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Most of the Western World has a net negative population growth (ignoring immigration), so it turns out some countries are already desperately paying people to have kids.
http://www.npr.org/sections/mo...

That depends on your definition of "at war". We've officially withdrawn from Iraq. We still have advisers there, but we never completely withdraw from anywhere. Troop levels in Afghanistan are also lower than they've been in a decade: http://www.npr.org/2016/07/06/...

Especially considering he didn't start *any* wars, I'd say it's pretty easy to argue that he was better than Bush.

If Clinton had won, you would be fighting in Trump's revolutionary army and decrying the continued Democratic tyranny. Which ok, would amount to you trolling on the Internet some more, so no, we would be having this discussion, and you'd be doing the same things as you are now.

Funny. Because that sure didn't happen when Obama won, but the left were right there back when Bush Jr., was elected for a second term screaming that they should violently oppose him.

Nope, it's confirmed that there were internet trolls then. Some continue to this day.

2012 also had plenty. Including a special one you may know.

And gee, look again...it's the left doing exactly the same thing.

Yes, yes, pity you, because the Left surely is the one making you the victim, you internet troll you. Poor you. Why do you lie? Do you think everybody else is too dumb to spot your bullshit?

When Trump himself jumped into it with vigor, that's a losing game.

But oh boy, let's look at Obama's decisions shall we? A head of the DoJ that refuses to enforce immigration law, and is now in the running to defend criminal illegals. Very progressive, much law and order!

Even Donald Trump admitted that Obama had deported millions. Strangely he had no problem lying about it otherwise. Just like you.

Couldn't Trump find a non-racist attorney general candidate? Couldn't Trump find a candidate for secretary of state who knew what a war crime was? Couldn't Trump find a way to not create more conflicts of interest?

You mean the joke? Did you actually read/watch what he said. I guess not, that's what happens when you let the media lie to you. Yep, he's so racist he's prosecuted KKK members.

Oh goodness, he's not so stupid he can claim that the KKK is a perfectly normal civil organization. But he's stupid enough to crack jokes about them. Well, that's not a point in his favor, nor is his position on marijuana, which remains opposed to legalization. Nor the failure to list his failed judicial nomination. Or the other things he mysteriously left out.

But I guess it's too bad there's plenty of other things to know about Jeff Sessions.

Really, couldn't Trump find ANYBODY else?

Now, let's move on to that "war crime" bit. Smart move. You know why?

Because you aren't thinking, and believe being stupid enough not to condemn actual war crimes because of some carefully inculcated desire to be legally scot-free equivocator is a good thing?

It's dumb. Dumb-ass stupid shit that would get you worked up into a frenzy if it were the other side saying it, but when it's yours, well, you just think it's the greatest thing ever.

Because if he didn't answer the way he did, he would have let every nut with an axe to grind go after the government.

They already do. What's your point? That we should keep doing the things that are fucking dumb?

Starting right at the top with the previous Obama ad

While I agree with everything you just said, both of your proposed solutions are the exact opposite of the Republican platform on healthcare reform. That isn't hyperbole, the core of their plan is to increase reliance on private insurance and push more responsibility to the states.

Indeed, the Republican platform is to funnel even more money to private insurance. In fact, Paul Ryan's Medicare "reform" plan is to push all Medicare recipients onto private plans (but still paid for by the government, via vouchers) so that the private companies can make even more profits. According to this article, Medicare administrative costs are about 2% of operating expenditures while private insurance runs about 17%. This doesn't include marketing or profits for the private insurance, with those items the overhead is 20-25%. So up to a quarter if the money paid for insurance to these companies doesn't even go to actual care and Ryan wants to push our our seniors into that environment, while the rest of us pay for it (or don't, just run up the debt some more). Ryan's plan would be a huge government handout to the insurance companies, even larger than Obamacare, which was a MASSIVE insurance company handout. As this article observes, the Republican base are the exact people who would benefit most from lower-cost healthcare but for some reason in every election they manage to vote against their own self-interest. It's just mind-boggling, it seems like they would be willing to set their own world on fire rather than see a single person get something from the government that they didn't "deserve".

http://www.npr.org/sections/he...

https://mises.org/blog/lack-ep...

They repeatedly stopped competitors

There's also the fact that most the electric power generated still comes from fossil fuels...

A common argument with a kernel of truth, but it's more complicated that that. Mind you that any grid electricity generated by renewables is going to be a significant off-set to this assumption. (I'll get back to this)

The other side of this efficiency. Standard car internal combustion engines only use 20%-30% of the gasoline's potential energy propels the car, and the rest of the energy is lost primarily to heat and secondarily to friction. Power plants, even the dirtiest of coal plants, are way more efficient creating electricity from a fossil fuel than the car's internal combustion engine is (power plant efficiency vary by plant and fuel source, but they are all higher than 30%). The electric car engine is 80-95% efficient at propelling a car with the losses mostly from friction. Now if any of the electric grid comes from renewables then that translates into better overall EV efficiency and "green factor" but exactly how efficient and green will vary depending on the grid sources where you live. In the US, the portion of electric grid power generated by fossil fuel sources varies significantly by state. Here's a nice breakdown of each US state's electric grid sources. http://www.npr.org/2015/09/10/...
(Relatedly, notice that renewables are increasing mostly across the board, and/or coal is being replaced with more efficient and lower emission natural gas.)

...or requires renewable energy collection methods that are created initially by fossil fuels.

Criticising renewables for being created initially by fossil fuels isn't really fair because fossil fuels play a role in creating pretty much everything, whether it's renewable or not. The point is to use the fossil fuels to create something that adds more long time value and efficiency to our lives than simply burning more fossil fuels to spin a turbine.

The study corrected for differences in income.

That said, sleep disruption caused by traffic noise is, IMO, far more likely to be the cause of the increase in dementia than air pollution.

Cough, cough (tee hee) don't pat yourselves on the back idiots http://www.npr.org/sections/he.... Americans are just dying before than can get cancer. Well done government/corporate spin, turning the ugly reality of the political dominance of a minority stealing actual life from the majority, into oh look, that parasitical minority is saving you from cancer.

Yeah, try living in the USA. Last night they said Planned Parenthood has a 59% favorable rating. Congress has an 11% favorable rating. Congress is going to stop giving money to Planned Parenthood. They're also going to kill Obamacare and 75% of Americans either want it to stay the same or simply change it. Of those in the "change it" camp, a significant number actually wan MORE government involvement, not less. I think most Trump voters wanted to keep out the Muslims and Mexicans, not lose their benfits. They don't even listen to their own base.

Speaking of fake news, can anybody prove a specific news story was fake and had a measurable effect on election results, with data to back that up? No takers?

How about anything published by Jestin Coler, CEO of a company called Disinfomedia?

During the run-up to the presidential election, fake news really took off. "It was just anybody with a blog can get on there and find a big, huge Facebook group of kind of rabid Trump supporters just waiting to eat up this red meat that they're about to get served," Coler says.

At any given time, Coler says, he has between 20 and 25 writers. And it was one of them who wrote the story in the Denver Guardian that an FBI agent who leaked Clinton emails was killed. Coler says that over 10 days the site got 1.6 million views.

"The people wanted to hear this," he says. "So all it took was to write that story. Everything about it was fictional: the town, the people, the sheriff, the FBI guy. And then ... our social media guys kind of go out and do a little dropping it throughout Trump groups and Trump forums and boy it spread like wildfire."

And as the stories spread, Coler makes money from the ads on his websites. He wouldn't give exact figures, but he says stories about other fake-news proprietors making between $10,000 and $30,000 a month apply to him.

The sort of person who's on the ball enough to do good isn't going to fall for Fake News. Where the sort of person who is just needs a little push in the right direction to do something nasty. That's why you don't see left wing Fake News very much. The ones selling it (not good natured lefties but folks in the page views biz) admitted as much when asked in several interviews. Lefty Fake News gets debunked too fast to spread like good Fake News needs to...

This. Last month, there was story about this on NPR.

TL/DR: Jestin Coler (the fake-news writer) claimed that he does it to show how easily hoodwinked people are by fake news, but when pressed, he admitted he could make lots of money doing this. A few interesting quotes from his interview:

The whole idea from the start was to build a site that could infiltrate the echo chambers of the alt-right, publish blatantly false or fictional stories and then be able to publicly denounce those stories and point out the fact that they were fiction.
[...]
We've tried to do similar things to liberals. It just has never worked, it never takes off. You'll get debunked within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out.

Who saves the money? The consumer.

Delusional corporatist is delusional.

I seriously doubt they went into "saving the customer" mode knowing a lot of people were going to die from faulty ignitions.

They kept putting the same parts in vehicles over ten years after knowing it was a problem. You see this DGAF attitude over and over and again, just to save a few bucks per widget for the sake of profits.

Just for you I'll explain.

Those financial firms (many of them US banks) cater to the EU rather than Britain. While Britain was in the EU it made sense to set up shop in London. Good place to live, they speak English over there, good timezone, good communications, adequate and halfway familiar legal environment, sufficient critical mass of a raft of supporting firms, relatively liberal trading rules (for Europe), their customers just a phone call or a 1-3 hour flight away, and zero complications doing business with anyone else in the EU. That's what the EU was designed for. Life was good.

Various other EU countries might have preferred the seat of all that financial service to be in their own country instead of London. Financial firms provide high quality jobs and have a high (taxable) turnover. Only they couldn't do shit about it. EU guarantees free exchange of services and the most influential players (US banks) happened to prefer London. Not in the last place because London and the UK really listened to industry demands (knowing full well what they stood to lose if they didn't). So London it was. End of story.

Enter Brexit.

Brexit means the UK leaves the EU and has to negotiate terms on which to continue trading. The most basic terms of free trade (WTO--level) ensure free movement of goods but NOT free movement of services. Which EU membership guarantees, only that's what Britain is ending. So Britain is very much the asking party here.

Anyone prepared to bet that other EU countries (like Ireland) will be eager to let Britain keep all that yummy taxable business? And those jobs? When they can simply negotiate away London-based firms' comfy access to the EU, grab the jobs and (part of) the revenue? Really?

Those financial firms sure aren't. The incoming US commerce secretary Wilbur Ross (see http://www.npr.org/sections/th... ) isn't (see http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/u... ). I wouldn't either.

People who bet that Britain will keep providing financial services to Europe surely aren't picking the best odds here.

Everyone should brush up on the story of MP3.com:

http://www.npr.org/sections/th...

They will lose badly in court.

The GP is wrong, but mainly because it uses 8" floppy disks , not 5.25". Those are way too modern for our nuclear arsenal.

His reasoning is pretty flawed:
"..."Sixteen-year-olds are just as good at logical reasoning as older people are," he tells the Times) But he also believes judges should consider the lack of emotional control when sentencing defendants ..."
You don't think that lack of emotional control *might* lead younger voters to be more easily manipulated with emotional appeals to vague concepts of what's "right"* and "fair"* and "just"* in precisely the same way that militaries around the world have appealed to the younger demographic with concepts of nationalism and pride?

*If you don't have an issue with it, please define these terms objectively.

Further, this research isn't really news, http://www.npr.org/templates/s... discussed back in 2010 that younger brains lack full connection between cause and effect.

So despite naked tendentiousness (younger voters vote STRONGLY liberal and in the US, democrat), the evidence would suggest that really the voting age should be raised to, say, 26 or so.

The next big hit will be the trucking industry. Everyone thinks Google's self driving cars are pretty cute, right? Fewer accidents, vision impaired people can get to the grocery store, your car can drive your drunk ass home from the bar safely? All good, right?

Two things about that. First thing, they want this for the trucking industry. Don't tell me they're not working on it because they absolutely are. First article, second article.

Second thing. Truck driver is the most popular profession today. First article, second article.

The USA is set to lose 3.5 million jobs, just as soon as we get this tech ironed out. And it doesn't matter who the president is. Trump, Hillary, Vermin Supreme - it'll happen no matter what. It has nothing to do with politics, NAFTA, any of it. It's progress, it's capitalism, and it's going to happen.

People need to look a little farther afield than simple manufacturing to see how automation will affect the economy.

So what but is fake again?

The insinuation that research will be destroyed or "could only be retrieved with a taxing Freedom of Information Act request".

By the way, here's another fact you might have overlooked: Trump and Al Gore had a long conversation, which Gore called "a lengthy and very productive session with the president-elect. It was a sincere search for areas of common ground".

(1) Suicide rates -- In the US I think the increase in suicide rate is likely attributable to increased firearm ownership. There is no evidence that I know of that indicates that the increased level of gun ownership presents an increased risk to others -- in fact the rate of firearm homicide has gone down (along with most other violent crimes). But suicidal impulses -- which are very common -- plus a handgun in your pocket... that is a very dangerous combination.

(2) Rate of DoD PTSD rising -- likely to have to do with the influx of veterans from three wars (Gulf 1 & 2 + Afghanistan), plus a higher survival rate from severe physical trauma.

(3) Rise of opiate abuse -- coincides with the appearance of new prescription drugs and more aggressive prescribing of pain medication.

(4) Rise in disability awards -- conflated with a drive to recognize mental disabilities as on a par with physical ones.

At my age I've lived through many a moral panic, and this feels like the beginnings of one. Which is not to say mental illness doesn't cause real suffering, or that we shouldn't make it more of a priority. But what we need are more evidence-based approaches. Unfortunately we seem to be headed in the opposite direction.

The Taliban in Afghanistan admitted to hosting and supporting Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, who were responsible for the 9/11 attacks.

They also offered to hand Bin Laden over if the Bush Administration bothered to back up their claims.

They didn't bother.

Somewhat similar in that regard Turkey wants the U.S. to hand over a cleric it blames for the coup attempt but so far the Obama Administration hasn't been given enough evidence to hand Gulen over to Turkey.

Therefore, Turkey should bomb the shit out of the United States, overthrow its government, offer bounties to throw people into island prisons, torture hundreds of them to death, and plan on occupying our country for the next 30 years at least.

It sounds HUGE to say "she won the popular vote by millions of votes", but context,perspective, and a sense of scale are needed here:

[1] That ACTUALLY means that she won the popular vote by fewer votes than she got in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Yes, Los Angeles is the largest populated county in the Country. In fact, it has 10 million people, and San Francisco, a consolidated City-County, only adds a million more people it. To put it in context, Los Angeles County, if it were a state, would be the 10th or 11th most populated. And in area, it's LARGER than Delaware and Rhode Island.

[2] California has millions of illegal aliens, and it gives them drivers licenses and it signs people up to vote when it gives them their drivers licenses - and California also does not allow anybody to look for voter fraud, while then saying there is no voter fraud because none has been seen. To win the popular vote, all she needs is a bunch of ineligible voters in a few big cities, which by pure coincidence are packed with immigrants many of whom are illegally present and protected by the Democrats who run the places.

Oh poor you, too bad for you, it's totally a inaccurate and made up story. The truth about What California DOES, is issue driver's licenses, and then has an office in the California Secretary of State register them to vote. So if you are arguing that the California Secretary of state is failing in their duties, let's see you present some proof. Oh wait, you won't even look for it.

You remind me of all the people who couldn't find Obama's birth certificate in Hawaii. You don't buy California's votes? Then fucking go through the voter rolls, I dare you.

[3] The Constitution says nothing about winning the popular vote. For the entire history of the country, our presidents have had to campaign all across the country in small states and large ones and in cities and rural areas because they have to win the electoral college votes - it's a core element of the stability of our Democratic Republic. Pretending that her popular vote count gives her some legitimacy is like claiming that the winner of the Super Bowl is not legitimate if the losing team had more passing yards - that's NOT the metric for winning the contest, and the contestants would play differently if it were.

Whereas you pretend that winning the electoral college gives Trump more legitimacy, like if the Winner of the Super Bowl was the one who got 15 points from kicks, while questioning that the MVP was a QB who got six TD passes.

But go ahead, blather on about the Electoral college, but don't forget what this conversation was about:

The American people have spoken, and they want Trump.

When answering that question, why would you be so stupid as to ignore the 70 million people who didn't want Trump enough to vote for somebody else? Let alone the 90 million who couldn't bother to vote.

They didn't rise up and call out for Trump. They, in a few places, said, Ok, Trump, whatever, and yet a larger share stayed home.

If we went by popular vote, campaigns would concentrate on the big cities and the rest of the nation would be ignored in national politics, which is a recipe for very corrosive and divisive politics in such a large and diverse country.

We have corrosive and divisive politics, so obviously your desire to avoid that failed. Instead, those areas feel ignored and mistreated. The Electoral College is a point of failure, it does not protect us, it does not defend us. Not unless by some chance, the electors punt on the issue. Which is possible, but doubtful.

We're bringing coal back! Otherwise these unemployed coal workers are going to keep getting tested!

First claiming any source to the right of The Washington Times is "fake"

No, I didn't claim that. I called out several publications who do things like write stories as if they're true, when the only source they have is a tweet. I expect more from people who refer to themselves as journalists. It just so happens that the sites with the most influence have a conservative audience, but it's not restricted to the far right. That's just where the most money is, because the authors who specifically set out to write fake news have found that liberal audiences don't click on links to fake stories or share them nearly as often as conservatives do:

We've tried to do similar things to liberals. It just has never worked, it never takes off. You'll get debunked within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out. ...
Everything about [a story about an FBI agent investigating Clinton's emails involved in a murder-suicide] was fictional. The town, the people, the sheriff, the FBI guy. Then, we had our social media guys kind of go out and do a little dropping it throughout Trump groups and Trump forums and boy it spread like wildfire.

The story he was referring to was posted on a site called denverguardian.com which had the local weather for Denver on the front page, but the fake article was literally the only article on the entire site. The 1.6 million visitors didn't even bother to click around the site to see who they are getting their information from, but they will believe it and then go out and share it. That's what you did when you linked to a story on The Washington Times that was making vague suggestions that California is or will be registering illegal immigrants to vote (even though they chose their language carefully to avoid making that specific claim, when you read it and post references to it you fill in the blanks for them and just say it's happening). And, like he said, it's not a new phenomenon. Glenn Beck was fully aware that conservatives would eat up stories and pay him if he cried on air or got out his chalk board to try and draw lines between things that have no connection. He didn't earn tens of millions of dollars because no one believed him. They just never did their own research, which is something I see more and more of from people who call themselves conservatives.

If you really want to continue such a discussion, I'd like to hear you acknowledge that non-citizens clearly do vote in elections.

Well, then allow me to copy and paste:

I have no doubt that the voter rolls of every single state have people on them who shouldn't be there

I guess I'll continue that quote since it's on topic:

but to suggest that California has somehow institutionalized this is ridiculous. And then trying to claim that no one is investigating because it doesn't matter because California always goes Democrat is also ridiculous.

If YOU want to continue the discussion, I'd like you to admit that, according to every study that has ever been done on the subject, voter fraud is a statistically insignificant issue. Once you admit that, then there's really not much else to talk about. Yeah, it would be fantastic if voter rolls in every state were 100% correct and accurate, but the fact is that voter fraud is not an issue with any sort of measurable impact on the outcome of federal elections, and if any state started registering illegal immigrants to vote en masse you would see an investigation in no time. People would be tripping over each other for the chance to lead the investigation and get their own name out there. The reason why there is no investigation in California is because what you suggested is happening is not. It's not happening. That is not the way things work in California or any other state.

Have they done anything to address the issue of the earthquakes this can produce? Earthquakes (especially large numbers of microearthquakes) are why geothermal energy is off the table because it damages all of your buildings and infrastructure. To make things worse, the effects of lots of earthquakes on wildlife isn't well understood.

It's Iceland, They have volcanoes and lava and new islands forming, and earthquakes all the time anyway. You could shoot every evil hoomin, appoint some pond algae prime minister, and they'd still have all of the above.

Perhaps a lawsuit against the Mid-Atlantic Ridge is in order.

Have they done anything to address the issue of the earthquakes this can produce? Earthquakes (especially large numbers of microearthquakes) are why geothermal energy is off the table because it damages all of your buildings and infrastructure. To make things worse, the effects of lots of earthquakes on wildlife isn't well understood.

Get some perspective. Christ almighty you lefties are so full of hatred and anger that you can't even see straight.

Wait. Are you trying to be funny or ironic? Because there's been a LOT of hate and anger expressed this election cycle and it's been coming from Trump and his followers. Liberals are simply frightened about real damage the Trump administration, Republicans and Conservative with seriously backward, narrow-minded, phobic, agendas, could have. (You *know* I'm right about those things -- just look at Ohio's attempt to ban abortions at 6 weeks after conception.)

You know, just like the unrealistic fears and hysteria Conservatives had when Obama was elected - because he was black and "not an American".

Of course, perhaps everyone should just relax. So far Trump has backed out or reduced most of his campaign promises, so he'll probably flake on everything else too.

They said tech "talent".

http://www.npr.org/sections/th...
From the linked article:

And it turns out that the job done in China was above par - the employee's "code was clean, well written, and submitted in a timely fashion. Quarter after quarter, his performance review noted him as the best developer in the building," according to the Verizon Security Blog.

All told, it looked like he earned several hundred thousand dollars a year, and only had to pay the Chinese consulting firm about fifty grand annually," according to the Security Blog.

Maybe they're not the best of the best, but neither are most slashdotters or coder either. These bunch are probably better and cheaper than most of you here.

Yeah this definitely discourages me: http://www.npr.org/sections/th...
And 3 years before that they said it was 10%: http://china.org.cn/environmen...
So do you believe it's really 20% or actually higher?

If you don't believe that it's a problem perhaps you can convince these bunch:
http://articles.latimes.com/20...
http://www.theglobeandmail.com...

See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Actually it was Hillary Clinton's infamy and unfitness for office that elected Donald Trump, in a close contest of infamy and poor fit for the job.

Well, you're right it was close, but don't tell Trump. He thinks he won HUGELY! HUGELY! He's still convinced it was the biggest ass-kicking in electoral history.

It isn't. So maybe you should call Trump up and tell him.

Trump outperformed Romney in non-whites across the board.

It's still being argued, but a 2 percent gain? Color me unimpressed.

Dems could have run just about anyone but Clinton and taken the office. But no.

A hypothetical we can't test, like it or not.

Watching Veritas' videos exposing campaign disruptions and voter corruption in the Democrat Party and the shenanigans the Republicans pulled trying to defeat Trump as well.
https://www.youtube.com/channe...

Watch what? Words out of somebody's mouth? Why didn't we get videos of ACTUAL buses being driven around? Why do we never get that?

Critical analysis shows the failure.

No matter how much editing Snopes claims O'Keefe has done, the entirety of all videos are available for examination AND there is no denying that the Democrat operatives said what they said and no reason to disbelieve that they did what they said they did.

Actually, Jerry, based on what O'Keefe's done in the past, including the result of the Planned Parenthood investigations that came out of his lies, there is zero reason to believe anything he produces. That you cite him, so uncritically, is a reason to disbelieve you.

The exact same thing happens when you're selling as well.

If you sell a share at $2.99, and then somebody buys at $2.99, then guess what? You still sold it at the price you asked for.

Likewise, if you place a bid for a share at $3 and then you buy at $3, then guess what? You still bought it for the price you asked for.

By the way, that quote in your signature is not only horribly misquoted, but it's horribly written English as well. Ben Franklin wouldn't have written such bad English, ("they who can"? Seriously?) and it was actually written like this:

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."

And it likely doesn't mean what you think it means:

http://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/...

In reality, however, we see that abortions are dropping.

The Little Sisters of the Poor were just picking a legal fight rather than admit they used the coverage let doing more to actually help the poor who they are supposed to serve. Apparently filling out paperwork is so onerous, they'd rather pay a bunch of lawyers. To waste time. Even the Supreme Court punted.

The GOP was given everything they had wanted in healthcare reform, yet refused to get behind their own plan. Now they're stuck with years of repeal calls, but they can't afford to deliver. And they have nothing to counter offer.

And yet when Trump appoints a military man to run the military or financial people to run financial things he's criticized and attacked for it. Make up your mind, champ.

It might make a difference if the military man in question hadn't been guilty of worse security breaches than the ones they attacked Hillary for or if the financial person wasn't instrumental in one of the biggest Wall Street screwups ever.

Isn't giving people who are unqualified positions of power the textbook definition of corruption?

And yet when Trump appoints a military man to run the military or financial people to run financial things he's criticized and attacked for it. Make up your mind, champ.

Mississippi has one of the larger percentages of union employees in the south. Not sure why you are so butthurt about unions? Do you have a problem with people getting together to try and get a better deal for themselves?

No, I have a problem with workers that are being exploited by an overbearing corporation and its overpaid bosses to also have to deal with being exploited by an overbearing and often corrupt union and its overpaid bosses. Mississippi has lots of union workers, and yet it's a right to work state. So why do the unions in Michigan and elsewhere think they need laws and the violent power of the state to force people to join a union against their will, and even take money out of the paychecks of people that get NO benefit from the union? Or extract union money from workers' paychecks for partisan lobbying activities?

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.

"Secretary" used to be the most common job according to some interpretations of BLS reports. The Word Processor made that role largely obsolete and now self-service:
http://www.npr.org/sections/mo...

So nowadays it's "Truck Driver"... wait a bit longer until autonomous vehicles make those delivery jobs go away. Wouldn't call those middle-class jobs, though.

Counterpoint: Sales and Services are the most common job in the US today, along with maybe some form of Educator:
http://www.marketwatch.com/sto...

It'll still be a while before those social jobs are automated away.

Let's consider just one statistic - workforce participation as a percentage of the population. Around the year 2000 it was about 67%, it has been fairly steadily declining since 2008 from about 67% to 63%...

In other words, 4% less of the working age population is employed.

I'll just mention in passing things like the majority of newly-created jobs being part-time, wages being stagnant for the last 8 years, and a national debt that has increased from an "unpatriotic" $11 Trillion under President Bush to nearly $20 Trillion after 8 years of President Obama...

That is what passes for "generally positive economic growth"?

More like 8%

Indeed, and even that is rapidly declining. About 80% of the oil used in America comes from ... America. Much of the rest comes from Canada and Mexico.

Saudi oil goes mostly to Europe and China.

More like 8%

That's the old one from his campaign last year. There is a new one from a few weeks ago. http://www.npr.org/2016/11/13/...

Primarily, I think you've got several screws loose. I think the rich voted for Trump because of things like the estate tax...

This implies that rich and upper-middleclass people are stupid. 90% of Americans have a net worth < $1 million. 99.5% have a net worth < $11.8 Million. Under current tax law, you only pay federal estate taxes on the part of your net worth that exceeds $10.9 Million for 2016, which is automatically adjusted for inflation. That < 1% of the population obviously couldn't have elected trump on their own, so the rest of the rich and semi-rich who voted for him must either be stupid or naively optimistic about their future earning prospects. Even if the Democrats were in power and bumped the estate tax exemption down to the pre-Bush $1 million level, that's still only 10% of Americans who'd pay a penny in estate taxes.

Speculating about the higher order effects of how large structural changes in the tax code will effect the income distribution is akin to astrology, but the 1st order effects are clearly more beneficial for a small minority of the wealthiest Americans.

Note that this post isn't rhetorical. It's entirely possible that Trump voters did vote primarily on personal economics and fall into these three categories:

• 1. Think Trump's tax policies will directly benefit them, but just can't or didn't bother to do the very simple math.(i.e. the stupid and the lazy)
• 2. Understand that Trump's tax policies will lower taxes on people richer than them a lot more than it will lower taxes on them directly, but believe the higher-order effects will have a net benefit to them (i.e. trickle-down economics).
• 3. Are really rich and will benefit from Trump's tax policies

I'm just saying that #3 is far too small a voting block to even move the needle in the popular or electoral college votes. If economics was a deciding factor for a significant number of voters, some combination of #1 and #2 were heavily involved.

getting two fiscal conservative governors in a row—Schwarzenegger

Schwarzenegger was nothing of the sort. On his first day he created a $4 billion deficit (in city and county budgets that the state backfilled). In 2004, he campaigned for Prop 57, which was $15B in bonds for operational costs, the interest on which was $1M a day for 11 years (another $4B). His administration, instead of "cut[ting] up the state's credit card," tripled the debt.

Even the fake news networks admit fake news just doesn't work on liberals very well. As the owner of one of these fake news sites stated:

We've tried to do similar things to liberals. It just has never worked, it never takes off. You'll get debunked within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out.

So a you believe self-admitted liar and fraudster Democrat when he tells you that Democrats are just too smart to fall for his tricks, but Republicans are too stupid.

Right. By the way, did you know the word gullible isn't in the dictionary?

Would this system flag fake news like the Michael Brown "Hands up, don't shoot" fake news that falsely claimed he had his hands up and was not charging at the police officer after already attacking him and attempting to take the officer's sidearm?

Hopefully yes it would. Ideally such a system would not only focus on the vast majority of fake news pushing a conservative agenda, but also the fake news pushing a liberal one.

It isn't like liberal partisans aren't as willing as conservative ones to use propaganda, it just doesn't work as well for them. Even the fake news networks admit fake news just doesn't work on liberals very well. As the owner of one of these fake news sites stated:

We've tried to do similar things to liberals. It just has never worked, it never takes off. You'll get debunked within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out.

Actually, there's plenty of evidence. NPR had a piece recently which you can listen to at http://www.npr.org/sections/al..., They found a guy, actually a Hillary voter

So, not a Russian then. And it was known many months ago that David Brock was hiring people to troll on Hillary's behalf.

Actually, there's plenty of evidence. NPR had a piece recently which you can listen to at http://www.npr.org/sections/al..., They found a guy, actually a Hillary voter, who made a reasonable amount of money putting out fake news during the run-up to the election. Listen, read, and see what you think. As a side line, I was a member of a right wing meetup group during the primaries. Someone posted a story that originated with that nut job Alex Jones (I hope he sues me) saying that some TV station in Wisconsin was reporting a guy who claims his vote was switched from Cruz to Trump (primaries). Their mistake was they cited the station. I called and they not only didn't put out the story but had never heard of the person alleged to have had his vote switched. By this time, however, the story had been widely spread throughout the Alt-Right bubble. Moral, don't believe a story until the source cites enough info, links, legitimate news organizations, or whatever so that you can verify the story yourself. Without that, there is a high probability that you're being lied to. BTW, I recently saw a news item that Trump was a paid agent of the KGB during the 1980's.

> You really do just make shit up, don't you?

I just love these post-fact "refutations" where you don't actually bother to cite sources or anything, even though this information is stupidly easy to find online.

Let's look at the important factual claims here, shall we? There are basically two: that she raised more here than in her presidential campaign and that the vote totals were closer in other states that Hillary won and that she's challenging states that would help Hillary win. This leads people to form the opinion that it's Hillary & co. funding this because it benefits Hillary more than Jill Stein. If we just want more confidence in the final results, then all the close states should be recounted, not just those which benefit Hillary.

That said, feel free to suggest improvements to how we vote for the future. We really should prevent vote fraud of every kind. I still remember just a few months back when Tim Kaine was saying stuff like this:

That moment would not have been as big a moment last night had Donald Trump not spent the last few weeks going around saying that the election is rigged against him. And when Donald says that, he's basically, after a campaign of attacking virtually every group he can attack now, he's attacking a central pillar of our democracy — that we run fair elections, that we accept the outcome of elections and then that we have a peaceful transfer of power.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2016/10/20/498676187/vp-candidate-kaine-trump-is-attacking-central-pillar-of-our-democracy

Claim 1 - Jill Stein got more money for a recount than her campaign:

Here's an image for easy comparison, but $5M > $3M. How do we know she got over $5M for this campaign?

"Green Party Candidate Jill Stein Files for Recount in Wisconsin, Raises More Than $5M for Recounts in Michigan and Pennsylvania"
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/politics/Green-Party-Candidate-Jill-Stein-to-Seek-Recount-in-Battleground-States-402731286.html

Jill Stein, who ran for president as the Green Party candidate, has filed paperwork to request a recount of the votes in Wisconsin just under the deadline, and has raised more than $5 million to fund other recount efforts in the battleground states of Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Now, how much did her presidential campaign raise? The FEC has that info here:
http://www.fec.gov/fecviewer/CandidateCommitteeDetail.do?candidateCommitteeId=P20003984&tabIndex=1

This currently gives us about $3 million dollars ('net contributions') as can be seen below:

Beginning Cash On Hand $73,681
Ending Cash On Hand $58,303
Net Contributions $3,013,441
Net Operating Expenditures $3,413,467
Debts/Loans Owed By $87,740
Debts/Loans Owed To $0

Claim 2 - The challenges are in favor of Hillary

States where we need recounts: WI, MI, and PA - source was quoted above. States NOT on the recount list NV, CO, MN, or NH - I can find no reports of recount requests here. Feel free to give sources if someone is recounting any of those.

NV is closer than PA & WI. MN is closer than PA. NH was won by just 2,732 votes - far less than any state on this list. CO had a pretty small margin too, but it was slightly larger than the three recount states.

I will also leave this here, because of all the #fakenews about "hacking" the election... never mind that MI (one of the recount states!) uses only paper ballots:

BuzzFeed started this "fake news" meme. They are defining "fake news" as "false or misleading news"

Jansen created a fake news empire quite apart from BuzzFeed and well before it was named by BuzzFeed or any other mainstream media source. He says (and I quote) "Everything about it was fictional. The town, the people, the sheriff, the FBI guy." That's not misleading. That's fake.

There is some basis to your assertion that this is primarily consumed by the right wing. Jansen says "this isn't just a Trump-supporter problem. This is a right-wing issue. Sarah Palin's famous blasting of the lamestream media is kind of record and testament to the rise of these kinds of people. The post-fact era is what I would refer to it as. This isn't something that started with Trump. This is something that's been in the works for a while. His whole campaign was this thing of discrediting mainstream media sources, which is one of those dog whistles to his supporters. When we were coming up with headlines it's always kind of about the red meat. Trump really got into the red meat. He knew who his base was. He knew how to feed them a constant diet of this red meat." And it appears they devoured it greedily.

He also says "We've tried to do similar things to liberals. It just has never worked, it never takes off. You'll get debunked within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out."

You can try to make this about something else, even try to dismiss it by calling it a meme, but the fact of the matter is that fake news was generated out of whole cloth and the right wing consumers ate it up.

"The people wanted to hear this. So all it took was to write that story. Everything about it was fictional. The town, the people, the sheriff, the FBI guy. Then, we had our social media guys kind of go out and do a little dropping it throughout Trump groups and Trump forums and boy it spread like wildfire."

Sorry. That is not even remotely comparable to the main stream media, regardless of the fact that they have a diversity of opinions or that some of them may be (gasp) feminists.