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I'm so old I remember when tech companies used to hire individuals based on their ability to do the work..

No. You simply remember the times you were hired and your self-belief makes you assume that you were the most qualified applicant. It's not true now and never has been.

Those guys never do time

There was only one bank which ended up getting prosecuted for the '08 mortgage crisis. A tiny Chinatown family-owned bank that discovered one of their loan officers taking bribes and making fraudulent mortgage applications. The managers of the bank promptly reported him to regulators -- for which the managers were indicted, with the fraudulent loan officer becoming the star witness for the prosecution against the bank.

http://www.npr.org/2017/05/18/...
"As it happens, Abacus didn't deal in subprime. The Chinatown-based bank also didn't package its mortgages into the sort of financial instruments that made The Big Short's machinations so arcane. In fact, the bank had one of the lowest default rates in the country."

Some other articles on the prosecution of Abacus:
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/0...
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/1...

Every claim he made in the above post was true.

Nope, in fact they were quite refutable. Not only that, you do realize it was trying to defend another post, with yet more falsehoods, don't you?

If you can't see that the Republicans cleaned house this election, you are mathematically challenged.

Unlike you, I can pay attention to the data, not just make the conclusions I want to believe are true, so recognizing that turnout was down, the actual numbers were relatively close, and only the distorting effect of gerrymandering and malappoirtionment misleads certain people into thinking that there's actually a substantial gap.

The "more people voted for Clinton" argument only shows your ignorance of our election system.

The argument, in case you don't remember, was regarding the American people, thus your denial of that factor shows your ignorance of the conversation. We're not talking about the electoral system. We never were. We're talking about something else. Your defensive deflection underscores the weakness of your argument, because you are desperately trying to evade the rebuttal of the original point being made.

Either that, or you are just innocently confused and mistaken. I doubt it.

I'm sure Trump's average golf score is lower than Hillary's but if Trump lost the election you wouldn't see me bringing his golf score up. You care to know why? Because both golf scores and number of votes mean fuck all in our election.

Indeed, I don't care how he scores on the Golf Course. I do, however, care that he rushes off to the Golf Course at the cost of millions of dollars, even after proclaiming that he wouldn't do that, nosiree, he'd stay on the job.

Of course, if he had lost the election, he'd be screaming tirades to get attention, but at least it'd be on his own dime.

The only thing that matters is electoral votes and Trump is better at scooping those up.

No, that doesn't really matter in this conversation, we were actually discussing something else in this post and you're merely trying to derail the conversation since factually this defense was mistaken, as pointed out already.

Cry about the game all you want but both parties knew the rules to the game before election day. If you can't understand this, please stick to spreading cream on your sore butt hole and bugger off with the "Hillary had more votes" line.

Cry about the electoral college all you want, but the rules of that broken, flawed, system, were known to be so long before election day in 2016. In fact, you might review a little history instead of trying to emulate a certain fool who can't even admit he lost the popular vote but has to proclaim without evidence, that the election system was broken enough to allow millions of illegal votes.

Which, of course, would invalidate his election, as well as the thousands of others on that day, but do you think he thinks about that? He still lies about a landslide.

Sorry, you lost again

Never did I deny that the medical condition is "lactose intolerance". The very reason that the medical condition is "intolerance" is because sooo many in those doctors' population were lactose tolerant.

That does not mean that "lactose tolerance" is grammatically incorrect. For example: An Evolutionary Whodunit: How Did Humans Develop Lactose Tolerance?

This development of lactose tolerance took only about 20,000 years

around the same time, adult lactose tolerance developed.

the lactose tolerant wouldn't always have had an evolutionary advantage

for the lactose tolerant

why adult lactose tolerance evolved so quickly

It's hard to tell how prevalent lactose tolerance has been over time

And the scientific term is lactase persistence.

(I can respect the urge to be a grammar Nazi, but a wrong grammar Nazi makes a fool of himself.)

I expect that if all cars were banned, he would "discover" a major source of air pollution due to shoe-leather wear, or farts or exhaling

Too late.

I'll see you on that and raise ya several thousands of $$$. The UVM Medical-Industrial complex hbas been swallowing up healthcare facilities around the state and threatening independent providers to our detriment. Meanwhile, as this state-sanctioned monopoly blossoms it becomes harder and harder to get the simplest of procedures without going through a UVM facility - which costs a fortune. https://vtdigger.org/2017/07/3...

It is no coincidence that Vermont is among the top ten most expensive places to buy health insurance: http://www.npr.org/sections/he...

If any of the things you insist are "obvious" were actually true, then it would be easy to support them with actual data ... yet you can't.

Research has suggested a causal link for years.

While the left wing does have a pretty strong monopoly on university protest, actual terrorism is predominately the domain of the right wing in America, and has been so since the 1990s. Back in the 70s, things were different, but we haven't really had that many violent radical left movements or attacks in America for several decades now.

http://www.npr.org/2017/06/16/...

this one looks like a legit piccy....
http://www.npr.org/sections/th...

The gun industry has also made changes. Most gun owners these days store their guns in a full size or compact safe, and it is standard practice to cable lock or trigger lock all firearms not stored in a safe. Those are now industry standards that have greatly reduced the number of accidental shootings.

Just because doctors and hospitals are making an effort doesn't mean that it is effective. Maybe you missed the stat:

Medical mistakes: 250,000 per year, the third leading cause of death and on the rise http://www.npr.org/sections/he...
Accidental shootings: 760 per year and the lowest in history with record gun ownership levels

Yet politicians want to force substandard, defective guns on the citizenry in the name of safety, but there is no outcry over the hundreds of thousands killed every year by doctors. It is not about the regulation or implementing more safety measures, it is about the political pressure to move in a direction.

NPR's All Things Considered produced a story that drew a correlation between IT People jumping from Job to Job in Silicon Valley as the catalyst for the California Companies to become the leading Tech Center -versus- the stifling of raw talent by strict anti-competitive laws in New Jersey.

Actually, I read about a solid state battery being developed in a lab not too long ago. Can't remember where... gettin old is a biatch

The last one I can recall is the lithium glass battery.

o.O

Which average Joe would pay $5000 for a cell phone telephone

Or $15000 for big screen TV

How many people in 1885 could afford Karl Benz's car? They probably waited for the Model T in 1908 but missed out on the Model A. $800-$900. While affordable still very much a luxury item.

Now, being in the basement is odd considering that we have double the size of an average Joe house.

I honestly have absolutely no idea what you mean.

"A report released today by the Governors Highway Safety Association shows that the number of pedestrians killed in traffic jumped 11 percent last year, to nearly 6,000."

The electoral college is an equalizer similar to the way each state gets 2 Senators and a population-proportionate number of Representatives.

Nope. It's an de-equalizer, due to the way it is allocated and the way the House is apportioned.

It even lets under 25% of the population decide the presidency.

Without it, the mob rules (queue Black Sabbath from the Heavy Metal soundtrack.)

The Electoral College mostly serves to discredit elections when it produces a questionable result, it serves no purpose in preventing "mob rule" whatever you mean by that bogeyman word. Or any other abuses. Don't believe me? Check the election of 1876.

Historically, it was created because Philadelphia would have been able to dictate to the entire country.

Historically, Philadelphia wasn't even the largest city in the country at the time, let alone capable of real attempts at dictating to the country by population. It wouldn't happen.

No, they came up with the Electoral College because they knew they wanted a separate Chief Executive, but lacking a consensus for the popular vote at all (South Carolina didn't even have that for selecting its electoral college members until after the Civil War), they came up with the half-assed system they started with, that didn't even last until the 1810s because it was so broken in terms of procedure.

Utter BS to your statement there is no vote fraud. You're playing semantic games. There has always been, and always will be, vote/election fraud. Otherwise, how to explain dead people voting, 100% (sometimes 100%+) turnout for one candidate, people found guilty of fraud, etc.

Seems to me you're playing semantic games, and BSing yourself. Even those claims of "100%" turnout are faked up.

You might find some technical points to quibble over, ask for more precise speech, but that's a boomerang that comes back to roost in your own house.

Hmm..I guess the crusades were some type of party.

Bad example...the Crusades were a reaction to the Muslims overtaking the "Holy Land"...and not letting Christians in....it was a defensive move back in the day.

Once again, the Muslims were the initial aggressors.

Better example than you realize, the Crusades were actually a falsified bit of propaganda using the hysteria over purported aggression against pilgrims that was severely exaggerated, but were used by the Pope to try to improve his political position. Or the Venetian merchants. Or the local kings and emperors.

Which also explains why instead of going to the Holy Lands, the Crusades often targeted local Jews anyway. Sorry, once again, you're misinformed.

But since you actually brought up more recent affairs yes, we can find modern-day violence from the people you don't condemn.

And even the attempts to subvert the legal system to support Christian Dominionism remain evident, the 92nd anniversary of the Scopes trial may be coming up, but they remain pervasive in their efforts to suborn the law to their interests.

Oh, I want to add:

Which is why I support removing all party affiliations from all government voting material. It is easy to paint (D) or (R) or (L) or (S) candidates as a whole, but much harder if none of that was available.

I support this.

Then we have TWO people who are trying to make the same foolish change. If you think party identification is a problem, what makes you think that a mere change to the ballot materials will help? Even Eddie Murphy knew that people could remember a name.

No, what you should do is look for the real problem, which is a lack of representation arising from the current system. You can see it in the Electoral College, but also the House, and even the Senate. Winner-Take All, First-Past-the-Post, and the lack of proper apportionment as well as Gerrymandering all contribute to a non-representative electoral system.

You might as well be focusing on the order of names on the ballot for all the good your solution will do in the end.

Really? Where are you?

NPR says about 11cents for MN average.
http://www.npr.org/sections/mo...
(ok that was 2011)

According to Xcel energy themselves: https://www.xcelenergy.com/sta...

Energy charge per kWh:
On-peak time
June through September $0.20077
October through May $0.16454
October through May with electric space heating $0.10912
Off-peak time:
All months $0.03015

> Which, in the case of this administration, would have lead to you dismissing a lot of accurate news reports. Anonymous sources should be treated with caution yes, but not immediate dismissal.

That's irrational. You should believe things because you have proof, rather than demanding proof before you'll stop believing. A horoscope might be right some of the time, too, but when it's right, it's for the wrong reasons. Otherwise, someone can just point out that anonymous rumors say that you're a creep who does unmentionable things in private. And we're all going to believe that now because you have no way to disprove it. Also, we can dismiss any evidence you do give us because you're a creep. See how that works? Believing things like this just makes people into tools: sad, pathetic, easily-manipulated losers.

> Which is why CNN only reported on the existence of the dossier, they didn't break it.

CNN reported that they had evidence they wouldn't show us. Buzzfeed actually showed us the dossier that CNN wouldn't, allowing people to understand just how unreliable the "evidence" CNN was working from was. Honestly, CNN was less ethical here, because they gave the viewers no opportunity to verify anything and they reported absurd rumors they were unable to verify instead of keeping their mouth shut.

CNN never should have reported on anything but the items they were able to verify from the dossier and never mentioned the rest. Instead they kept telling us how they had secret evidence they weren't going to show us. Then Buzzfeed showed everyone that it was a pile of garbage. It goes right up there with the story that hit Slashdot about the "secret communication with Russian banks" that turned out to be stray DNS queries from a 3rd party marketing server caused by Russian spam (also, who the hell was tapping their DNS...!?)

> Because there's nothing to retract, it hasn't been falsified.

The dossier puts one person in the wrong country because they confused him with someone who had the same name. It's true that some of the items are not falsifiable, because no evidence exists whatsoever, but again, it's not rational to believe things that cannot be falsified.

You might as well tell us that you saw all of this in your crystal ball, it's just as reliable. It's up to you to prove the claims you make. Trying to shift the proof onto others to disprove your claims is not rational. Hearsay is not evidence.

Again, they should not have reported anything they could not independently validate. Hearsay is not news. Any "journalist" who publishes such--about any person whatsoever--is a disgusting creep who deserves public scorn.

> CNN published one legitimately inaccurate story, and fired everyone involved.

CNN's Chris Cuomo, a licensed attorney with an ethical obligation to know better and not to misinform us, falsely told us that Wikileaks was illegal. More credible lawyers quickly told us that was absolute BS.

CNN ended their association with Donna Brazille, but they never identified the person who actually leaked the questions, let alone did they fire them.

By all means, hold all of them to that standard. But demand documented proof of everything, on all sides. No, the person CNN blackmailed was not 15, at least according to their Reddit history. No, Trump's commission did not demand non-public voter roll data, you can read the damned letter on NPR. It's amazing how many lazy scumbag "journalists" couldn't be bothered to link the damned thing, including the article that Slashdot linked to.

It's damned pathetic that supposedly professional "journalists" are so lazy that they're not as good at providing sources as Slashdot comments.

I did not claim that Assage was arrested by the US. If you read the article linked above, it states that:

The tough talk from the United States and allied governments may have had an effect on some companies that were providing services to WikiLeaks. The online retailer Amazon stopped hosting its website. A Swiss bank that had been holding Assange's legal defense fund announced it was freezing the account. PayPal, Visa and MasterCard all said they would stop processing payments to WikiLeaks.

"There are all kinds of influence that government has in dealing with the private sector," says Herbert Lin, a computer scientist and cyberwar expert at the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences. "One could imagine some senior government official calling them up and saying, 'You know, you really ought to stop supporting payments to this organization, because it's really harming national security. And if you help us, we won't forget you.'"

There has also been a longstanding suspicion that Sweden issued the arrest warrant for Assage as a favor to the US government. How else do you explain the coincidental arrest of Assage during the same week that his website was shut down, his bank account was frozen, and PayPal, Visa and MasterCard refused to do business with him?

For that, you'd need to talk to WeVibe as I hear they have expertise in that area.

Obama wouldn't try to stifle the free press.

Wrong. On the same day that US governement announced World Press Freedom Day,

https://2009-2017.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2010/12/152465.htm

Julian Assange was arrested.

http://www.npr.org/2010/12/08/131892110/wikileaks-dodges-obstacles-to-stay-online

On that same day, the famous journalist Daniel Ellsberg defended Assange, pointing out that "EVERY attack now made on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was made against me and the release of the Pentagon Papers at the time."

http://blog.sfgate.com/opinionshop/2010/12/07/daniel-ellsberg-praises-wikileaks/

How did you get modded troll? The letter is here and it asks for "publicly-available voter roll data."

There are a few extra fields of data in some states that you missed, but they only asked for the public data, so the person you responded to is wrong to say otherwise.

Unless someone has silently edited either the Slashdot article or the Engaget article since you posted that, your statement is completely false. Nowhere on the version of the article that I read does it mention non-public data. At most, it talks about Louisiana refusing by saying they'll have to buy the publicly-available data.

But perhaps you've read the many other articles that did say that and you got confused, which is perfectly understandable. In that case, please try reading the actual letter instead of relying on lazy journalists who don't bother to cite their sources:

"I am requesting that you provide to the Comission the publicly available voter roll data" (emphasis added).

So no, neither the Slashdot summary nor the article linked here says that and it wouldn't be true even if they did say that. And any source saying that should give you a copy of the letter to verify it for yourself because if they do not, they are completely unreliable rumor mongers. If they bothered to cite reliable sources, they wouldn't have this sort of problem.

TFA is wrong.

"The letter, sent Wednesday to all 50 states, requests that all publicly available voter roll data be sent to the White House..."

But you'd know that if you had read the actual letter, which you can see in full on the article I linked to, instead of relying on lazy journalists who provide opinions but not sources.

TFA is wrong.

"The letter, sent Wednesday to all 50 states, requests that all publicly available voter roll data be sent to the White House..."

But you'd know that if you had read the actual letter, which you can see in full on the article I linked to, instead of relying on lazy journalists who provide opinions but not sources.

Block all blue states from participating in federal elections until they can prove, either by providing data to the federal government or through an internal audit run by an independent entity, that they don't have dead people, illegal aliens or other fraud on their voter rolls. http://www.npr.org/2012/02/14/...

Also, we need a federal voter ID law for all federal elections. The ID can be free, but you have to spend the time up front to get it at least 2 weeks before the election. If you can't be bothered, you clearly don't value your voting rights. We have made voting rights universal, to the detriment of the country, but there used to be all kinds of restrictions on voting rights, having the very minimal requirement of a photo voter ID is common sense if you want to prevent voter fraud, and a big problem if you are perpetrating it.

The Democrats hate voter ID laws for the simple fact that they abuse the ignorant (busing people from homeless shelters), the elderly (busing people from nursing homes who are mentally incapable of voting), the incarcerated, the dead, and some other just blatant fraud. Investigation into the veracity of the voter rolls would reveal some of this fraud and spur motivation for a national a voter ID law (probably in concert with a national registry that prevents voting in multiple states and culls dead people from the rolls periodically) and that would dramatically increase the difficulty of this fraud and abuse of our election system.

Looks very reasonable to me. https://apps.npr.org/documents...

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

"The letter, sent Wednesday to all 50 states, requests that all publicly available voter roll data be sent to the White House..."

They're asking for otherwise-PUBLICLY AVAILABLE information. They're not asking for secret stuff (why would the states have that anyway?).

Isn't it getting a little tiresome to misinterpret everything Trump does as malignantly as possible?

Donald Trump removed from the GOP platform language for punishing Russia invading Crimea and threatening Ukraine. citation provided

America is now essentially subservient to Russian foreign policy on Ukraine, which is why Trump never acknowledges Russia's ongoing attacks on Ukraine and the United States.

It's obvious that Donald Trump is acting as a puppet of Vladimir Putin, and has ceded control of America's foreign policy to the Russian agents that prop up his business empire while criminally attacking his political opponents.

The G20 meeting is a venue for Vladimir Putin to instruct Donald Trump to commit his next treasonous actions. In exchange Russia will collude with Donald Trump on additional attacks on American democracy.

http://www.npr.org/2016/10/11/... There is a lot more than just this but I'm at work. Anyway even this is a waste of time because it wouldn't matter. Even the fact that Putin himself claimed that it may have been "loyalist Russian hackers" couldn't convince you that Russia was involved so I'm sure that pages of evidence would make no difference.

http://www.snopes.com/kkk-endo...

On the other hand.....

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

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

http://www.motherjones.com/pol...

http://www.motherjones.com/pol...

That's just a few. Trump got the vote of the KKK and neo-nazis, and if you voted for him, you're ideals align with theirs.

Don't be a gullible fucking idiot.

There are good reasons to be against GMO, mostly because the commercial part of it or the side effects that "change".

So because of some commercial uses bother you, means the technology is bad? That's like saying we should ban desktop computers because Microsoft makes questionable business practices. Besides, many well known GMO patents have expired, and farmers have been using GMO plants royalty free for the last two years to the exclusion of non-GMO because they know the GMO ones to be superior:

https://www.technologyreview.c...

Example: You do realize GMO plants do not contain pollen?

This is just downright laughable. By far the most prominent GMO product is canola, which without a doubt produces pollen. Read myth #2 here:

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

The whole anti-GMO movement relies on mis-truths, and wouldn't exist at all if nobody ever made up any of the bullshit you just bought in to.

Anyone who voted up your post which is just a bunch of lies and bogus allegations.

Apparently you're not only one of them "low information voters", you're also promoting ignorance.

Time for you to learn.

- Bill Clinton pardoned two terrorists who were responsible (among other things) of killing two cops.

An unusual combination of New York political and law enforcement leaders have condemned former President Bill Clinton's pardon of Susan L. Rosenberg, a one-time member of the Weather Underground terrorist group who was charged in the notorious 1981 Brink's robbery in Rockland County that left a guard and two police officers dead.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01...

- Bill Clinton also pardoned 16 Puerto Rican terrorists, two of which refused his pardon.

On August 11, 1999, Clinton commuted the sentences of 16 members of FALN, which is a Puerto Rican paramilitary organization that set off 120 bombs in the United States, mostly in New York City and Chicago. There were convictions for conspiracy to commit robbery, bomb-making, and sedition, as well as firearms and explosives violations.[

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

- The Clintons stole furniture from the White House and returned some of it to avoid further lawsuits.

The Clinton White House furnishings in question, which were donated in 1993, included two sofas, an easy chair and an ottoman, worth $19,900, from Steve Mittman; a kitchen table and four chairs, valued at $3,650, from Lee Ficks; a $2,843 sofa from Brad Noe; $1,170 in lamps from Stuart Schiller; and a $1,000 needlepoint rug from David Martinous, according to the Post.
Mittman, Noe and Joy Ficks, the widow of Lee Ficks, told the Post that their donations were gifts to the White House, not the Clintons. The contributions were intended to complement a 1993 White House redecoration project.

http://www.factcheck.org/2016/...

and it was apparently not enough because Hilary did it again when she was Secretary of State.

The ex-agent told the FBI that they were aware of Clinton or her aides 'removing lamps and furniture from the State Department which were transported to her residence in Washington, D.C.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...

- Bill Clinton has a history of rapes (he settled on the most famous one) and Hillary has a history of covering up his actions.

Bill Clinton raped me, and Hillary Clinton threatened me

http://www.npr.org/2016/10/09/...

- Hillary Clinton got caught lying many times

She said when she arrived in Bosnia on March 25, 1996, "I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base."

But news video footage of her arrival at Tuzla shows Clinton, then the first lady, calmly walking from the rear ramp of a U.S. Air Force plane with her daughter, Chelsea, then 16, at her side. Both Clintons held their heads up and did not appear rushed.

The video shows Clinton spending several minutes talking with the group, including an 8-year-old Bosnian girl who presented her with a poem, and later greeting U.S. troops.

Some good charts existed in the press about the 3 hop size of investigations.
With 3 'Hops,' NSA Gets Millions Of Phone Records (July 31, 2013)
http://www.npr.org/templates/s...

Not milk chocolate. There's simply not enough theobromine to kill a dog - they would have to eat their own weight or more. Milk chocolate isn't the same as baker's chocolate. The sugar would kill them before that point. There's plenty that vets push that is BS - such as large dogs needing heartworm vaccinations, or needing vaccinations every year, or vaccinations for leptospirosis, when the vaccine only protects against 6 out of more than 150 different types and has side effects.

Uh huh...

For your own sake at least get your pets vaccinated for rabies. It's zoonotic, so it can be transmitted to humans, and it's fatal!

Do you approve of NPR because it's funded by listeners?

NPR isn't "funded by listeners", it's majority funded by institutional and corporate sources; that's true even at the level of individual stations.

And I neither approve nor disapprove of NPR, but I certainly consider it strongly politically biased, towards the political preferences of both its donors and its listeners.

Wow so your evidence is that it's still in business and the CEO has "expectations"?

No, the evidence is the bias and inaccuracies in what the WaPo publishes, which happen to align with the interests of the owner.

I came here to say this, but obviously you beat me to it.

Then you should be embarrassed for yourself, for what you would have said.

I'll add as a resident of NH, in a state that voted for Clinton (I, myself, did not), that I respect the will of the electoral college, even as I see Trump as an orangutan in a MAGA baseball cap. This cycle the electoral college was not of my state's choosing, but next time it could go our way. Better that than NH's vote never mattering in the slightest, with NY and CA choosing our president ad infinitum.

Or NH's vote could go on not mattering in the slightest way at all, having no purpose and no meaning. You might as well stay home past the primary, and even then, it's mostly a gimmick.

For those who wish to eliminate the electoral college, I'm fine with that as long as when that happens states are given the opportunity to withdraw from the US. Canada is not so far away - we even touch borders!

At least you'd have a chance at a say in Canada's elections, not being constrained by an artificial abomination that serves NO purpose whatsoever. I know, I know, you've been told that it does that, but it doesn't. The Electoral College does nothing except provide a haphazard scattershot system that is prone to abuse, and which you mysteriously believe does something.

Sorry, but you're a fool. Even the secessionists of the Civil War (remember that?) knew it. That's why they proposed a host of reforms. Then, of course, they decided to hell with it, and raised up arms when they lost an election, but that's a separate problem, as is their cause. They weren't wrong to point out the failings of America's system of government in terms of representation.

You may not like it, but it's true. Now go flag your Dixie Maple Flag in the streets of Concord.

Here in Oklahoma, we are thankful for the electoral college.

You shouldn't be, because you should recognize that it is a fundamental abomination on the electoral process that accomplishes nothing except results that lead people to question its very legitimacy.

It did exactly what it was supposed to do. What is it supposed to do, you ask? Simple: It's there to prevent tyranny of the majority so large population states, like California and New York, don't have an over weighted say vs smaller states like Oklahoma and Wyoming.

Except...it does no such thing. That's right, a mere 11 states are necessary to win the Electoral College, and thus the Presidency. You are confusing the happenstance where those states went 6-5 with some actual systematic function of the Electoral College.

I'm sorry, but you need to go to Civics Class, and demand a refund, you have been failed, since anybody with a grasp of math could recognize the problem. But you've been miseducated, and taught that the Electoral College does something, but it does no such thing. Not at all.

If we had a direct population vote as you insinuate, then Los Angeles alone would overwhelm all of the votes of Oklahoma and Wyoming which deprives those states of representation. The electoral college assures their views are represented.

Nope! It does nothing to give them representation or a vote at all. You can check for yourself, just ask how many people are gerrymandered out of representation today. And it was worse BEFORE things like the VRA, Baker v. Carr, Reynolds v. Sims, to the point where MILLIONS more people than live in Los Angeles county (let alone Oklahoma and Wyoming) were soundly disenfranchised due to literacy tests, poll taxes, and other forms if vote discrimination. Not to mention the Indian tribes, as an Oklahoman you should be familiar with that history.

Sorry if you don't like it but it's the law of the land.....and for good reason.

Nope. You are merely mistaken and confused, because you have never sat down to think about the actual effects of the Electoral College, but are simply parroting a dogmatic support for it. There is no good reason for the Electoral College, none at all.

To continue, since you're so mistaken, I want to address more than one of your posts.

First, the states aren't just "geographic regions" inside a big national government. They are sovereign states and our national government is a republic of sovereign states. The history on that aspect is well covered and well litigated. (hint: It's the states rights vs federal government argument that you always hear about).

Yet a real review will show that effectively states are nothing more than artificial geographic regions, with no commonality or continuity to them. Especially out west, where border lines were drawn on a map to fit human ideas of straight lines, not actual interests or communities.

The states are not just "artificial jurisdictional areas we call states". You grossly misrepresent their place in the pecking order.

They really are, there is no natural existence for any of the states, you grossly misunderstand the point being made.

Thinking of the states from a sovereign perspective, Oklahoma has as much right to be represented in our national government as New York or California. Not more. But not less either. The electoral college and the senate are the most public examples of how we try to achieve that balance. We don't base it on population because NY and CA would always win.

Nope. Not only are you wrong on the substance of Electoral College, as it is based a bit over 80% on Population now (and that sum is purely arbitrary, you can chec

Considering the fact that Obama was trying to ram TPP through, trying to blame this on the Republicans and Trump is ridiculous.

First of all, realize that the TPP is NOT about free trade. It's about intellectual property control and a variety of other topics. "Free trade" is a generic cover for the whole thing. The real motivators are things that would be balked at if they were negotiated separately.

For details as to what TPP really IS about, well, here's a very short summary:

The TPP and Intellectual Property

And the EFF's position on it:

EFF on TPP
EFF and the Copyright Trap

I'm not going to go into a lot of research for that particular question since this has already been hashed out a million times before.

However, as for the Democrat portion... well, first off, Obama spearheaded TPP and intended to try to get it rammed through towards the end of his term.

Obama and the TPP

Hillary in fact praised it as the "gold standard" while it was in development (in secret, I might add, to the point where Congressmen had to go to a secure room to look at the drafts and could not keep their notes on it with them):

Hillary on the Gold Standard

TPP Secrecy (note the caption on the picture)

Now she did try to back off on this and flip-flopped, although this might well have been a pose for the campaign:

Hillary and TPP

But the fact is that the Democrats did not officially oppose it.

Rejecting formal TPP opposition

Some would say that the fact that Hillary is particularly likely to lie about this to get elected, even among politicians. But people specifically close to her indicated that, if she was elected, she'd flip-flop on it pretty rapidly.

Terry McAuliffe's view on TPP flipping

Additionally, while people seem to very much enjoy shitting on the Republicans for draconian copyright laws, fact is that the Democrats are just as bad, and in some cases, worse:

Congressional support for SOPA and PIPA

This raises doubts as to what parts of TPP would be "renegotiated," if that had happened, which was one option that seemed to be spoken of for a Hillary presidency. Suffice it to say that it is likely that the IP law portions would not receive renegotiation that would be considered consumer-friendly.

Stereotypical "Republicans are evil 'cuz Republicans" and "Trump is evil 'cuz Trump" is not going to fly here, unless you're also willing to jump on board the "Democrats are evil 'cuz Democrats" train. Fact of the matter is, both sides are bought and paid for by the technology and content generation industries. This was the sentiment when SOPA was defeated by massive Internet backlash:

Backlash after massive SOPA protests

And Democrats were certainly benefiting from Hollywood donations which "encouraged" them to support SOPA:

So in short, both sides are filthy here. You can blame one side or the other for the majority of the problem a

And the safety record for Murray's company isn't great. Murray would have to prove otherwise.

At one time, there were real gains made in home appliance efficiency, but regulators and politicians continued to push efficiency past what physics allows to kiss the asses of the environuts who failed high school physics, so you are left with a reasonably efficient appliance now made mostly useless by "green" regulations that violate the laws of physics and/or chemistry (like removing the phosphates from dishwasher soap http://www.npr.org/2010/12/15/... )...

License plates are issued by the government and are protected as "government speech". The Court ruled on this issue two years ago.

Really, the issue was how rural NC and Charlotte were at odds over how tax revenue should be distributed to rural counties and urban municipalities and how much power Charlotte should have vs. the state legislature in Raleigh. Transgenders just happened to be a convenient battleground, but it was a power struggle between Charlotte and Raleigh, not between Democrats and Republicans. If you read the coverage of the compromise (see NPR on it), you'll find that the state won by imposing a moratorium on any municipal anti-discrimination measures.

Whole Foods is still way cheaper than buying groceries in Canada, and you guys are complaining about the price?

Umm, I don't know where you live, but in Vancouver, which last time I checked was still part of Canada, there are Whole Foods stores... You can go to Whole Foods and purchase groceries at GREATER than average Canadian prices.

And I just had to add... Eff You Trader Joe's for killing Pirate Joe's. http://www.npr.org/sections/th...

Social Security was designed to avoid accumulating large pools of money. Because large pools of money cause problems. They are truly what caused the 2008 crisis.
Pools of pension dollars are irresistible in our managementist system, even capitalism would be an improvement over this mess.

The Slants are Asian Americans. They're aware of the current disparaging connotation and are used it to try to overcome it.

Planet Money had a great podcast episode on this. One of the biggest parts for the Slants was when RBG said "hey, what if they want to take this word back"

Its still funny that that myth persists, the whole no pesticides in organic food. Its just flat out wrong. All farmers use pesticides, organic or not

Yes, just that some pesticides are worse than others. According to this article [1], the USDA maintains a list of what's organically approved and what's not. Equating all pesticides is the real myth.

"Organic" (a term I find amusing) as a quality standard makes a lot of sense.

[1] http://www.npr.org/sections/he...

NPR had a episode on their Planet Money podcast about this very case.

This is a common misconception about the Presidential election.

Actually, the misconceptions here are yours.

The Senate and the Presidency were never meant to be elected directly by the people.

The whole US government was constituted before there was an emphasis on the concept of universal suffrage, the same with states.

In fact, the original process was for the State Legislators to select the Senate members for the State.

Yeah, the state legislators FAILED in that, to the point where the people clamored for the direct election of Senators through the passage of the 17th Amendment.

Likewise, the election for the Presidency was to be done at the State level. That's why the Electoral College exists; to ensure that the person who gets the most State votes wins, and so that every region of the nation has a roughly equal voice. If this was not the case, all it would take is for someone to win the majority of the 8 largest cities, leaving entire regions of the country effectively voiceless when it comes to selecting the President.

You are severely mistaken, if you think that the Electoral College serves in any way to ensure that the person who gets the most State votes wins, or that ANY region of the nation has a voice. In reality, only 11 states are necessary to win the Presidency. I'm not sure how many of the largest cities are needed, but you claimed it ensured something. It does not. The Electoral College offers no such assurances. It has no controls or effects that would lead to that, none at all. There isn't even a defined method for the apportionment of the House, which is why we're stuck at 435 members.

This was actually one of the grievances of the Civil War, that Lincoln did not win a Southern State. In fact, there were proposals before the Civil War, to do something to reflect the regional divisions in the country.

Instead of one national election, think 50 State elections.

And by this system, we get less than 25% of the vote. Not even a run-off is necessary.

I'm sorry, GlennC, but you've bought into the myth of the Electoral College, to the point where you are stating factual untruths, and you may sincerely believe them, but you are severely mistaken. Only happenstance even keeps the 11 most populous states as diversely situated as they are, and even that isn't much.