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There was no combat going on in Baghdad Iraq in 2007? None at all except when the United States pulled the trigger?

From the NY Times
http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/07/reaction-on-military-blogs-to-the-wikileaks-video/

"Between 3:13 and 3:30 it is quite clear to me, as both a former infantry sergeant and a photographer, that the two men central to the gun-camera’s frame are carrying photographic equipment. This much is noted by WikiLeaks, and misidentified by the crew of Crazyhorse 18. At 3:39, the men central to the frame are armed, the one on the far left with some AK variant, and the one in the center with an RPG. The RPG is crystal clear even in the downsized, very low-resolution, video between 3:40 and 3:45 when the man carrying it turns counter-clockwise and then back to the direction of the Apache. This all goes by without any mention whatsoever from WikiLeaks, and that is unacceptable.

At 4:08 to 4:18 another misidentification is made by Crazyhorse 18, where what appears to clearly be a man with a telephoto lens (edit to add: one of the Canon EF 70-200mm offerings) on an SLR is identified as wielding an RPG. The actual case is not threatening at all, though the misidentified case presents a major perceived threat to the aircraft and any coalition forces in the direction of its orientation. This moment is when the decision to engage is made, in error."

So yes, accident in a combat zone, trying to spot a threat in a loud vibrating aircraft through greyscale optics in a dangerous area.

Fog of War.

Again, meditate on this one bit of text for a few years: "not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly". That is the text you are ignoring, so that is the text you need to focus on.

That's the text I bolded. There's no military necessity to open fire on people who are not engaged in hostile action, and certainly none to open fire on a van that pulls up and tries to help the wounded. You yourself said, "does not indiscriminately harm non-combatants." The difference is that you think the troops should be able to label anyone a combatant and then kill them just by claiming they are hostile when that's obviously not the case. If all the men in the video were hostile, they wouldn't be milling around on a street corner. They would be taking cover and returning fire.

The problem when you ignore the rules of engagement, and fail to verify the threat before you eliminate it, is that you end up killing a lot of innocent people. In this case, it was two Reuters employes and anyone unfortunate enough to be near camera equipment, and a good Samaritan and his two daughters, though the two girls thankfully survived.

Restraint of force is a primary component if you're trying to win the hearts and minds of the locals. Recently I read this story:

“We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat,” said Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who became the senior American and NATO commander in Afghanistan last year. His comments came during a recent videoconference to answer questions from troops in the field about civilian casualties.

Though fewer in number than deaths from airstrikes and Special Forces operations, such shootings have not dropped off, despite new rules from General McChrystal seeking to reduce the killing of innocents. The persistence of deadly convoy and checkpoint shootings has led to growing resentment among Afghans fearful of Western troops and angry at what they see as the impunity with which the troops operate — a friction that has turned villages firmly against the occupation...

“There are stories after stories about how these people are turned into insurgents,” Sergeant Major Hall told troops during the videoconference. “Every time there is an escalation of force we are finding that innocents are being killed.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/27/world/asia/27afghan.html

I hope you learned something, because I'm bored with you now.

I have already learned that there are an endless supply of apologists for American power who are unable to grasp basic moral concepts. And in your case, ill prepared, unread, and sadly typical.

Video game driving skills do apply to real life:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/sports/othersports/04nascar.html

http://www.dailytech.com/Champion+Gran+Turismo+Gamer+Becomes+Realworld+Racing+Champion/article17035.htm

Quote: At the camp, Ordoñez proved a natural at racing in real world cars. He found his "experience to be consistent in the laps and to know the perfect line in the tracks" had helped him to be able to recognize real-world braking points.

As for the article/story:
1) The camera angle was too low for the car, and it was fixed.
2) In GTA3 etc who cares about hitting small stuff like traffic cones?

You, as a participant in online gambling, have ZERO ability to determine if you are being cheated.

All serious players at online casinos run programs which store each and every hand dealt at the tables they play at, and make various statistics based on that information. Some of them have a sufficient grasp of statistics to be able to figure out if they're being cheated. Certain things, like getting worse hands in a consistent manner, would be grossly obvious for instance. Furthermore, casinos already have a steady revenue stream: the rake. At tables where the big blind reaches 50 dollars, the casino takes about four dollars every single hand, so they're probably earning at least 200 dollars per hour per table at these stakes. There is absolutely no incentive for a casino to cheat his customers, which could just go elsewhere at the first sign of being cheated.

Here is a link to a blog about a cheating scandal at one of the major poker sites. The cheating was discovered by players, and it was not done by the casino, but by rogue employees.

I had written a long rant about the rest of your post, but I think it is best to simply say that you have no idea what you're talking about. I will, however, give a reply to the last sentence.

I have no problem at all with banning online gambling worldwide.

It's easy to call for a ban when it doesn't affect you or anyone you know.

Many sites Straight Cheat..

You don't have a very good grasp as to how online poker works. And yes there is a reason for an online casino to cheat their customers you cock gobbling retard.

You know who he sounds like? Someone with a brain in their head. So Mr. online poker shill, you continue wasting your money in cheaterville while the rest of us laugh at you.

You don't have a very good grasp as to how online poker works. There is no reason whatsoever for an online casino to cheat their customers. In fact, it works against their interest.

Sure there is a reason. To extract more rents from them. It is in their interests as long as they dont get caught. And it has happened: The Absolute Poker Cheating Scandal Blown Wide Open.

The GP is correct. You are incredibly stupid to "game" on a site that has no accountability and where you wining/loosing is unverifiable and therefore arbitrary.

Like all large corporations (including Google), they will do evil to make money. They just don't care any more. They are usually strong enough to put the government off indefinitely or are willing to pay a small fine to make a large profit.

You mean like walking off with USD1.6 billion of US taxpayers' money? Yes, if any company has the credentials to be able to do that, IBM would be at the top of the list.

(For those who don't remember, IBM was billions of dollars into an FAA modernization contract in the mid 90's when it sold its federal services division, including the never-completed contract, to Loral, effectively walking away with billions of dollars of taxpayer money for services never rendered.)

The best bit of journalism in the last year on this subject:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/business/global/02hacker.html?emc=eta1

Now - read the story of Maija the not-so-l33t hacker and pay special attention to how the story explains how the Chinese special intelligence services work. The whole thing is outsourced, loose affiliation. The blackwater-ization of hacking, where for the government is most interested in a plausible denial.

Then tell me again how the Chinese intelligence services aren't funding and running Ghostnet.
The way I see it, these hackers probably get treated as well as Bobby Kotick treats his people. Do thy bidding and get hookers sent over for lunch, maybe two if you find a 0-day.

No kidding. These kinds of pranks can be DANGEROUS.
On August 31st, 2005 in Baghdad, there was a large crowd of Shiites on a pilgrimage crossing a crowded bridge. Someone somewhere on the bridge said something about suicide bombers, and this sparked a horrible panic which turned into a stampede. Over 950 people died from being crushed, suffocated or drowning after jumping or falling into the Tigris. This probably wasn't a prank. It could have been malicious, or maybe there are words that rhyme with suicide bomber in Arabic. But it does demonstrate how dangerous a prank can be.

Right, the news would never look this good.

Q Do your parents know about what you do for a living? What was your occupation before you became a call girl? What made you go into this line of work? Was it just the money or was it the flexible hours and the chance to be your own boss? – Dmitri

A. My parents don’t know about my work, or anything else about my sex life. I was a programmer when I decided to quit my job and become an escort. I was single and meeting people through a popular dating website. Finding someone “special” proved to be difficult, but I did meet many nice men. At that time, the reason I gave up my programming job was the free time. I was caring for a family member with a serious illness — the free time and money was a huge benefit.

I'm not sure of the particulars, but during US drafts some particular religious sects were conscientious objectors - for instance, Mennonites and Amish, and that may apply to some group in Israel, as well. In fact, during WW1 the US sent 45 Mennonites to Leavenworth and basically stripped them naked beat them, and left them in a cell with only a uniform to wear - some refused and died over it (including some ancestors of mine). Because of this religious persecution in the United States, several groups moved to Canada.

The solution is crowd-sourcing.

See this March 10th, 2010 New York Times piece by UCLA Prof. Richard A. Schmidt, who's one of the world's experts on the phenomenon of sudden unintended acceleration: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/11/opinion/11schmidt.html Converging lines of evidence indicated that, for a rash of cases in the 1980s, the cause was most likely driver error: your foot gets accidentally placed on the gas instead of the brakes ("noisy neuromuscular processes"). The good news is that if there are regularities to the human error, then designs can be updated to block or reduce that error (e.g., shift lock).

For consistency's sake, you also want Obama impeached for continuing the policy, right?

East Palo Alto was the first city to have complete coverage. They say it has helped reduce shootings. It is also helping to resolve a mystery regarding a plane crash - http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/audio-of-tesla-plane-crash-may-help-in-determining-cause/ . I knew the pilot, who was extraordinarily careful about flying his plane and had flown out of Palo Alto airport hundreds of times. We suspect he lost his left engine during takeoff and was pulled left into the power lines (normal procedure is to veer right towards the bay). These audio recordings might determine what happened.

...AT&T, Google and Microsoft, and advocacy groups from across the political spectrum said Tuesday that it would push Congress to strengthen online privacy laws to protect private digital information from government access.

They want to protect our information from the government, but what about themselves? Some of their very business models depends on people giving their information to the company (Google). Such a coalition is not likely to recommend privacy laws that also apply to their own corporations, so any privacy reform spearheaded by these members will be incomplete and potentially damaging.

On their principles page they only make mention of limiting the government's access to information, and don't even reference anything about corporations. While I applaud their attempt to limit government access to our private information, their (understandable) bias in favor of their corporate needs kind of limits this effort in my opinion. I am more concerned about the amount of data that google and other such companies have about me at this point.

Any privacy legislation needs to restrict the amount and kinds of information these companies can collect about us in order to really protect privacy on the internet, since the internet is really more the domain of corporations than the federal government.

DNA has been getting relied on heavily lately to solve otherwise cold cases. States have started running crime scene evidence through DNA databases wholesale, and then running with whatever match they get, even if it's just a partial.

Think about it: if there's a one in a million chance that the DNA will match, and you have a 20 million person database, then you're going to get 20 matches. Now just find the guy who's most convenient to prosecute. Boom, instant cold case conversion!

DNA's Dirty Little Secret: a forensic tool renowned for exonerating the innocent may actually be putting them in prison
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2010/1003.bobelian.html

Also:

New Rule Allows Use of Partial DNA Matches
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/25/nyregion/25dna.html

DNA Evidence Can Be Fabricated, Scientists Show
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/science/18dna.html

DNA has been getting relied on heavily lately to solve otherwise cold cases. States have started running crime scene evidence through DNA databases wholesale, and then running with whatever match they get, even if it's just a partial.

Think about it: if there's a one in a million chance that the DNA will match, and you have a 20 million person database, then you're going to get 20 matches. Now just find the guy who's most convenient to prosecute. Boom, instant cold case conversion!

DNA's Dirty Little Secret: a forensic tool renowned for exonerating the innocent may actually be putting them in prison
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2010/1003.bobelian.html

Also:

New Rule Allows Use of Partial DNA Matches
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/25/nyregion/25dna.html

DNA Evidence Can Be Fabricated, Scientists Show
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/18/science/18dna.html

The problem with your reasoning, is that just a little bit of the cost is actually paper. Sure, you get rid of one middleman, but you replace it with another who want their cut (30% seems to be the going rate).

The "lack of value" you see doesn't show up as a saved cost for the publisher and author, and most of the work is done anyway. And AFAIK, publishing isn't a business making money hands over fist. A few authors do - J. K. Rowling and Dan Brown are not exactly median earners - and publishing them is very profitable too. But for most books, this does not seem to be the case.

Maybe you missed it, but he's not officially inspirational anymore. (Last paragraph.)

That paragraph was amusing, in a way. It reads:

Cynthia Dunbar, a lawyer from Richmond who is a strict constitutionalist and thinks the nation was founded on Christian beliefs, managed to cut Thomas Jefferson from a list of figures whose writings inspired revolutions in the late 18th century and 19th century, replacing him with St. Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and William Blackstone. (Jefferson is not well liked among conservatives on the board because he coined the term “separation between church and state.”)

I laughed at that. Don't these "conservatives" realize that the separation of church and state is better for the state AND the church? The best way to destroy the religion they so cling to would be to intermingle it with petty politics.

Maybe you missed it, but he's not officially inspirational anymore. (Last paragraph.)

Google 'new london police IQ Jordan'.

http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09/19/weekinreview/ideas-trends-help-wanted-invoking-the-not-too-high-iq-test.html?pagewanted=1
" In 1996 Mr. Jordan scored 33 out of 50 on the exam, ... He says he was curtly informed that he did not ''fit the profile,'' which litigation revealed was a score of 20 to 27.

''Bob Jordan is exactly the type of guy we would want to screen out,'' said William C. Gavitt, the deputy police chief"

Citation here:

METRO NEWS BRIEFS: CONNECTICUT; Judge Rules That Police Can Bar High I.Q. Scores

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/01/technology/personaltech/01pogue.html?src=mv

Just some Slashdot nazelgazing.

Andy Ihnatko's Sun Times review + Unboxing

Xeni Jardin's Boing Boing review

Goatberg's WSJ review

Baig's USA Today review

and Pogue's awkward review for NYT

"racial divisions are fundamentally arbitrary, and ... deciding who is white has been not only fluid but also heavily influenced by class and culture. ... this concept -- the social and cultural construction of race over time -- remains harder for many people to understand than, say, the notion that gender is a social and cultural construction, unlike sex."

"Who's White? " by Linda Gordon, a review of "The History of White People," by Nell Irvin Painter, (496 pp. W. W. Norton & Company, New York) in the NYTimes Sunday Book Review on March 28, 2010 at p. 1.

RTWT, it is worthwhile.

While you have a point, by your own logic, you'll never know how much happier your life or our society might have been if you had not been drilled for thirteen or more years in:
* only doing what someone in authority tells you to do;
* only socializing with people of a similar age, similar mental abilities, and similar social class;
* doing stuff no matter how stupid or pointless you thought it was just because some authority told you to do it or else;
* had more chances to think up your own things to do with people you picked;
* had more chances to work with both your hands and brain;
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/24/magazine/24labor-t.html?_r=1
* and so on.

See New York State Teacher of the Year John Taylor Gatto:
"The 7-Lesson Schoolteacher"
http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
"""
Look again at the seven lessons of schoolteaching: confusion, class assignment, dulled responses, emotional and intellectual dependency, conditional self-esteem, surveillance -- all of these things are good training for permanent underclasses, people derived forever of finding the center of their own special genius. And in later years it became the training shaken loose from even its own original logic -- to regulate the poor; since the 1920s the growth of the school bureaucracy and the less visible growth of a horde of industries that profit from schooling just exactly as it is, has enlarged this institution's original grasp to where it began to seize the sons and daughters of the middle classes.
"""

See also his:
"State Controlled Consciousness"
http://www.the-open-boat.com/Gatto.html
"""
If your kids do badly, it does not mean that they're bad readers or anything else. It means they haven't been obedient to the drills the state set down and they're marked for further treatment later on with a mark to be excluded from responsible jobs. Perhaps some way is to be excluded from the colleges that lead to responsible jobs, in other ways from the licenses that lead to responsible jobs.
This was ALL worked out. It didn't evolve by a lot of rational people saying we'll take this this and this from the past, then the next generation says we'll take this this and this. This was set down largely in a handful of places. Prussia was perhaps the most prominent of those places. The Prussian experiment leapt into the United States almost immediately in the 1840's. Leapt into the United States; its propagandists covered the country here. Its backers, its financial backers set up the most important teacher training institutes and then financed those institutes and then no one was allowed to become a teacher who didn't more or less subscribe to the fact that experts could create a curriculum and pedagogues could administer it.
Well, that's exactly what Horace, the Roman essayist, talked about in several of his essays. He said, "the master creates the lessons, the pedagogue (the teacher) administers the lessons." But if you find the teacher creating the lessons or deviating from the direction the lessons are headed in, you get rid of the pedagogue.
"""

And that last is part of what happened to Jaime Escalante. While he may not have understood the bigger picture, he deviated from the lessons, and was ultimately replaced, whatever the results.

As Gatto says at the end there:
"""
A lot of the constraints on us, a lot of the ah, ah - strings that hold us like puppets are really inventions of our own mind. I'm not saying that there aren't armies and police and various ways to punish deviants. But there isn't any way to punish a LARGE NUMBER of deviants. There isn't any way to do that. It's too expensive to even try to do that, unless you can colonize the minds of children

http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/obama-takes-on-the-teacher-unions/

Oh really?

From the first paragraph:

President Obama gets an A+ for his education speech just now. He made all the traditional and necessary points that one would expect a progressive Democrat to make — such as the crucial necessity of more early childhood programs — but he also added elements that will make teachers’ unions uncomfortable. And, frankly, that’s terrific. The Democratic Party has been too close to the unions for too long, and their interest is not precisely the same as the students’. The unions would be failing their members if they didn’t cry foul when bad teachers were pushed out, but that’s what we need more of. Education reform is going to mean challenging the unions, and Obama signaled that that’s what he plans to do.

And that's not really the only opinion piece you can find from the New York Times that is critical of the teacher's unions.

The huddled masses of special effects lovers will pay their last drop of blood to see it too. You don't even need a storyline.

Of course, why do you think they've announced Men in Black 3, Hancock 2 and (*shudder*) I, Robot 2?

And keep in mind that these are just sequels that Will Smith is involved with. Rarely I go to the theater but one of the big detractors is when every single goddamn preview before the feature film is about a sequel. It started happening frequently a couple years ago and now is just completely out of hand.

I imagine the 3D effect is going to exacerbate this situation. "Yeah, we done did Watchmen but now we need an excuse to capitalize off of Watchmen in 3D so we'll hack together a script for Watchmen 2: Who Watches Those Who Are Watching the Watchmen? Do you smell boatloads of money?"

Hi,

What's going on isn't that people are lazy, but that they're being lied to, constantly. These lies get so ingrained that they become conventional wisdom, so much so that in your rant you recited some of them without wondering how you know.

Let's take the claim that inflation is raping the dollar. We've been hearing that ever since Obama took office because his opponents are willing to say anything, even irresponsible things, to embarrass him. We've also been hearing it from people who think that returning to the gold standard will make them richer ever since the seventies, when we left the gold standard (which had been in place since the beginning of the 20th century, having replaced gold and silver against the strident protests of William Jennings Bryan).

People see the prices they pay for things increase, and think that there's something wrong, especially as their salaries aren't increasing nearly as fast (thanks to 40 years of unionbusting, offshoring, skyrocketing CxO salaries, and importation of foreign workers who are then treated like shit). People are then told that inflation is the problem, not the fact that they're being asked to work for less so the big boss can get a bonus. And the suggestion to return to the gold standard makes sense when that's the only thing you're looking at- it would be more difficult to cut wages than simply refuse to raise them, which is the same thing with inflation. Plus, inflation makes your money rot in the bank.

I don't know why, but inflation is a necessary part of how economies work. Unfortunately, it's hard to trust economists because half of them are liars who will say anything to try to make rich people richer. Still, Paul Krugman seems trustworthy, and at any rate he has a graph of inflation on his blog which should indicate that the dollar is not being raped.

I'm not sure what to say. It's hard to find out who's not lying to you and easy to accept intentional fallacies by liars. I mean, after the hottest decade on record, they sound like Baghdad Bob continuing to deny that the globe is warming! Most of the sheeple aren't sure what to believe either and go with what people they trust tell them. You can't be an expert on everything and liars have been poisoning the well on expertise for decades.

There have been several studies (third question in the interview, feel free to google for more information) showing that the areas of the brain linked to complex decision making and impulse control are still under development in the adolescent brain, and in fact continue to develop into the 20s. These findings may explain, in part, why teenagers are more prone to risky behavior (such as, say, unprotected sex) than older people. In short, studies indicate that hormone-soaked teenage brains do NOT have all the physiological necessities for impulse control.

This is just another story of government over reaching in to the lives of the population. First health care now privacy.

Before health care there was, and still is, the War on Drugs. Two Republican, 2 not 1 and Republican not Democrat, presidents overreached with that. Republican President Nixon had The Shafer Commissionstudy whether hemp, marijuana, should be legalized. Of the 13 members Nixon appointed 9. Even then he said no matter what the commission concludes he would never agree to allow hemp to be legalized. And that is exactly what the commission concluded. After him Republican President Reagan then toughened law enforcement and sentencing for drug offices. Nancy Reagan was the one that started the Just Say No campaign. Neither Nixon nor Reagan, nor most Democrats for that matter, would agree to legalization.

Next they will tell you what to eat

Michael Bloomberg, a Republican, wants to say what people eat. He also advocated smoking bans as well as gun bans.

Big brother here we come.

That's true with both Republicans and Democrats.

Falcon

The US Census projects the running count and takes into account illegals.

But lets say it doesn't.

The current estimate is between 10 and 11 million illegals.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/31/us/31immig.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt

So if that is the right number, than the population is between 316-321 million. If we go to the super high estimate of 20 million, then we have a population of between 325 and 330 million, still a long ways from your 350 million figure.

The tea partiers have no love for the GOP and are not comprised of only republicans. The thing is that the GOP is essentially trying to co-opt the movement.

And some of those stats you provide are outright nonsense. I'd consider this a more legitimate source. The highest I've seen elsewhere was on CNBC where they report 42 cents of every dollar goes to the military, 28.7 cents to current spending, 10 cents to interest on past and present military debt and 3.5 cents to Veterans.

I call BS on the story about commercial tax rates but I currently don't have the time or inclination to find evidence to back up my claim.

when your economy is trashed by greedy speculation then fear and hysteria. that's what sent germany to the dogs: the great depression, the collapse of the financial world

aka, what the world just experiences in 2008 (on a much smaller scale, true)

but this historical parallel leads us to four observations:

1. the angry tea partiers, with their brick throwing and insane murderous anger, IS kristallnacht, on a smaller scale

2. intolerant deluded propagandized fools hording guns in the woods are the seeds of fascism, NOT our protectors from fascism

3. we need strong government regulation in the financial sector, and the assholes (greenspan and co) who dismantled the 1930s era (irony) protections need to be grilled a la congressional hearings and roundly castigated for their dangerous irresponsibility

4. hopefully the world, and the usa, can weather this horde of angry morons out of work, the seeds of fascism, without them crystallizing around some modern day hitler-like demagogue and mounting a political (and visceral: they love guns) challenge to civilization. and then let the retards fade away into history

interesintg note: many tea partiers receive government benefits (unemployment, medicaid)... while they rail against government aid. they go to tea party rallies... instead of looking for work. fucking ignorant hypocrites

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/us/politics/28teaparty.html

because the WTO saying stuff actually makes a difference to US behaviour. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/22/business/worldbusiness/22iht-wto.4296092.html A quick reminder that the EU is bigger and far more bureaucratic

Not surprisingly, higher SAT scores correlate with a higher eventual annual income, something to the tune of $20k/yr per 40 points in the combined SAT score (critical reading + math + writing). Assuming wages increase at the inflation rate of 3%, income is earned from ages 23 through 65, and a discount rate of 10%, the average additional lifetime earning potential of +100 points equates to $162k in present dollars.

Obviously not all eggs result in a baby; only about 10% of eggs result in a live birth. Even so, the economic value of higher SAT scores makes the $2350 look pretty trivial.

As for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine discouraging "compensation based on donors' personal characteristics"...well, they're exactly not raising my kid are they?

How about the HFCS question?

For fuck's sake, there's HFCS in just about everything we eat these days. After the recent study, I went through my pantry. Wanted to see precisely how much of the stuff it was in.

- Hot dogs? CHECK.
- Oscar Mayer "deli meats" for sandwiches? CHECK.
- Breakfast cereals? Almost universal. If it has "modified corn starch", that's HFCS under a disguised name.
- Salty-type snacks? Check. Even the supposedly all-natural pita chips.
- Anything from Chef Boyardee. Check.
- Frozen pizzas waiting to be heated up? Check. Turns out they add HFCS to the goddamn tomato sauce.

The list goes on but I think you get the picture. We're being fed HFCS EVERYWHERE and we just saw a major study done showing an effect on HFCS, either by brain chemistry or satiety reflex, causing obesity. If they were feeding rats the same stuff in their "fatty foods" (and cheesecake is OMG FUCKING FULL OF IT)...

That's a major reason why I limit the amount of processed foods I eat. I've been doing this for a long time and cook most of my food from scratch. It does not really take a lot of time and the quality of my meals has improved greatly.

A while back, I came across this article by Michael Pollan and I agree with it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/28/magazine/28nutritionism.t.html

"Eat Food. Not too much. Mostly Plants."

Avoid processed/prepackaged stuff as much as possible.

You just can't decide between looking "socially acceptable" and living longer. So you are pissed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/health/07fat.html?ex=1352091600&en=df140405014189b6&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

If his assassination outrages Europeans, what that reflects is the lack of respect that Europeans have for fundamental human rights and international law when it comes to Jews.

Dear sir, we are not cowboys and this is not the far-west. In Europe we have this thing called Court of Law. There was no international arrest mandate for al-Mabhouh, and even if there was one, he was supposed to have a trial (call us old fashioned here in good ol' Europe, but we kind of believe that before assassinating people, they are kind of supposed to have a trial and check if the accusations against them stand in a court of law).

There are international arrest mandates for former Israeli ministers here in EU but that's strange, we don't see intentions here for going after the guy and murdering him: http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/british-court-issued-arrest-warrant-for-livni/

I do know that is not something that country believes in so I understand that since you where not raised in a society that values legality, respect for human life and moral, you simply fail to see my point.

The Israelis, yet again, demonstrate that their nation is part of the West. Israel is a Western democracy that safeguards civil rights and, in general, human rights. Wafa Sultan, a prominent American of Syrian ancestry, correctly and firmly praises the achievements of the Israelis.

Israel, not Turkey, deserves to be a member of the European Union (EU).

The Turks have long attacked human rights. In Turkey, suppressing free speech on and off the Internet is almost a national sport. You can be arrested and imprisoned for claiming that the Turks are responsible for the Armenian genocide.

After a Congressional committee approved a resolution ascribing responsibility for the genocide to the Turks, the Turks withdrew their ambassador from the USA.

This sort of behavior is not what we Westerners want to see in the European Union. The Israelis act more like Europeans than the Turks and deserve EU membership far more than the Turks.

ah ?!

Israel is a racist country which violets human rights and international law.
Our army top officers ordered solders to ignore our Bagats (which is the highest authority in our court system.) orders and to ignore the law.

As one that live in Israel I can say FUCK NO, my country doesn't deserve to even be called a democracy, my friends has been arrested for saying stuff like what I write to Israelis.

Israel, not Turkey, deserves to be a member of the European Union (EU).

The Turks have long attacked human rights. In Turkey, suppressing free speech on and off the Internet is almost a national sport. You can be arrested and imprisoned for claiming that the Turks are responsible for the Armenian genocide.

After a Congressional committee approved a resolution ascribing responsibility for the genocide to the Turks, the Turks withdrew their ambassador from the USA.

This sort of behavior is not what we Westerners want to see in the European Union. The Israelis act more like Europeans than the Turks and deserve EU membership far more than the Turks.

In conservative America, the way to be successful is to go on welfare and then join the Tea Party to protest other people going on welfare.

Just ban them from listening in on Americans, as an official policy, and don't worry about it.

I'm sorry but that's purely wishful thinking on your part.

In 1976, the Church Committee reports found NSA obtained copies of millions of private telegrams sent from, to or through the United States in its SHAMROCK program.

On August 17, 2006, District Court Judge Anna Diggs Taylor ruled in ACLU v. NSA that NSA violated the First and Fourth amendment by warrantless tapping American citizens in the aftermath of 9/11.

In April 2009, intelligence officials admits that NSA had been engaged in “overcollection” of domestic communications of Americans. In one extreme case they even wiretapped a congressmen while he was overseas.

Please note that I am not wearing tinfoil hats and all my sources came from either from Congressional hearings or court rulings.

Donate to WikiLeaks? Quality investigative reporting (in the realm of government) is amost a myth. Some journalists have the balls to repeat the claims of an anonymous source while keeping the source anonymous, and in the pre-internet days that was important, but its rapidly becoming less so.

I do see quality investigative reporting in the realm of consumer advocacy, but in politics the press has devolved to repeating any claim that damages the party they don't like, without even spending 5 minutes of Google to see if it passes the laugh test.

The National Inquirer is up for a Pulitzer this year, believe it or not, for running a tawdry sex scandal story about a politician. If that's not a sign of how far political journlism has fallen, I don't know what is.

Although, I bank at a credit union where there was no fee anyways, they simply transfer the funds from checking (for free).

Didn't we just pass legislation that for the first time forces private citizens to buy a product from a select set of other private citizens. The constitution is no longer relevant to the party in control of our government. They have deemed it something that can be reinterpreted to mean whatever they need it to mean at the time. All they need to do is redefine what words mean and suddenly the constitution means all sorts of things!

Here's a few examples:

1895: Wage is now the same as income! Democrats begin their long march towards socialism! With the help of the Socialist Labor Party of the 1890's, they pass an amendment so they can now collect income tax from everyone! The sucking noise begins.

1935: Now retirement and health care are a RIGHT and the government is required to provide for the "happiness" of the people by collecting money from one group of people and giving it to another. Democrats, unhappy with the difficulty of getting constitutional amendments, so they decide to craft laws that skirt the letter of the constitution, arguing that social security/medicare is an retirement benefit to the people, while arguing to the SCOTUS that it is a tax. When the SCOTUS rules the initial law unconstitutional, democrat FDR runs personal smear campaigns against SCOTUS justices and has them replaced with justices that are willing to interpret the constitution the way he needs it. And thus begins the largest ponzi scheme in world history!.

begin rant:
The government then took from the ponzi err. social security fund as frequently as pleased to and for whatever reason it deemed important enough to do so. Which was of course any reason. Now, were this a REAL business, at this point the CFO would be thrown in jail, but this is the U.S. government! They buy the jails! Social security has been bankrupt for decades, the debt is around 17 trillion. But this week, for the first time, even on paper, the government is giving out more money in social security than it is taking in..

I ask you, if the government can force you to buy something from someone, is there anything there anything the government can't force you to buy? And if the government can arbitrarily come in and tell me what I must buy, what I can buy, and what I can't buy, can we truly say we live in a free society?

And for you fools in control. What makes you think the next generation is going to pay any attention to the laws you so haphazardly pass when you completely ignore the laws of the previous generations? That's anarchy! :end rant

I would be remiss to point out that Thomas Jefferson was like a fricking Nostradamus in predicting what would happen in this country. And how can I possibly follow the words of Jefferson with my pathetic waxing? So adieu!

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.
-Thomas Jefferson

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.
-Thomas Jefferson

Great innovations should not be forced on slender majorities.
-Thomas Jefferson

Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms [of government] those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.
-Thomas Jefferson

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of the

Yes, China has a bubble.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/10/AR2010031002636.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/25/AR2010032503777.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/05/business/global/05yuan.html

http://www.ap.org/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/
http://online.wsj.com/home-page
http://www.nytimes.com/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
http://www.cnn.com/
http://www.c-span.org/
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/
http://www.popularmechanics.com/
http://www.scientificamerican.com/

Need I go on?