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I said, tons of evidence of Russia attempting to alter the election, and attempting to coordinate with Trump's team

Zero evidence. Both parties are virulently anti-russian and have been for over a century. Even the self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders has been onboard Russiagate from the beginning. It's as stupid as stupid as accusing a gay person of interferring in an election between a homophobic Catholic and a homophobic Baptist. Your preferred choice when dealing with two candidates that hate your guts is going to be "none of the above".

Like Birthers, Lunars, Chem Trailers and other whakjob conspiracy theorists, all you have is a Gish Gallop. That's where you fire off a rapid series of talking points while pretending that volume == substance. But spent a moment scrutinizing any of the talking points and they invariably turn out to be bullshit. Twitter troll farm? Bullshit. Russian NRA spy? Bullshit. Russia hacked the DNC emails? Bullshit.

Bullshit.
Bullshit.
Bullshit.
And more Bullshit. Rinse, wash and repeat.

Conflating this with McCarthyism is disgusting, and you know it.

Lulz. Russians, Russians, everywhere! Russians in your utility grids, Russians in your voting machines, Russians in Black Lives Matter! Russians controlling the White House with a manchurian candidate! So many Russians we have to accept mass government-directed corporate censorship of the internet! But yeah, this is nothing like McCarthyism. Oregon has lots of rivers, but have you tried kayaking down De Nile?

Huh? The Special Investigation was launched a long time ago due to an undeniable act of obstruction of justice.

Huh? You can only have obstruction of justice after the fact. Not before. It's like if your local police department got a warrant out on you for resisting arrest - when there's no warrant out and no one has tried to arrest you. Ever.

Breach of the emoluments clause is going to require the third branch of government to do something about.

Uh, no. Removing a president from office is purely up to the legislative branch. It's telling, though, that you poo-pooh an actual violation of the Constitution from Trump, instead of your stupid McCarthyite conspiracy theories.

You're well aware that Mitt was talking about militarily.

You're well aware that's laughable. Democrats have been calling the hack of the DNC emails (actually leaks) a 'digital Pearl Harbor' from Russia for years now. All these supposed attacks on American democracy and that of its allies, but none if it is military? However you want to rationalize the fact you're in the same boat as Mitt Romney. And a bunch of Lunars, Chem Trailers and Birthers.

See Turns Out Algorithms Are Racist. And don't forget that time Twitter taught Microsoft’s AI chatbot to be a racist asshole in less than a day. If we can do the opposite and make sure our algorithms aren't racist unintentionally and that our machine learning assistants don't become racist, you'll have won half the battle of making them ethical. This is going to be a hard problem to solve. It's not enough for programmers to be ethical they need to have outside observers helping them, especially people not like them.

What I'm saying is that 45 could at least bring the tragedy up, tell the people of Paradise that their country will do what they can to help... in times of devastation it is comforting to know that a leader is taking time to at least ACKNOWLEDGE what's going on. He is not, and has not.

Well, maybe that's fair. Obama did: https://www.chicagotribune.com...

Donald, on the other hand, seems to be more interested in cancelling regulations: https://observer.com/2017/10/t...
He is tweeting, though! He says environmental laws are the problem! https://newrepublic.com/articl... But environmental laws are not the problem https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/07...
He says that water is the problem! https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/07... Although turns out water is not the problem: https://abcnews.go.com/Politic...

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic, or if you're really so stupid as to think Sheldrake is anything more than a psuedo science conman.

https://newrepublic.com/articl...

He's as much of a conman as those dipshits who spout the electric universe bullshit... which i'm sure we'll be seeing on this thread in no time.

US Elite will work with China at all costs, moral costs. https://newrepublic.com/articl...

An evangelical apologist? Go figure...

https://newrepublic.com/minute...
https://www.rollingstone.com/p...
https://www.al.com/living/inde...

And next on evangelical docket? Getting rid of Sessions to protect Trump.

https://www.politico.com/story...

He's not really cool with it:

https://newrepublic.com/minute...

Even better would be if people learned to think for themselves

That sounds nice but politicians are trying to avoid that.

...a period is a sign of anger.

The problem with science in the US is that it has been overrun by MBAs and liberal self-centered asswipes that think they should get money just because they deserve it.

MBA's may be a problem, but you're just shaking your personal marotte when complaining about liberals. Problems for science in the US are mostly on the other side of the aisle. Some of the most powerful Republican politicians can come up with absolute howlers and go on to create legislation related to areas they're so blatantly ignorant about, but the party and their voters have no problem with that. The Republican president is proudly scientifically illiterate, but can and does name leaders of science (or related) agencies - and again, neither the party nor the voters feel there is a problem. The rank and file Republicans are themselves against science funding, while the Democrats are in majority in favor of increased science spending.

So, you're wrong. But then, since you're apparently a Republican, it was probably never about being right, was it?

That's not my experience at all. I've been on the pro GMO side of this ever since I heard it was a thing, primarily out of distrust of food alarmists (there's enough bullshit about food to turn all of California, where these myths are the most prevalent, dark brown. My biggest peeve of the moment is that people actually think MSG is bad, but the opposite is actually true.)

The the worst offenders have all been Democrats. Their reasons are usually because they think GMO harms the environment (the opposite is true) they think it causes cancer, (false) they're on a crusade to make everybody eat organic (try finding an organic purist that isn't a Democrat. Vegans almost universally fall in this category as well, and try finding a vegan that isn't a Democrat.) Another reason it's usually Democrats is because of their very anti corporate stance, and/or they just hate Monsanto, not even bothering to consider that the technology itself is separate from the companies that employ it. The bill to ban GMO labeling was mostly supported by Republicans and mostly opposed by Democrats. Although Obama did sign the bill, in spite of his base labeling him as a coward for "caving to Republicans", and indeed many well known left leaning people here on slashdot were whining about their "right to know" about food's very immaterial GMO status every time that I told them the only purpose is to stigmatize it (i.e. labeling Jews.) Ironically, these guys want to know that more than they want information about material facts that manufacturers aren't required to put on labels, like the arsenic content of apple sauce.

But, if that doesn't satisfy you, then this should help:

https://www.isidewith.com/poli...
https://newrepublic.com/articl...
http://www.weeklystandard.com/...
https://reason.com/blog/2016/0...

Oh, and if you support Bernie for 2020:

https://geneticliteracyproject...
https://www.politico.com/story...

It's all but guaranteed that if Bernie gets elected, and Democrats have a supermajority in Congress, (the later if which could likely happen, given the shit coming out of Republicans lately, especially with net neutrality) you can bet your ass that GMO would end up banned, which would be a huge setback for the United States.

The Federalist is a white supremacist website.

Go back to Stormfront, boy.

"Fan fiction"? No, "fiction" implies that he made it up. True, he has form for that, but in this case it's probably more like an extended gossip column than outright fabrication.

Mind you, that in itself is valuable. It may not portray Trump accurately, but it probably portrays what people close to Trump think about Trump accurately.

The point of a computerized system is scale. I.e., the bot would be monitoring your displayed emotion every second of the day.

Crazy? When you're distinguishing your commodity through affective labor (a Pret a Manger), it almost seems inevitable.

https://newrepublic.com/articl...

Alford's story is entirely believable. She was an attractive, naive recent graduate of Miss Porter's School. Miss Porter's was also the alma mater of Jacqueline Kennedy and of a slightly older White House secretary named "Fiddle" with whom Kennedy was also having an affair, or so the First Lady believed--there was also a purported dalliance with Fiddle's close friend "Faddle," a secretary in the press office--and it isn't lost on Alford that this descendant of Boston's lace-curtain Irish had a thing for Social Register girls. Her fourth day on the job she was invited upstairs to the private residence. Kennedy led Mimi into his wife's bedroom (the First Lady was away), unbuttoned her blouse, touched her breast, pulled down her underwear, dropped his pants, climbed on top of her, and fucked her. When she told him she was a virgin he became a bit more compassionate, but neither in that sexual encounter nor in any other did he ever kiss her on the lips.

This part of Alford's story doesn't really add anything to what we already know about Kennedy. Nor does it really change my opinion of the 35th president. But this part does:

Dave Powers was sitting poolside while the President and I swam lazy circles around each other, splashing playfully. Dave had removed his jacket and loosened his tie in the warm air of the pool, but he was otherwise fully clothed. He was sitting on a towel, with his pants leg rolled up, and his bare feet dangling in the water.

The President swam over and whispered in my ear. "Mr. Powers looks a little tense," he said. "Would you take care of it?"

It was a dare, but I knew exactly what he meant. This was a challenge to give Dave Powers oral sex. I don't think the President thought I'd do it, but I'm ashamed to say that I did. It was a pathetic, sordid, scene, and is very hard for me to think about today. Dave was jolly and obedient as I stood in the shallow end of the pool and performed my duties. The President silently watched.

Afterwards, Alford says she was "deeply embarrassed," and as she climbed out of the pool she "could hear Dave speak in as stern a tone as I ever heard him use with his boss. 'You shouldn't have made her do that,' Dave said. 'I know, I know,' I heard the President say. Later, a chastened President Kennedy apologized to us both." Alford believes that Kennedy showed "his darker side ... when we were among men he knew. That's when he felt a need to display his power over me." Kennedy didn't just have a thing for Social Register girls; he had a thing for humiliating Social Register girls. He also had a thing for humiliating his fellow Irishman, Dave Powers.

It was cloudy during the eclipse - DAMN YOU TRUMP!

Those in the know use satellite imagery to avoid clouds. And Trumps budget cuts $500 million (about 20 percent) from NOAA's satellite division. So, while Trump isn't to blame for cloudy conditions during this eclipse, he might be to blame for cloudiness during the next eclipse...

Trump’s budget cuts could mess up your next solar eclipse viewing

https://newrepublic.com/articl...

Look who you are defending. You seriously think those guys give a fuck about anybody else's rights? Do you see any reason to doubt their violent intentions? Because I do not. This is not a bad taste outfit at a fancy dress party. This is a bunch of rampaging white supremacists on a warpath.

https://newrepublic.com/articl...

Your tribalism is showing. And it's really messing with your perception.

No, my tribalism isn't showing. This has been a purely left-wing thing, do you think groups like antifa and BAMN are right-wing? There are more members in those two groups in the US and Canada, then there actual KKK members. And the number of self-proclaimed KKK members is under 5000, some official crime stats put it under 2500. There are more BAMN members violently active in the state of California.

You had to go that far to find an example (and a made-up one at that)? Should tell you something about the strength of your case.

Yes, very made up so made up in fact that the party admit it happened. Just like Salon's so many pro-pedophile articles. Or the NYT which has several as well. Then there's groups like PIE(UK) which were heavily involved in politics in the 1980's trying to legalize it, including with the British Labour Party. And the famous one in north america of course is NAMBLA, and several of their splinter groups. One was very big in the Toronto politics scene and tried to legislate gay bath houses for underage boys and men.

Sound advice. You should try it.

Looks like I already, maybe you should simply stop reading CNN and WAPO.

Clinton was ahead by double digits and it looked impossible for Trump to win, a few weeks before the vote. Then those emails leaked out, and then the FBI started another investigation a week before the vote... That's when Trump made up the huge gap.

Uh huh. What about all the other manipulation going the other direction - Comey letting Hillary off the hook for her unauthorized, unsecured email server & destruction of evidence that would have given a non-connected civil servant a few hundred years to serve in prison. The synchronized media freakouts over the stupid crap coming out of Trump's mouth while ignoring equivalent levels of verbal diarrhea from Clinton. The neat timing of the releases on year's old dirty laundry from Trump whenever Hillary stepped in it - like the 'pussy grabbing' tape. Without talking about Hillary's past dirty laundry, like when she spent months lying about being shot at by snipers in Bosnia.

And that's without even talking about the Democratic primary, and the collusion between Hillary's campaign and the DNC to coronate her.

I wouldn't know as I don't watch any cable news. I prefer to get my news in written form - where there is a lot more space and it allows for a great deal more nuance - and I try to limit my consumption to publications that abide by old-fashioned journalistic ethics standards which preclude making claims without verification and a name big enough that there is a reasonable chance they'll get sued if they deliberately make stuff up.
Even then I know that they will still, sometimes, make embarrassing mistakes - but at least I can be somewhat confident those mistakes won't be deliberate attempts at deception.

>It's hard to find solid analysis, instead it's all hysterical
In the case of this particular bill - I've read several dozen analysis and trust me - the hysteria is entirely warranted. More critically - you can't blame the media for the fact that analysis was slow-coming - that was directly caused by the republicans rushing the bill through congress (they did not even let the CBO have time to analise it) and flat out lying about what is in the bill - let alone it's likely consequences.
It's hard to do analysis when a bill is being rushed through congress faster than even the congressmen can read it and those pushing it are flagrantly and openly lying about what is in it. After-the-fact analysis is the only option left. https://newrepublic.com/articl...
Then again last week I was reading a Trump supporter defending the bill and basically next to every tax cut in it he concluded 'likely to increase insurance participation' - because apparently he sincerely believes that when rich people pay less taxes poor people can afford insurance more easily. I never did quite figure out how he came to the conclusion that regressive tax cuts gives money to POOR people, but he was quite adamant that he believes it.

In the end though my personal opinion is that those who dismiss the entire thing are wrong. Those who say "all the politicians are bought and sold", who speak of "republicrats" - they are wrong. Sure NEARLY all politicians are bought and sold - but the few who aren't (Warren, Sanders et all) - they're all on the same side. The last one the republicans had was Ron Paul and he's long gone. But more importantly - even the rest are not bought and sold by the SAME PEOPLE.
So there is still value in voting right now - because you can vote for the ones who are bought by the rich people whose interests most closely align with your own.
That's far from getting to vote for what YOU believe in - but it's not as bad as those people make out either, and it doesn't make voting completely useless.

More critically - the bad laws that allow this full scale plutocratic selling of laws to exist, can only be fixed by the government - and the only way to force them to do that is at the ballot box. And, once again, the few there who will drive finance reform laws are all in the same party, what voters can do in 2018 -is to give them a MUCH BIGGER TEAM. There are maybe 5 of them now, we need enough to pass a bill that every other member of both houses will hate.

Your day must have been a good while back.

Consistently, one of the most popular courses at Harvard, CS50 is known for an unconventional atmosphere,

Should be:

Consistently, one of the most popular courses at Harvard, CS50, is known for an unconventional atmosphere,

The comma after "consistently" is less obvious.

Steven Pinker — 1994

It is simply not true that an English adverb must indicate the manner in which the actor performs the action.

Adverbs come in two kinds: "verb phrase" adverbs such as "carefully," which do refer to the actor, and "sentence" adverbs such as "frankly," which indicate the attitude of the speaker toward the content of the sentence.

Other examples of sentence adverbs are "accordingly," "basically," "confidentially," "happily," "mercifully," "roughly," "supposedly" and "understandably." Many (such as "happily") come from verb phrase adverbs, and they are virtually never ambiguous in context.

The use of "hopefully" as a sentence adverb, which has been around for at least sixty years, is a perfectly sensible example.

Perhaps the author of this story item regards it as consistent that a popular course among Harvard undergraduates is known for having an unconventional atmosphere.

No?

Okay, I admit defeat.

That's because Republicans abused the Amendment process.

Democracy does not work..

This is because the vast majority of them are patently false

Like...?

How about this one: the NSA is listening to everything that we do and selectively ignoring it. Prior to Snowden, this was absolutely a conspiracy theory and considered "patently false" (it's too big of a problem everyone with the technical know-how assumed). Now we know it's true. Not only do we know it's true, but we know that it has gotten worse since being revealed.

Or this one: the above is in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment, yet we cannot even sue to stop it because we don't have standing court. At the same time, our beloved secret courts (FISA Court) upheld mass collection of our communications as legal even without any reason to do it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Court#Secret_law

Trump is literally being sued for inciting violence at his rallies, where he encouraged supporters to 'deck' and 'get him outta here'.

And this is fake news. You're literally making up a quote that Trump told supporters to 'deck' a person. The closest he came to saying something like that was here:

After receiving a notice from his security that someone might be planning to throw tomatoes at him (again), Trump told his supporters to “knock the crap out of them I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees.” The crowd vociferously cheered him on.

However, if you watch the video: it's clearly a joke. And here in lies the problem with liberals: a joke is a statement of fact when it's not a Democrat saying it. I'm sure CNN and MSNBC ran with what you said though, so I suppose I can only fault you so much for doing absolutely no research while slamming those you disagree with...

Kind of like how CNN is running stories about Trump golfing more than Obama, because he goes to Trump-owned golf resorts. Being at a golf resort that it itself a much larger resort is not the same thing as golfing, which apparently CNN is unable to decipher (including the use of the phrase "many times" rather than concrete numbers). Don't take this the wrong way: Trump has golfed since being elected, but not as many times as the story suggests. But he has also golfed with other politicians (both foreign and domestic), which is a common business tactic for that generation. That's different from solely golfing with celebrities or friends, which Trump is hypocritically guilty of doing, but seemingly not as a dominant majority yet.

Ok, if it is a known practice, cite it.

Originalism. It's not hard to find.

Find me some supreme court decisions that disregarded amendments in favor of what the Founders thought. Or appeals court decisions. Or circuit court. Or traffic court.

Oh, you want to see it in an American legal context? Most especially you'll want to look at the criticism of the Dred Scott decision for the most infamous example.

More recently, well, there other sources of information as to the patterns and practices of your average self-proclaimed originalists.

It's a bankrupt and destitute moral philosophy.

https://newrepublic.com/articl...

Don't just read the headline, read the article - with all those cited examples and proof. The same behaviour that was smiled at last saturday is "rioting" when black lives matter protesters (for example) did them.

When confronted with the facts, Obama didn't say, "Hey, you have your facts and we have our own alternative facts." Instead he conceded that Benghazi "wasn't just a mob action."

It's important to acknowledge that there is such a thing as the truth. We all share the same reality.

It has been suggested that Donald Trump is not a liar. "He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all."

This is a race to the bottom where stopping it is in the interest of everyone involved.

Imagine if you will, the coming brain drain. As there are less and less opportunies for the best and brightest, many will leave. Considering the present hatred towards science, there will be a short time of wild applause for the loss.

http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/con... is very interesting, as it speaks to a coming brain drain, as foreign born students in the US opt out of staying here and go back to their own countries to work their careers. Interesting in that these are not regular Americans! So where are the smart Americans going?

Here: http://www.npr.org/2012/02/05/... The finance sector.

Well, that's kinda nice now isn't it? Smart kid. Goes and gets get holed up in a cubicle at Goldman Sachs, and creates and innovates. ..... nothing.

I forsee the day where a bright young US student interested in science or technology relocates to China or India, while the US tries to make money selling our hats to each other. Meanwhile an increasingly poor and uneducated public cheers the loss of the liberal egghead with his bible and common sense defying ideas. https://newrepublic.com/articl... Yeah, I know - it's New Republic. Bigthink has an article as well http://bigthink.com/dr-kakus-u... . Its a little older but still good food for thought.

"Well, I assume you don't trust Trump to tell the truth - since it must be obvious even to you that he lies more or less constantly. "

Trump is not a liar, though. He's a something else entirely. Something worse. He just doesn't care whether what he's saying is true or false. He makes it up as he goes along. He doesn't care how it bears on reality or law as long as people listen and go along with it.

Loyalty is the one thing that counts, though I think you're right that there's also the plan to cut taxes for the rich as much as possible and claim (erroneously, based on decades of past experiment) it will benefit people at the other end of the system when it someday, real soon now, manages to trickle down to them.

That is not, and I quote, "she asked someone at the IMF in the EU about if Greece was getting a bailout, so her son in law could make a big bet on it happening". Nor is that anything other than a hasty "PIs ask your econ team to review." written by Hillary. That's the chair of the commodities trading commission, sending information to the Secretary of State, on a topic that it was her job to deal with, and her forwarding it to her team. Yes, the secretary of state's job is to stay on top of the most major international political issues of the time, for crying out loud - how can you possibly think otherwise? Or did you think that Greece was not one of the most (actually, *the* most) pressing international political issues of the time? She was repeatedly and regularly dispatch to meet with Greek and other European officials on the topic.

The fact that her son in law made bad choices of investments in Greece despite being related to a top US government official should make it obvious how little communication there was between the two on the issue. But no, because she talked to an aide, and that aide talked to someone who works on the Clinton foundation, and Chelsea is in the Clinton foundation, and Chelsea's husband is investing in Greece, that means that Hillary Clinton was carefully manipulating Greek investment funds with insider info - it's all so obvious!

The other thing you linked is also not anything written by Hillary. It's about how a Canadian company (who had given to the Clinton foundation) was bought by the Russians, and in the process a number of different US government officials signed off on the sale - one of them being Clinton. Wow, stop the presses, clearly that's totally like having an email saying "If you give me money, I'll approve your sale"! Do you realize how many things the Secretary of State's office has to sign off on? She didn't even have veto power on the deal. And do you know how many different donors have given to the Clinton foundation (which, by the way, is not "money to the Clintons" - it's a charity that Charity Watch gives it's highest possible rating, unlike Trump's charity, which was basically a scam and was recently delisted by the government of New York, which is also investigating criminal charges)?

    Both Fact Check and Politifact call the accusations concerning Uranium One that this was some sort of corrupt deal false.

Former CIA Officer: President Obama Should Pardon Edward Snowden

Barry Eisler spent three years in a covert position in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations and is the author of 12 novels, including The Detachment

He let Americans evaluate omniscient domestic surveillance for themselves

This week, Edward Snowden, multiple human rights and civil rights groups, and a broad array of American citizens asked President Obama to exercise his Constitutional power to pardon Snowden. As a former CIA officer, I wholeheartedly support a full presidential pardon for this brave whistleblower.

All nations require some secrecy. But in a democracy, where the government is accountable to the people, transparency should be the default; secrecy, the exception. And this is especially true regarding the implementation of an unprecedented system of domestic bulk surveillance, a mere precursor of which Senator Frank Church warned 40 years ago could lead to the eradication of privacy and the imposition of “total tyranny.”

That today we are engaged in a meaningful debate about whether such a system is desirable is almost entirely due to the conscience, courage and conviction of one man: Edward Snowden. Without Snowden, the American people could not balance for themselves the risks, costs and benefits of omniscient domestic surveillance. Because of him, we can.

For this service, the government has charged Snowden under the World War I-era Espionage Act. Yet Snowden did not sell information secretly to any enemy of America. Instead, he shared it openly through the press with the American people.

For this service, Snowden has been accused of having “blood on his hands“—the same evidence-free cliché trotted out every time a whistleblower reveals corruption, criminality or anything else the government would prefer to hide. That this charge is being aired by the very people responsible for wars that have led to thousands of dead American servicemen and servicewomen; hundreds of thousands burned, blinded, brain-damaged, crippled, maimed and traumatized; and hundreds of thousands of innocent foreigners killed, is more than ironic. It’s also a form of psychological projection, or propaganda, intended to distract from where true responsibility for bloodshed lies.

And for this service, the usual suspects have claimed Snowden has caused “grave damage to national security.” As always, the charge is backed by nothing but air, and ignores—in fact, is intended to distract from—the real damage caused by metastasizing governmental secrecy. This includes not only disastrous government mistakes and cover-ups (see the Bay of Pigs, the “missile gap,” the Gulf of Tonkin, Iraqi wea

At least one Ph.D. linguist from MIT disagrees with you.

From The New Republic:

... Okay, so Peter Thiel loves the blood of youth—that’s not quite enough to prove that he’s a vampire. But there’s more: In a piece for Vanity Fair, Nick Bilton wrote about a time he was invited to a dinner party at Thiel’s house, but, strangely, there was very little food around. When Bilton asked Thiel’s friend about this, his friend explained “that Thiel is often on some sort of weird diet and he didn’t really eat all that much, anyway.” Sounds like the kind of excuses you would make for your vampire friend.

Still not convinced? Well, Thiel is very, very pale. I’m not saying that Peter Thiel is definitely a vampire. But next time he’s about to enter a house, it’s worth checking to see if he waits until someone explicitly invites him in.

You seem to think that the "dumb conspiracy theories" comment was flippant. It wasn't. It is part n parcel of the "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy" claim by Clintonistas. Everything they don't like is a "conspiracy" so it is dismissed. Even when it turns out to be true. This isn't the first time it has been tossed around, and I doubt it will be the last ...

Oh hey look, https://newrepublic.com/minute...

The Clinton Playbook page 105

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

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

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

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

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

Arrested for a shell game he was playing.

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

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

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

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

the issue is kind of that it's not just a hassle for us, it's also a hassle for like, half our hemisphere. the USD isn't exactly like every other currency in the world. it's all over the place, it's hoarded, because it's stable and it doesn't change all that much.

you start swapping the pictures around every couple years, and people might start hoarding the yuan, because they'll know it'll look the same in 20 years.

hey look jefferson

https://newrepublic.com/articl...

I don't expect those who didn't live through it to understand - your perception of the times is entirely skewed by people with an agenda twisting historical events to fit their political beliefs. So let me give you an apolitical history.

The 1970s were most shaped by the 1973 Arab oil embargo. The sudden rise in oil prices sent a financial shock which sent our economy reeling almost into depression. This combined with Nixon's wage and price controls in 1971 led to stagflation - a combination of a stagnant economy and inflation. Normally, inflation picks up when the economy is vibrant, and decreases (is actually in danger of crossing over into deflation) when the economy is bad. But in the 1970s we suffered a bad economy with high inflation. According to Keynesian economic theory, that shouldn't be possible. But it was real, and those of us alive at the time had to deal with it.

Fed chair Paul Vocker (Carter appointee, who impressed Reagan enough he kept him on) had a theory that stagflation could be fought with high interest rates, which is exactly what he did. Under his policies, The U.S. Prime Rate peaked at 21.5% in Dec 1980 . Look through that history and you'll see two peaks. The 1974 peak where interest rates were trying to keep pace with inflation, and Paul Volcker's peak in the 1980s to try to deal with stagflation. Interest rates didn't return to "normal" (around 5%-7%) until the 2000s.

Whether his theory worked or stagflation disappeared on its own is irrelevant. What's important is that we eventually escaped stagflation. Inflation came down and the economy began picking up again. But it was a miserable time for us all to be living in. High unemployment, high inflation, high interest rates. You can see the U.S. suicide rate spiking immediately after the Arab oil embargo, then staying high for a sustained period through the 1980s due to the high inflation and high interest rates (basically meant trying to save money was a lost cause).

That's why the suicide rate back then was so high. Wasn't the Democrats or the Republicans or Carter or Reagan who was at fault. It was the stupid oil embargo and the weird economic corner case we somehow found ourselves in. (TFA is also sensationalist. Suicide rate was at an all-time low around 2000. So it's not that suicide rates are "surging", they're just returning to normal levels. If you're going to study an anomalous suicide rate, study why the suicide rate hit that all-time low. Don't try to characterize what's happening now as some unexpected spike.)

The 2012 GOP platform clearly endorses alternative, renewable energy.

And by "endorse", I assume you mean, "doing everything they can to kill renewable energy".

http://usuncut.com/news/solarc...

http://www.scholarsstrategynet...

https://newrepublic.com/articl...

http://mic.com/articles/130336...

Plus, both of the leading GOP candidates for president, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, are climate deniers.

https://youtu.be/J_xVWfGjk0o

https://youtu.be/KyulquUwi1Q

They closes thing they get to a subsidy is what the government buys from them for their own use, for the reserve, and what they give out to poor people to heat.

Last I heard (2013), oil companies were getting on the order of $5.1 billion in subsidies for exploration. https://newrepublic.com/articl...

Categorization of oil under the tax code as a form of domestic manufacturing eligible for a 6% deduction of net income, claiming foreign royalty payments as a credit against American taxes, and deducting numerous costs associated with the drilling process is absolutely an insane handout that other energy suppliers are excluded from. http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/29/...

By comparison, research and development for solar energy was given only $302 million; and wind energy just $123 million. http://www.reuters.com/article...

You are aware that Senator Orrin Hatch is on record previously saying that Obama should nominate Garland to SCOTUS, right? Instead Obama nominated Kagan in 2010. So what's the problem with a pick that he himself suggested?

This is a deliberate attempt to pick a fight with folks who support the second amendment. There is nothing "middle of the road",
or "centrist" about this terribly flawed politically motivated nominee.

I think Sen Hatch would disagree.

I don't believe the Great Flood was a myth. The "world" at that time was centered around the Euphrates river. Going by the description in some of the clay tablets, it would seem that someone upstream may have decided to destroy a natural dam out of revenge right when the mountain snow was melting in Spring (The Epic of Gilgamesh). That would have unleased a torrent of water 40x that of normal, and led to up to 11 feet of mud being deposited on the lower plains.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/...

https://newrepublic.com/articl...

The layout of some of these clay tablets looks like someone invented the spreadsheet before the computer:
http://isaw.nyu.edu/exhibition...

http://isaw.nyu.edu/exhibition...

They even invented a tablet with round corners before Apple:

https://s-media-cache-ak0.pini...

The logic of authoritarians:

Thanks to Snowden's revelations, terrorists started using unbreakable encryption!!!!!!!

Right. Except they didn't.

That was pre-Snowden. Terrorists didn't know about encryption before that.

Right again. Except they did.

So, you see-- Snowden has "blood on his hands" for making terrorists aware of encryption, which they knew about for decades, so they could use it, which they didn't. And thank goodness for that, because if they had used encryption, the attacks might have been successful, which they were.

Got it.

Alright then.

I think one of the main problems with the muslim world is lack of critical thinking, which leads to unquestioning belief in authority and conspiracy theories. Don't take my word for it, this is straight from the horse's mouth:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

As for ISIS, it's too simplistic to say it's just religion, see this (somewhat biased, but largely true):
https://newrepublic.com/articl...

But you can't understand what they do without taking islam into account. They blow up not just ruins from pagan times (Jahiliyyah), but also muslim shrines. Well, that's Wahhabism in action, and Saudi Arabia has the same policies, to the extent that they can get away with it.
In Paris, IS targeted the music venue Bataclan, makes sense since music is banned in Wahhabism. It's also jewish-owned, and has been a target many times before, also the headlining band recently toured Israel, apparently. So there's the antisemitic aspect. Restaurants and bars were attacked: that's alcohol, music, *and* men and (non-covered) women in the same room, that's triple haram. Wahhabism also bans sports (any kind of game actually), which explains the attack on the soccer game.

Without this background-knowledge the massacre looks like a random burst of violence, perpetrated by mentally ill people. Far from it, it was well-planned, and in line with doctrine.

Another example, IS wants to conquer Rome. They also called Obama "the dog of Rome". This obsession puzzled me, until I found out what "Rome" can refer to in the Muslim world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Know your enemy. Western policymakers don't seem to understand IS, so they got caught off gaurd last friday:
http://blogs.reuters.com/great...

IS announced Washington DC and London will be next, so nobody can plead ignorance anymore.

At the same time, this march of Muslims should speak out against Islamic terrorism and the sort of extremism that their religious brethren in the ISIL areas, and the Boko Haram practice in the Middle East, and Africa. Burning folks alive in cages, auctioning off 12 year old girls for sex slavery . . . this is what Islam is all about.

Funny, then, that Daesh is more popular in Europe than it is in the Middle East.

In other words, Americansâ(TM) taxes are parallel with taxpayers' consent, suggesting that expenditures that do not correspond to an individualâ(TM)s will are some kind of affront.

There is a very interesting read, which is a review of two books, one a biography and the other an autobiography. The article appeared in New Republic sometime in the late 80s or early 90s. It can be found here.

The story is long and complicated. Excerpt: "Whatever his reasons for turning against communism, he remained left of center long after he did so. As late as 1952, by which date he had been publicly denouncing Communists for six years, the Los Angeles County Democratic Central Committee declined to endorse him for an open House seat because they thought he was too liberal. It's tantalizing to speculate on what might have been had the Democrats of Los Angeles not made this bonehead decision. Would Representative Reagan have become Senator Reagan? Might he have ended up as JFK's running mate? Would he have drifted to the right and become a marginal crank like Sam Yorty? Or would he have stayed left and won the White House four or eight years earlier than he did? And — most delicious thought of all — would the ultimate sneer-word of today's conservatives be not McGovernism or Carterism, but Reaganism?"

I don't know of any climate change so called "deniers" that deny the fact the climate changes.

Now they deny even being deniers.

Meet Senator James Inhofe: http://www.newrepublic.com/art...

You may have heard of him. He now heads the Senate committee overseeing climate science.

He has gone on record as saying that "it's not happening". Most recently just a couple months ago when he brought a snowball to the Senate floor as his proof.

His other variation on the theme is to say it's happening, but God's doing it, not humans: "Man can’t change climate. [...] My point is, God's still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we, human beings, would be able to change what He is doing in the climate is to me outrageous."

For years there have been reports of trace amounts of drugs in treated wastewater that could be harming wildlife and "no one seems to know which compounds need to be removed or how to remove them from the water safely", so are they filtering out these drugs before reusing the water for drinking water?

http://www.scientificamerican....

Aga said even without knowing exact impacts, consistently seeing antibiotics show up in effluent is concerning.

“Even at low levels you don’t want to have people ingest antibiotics regularly because it will promote resistance,” she said.

http://www.newrepublic.com/art...

It looked at samples from 50 large-size wastewater treatment plants nationwide and tested for 56 drugs including oxycodone, high-blood pressure medications, and over-the-counter drugs like Tylenol and ibuprofen. More than half the samples tested positive for at least 25 of the drugs monitored, the study said. High blood pressure medications appeared in the highest concentrations and most frequently.

I'm a little unsure why you would assume there is anything like a free market in producing food in the US. http://www.newrepublic.com/art... http://www.economist.com/news/...