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Err what?

The investigation showed 110 classified emails on her personal computer. It literally was a federal felony offense.

Actually, no: it was not literally a felony offense. It would have been a felony to disclose classified material to unauthorized people, and it would be a felony to mishandle classified material in such a negligent way that they are disclosed to unauthorized persons (the specific words in the law is "through gross negligence"), but it's not a felony for classified e-mail to on her server per se-- the prosecutor would have had to show either intent, or show that unauthorized people could reasonably be believed to have had access to the classified mail on her server because of her negligence.

That's a hard case to make, and what Comey said was that he did not think that a reasonable prosecutor could reasonably make that case.

(Precisely what he said is here: http://www.latimes.com/politic... )

--interestingly, the government servers did get hacked (presumably by the Chinese), but there's no evidence that her personal server ever was. So she could have made the opposite case-- her emails actually turned out to be safer on her personal server.

Your example. Not mine.
http://www.latimes.com/world/m...

Pass Stupid Tax Laws, Win stupid Prizes.

With the new tax laws specifically targeting the wealthy this was not a surprise. It's more about clueless young people 'sticking it' to the men and women with the jobs and motivation to build much-needed infrastructure. I can't imagine a better example of cutting off your hand to spite your your fingers.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/...

Thank you for elegantly demonstrating why capitalism is a curse on our people.

Respectfully, that's not what I said. Sometimes, a lot more times than we give credit actually, Profit=Sales-Jobs works out, when the interests of consumers, employees and business-owners align. In a functioning economy, where you can reliably call Domino's and actually get food in exchange for debit on your bank card, this alignment is happening a lot more often than you think.

It's when people get too greedy, and make-believe that marketing alone, particularly based on clever half-truths and lies, can make them rich without a decent or actual product, do things go sour. The modern trend or fashion of maximizing profits, at the expense of both employees and customers, is what sickens capitalism and leads to dumb ideas like electronic street bodegas, and ridiculous press-releases about "creating jobs" specifically intended to i) waive off government scrutiny and ii) attract more investors (fine print: return on investment not guaranteed).

Capitalism isn't perfect - nothing is, and expecting it to be of course will leave you disappointed, bitter, anti-social, or ranting/raving on Slashdot. Chill. Go to a locally-owned coffee shop, pay the man for a freshly-baked muffin and a hot cup of joe, and realize that business usually works fine, except for a few asshats trying to get rich quick by cheating. If you become aware of the cheating, and consumers voice their opposition, workers choose not to work there, and investors withdraw their support, and maybe even an elected government sends inspectors to expose the bad meat, the cheater goes down in flames, and the delicate balance of interests that we call "capitalism" is working. Capitalism fails only where we tolerate lies, cheating, and dirty little secrets, the same things that fuck up everything everywhere.

There's a difference between "rooting for" a candidate and "illegally hiring hundreds of people to campaign for them online."

You mean when David Brock spent a million dollars hiring internet trolls on Hillary's behalf?

As with all Hillbot smears - racism, misogyny, collusion, election cheating - this one is pure projection.

There was absolutely no reason to withdraw from it, and some republicans are only now starting to realize this.

Paris Climate Agreement needs no renegotiation because it's non-binding, it's been criticized for asking too little too late, it was a political and diplomatic move without any negative consequences - other than being a symbolic gesture that doesn't really change much.

http://www.latimes.com/opinion...
https://www.newscientist.com/a...
http://www.npr.org/sections/13...

Even worse, a smart politician could use it in their favor right now. Even if the objective isn't met, it's far into the future, so he/she could just say that his/her political party did everything they could during their term to get there, but other administrations endded up not following it properly. It's the perfect excuse for a political party to return to power when things gets more dire in the future.

What happened there was the usual Trump blindness when trying to undo everything Obama did that got some attention under his administration on the premisse that everything he did was bad in some way, stupid campaign promisses filled with misinformation and vilification, plus Trump being an idiot that only listens to cospiracy theory alt-right channels.

Worst of all: if Trump just kept quiet and didn't step back from the agreement, the US would probably hit it's target anyways. Governments are not leading the way on this - the global economy is.
The economy is moving independent of governmental interference towards renewables, generating less garbage, developing electric cars, closing down fossil fuel power plants, and a bunch of other stuff. We're moving away from fossil fuels because it became economically feasible and attractive to do so, from an international standpoint.

Stepping down from the accord just painted the US as a country to be sidestepped for doing all sorts of businesses that will be moving tech towards cleaner goals - which is why so many US corporations were quick to announce they'd keep following the accord regardless of what the government is talking. It's not because those corporations are "good" or environmentaly friendly or some bullshit. It's because the global economy right now is aligned with those goals.

Notice how many news we hear these days about China's progressive moves towards clean energy. That's because China is trying to get the worldwide leadership on that particular topic. Trump just made it this much easier for another country to assume the position of global leader in a topic that lots of people are paying close attention to.

But now the damage has already been done. With or without renegotiation, it doesn't matter. Republicans can either be outright denied a renegotiation, which will continue looking bad for US in general, or they can get the agreement renegotiated which will keep them on a list of countries that are still in denial of a problem that needs firm stances, not because it's some charity or plead for help from another country, but because of their own interests.

What makes you think corporations becoming larger than the government will happen? That's one of many things that anti-competition law is designed to prevent.

Are you sarcastic? I'm sure you are!

• https://www.researchgate.net/publication/295938213_Multinational_corporations_A_new_global_dimension_-_Corporations_bigger_than_governments
• http://www.globalissues.org/article/234/the-rise-of-corporations
• http://www.globalissues.org/article/51/corporations-and-human-rights
• https://www.corporations.org/system/top100.html
• http://www.globalissues.org/article/52/pharmaceutical-corporations-and-medical-research
• https://archive.skoll.org/2011/02/21/corporations-are-more-powerful-than-governments/
• https://www.businessinsider.com/25-corporations-bigger-tan-countries-2011-6?op=1
• https://business.time.com/2012/01/27/are-companies-more-powerful-than-countries/
• https://www.cbsnews.com/news/5-myths-about-big-business-vs-big-government/
• https://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/16598-focus-monsanto-protection-act-proves-corporations-more-powerful-than-government
• http://www.globalissues.org/article/54/tax-avoidance-and-havens-undermining-democracy
• https://makewealthhistory.org/2014/02/03/the-corporations-bigger-than-nations/
• https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/02/control-nation-states-corporations-autonomy-neoliberalism
• http://www.confrontcorporatepower.org/how-corporations-influence-the-government/
• https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/15/these-25-companies-are-more-powerful-than-many-countries-multinational-corporate-wealth-power/

South Korea is also known as "Republic of Samsung":

• http://articles.latimes.com/2005/sep/25/business/fi-samsung25
• https://ipezone.blogspot.com/2008/04/dismantling-of-republic-of-samsung.html
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/in-s-korea-the-republic-of-samsung/2012/12/09/71215420-3de1-11e2-bca3-aadc9b7e29c5_story.html

I was unable to confirm your claim. And I found this July 2017 LA Times article: "Still, even with all that growth, foreign buyers only accounted for 5% of all previously owned home sales during the 12-month period, up from 4% in the prior survey."

Do you have any leads on your claim of "1 in 4 houses in California are owned by China" ?

Over 100 websites were tracked here during the final weeks of the 2016 U.S. election campaign, producing fake news that mostly favored Republican candidate for President Donald Trump.

They should try self-reflecting on why almost every major news organization and poll showed Clinton winning before the election. Maybe the problem isn't that a handful of websites which favored Trump somehow skewed the election. Maybe it's that the media's expectation for the election was skewed from reality.

The one poll which called the election correctly noticed that Trump supporters were less likely to admit to pollsters that they were going to vote for Trump. When they corrected for this, surprise surprise, their poll showed that Trump would win. That's what happens when you engage in campaigns to shame people with certain political beliefs - they disappear from public view, but still show up in elections (thanks to secret ballots).

Real change comes about from convincing people that your way is right. Not from shaming, ridiculing, and attacking those who disagree with you. Unfortunately, the media and to a lesser extent the Democratic party seems to be trying its hardest not to learn this lesson.

I think you have it about right there. An EV has somewhat higher greenhouse gas emissions than a hybrid vehicle if the electricity comes from coal. But it could reduce in-city pollutants. On the other hand, coal plants have serious problems with mercury, NOx and SOx (less so for new plant designs, but those are also more expensive), and modern cars are pretty low-emitting (although they apparently remain the main source of smog in LA).

> That's what they said when Mac stopped using floppy disks.

No, it's not what ANYONE said then. What they said then was something along the lines of "that's too soon". And they were CORRECT- plenty of iMac purchasers bought an external floppy drive to transfer data to and from, and used it for the life of that computer. No one seriously believed that the 1.44 Megabyte floppy, a reasonable and useful amount of storage in 1987, with hard drives under one hundred megabytes, was "the future" or "would never go away" ten years later, with hard drives in the gigabytes.

Here's the types of things they were saying:

Summary: "It's a publicity stunt to sell more expensive media solutions"
http://www.osnews.com/story/18...

Summary: "People who need floppies will buy USB floppies, networked machines won't care so much, and that's a big part of their target market"
http://articles.latimes.com/19...

Nobody ways saying "Great, but the floppy is so perfect that everyone will use it forever". But you can absolutely make that case for the headphone jack, which doesn't appear to be going away at all. It's just something you can't get on a new iPhone, which is a shame, but it's not new for Apple to ignore a standard for profit.

Whether it's provable or not is the question. Here's some more info on it: http://www.latimes.com/busines...

Because it makes it completely clear who is actually paying the taxes - the customers. A tax on revenue is otherwise known as a sales tax.

Nope. Sales taxes are taxes on exchanges, not revenue. They have no relation to each other, in fact. Thus leading to many other taxes such as service fees, use taxes, and other means of gathering revenue.

Companies don't pay corporate taxes. It gets passed on to customers as higher prices, to employees as lower wages, and to owners/stockholders as reduced dividends.

Companies don't make profits. It all comes from customers who they charge higher prices, even as they lower wages and pay out money to owners/stockholders while often failing in their legal duties. Equifax for example.

You see, companies are just paper entities - they don't really exist. They're just a line a bunch of people (owners/stockholders and employees) draw around themselves so they can declare "we are working together." All the productivity, all the innovation, all the decisions are made by those people, not "the company". The company is just an inanimate banner, a flag they hold over their operations.

Nope, it's an entity used for legal means and purposes to achieve a desired effect, including controlling the productivity, innovation and decisions of those people under its banner. It is a legal structure, and not related to a banner or flag. And in fact, it's usually the owners/stockholders who draw the lines around their employees to constrain them.

So you can't really tax a company. That's like impounding a car for assisting in a bank robbery, or sentencing a PC to prison for being used in a hack.

No, it really isn't. But legal action against objects does exist. Cars are impounded when believed to be used in a crime, and seized.

There's no reason to put a PC in prison, that's as pointless as hanging a dead man. But taking one to court? It could happen.

Losing those items just turns into an additional financial expense for the people who used to own them. Likewise, corporate taxes are just additional financial expenses for the people involved with a company - owners/stockholders, employees, and customers.

Yes, taxes are a financial expense for everybody, that's the point of their existence.

Once you realize this, you realize how stupid it is to have a million different taxes for a million different things.

Nope, there's no logical or rational connection.

It's a horribly inefficient way to collect tax revenue. The most efficient method would be to have a single tax which you assess against all people.

Define efficiency. Then compare and contrast it with fairness and effectiveness, as well as other desirable traits.

If you believe in progressive taxation, then the obvious tax to keep is the income tax. Pretty much all other taxes* can be eliminated with no effect on the economy or tax revenue, other than vastly reducing the amount of money wasted on collecting taxes and forcing people/businesses to keep track of a million different taxes.

Nope, they can't be eliminated, otherwise numerous streams of funding would cease to exist for various entities that do not collect income taxes, sales taxes, or have other revenue streams.

Your desired change would require massive efforts to revise and consider all that, and you can't just hand-wave it away.

* (Behavior-modifying taxes would still be useful since their primary goal is not to collect revenue for the government. e.g. Fuel taxes to encourage energy efficiency, property taxes to prevent speculators from holding on to fallow land which could otherwise be put to much better use.)

Because it makes it completely clear who is actually paying the taxes - the customers. A tax on revenue is otherwise known as a sales tax.

Companies don't pay corporate taxes. It gets passed on to customers as higher prices, to employees as lower wages, and to owners/stockholders as reduced dividends. You see, companies are just paper entities - they don't really exist. They're just a line a bunch of people (owners/stockholders and employees) draw around themselves so they can declare "we are working together." All the productivity, all the innovation, all the decisions are made by those people, not "the company". The company is just an inanimate banner, a flag they hold over their operations.

So you can't really tax a company. That's like impounding a car for assisting in a bank robbery, or sentencing a PC to prison for being used in a hack. Losing those items just turns into an additional financial expense for the people who used to own them. Likewise, corporate taxes are just additional financial expenses for the people involved with a company - owners/stockholders, employees, and customers.

Once you realize this, you realize how stupid it is to have a million different taxes for a million different things. It's a horribly inefficient way to collect tax revenue. The most efficient method would be to have a single tax which you assess against all people. If you believe in progressive taxation, then the obvious tax to keep is the income tax. Pretty much all other taxes* can be eliminated with no effect on the economy or tax revenue, other than vastly reducing the amount of money wasted on collecting taxes and forcing people/businesses to keep track of a million different taxes.

* (Behavior-modifying taxes would still be useful since their primary goal is not to collect revenue for the government. e.g. Fuel taxes to encourage energy efficiency, property taxes to prevent speculators from holding on to fallow land which could otherwise be put to much better use.)

This also avoids the hypocrisy of saying you believe in no taxation without representation, then simultaneously wanting to tax corporations while believing they should have no role in government.

They've been banned in California fwiw.

You really have no idea how much money is squandered annually on tests that are performed by rote and have little chance of revealing the underlying issues.

AC wrote:

His name was Barack Obama. Not Barry, you ass.

from the LA Times:

Obama was born in Honolulu. When he was 2, his father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., a Kenyan, and his Kansas-born mother, Ann Dunham, separated and later divorced. Dunham later married Lolo Soetoro, who was a Muslim. In 1967, the family moved to Jakarta, where Obama lived from ages 6 to 10. People there knew him as Barry Soetoro.

Jesus. First she ruts with a Kenyan man-ape THEN she runs off to Jakarta and marries a dune coon? Damn, she must have been REALLY PISSED at Daddy for something.

AC wrote:

His name was Barack Obama. Not Barry, you ass.

from the LA Times:

Obama was born in Honolulu. When he was 2, his father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., a Kenyan, and his Kansas-born mother, Ann Dunham, separated and later divorced. Dunham later married Lolo Soetoro, who was a Muslim. In 1967, the family moved to Jakarta, where Obama lived from ages 6 to 10. People there knew him as Barry Soetoro.

Are you familiar with the concept of "past tense". Or how about the concept of "you don't know me like that".

Its "Barack", to you people, not Barry.

AC wrote:

His name was Barack Obama. Not Barry, you ass.

from the LA Times:

Obama was born in Honolulu. When he was 2, his father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr., a Kenyan, and his Kansas-born mother, Ann Dunham, separated and later divorced. Dunham later married Lolo Soetoro, who was a Muslim. In 1967, the family moved to Jakarta, where Obama lived from ages 6 to 10. People there knew him as Barry Soetoro.

http://www.prnewswire.com/news...

“My cabinet has been working very hard on trying to get it done, but ultimately, I think somebody said the other day, I am president, I am not king. I can't do these things just by myself. We have a system of government that requires the Congress to work with the executive branch to make it happen. I'm committed to making it happen, but I've gotta have some partners to do it,” Obama said.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.co...

No, that actually happened sort of as described.

"Programming talent comes from intelligence...." So you're not a programmer then? Or just an untalented one? Women are systematically driven out of IT jobs. I have borne witness to this over the thirty years that I have been in IT. But rather than relate anecdotes, I direct you to your favorite Internet search engine. Even a casual search will return a multitude of results that show it is a widespread phenomenon:

https://www.theatlantic.com/c...
https://www.theguardian.com/c...
https://www.theguardian.com/c...
https://www.nytimes.com/c...
http://www.latimes.com/c...
And so on.
This is not the case in other high tech fields. I have a cousin that has bben a mathematician for ATT for many years. She has daughter that has been an acoustical engineer for the US Navy for more than ten years. My granddaughter just got her PhD in aeronautical engineering and is working for United Launch Alliance.
And so on.

Evidence of humans in the Americas go back further. A 14,000 year old village was found on Triquet Island, northwest of Victoria Canada. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/one-oldest-north-american-settlements-found-180962750/

Controversially, James M. Adovasio, Dennis Stanford and Joseph and Lynn McAvoy; and on the wilder side, Albert Goodyear and Tom Demere say there is evidence for humans in the Americas that goes back much further. Their evidence and theories are not generally accepted. Good reads though.

Also, the weather of LA was overturned. In the movie it always rains in California.

Maybe they were anticipating anthropogenic climate change? ;^)

But seriously, rain happens in LA. For example, 2005.

Rain doesn't happen very often, but you never know about future trends...

Is that why Antifa violently attacks and destroys property on UC Berkeley's campus?

I care that both are doing this

Except Republicans flatly do not do this:

• Republicans do not use the IRS to suppress opposition
• Republicans do not use political correctness to suppress free speech in the workplace nor outside
• Republicans neither threaten nor use violence to suppress free speech

and will call out both until it stops.

There is no both here. it is solely the Democrats, who do this sort of thing. For the Greater Good[TM], of course...

The case at hand is not about dissent or opposition, but about felony rioting — and conspiracy to commit same. If smashing cars is illegal, it is normal — indeed, imperative — for police to find and prosecute the law-breakers, and they are doing it by the book.

Wondering who Google would turn to find information.

That's sort of like asking "where do Hawai'ians go for vacation? (BTW: it's Las Vegas, aka "the 9th island.")

weylin

So should Coca-cola Company lose their trademark because a bunch of Georgians erroneously call all soft drinks "coke" ?

Yes, they should. That's how it's supposed to work, exactly.

Neither this world nor its laws exist for the comfort and privilege of the Coca-Cola Company.

Coca-Cola is granted certain rights of naming under certain conditions in order to enhance trade among humans. That purpose is not served by treating their artificial, temporary right to a name as though it were some moral or natural law. They lose it when it becomes generic, like band-aid or kleenex.

But nowadays corporations have redefined copyright violation as theft and illicit copying as piracy, and people act like it's true.

Learn from the Sriracha Guy.

Well, for starts not having some of the most restrictive zoning laws in the country, and having people fight back at any housing that is less than ideal would be a major aspect.

Governor Brown is trying to change that Gov. Jerry Brown's sledgehammer fix to California's housing crisis

Unfortunately, there are people who are advocates for the poor who don't get this and have gone out of their way to block housing that doesn't have affordable housing built into it, which just results in total fewer housing.

I think you've got the good guys and the bad guys in these fights confused. That's not surprising considering that the bad guys are generally wealthy, organized and smart. For decades now in California the NIMBYs have successfully used restrictive zoning, slow growth master plans, elimination or downsizing of projects, onerous environmental reviews and when all else failed lawsuits to limit new construction as much as possible. They did this because they didn't want newcomers spoiling the "character" of their neighborhoods (read: rich and white) or reducing their obscene property values which had been artificially inflated by these very same policies. I say that these people are smart because they have often enlisted the aid of useful idiots in the environmental and affordable housing movements to unwittingly do dirty work. For example, by blocking housing that didn't have enough affordable units so that nothing got built instead. This has the dual benefit of obfuscating the manipulations of the NIMBYs while appearing to be noble. How could anyone be against more affordable housing? We need to hold out for a better deal! Yeah right. The NIMBYs are playing Chess to your Checkers.

Hey asswipe, don't you need to go plant some flowers at Auschwitz, Srebrenica or along the Berlin Wall?

We don't need any Europeans pissing on the graves of American soldiers. We already have President Trump doing it.

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

http://www.latimes.com/politic...

Progressive labor activists took a very different view 100 years ago, when 15 states established America's first minimum wages. Labor reformers then believed that a legal minimum would hand a raise to deserving white Anglo-Saxon men, and a pink slip to their undeserving competitors: racially undesirable immigrants, the mentally and physically disabled, and women. The original progressives hailed minimum-wage-caused job losses among these groups as a positive benefit to the U.S. economy and to Anglo-Saxon racial integrity.

Update to today and you have a vehicle for reducing illegal immigration.

If everything were equal, we'd expect 12.5% of police shootings to be blacks.

Thing is, things are not equal. So no, we wouldn't expect 12.5% of police shoots to be of people that are black.
http://www.latimes.com/science...

We'd also expect, everything being equal, 12.5% of people shooting the police to be black. It's 39.7%:
https://ucr.fbi.gov/leoka/2014...

But hey, everything isn't equal. Look deeper and stop relying on base statistics.

That kind of discrepancy defies all reason

No. Exploring it may beyond your limited intelligence but please, do

let a little math stand in the way of preserving your bias

Maybe a little more than you're capable of, but at least fucking read the work being done by others.

Doesn't swing that way if you don't want to bake a cake, which is a standard offering of bakers. Why would hosts be exempt from being forced to host websites, given that hosting is their standard offering?

Indeed, website operators can't deny folks a wedding website just because they're homosexual and the same sex.

Not in the states that have passed a law regarding that, anyway. The few exceptions include religious ministers (in a religious capacity), and church sites (if restricted to church members and not generally available to the public for the purpose). These state laws remain legal, and authorized under such provisions as their constitutions allow. No First Amendment challenge has overturned them as far as I'm aware. Unlike say, Cantwell v. Connecticut or Sherbert v. Verner.

Doesn't swing that way if you don't want to bake a cake, which is a standard offering of bakers. Why would hosts be exempt from being forced to host websites, given that hosting is their standard offering?

Honestly, I think rich people just throw their money at it to keep it tied up in court for as long as they can. Malibu has the exact same problem - the beach is public, but the houses in front of it block access. The few public access gates are frequently locked (illegally) or vandalized by property owners to prevent the public from accessing the beach.

The basic idea is that you can't own the beach. You can own the land adjacent to it, but the beach (in California, up to the point where it's submerged during high tide) belongs to the public. Rich people have tried to get around this by buying up all the land in front of a beach to make it difficult or annoyingly distant for the public to access it. But the CCC responds by requiring a public accessway be installed if that happens.

This isn't limited to companies. It affects the entire country. The one poll which correctly predicted the 2016 election noticed that Trump supporters were less likely to reveal to pollsters that they were Trump supporters. And when they took steps to compensate for it in their poll weighting, lo and behold they predicted Trump would win the election.

The vitriol and violence in the media and by protesters created a culture of shaming Trump supporters, who promptly went turtle to protect themselves. Consequently they ended up undercounted in all the polls, but showed up in the election.

We need to take a lesson from science. When the theory of continental drift was first proposed, geologists initially scoffed at it and dismissed its proponents. But they never ridiculed them, never excluded them from publishing papers. And as more evidence was gathered, the community gradually came around to accept it as correct. Democracy gets it strength from the diversity of viewpoints within its population. This allows us to think up, consider, and try all sorts of different ideas which would never even be suggested in other forms of government. "Shaming" people with unpopular views is detrimental to a functional democracy.

My California city has more than 3,000 homeless people.

Homelessness is caused by government.

I'm coming to the realization that the Democrats are actually corrupt(*).

I was reading about the DOJ slush fund [breitbart.com](**) and it struck me just how deep and insidious the corruption has been in this country.

Why not Teapot Dome, Credit Mobiler, Iran-Contra, Enron, and Bernie Madoff?

This is paired with the IRS selecting conservative charities for intense scrutiny

And liberal ones. Who both needed to file proper reports to meet their non-profit status.

Even Congress had to admit it was all proper in the end.

11 California counties have more registered voters than adults

You can't blame California for Steve Mnuchin, Tiffany Trump, Jared Kushner, and Steven Bannon, who nonetheless, remind us, it's not a crime. Despite false claims otherwise.

And let us not forget after the election, leftists pleaded with the EC delegates to be faithless,

I pleased with the EC delegates to quit myself, it might be the only thing that gets us past that broken system.

then pleaded with the supreme court to invalidate the results,

No, the Supreme Court acted in 2000, unlawfully overriding state courts for their own partisan gain.

then pleaded with the U.S. military to step in and prevent the inauguration (wtf?),

Like those massive crowds of people that Trump (falsely) claimed were there, huh?

leaked secret and sensitive information - not to expose crimes, but for political slander,

Oh wait, you mean when they leaked Trump's fake pictures of Time Magazine covers, right?

and rioted for weeks

No, that was Chicago celebrating winning the World Series.

For example, Hillary made no statements condemning the riots,

Also she didn't condemn the sugar plum fairy.

and most of the left blamed the rioting on Trump.

Trump called for it himself.

blocking reasonable voter registration,

No, that was the GOP.

and suppressing the military vote.

sure man

There's a sub-conversation on the net that holds that the Democratic party *won't survive* once all the corruption has been rooted out.

Sure man, and what else are they discussing? Why they can't find the dead bodies in the Pizza Parlor?

The Democratic ideals are so far from what people want that they require all the extra boost they get from a tilted playing field.

Is that why they keep getting more voters?

I'm not sure I believe that bit about the Democratic party not surviving, but after reading about the DOJ thing, and knowing the level of effort we're putting into the Russia probe while ignoring some seemingly obvious evidence [dailysignal.com] on the Democratic side, it makes me wonder...

Actually, the Republicans in Congress are still busy chasing their tails over Hillary.

I gues

http://www.latimes.com/busines...

http://dailysignal.com/2016/11...

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/...

Case closed.

Actually, the Johnson & Johnson claims keep getting over-turned on appeal. There have been plenty of claims, but they don't end up paying them out because the science doesn't support talc causing ovarian cancer. But yes, another jury of members of the public has found in favour of a claimant. Doubtless, it'll again be overturned on appeal. There's lots to read about this, but it is odd that the only 'scientific' studies that find there is a statistically significant link between un-contaminated talc powder and cancer, are those being performed by claimants, and nobody else can replicate their results. http://www.latimes.com/busines...

As for glyphosate, they ARE very, very clear about it. It's the most widely used herbicide in the world. It has been tested over and over and over again. There's no *evidence* it causes cancer. That's it. (Evidence, that is, which is able to be replicated. Anybody can make a claim in a study, but there's no peer-reviewed, replicated studies, which find any link between glyphosate and any form of cancer).

And be a test subject? Sure - I'll happily eat any and all GMOs. I go out of my way to avoid any food labelled 'organic' between 1) I don't support fear-mongering, and 2) I generally know from a most-used range of 6 products, which pesticides and herbicides are being used on non-organic crops. Conversely, I *don't* know which of over 170 organic-approved pesticides/herbicides are being used on organic crops, Most of these are more toxic than glyphosate, and unlike glyphosate, most have not been through 40 years of studies to prove their safety.

What this also represents is a near perfect case study as to why most Republicans are sheer nonsense when it comes to the economic of taxation. They will try to convince you that if rich people and rich corporations accumulate enough cash they will start to "create jobs." So we need tax cuts or else nobody will create jobs.

You're trying to understand this from the perspective of an employee, not a business owner. Rich people and rich corporations don't "create jobs" in some cause and effect manner. It's a self-sustaining cycle (as long as the business model works and growth continues). They become rich(er) as a result of the jobs they've created, and becoming richer allows them to create more jobs, which in turn allows them to become richer yet.

To an employed individual, reduced taxes equals more take-home pay (more "profit"). So it's easy to understand your misconception. But to a business owner, the best way to increase your take-home pay (profit) is not by taking home the money saved due to a tax cut. It's from reinvesting that saved money into the business so your business can grow. That reinvestment is what creates more jobs (which in turn creates more profit, meaning more take-home pay). The only rich people who want a tax cut for the sake of a tax cut are people who've inherited their wealth and don't know how to run a business. Any successful business owner would rather take the money from a tax cut and reinvest it in the business (turning it into more money and also incidentally creating more jobs), rather than keeping it for themselves and using it on hookers and blow.

That's why all the arguments that rich people want to cut taxes so they can keep more for themselves are wrong. That's the last thing any rich person who runs a successful business would want to do with extra money from a tax cut. They would rather reinvest it in their business (creating more jobs) and grow it into even more money.

Since you want to make it political, the key point Democrats seem to miss is that it doesn't matter where from the economy you extract taxes. Whether you tax income, sales, business transactions (VAT), or business profits, the end result is the same - money transferred away from people's control to the government's control. Corporations are paper entities - basically a line drawn around a group of people (employees, owners) acting as one entity. The corporation by itself doesn't produce anything - the people it represents do. As such, a tax on a corporation is a tax on those people (and their customers). The government is not gaining any extra revenue by taxing corporations. The corporation, being a paper entity, just passes those taxes on to employees (lower wages), owners (lower dividends), and customers (higher prices).

This is why most taxes and tax cuts don't work like their proponents think it will. Aside from localized effects (a tax on almonds but not pistachios will result in almond sales falling relative to pistachios), taxes don't really affect the economy as a whole (increase in sales of other foods will balance out the decrease in almond sales). Only the overall tax rate affects the economy. Each person generates a certain amount of productivity, and the economy as a whole is the sum total of those persons' productivity. The overall tax rate is the percentage of that productivity which is shifted to the government's control.

Once you realize this, you realize it's insanely stupid to tax every little thing like our government currently does. Taxes should be consolidated into just one or two major things to make them easy to collect (if you believe in progressive taxation, the obvious choice is income tax), plus a few behavior modification taxes (e.g. property taxes to encourage people to find a profitable use for land or sell to someone who will, rather than use it unproductively). Elim

Iger said the importance of Pixar to Disney's future had become clear to him during opening ceremonies for Hong Kong Disneyland in September 2005, just a month before he became chief executive. He noticed the many characters from Pixar films featured in the kickoff parade. But there was nothing from Disney's recent animated movies, whose latest characters weren't popular.

That and Disney animation films were in a rut producing less and less at the box office. These are just facts man. Both companies benefited from the deal. To pretend Disney didn't is pure denial.

I could accept that you were talking about Australia

"Brownout" is low voltage or low current and is a failure mode unexpected in developed countries (because it tends to break stuff) and is not what happened in South Australia.

Yet another problem that shows how you could have spoken better. But you said it, not me. I wasn't going to be unnecessarily pedantic, as we're hardly discussing things on the particulars of the supply, but rather concerned with the origination of the issues.

It's a sign of incredibly poorly managed electricity infrastructure. Good supply or nothing is what is supposed to happen. Also comparing two events to the hundreds that happened during the Enron debacle alone is a bit much.

Actually, what happened in South Australia and what happened in California are quite comparable. A lot of the blame-game, including a deliberately misleading attack on "environmentalists" but a real causation that was significantly different than widely understood.

You can also find that happening in Alberta in Canada regarding its grid, and I believe, one of the South American countries, or maybe Central America.

Over 11 billion dollars

On payroll for prison workers? They could move a lot of goalposts on that money. I really do not appreciate being seen as so stupid and what's with the dishonesty?

If you don't want to be seen with disdain (though I would characterize you as misinformed and ignorant, rather than stupid or dishonest. But what is with your selective quoting? Here, quote the whole line:

You see, even if somebody articulated their own understanding in a flawed way, that doesn't actually mean that the expenses imposed by their actual situation with incarceration weren't real. There's plenty of discussion on the particulars. Over 11 billion dollars? That is quite a chunk of their budget.

I even provided sources. I'm talking about their corrections budget as a whole being a significant concern. But if you want, yes, we could focus on payrollA as the state does make the information available. As you can see, the CDCR spends a bit under half their budget directly on payroll, or over 4 billion dollars. That's certainly a large enough sum to be a matter of concern. And here's a funny editorial.

Mysteriously, however, it seems you still want to focus on your pointless complaint over the unnamed, uncited persons, you purport made some statements of some character that you deplore. Unfortunately, not having presented anything except your own judgement, it is impossible for anybody else to scrutinize them. At worst, you may have heard from somebody that spoke poorly, but a reasoned analysis certainly does establish that the business of corrections is still a matter of significant concern.

You apparently believe that you can simply declare something, and that other people will simply nod their heads in agreement at the obvious wisdom you are espousing. But to the contrary, your demonstrated opprobrium, especially towards the legislators of California (a not uncommon practice, as I have already noted), leads me to instead consider your statements more carefully and view them with significant disdain as you repetitively demonstrate a lack of intelligence and integrity.

Australia has had issues

An amoral opportunistic academic economist...

Reasons aside, your statement which I took issue with was, and I quote:

(and the only developed nation with "brownouts", what fun!

While your statement could be taken as mentioning them, it is not especially clear. I could accept that you were talking about Australia, but I'll point out that you could have spoken better.

Well, that, and the other things I mentioned about the situation with Enron. That was a demonstration of the old adage about a lie getting around the world before the truth gets its pants on. And there's a lot of rumbling over in Germany that seems the same.

You mist have misheard the situation

No there actually were elected idiots blaming payroll for a small number of employees for all of California's financial incompetence.

Yes, that was how you already indicated that you had misheard the situation. Repeating that false complaint doesn't mean much to me. I already know what you said, and I said you were mistaken in your apprehension of the situation, that I believe you must have misheard the situation. Even if I credit you with actually hearing such a statement from somebody, it doesn't mean as much as you may think, as that simply means you misheard from them. You should have sought out more information instead.

You see, even if somebody articulated their own understanding in a flawed way, that doesn't actually mean that the expenses imposed by their actual situation with incarceration weren't real. There's plenty of discussion on the particulars. Over 11 billion dollars? That is quite a chunk of their budget.

Sorry, but the most your complaint can do, is provide a person who speaks poorly. The most I can do, is say, ok, then perhaps there's a person who speaks poorly. They should speak (and perhaps listen) more carefully in the future. Like yourself above.

That California does have to address the issues with its corrections institutions, remains a true problem. You just seem inclined to let yourself get caught up in a distraction. It's one thing to note it, for correctional purposes(pun intended) but you can't let it overcome your awareness of the actual problem.

I used to be one of those, but instead of that extra work being done it was cut back and I was laid off along with a lot of others

Yes, it's quite lamentable, isn't it? And not limited to the grid, for that matter.

In fact, I was warning about the spiraling costs of incarceration back in the heyday of the 1990s. And no less than three local governments are still arguing over their own issues with incarceration, no relation to California at all.

Except you know, the tendency of local officials to sputter something about the West Coast now and then, while ignoring their own messes.

BTW, since you mentioned talking with veterans, you should ask them if securing firearms is a good idea, if accidental discharges are a bad thing, and if they have knowledge of people killed because of a resistance to proper safety.

The fact is, there are issues with firearms, and thus people are seeking solutions to the problem. People are getting killed already. Doing nothing is the stupid idea.

Apparently ~300 million "users".

Conservatives and religious people donate more money (a higher percentage of their income/assets, not just in terms of raw dollars) to charities and non-profits than liberals and atheists.

I don't know whether or not they feel smug when doing so.

A lot of religious donations aren't used for charity, but they are still tax deductible and are included as "charitable donations". Those donations build churches, pay pastors, gild statues, evangelize their church, and plenty of other things that have nothing to do with charity. Sure, there are many churches that do plenty of charitable work but there are also many that do none and those donations are just as tax deductible.

That all may be beside the point, since this article cites an MIT study that found that political affiliation didn't have a relationship with willingness to give, although conservatives gave more dollars in total (because they are richer) both sides give at about the same rate. Interestingly the article also states that "only 10% to 25% of church donations end up being spent on social welfare purposes" which backs up my point above, with religious donations excluded conservatives might give at a lower rate than liberals.

You guys realize that wind and solar farms literally kill thousands of birds every year, right?

http://www.latimes.com/local/c...

6,000 birds a year at the Mojave Desert solar farm. You know... in the desert... where there are much less birds because.... it's a desert.

I'm all for solar and wind. But let's stop pretending they don't have any drawbacks at all. Like the shear amount of rare earth minerals that have to be farmed by workers making $1.00/wk and dying from lung cancer.

This is the perfect quote:

>The truth is, all energy sources impact the natural environment in some way, and life is full of necessary trade-offs

http://instituteforenergyresea...

Environmentalism doesn't need to be tribalism. The best solutions can still have flaws and be the best option available.

Total 2016 vehicle sales in U.S.17.55 million. Tesla sales in U.S. 45,000 units. What, exactly, is a "small niche" to you?

Sources: http://www.latimes.com/busines... and http://insideevs.com/tesla-mot...

I sympathize with your viewpoint a lot. At the same time, if everyone Blue and Red States decide to not do anything involving money going to the other we'll be in pretty bad shape. On the other hand, it looks almost like the Republicans are trying to make a tax system that disproportionately hits Blue States http://www.latimes.com/opinion/readersreact/la-ol-le-republican-tax-deductions-plan-20170619-story.html so maybe we're already at that point. Here's my suggestion: if you would have donated to this but won't because of the state, instead donate the same amount to a solar charity. The Solar Electric Light Fund http://self.org/ and Everybody Solar http://www.everybodysolar.org/ are both good options.

Well, we don't know if there's evidence of rampant voter fraud.

We know there isn't evidence of rampant voter fraud. If there was evidence, you'd be able to produce it. Instead, states like North Carolina find...almost no voter fraud.

But hey, you may never know that Trump didn't win the Popular vote either, which makes you a double-sore loser.

Mainly democrat states are blocking the government from trying to determine how much fraud there actually is.

Nope. It's actually mainly Republicans like Kris Kobach miseleading the courts.

But let's go with the extrapolated report from earlier in the year. Which figures that somewhere between 4m and 6m people voted illegally. That includes everything from voting twice, to non-citizens.

Hmm, you want to cite a bogus report with no basis in reality? Hurts your own credibility, as bad as believing a James O'Keefe video.

Of course, if you do insist it's genuine that the elections are so compromised, then absolutely no elected official is legitimate, and they must all be removed, and their official acts rescinded.

The real reason behind voter ID laws is for Republicans to make it harder for people who tend to vote Democratic to vote at all.

So let's run with that. The reason democrats are for amnesty of illegals, is to make sure they always win by subverting democracy.

Sure man, we've been hearing that since the Naturalization Act of 1798.

You keep trying, but for some reason, people ain't buying.

Almost as bad as the whole Trumpcare business.