV, movies and the pap that your liberal media has spoon fed you. Meanwhile, disarmed Europe is one charismatic dictator away from another Hitler... Atheism and antisemitism area already well on their way in Europe. https://www.huffingtonpost.com...
https://www.spectator.co.uk/20...

The Las Vegas shooter was firing AR15 style rifles from 35 stories up at 500 yards range at nearly full auto at night using a bump stock. (One rifle at at a time, probably swapping rifles to keep from warping the barrels). The only reason he hit anyone was the sheer number of bullets he fired and the fact that he was firing into a crowd of 22,000 people. His hit ratio was ~550 injured or killed or about 2.5%. And that was aiming for a mob of people who were unaware of what was going on, at least at first. Anyone who as ever fired a fully automatic weapon knows that you cannot aim for shit at full auto. Anyone who has even seen a bump stock in action knows that you can't hit the broad side of a barn at 100 yards using one. The barrel and sight literally jump around in your hands beyond even the normal recoil... Compare that to a hunter (or retired or active duty military, many of whom were in the crowd) with a rifle crouched behind a truck looking for the shooter. At full auto, the muzzle flashes from the MGM were readily apparent to many witnesses.

Isn't that what happened to Damore? He made a bunch of arguments, the left claimed they were 'offensive'. And by 'offensive' they mean 'we can't come up with a coherent counter argument, we must stop him speaking'.

It's weaponized offense really. Back in the old days of course this sort of thing was the tactic used by religious fundamentalist types and was denounced by people like Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens.

https://www.goodreads.com/quot...

"It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking what."

Now it seems like the social justice left think that 'What you said is offensive' means 'You must be silenced/fired/beaten up'. In fact they've invented a whole new term - speech they don't like isn't just offensive, it's 'oppressive' to the oppressed groups they claim to speak for.

Normally they'll say something like 'silencing this sort of speech doesn't violate the First Amendment because it's not the government doing it'. Which is true in a narrow, legalistic American sense, but completely irrelevant. It's perfectly possible for freedom of speech to be violated by non governmental entities - e.g. the KKK was not a governmental organisation and was able to shut down speech they didn't like. Right now AntiFa is non governmental and does the same thing. Mobs can be incited online to get people fired or banned. All of these things violate free speech but probably not the First Amendment.

Of course a lot of people on the US have argued for Europe style hate speech laws as well, which would violate the First Amendment. E.g.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com...

Countries throughout Europe have seen the danger in certain hate speech and have created laws that punish racist incitement without compromising their democratic values on free speech. These laws protect Jewish and other minority residents and show that societies clearly value their safety and security in their countries. These laws have not prevented all acts of racism and violence from occurring, as the Charlie Hebdo attacks in France remind us, but they send the right message to vulnerable minorities and galvanize public and police support to prevent future atrocities.

If the Oklahoma chant happened in, say, Germany and the n-word was replaced with a derogatory epithet for the Jewish people, and the method of murder was changed from lynching to something employed by the Nazis, the perpetrators would be in jail right now and few outside the extremist right would argue that an injustice was done. How can so many in American society condone this incitement as youthful indiscretion and even redirect blame away from the perpetrators to the people who have had to suffer the oppression inflicted by those who spew these vile words?

America can learn something from the international community, where the legacy and dangers of certain types of speech are better understood. We too must find an effective way to monitor and forbid dangerous speech, without unjustly infringing upon freedom of speech. We should have started the discussion long ago.

Now you know why it's irritating when people try to silence your arguments rather than trying to address them. Congratulations. You know why people despise the left.

Why would I want to have more money? To watch a number on my bank account get bigger? Somehow I fail to see the appeal of that.

Well, there is always altruism, charitable giving to help people in need, villages that lack fresh water, people that suffer from disease, starvation, etc... What about donating to maintain academic freedom? Freedom of conscience? Or do you fail to see the appeal or purpose of any of that?

Food For the Poor
BUY A GOAT FOR A FAMILY IN AFRICA

But working sure isn't the way to do it, which is easy to deduce by simple observation.

Simply working isn't the only part of it, you generally have to show some discipline and wisdom in how you handle your money.

Humble Teacher Shocks Community By Leaving $8.4 Million To Charity
A janitor secretly amassed an $8 million fortune and left most of it to his library and hospital

Also, and I don't expect you to understand that, I don't give a shit about money.

That isn't so hard to understand*, I'm not particularly materialistic myself. But how about "the rich"? Aren't you one of the people around here that complains about them?

Slashdot is full of people that like to code, build things, hack hardware. It is what gets them going. One thing that a lot of people on Slashdot miss, or get wrong, is not realizing that there are people that feel like that about building companies, doing business deals, creating jobs and so on. In some ways it is a similar mindset in a very different setting. There are brilliant jerks like Linus here and there, but there are also good people too that are doing something useful.

*Not like "atheism" is "hard" to understand. I still can't believe you tried that line on me.

• Giving students easier access to money to pay for school is a demand-side incentive. What should happen is the increased demand causes more universities to be built, and the increased competition lowers prices (tuitions). But schools are not commodities. Schools with good reputations are in higher demand, so increasing the availability of money just makes more students apply to these schools. Demand goes up, supply stays constant, price goes up.
• Giving money to universities is a supply-side incentive. The government can even add conditions to receiving that money, like requiring tuitions not exceed a certain % of the median family income.

The U.S. college and university economics are so screwed up right now because of these student loans, grants, and scholarships, that the only solution I can see now is to aggressively shift money away from those programs and into public universities (with the stipulation that the public university keep tuitions reasonable). If you're poor, you'll still be able to go to college, but it'll be a public university, not a private ivy league college. Then wait for that additional funding to increase the reputation and competitiveness of public universities. That increased competition plus funds drying up for private colleges will force them to go on a diet, shedding those unnecessary administrators and reducing other costs, so they can lower tuition.

I'm also pretty close to decided that loans for students are a really bad idea. Loans basically allow you to time-shift money from your future into the present. Since students have their entire future earnings potential ahead of them, this is a massive amount of money that loans allow schools to tap into. Without any loans (or at least publicly funded or supported loans), students will only be able to pay what they can currently afford, and tuitions will fall to match their ability to pay out of pocket.

The best way to change white peoples' definition of a right to bear arms is for black people to bear arms:

Here's How The Nation Responded When A Black Militia Group Occupied A Government Building
https://www.huffingtonpost.com...

Mulford's legislation, which became known as the "Panthers Bill," passed with the support of the National Rifle Association, which apparently believed that the whole "good guy with a gun" thing didn't apply to black people. California Gov. Ronald Reagan (R), who would later campaign for president as a steadfast defender of the Second Amendment, signed the bill into law.

sexual assault is a kind of assault

In many cases, it's absurd to classify "sexual assault" as "assault". For example, an unwanted kiss is widely considered to be a "sexual assault":

https://www.nbcdfw.com/investigations/Student-With-Autism-Kicked-Out-of-College-288108301.html

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/reminder-groping-and-unwanted-kissing-is-definitely-sexual-assault_us_57ff9f7be4b0e8c198a6642f

Nevermind the fact that women are notoriously ambivalent about whether they want to be kissed or not, and one really doesn't know whether the kiss was wanted until after the fact.

Was sleeping beauty sexually assaulted? Does the Disney film teach sexual assault? Did Has Solo sexually assault Princess Leia when he kissed her while they were inside the giant space-worm?

> The increase in the need for student loans is because of the reduction in state support for public universities and colleges and a concomitant increase in the tuition necessary to pay for the education.

That's certainly a part of it. But haven't costs risen dramatically?

If government support had stayed the same, would costs NOT have risen dramatically?

> Back in the early '70s and before, state government support paid for 70 to 75% of the cost of the education of in-state students with the remaining coming from tuition.

I can imagine that funding may have been adequate before the boom in college attendance.

But when everyone and their dog thinks they need to go to college, the funding need to cover increased headcount.

I wonder how increased headcount has impacted the adequacy of funding levels.

He did not expose any war crimes.

False. Any other lies you want debunked?

Careful! The HuffPo will denounce you as un unpatriotic heathen if you say that the chances are less than 98% because 'that's what the numbers say".

https://www.huffingtonpost.com...

During the 2012 election, Republicans who hated the daily onslaught of polling showing that Mitt Romney was headed toward a comfortable defeat turned to Dean Chambers, the man who launched the website Unskewed Polls. The poll numbers were wrong, he said, and by tweaking a few things, he could give a more accurate count. His final projection had Romney winning close to all 50 states.

Chambers has wisely abandoned the field of election forecasting, and this year says he thinks the various models predicting a Hillary Clinton victory are probably accurate. The models themselves are pretty confident. HuffPost Pollster is giving Clinton a 98 percent chance of winning, and The New York Times' model at The Upshot puts her chances at 85 percent.

There is one outlier, however, that is causing waves of panic among Democrats around the country, and injecting Trump backers with the hope that their guy might pull this thing off after all. Nate Silver's 538 model is giving Donald Trump a heart-stopping 35 percent chance of winning as of this weekend.

He ratcheted the panic up to 11 on Friday with his latest forecast, tweeting out, "Trump is about 3 points behind Clinton â and 3-point polling errors happen pretty often."

So who's right?

The beauty here is that we won't have to wait long to find out. But let's lay out now why we think we're right and 538 is wrong. Or, at least, why they're doing it wrong.

The short version is that Silver is changing the results of polls to fit where he thinks the polls truly are, rather than simply entering the poll numbers into his model and crunching them.

Silver calls this unskewing a "trend line adjustment." He compares a poll to previous polls conducted by the same polling firm, makes a series of assumptions, runs a regression analysis, and gets a new poll number. That's the number he sticks in his model â not the original number.

He may end up being right, but he's just guessing. A "trend line adjustment" is merely political punditry dressed up as sophisticated mathematical modeling.

Guess who benefits from the unskewing?

By the time he's done adjusting the "trend line," Clinton has lost 0.2 points and Trump has gained 1.7 points. An adjustment of below 2 points may not seem like much, but it's enough to throw off his entire forecast, taking a comfortable 4.6 point Clinton lead and making it look like a nail-biter.

It's enough to close the gap between the two candidates to below 3 points, which allows Silver to say that it's now anybody's ballgame, because "3-point polling errors happen pretty often."

That line in itself is disingenuous, though. For the polls to be wrong, there wouldn't need to be one single 3-point error. All of the polls â all of them, as Brianna Keilar would put it â would have to be off by 3 points in the same direction. That's happened before, but in 2012 the error favored President Barack Obama. In 2014, it favored Republicans. Errors are just as likely to favor Clinton as they are to favor Trump, and they would have to favor Trump. And we still haven't accounted for the unique fact that one campaign has a get-out-the-vote operation, while the other doesn't.

By monkeying around with the numbers like this, Silver is making a mockery of the very forecasting industry that he popularized. "The idea that she's a prohibitive, 95 percent-plus favorite is hard to square with polling that has frequently shown 5- or 6-point swings within the span of a couple weeks, given that she only leads by 3 points or so now," he told Politico recently. "[E]verything depends on one's assumptions, but I think that our assumptions â a Clinton lead, sure, but high uncertainty

"Flamebait" being of course saying what is universally accepted as true, even by the GOP itself...

https://www.huffingtonpost.com...

Even though we like to think that everyone is enlightened, etc as us, in very broad swaths of American society being gay or jewish (or Muslim or...) is very much perceived as a negative out of the starting gate. File under: Sad-But-true.

I wonder how much of this is based on completely rational reasoning. Gays don't have kids (adoption notwithstanding), and the social purpose of having kids is to keep the population up and society running. Those that don't have kids have their social usefulness cut in half and are seen as not doing their part, so to a pre-robot society whose main resource is population, it's understandable that back then such people were looked down upon. I'm not saying that people were/are right to ostracize/mistreat others based on their sexuality, I'm just saying that such a point of view reaches the realm of rationality when viewed through the lens of history.

Jews have a tendency to be frugal/cheap and often restrict their social help to only other Jews, whereas in the US people lean more towards the idea of helping everyone. That's not to say that every Christian is an amazing, giving person (every group contains a spectrum of people), but when generalizing those are details that tend to come out. Muslims, well, there's a religion that hasn't left the dark ages. A quarter of muslims living in the UK support Sharia superseding local law when in conflict, if not outright replacing it. People are understandably worried when the fastest-growing demographic wants to outlaw homosexuality (52%) and who knows what else. Again, that's not to say that all muslims think like this, but when large portions of a group of people hold beliefs that are the antithesis of western freedoms, in Europe it's a huge problem that's only going to get worse before it gets better... assuming it ever gets better.

People are shitty and some groups of people have more shitty people than others, but should judge the people we meet based on their personality/actions and not their labels (heh, if you read between the lines, to SJWs that's oppression because you take people's victimhood away). However, in topics such as mass migration, such generalizations must be taken into consideration, even though I agree that using such terms as insults is bad and nothing but an attempt to make society's problems an us-versus-them problem, which doesn't help anything.

They really aren't.

https://www.google.com/search?...

You look at those pictures and think that it's amazing it was that bad, one day. It wasn't. It is that bad nearly all the time. It is a hellscape and it is killing them by the millions.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com...

But they have acknowledged there is a problem and that steps need to be taken.

This ban is for indoor. I could only wish that spraying perfume inside were equally illegal.

A male goat that sees females in heat will urinate on his beard. The smell of that is revolting outdoors and unbearable indoors, to the point that even cows (badly smelling creatures themselves) will refuse to enter a barn polluted by a perfumed goat.

A good part of human perfumes are not much more appealing to me than what a goat uses.

I am fully in favor of an Axe law.

Spraying a dangerous substance that has adverse effect (beyond just revulsion) to multiple schoolmates? Sounds pretty obvious to me.

This ban is for indoor. I could only wish that spraying perfume inside were equally illegal. Put that on at home. If you are so strongly doused that you set off a smoke detector, you should be forced to leave. I was once in a movie theater and someone thought it necessary to spray on extra perfume - in her theater seat. She's lucky I was thirsty, or I would have sprayed her with my drink to clean her off.

I am fully in favor of an Axe law.

If 'bad behavior' is only attributable to a small percentage of cops to begin with, then you would expect little change on average from using cameras.

The "bad behavior" (a nice euphemism for killing people) may be attributable to only a small percentage of cops, but the much larger percentage are part of a system which is designed to protect the bad cops.

The fact is, cameras have no effect on bad cops because bad cops know ain't nothing gonna happen to them.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com...

I thought you were referring to American colleges: Title IX, and the Dear Colleague letter. How many students have been falsely accused by educational institutions, denied due process, etc...

Be sure to have separate Jesus and Dog albums so you can find those precious photos.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com...

Google did this by trading. They generate energy one place, use it in another.
Nothing wrong with that, but they're still dependent on other sources.

The fact that they generate as much as they used proves some pro fossil energy anal-cranial-submersion to the point of suffocation proponents need to move on.

To site the chairman of CSX, ‘Fossil Fuels Are Dead’ : https://www.huffingtonpost.com...

Half of America wonders when the FBI will arrest Twitler fo "grabbing 'em by the pussy", which is surely worse than mere stalking.

Yep, those would be the same hypocrites who won''t say anything about big Democrat Harvey Weinstein dropping trou and beating off in front of a woman he cornered.

The Huffington Post is such a source of right-wing conspiracies...

What'd Meryl Streep say about Trump?

Oh yeah: "Disrespect invites disrespect. Violence incites violence. And when the powerful use their position to bully others, we all lose."

So, Meryl, what you got to say about DEMOCRAT Harvey Weinstein?

Oh, yeah, nothing.

Given Google's recent behaviour, I find it difficult to accept their stated intentions. While this is a very high profile story, think of how many other less public stories they can suppress. Look at the media take on the Boston free speech event and how they claimed it was brave anti-fascists saying no to white supremacists. In fact it was a small free speech group, which had a black speaker and an audience of various races, being surrounded by a braying mob who did such charming things as throwing bottles of piss at the police.

I simply do not trust Google to act as arbiters of truth, and mainstream media as a source is no guarantee of accuracy.

This is the kind of shit that Google will push; http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

Netflix introduced the unlimited streaming plan at $7.99 in July 2011. (Their current $7.99 plan doesn't stream in HD, so the $9.99 soon to be $10.99 plan corresponds to their original $7.99 plan.)

$7.99 in July 2011 is equivalent to $8.68 today.

So bumping it up to $10.99 means it's increased by 1.27x the rate of inflation. Or an average annual increase of 5.5% vs the actual annual CPI inflation rate of 1.4% over the last 6 years.

Right, but how much content have they actually lost access to since 2011?

I would argue quite a bit since they let the Starz and other popular content deals expire.

They have backfilled with less popular content and some of their own making, but as a subscriber, I would argue that their content is less appealing than it was 2011.

Also, they have completely destroyed the usability of their website to accommodate this loss of content. Their "ranking" system doesn't actually show you others' ratings anymore, it shows you what THEY want you to watch. You can't easily sort out the available content by year or popularity. It's really hard to even get to the review section of each show. And while you do all this, there are 4000 animated trailers playing in the background, which attempt to induce a seizure so that you will stop trying to find good content and just watch what they tell you to watch.

It wasn't like they accidentally lost this functionality either. They did it to force their less appealing content on you and try to hide the loss of their more popular content deals.

I still think they provide a valuable service, but it is nowhere near as valuable as it used to be. This is due in part to mismanagement on their part but mostly to the greed of their content suppliers. The end effect to the user is still the same though. Lower quality content for more money, which will indeed drive many back to pirating.

Netflix introduced the unlimited streaming plan at $7.99 in July 2011. (Their current $7.99 plan doesn't stream in HD, so the $9.99 soon to be $10.99 plan corresponds to their original $7.99 plan.)

$7.99 in July 2011 is equivalent to $8.68 today.

So bumping it up to $10.99 means it's increased by 1.27x the rate of inflation. Or an average annual increase of 5.5% vs the actual annual CPI inflation rate of 1.4% over the last 6 years.

JFK was on the left.

JFK slashed taxes, sent thousands of "advisors" to continue France's colonialist occupation of Vietnam, and lied his ass off about a "missile gap", that dramatically escalated the cold war. He also forgot to mention in his televised speech on Cuba that the entire reason the USSR wanted to place missiles there was to counter the nuclear-armed Jupiter missiles the United States had just installed in Turkey. He was also happy to play the racist card in a primary debate: "You say you are going to take ten thousand black people and move them into Orange County? It is just going to be catastrophic."

All right-wing actions, not left wing.

Every Democrat today is a hundred miles to the left of JFK.

Certifiable. Democratic leadership, starting with Clinton has been to the right of Reagan. Bill signed a laundry list of massive deregulatory and corporate trade bills that Ronnie could have only dreamed of. He also passed draconian crime bills that tripped the prison population, militarized the police and threw gays under the bus for 15 years with DOMA. Hell, he even tried privatizing Social Security long before Bush did. And then Hillbots had the gall to attack Sanders as being weak on minorities.

Speaking of Ronnie, Reaganism didn't begin with him. It began with Carter. Deregulating the trucking and airline industries, appealing to right-wing Christians and attacked Ford for being soft on the USSR. Oh, and he was also happy to play the racist card: "I see nothing wrong with ethnic purity being maintained. I would not force a racial integration of a neighborhood by government action."

Right. Wing.

Modern Democrats are totally bonkers, and blah blah blah blah blah

Repeal the 22nd Amendment, resurrect Reagan and he'd be the liberal in a three way race between himself, Obama and Hillary in 2020. Reagan insisted Social Security had nothing to do with the deficit; Obama wanted to cut benefits as part of deficit "reduction". Obama took Romneycare national, started a war with Libya without authorization from Congress (something his own VP threatened Bush with impeachment for if he did the same thing to Iran), fought his own party to pass the TPP, went to the right of the GOP with his "sequester" austerity. Obama also tripled the Afghanistan occupation, tried extending the Iraq occupation past the deal Bush made with Iraq, bombed three times as many countries as Bush, overthrew the democracies of Honduras and Ukraine, and repeated the Iraq "mistake" in both Syria and Libya. And Hillary is even more right wing than he is.

Right. Wing.

That's true to a point as long as you do a few things:

Like bury reports on right-wing violence?

No wait, that's the opposite, isn't it?

1) Group all anti-government, non-Muslim religious based attacks as well as white supremacist attacks into the far-right category while at the same time often miscategorizing other attacks such as classifying Fort Hood as 'workplace violence' even with Hasan's confession about his motivations. That actually required an act of Congress to have to the dead and wounded be recognized as victims of a terrorist attack and awarded Purple Hearts.

I remember another act to get other people Purple Hearts.

What was even worse was the Congressional call, where so many people thought they were getting Medals of Honor. That dismayed me. even more than trying to make a drug-addled depressed person into some sort of concerted act of terrorism.

2) Assign political motivations to non-political attacks. Not all attacks by right wingers are motivated by their ideology in the same way not all attacks by left wingers or Jihadists are motivated by theirs; sometimes an attack in a parking lot is just road rage with no deeper meaning.

Deny actual motivation and declare he's just crazy.

Seriously, any right-wing violence is immediately dismissed as mental illness by their pundits, or worse yet, blamed on the left.

3) Start tracking after 2001 and stop tracking after 2015.

Like this?

4) Change the definition of threat as it suits your needs. In some reports "threat" is based off of actual deaths and in others it's by incident. So when you need a bigger number you count the 5 times someone was harassed on the street (with no injury) and say that is a bigger threat than a single shooting that killed multiple people.

Could have told you that ten years ago.

There is also the fact that many Jihadist plots are stopped before the threat ever materializes due to the massive manpower dedicated to just that while far right attacks are not due to their limited nature and next to no dedicated special policing (they seem to be mostly of the "lone gunman", small or single target variety which are very difficult to prevent) . i.e. it's hard to stop a crazy person with a knife until the attack starts vs someone trying to buy large quantities of explosives.

Oh really?

It's just another case of statistics telling you whatever you want them to and not necessarily the truth.

Is that why you oppose the phony statistics often cited by the right?

You do, don't you? Even Jon Kyl's?

As the tax payer takes it up the ass from the NFL.

geography and climate of Zealandia were dramatically different in the past

How could their climate have possibly changed without SUVs, air-conditioners, and cows with meteorism?