Slashdot Mirror

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/1...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

How many more instances until we call this a trend?

The Gray Lady issuing anti-Trump screeds isn't a "trend" -- it's a way of life.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/1...
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

How many more instances until we call this a trend?

The Gray Lady issuing anti-Trump screeds isn't a "trend" -- it's a way of life.

Even if Americans stop burning coal, it is still a valuable export commodity.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

For many in the world, where billions of people still live without any electricity, it is the only realistic solution.

True, the USA is the only place in the world with sun and wind.

Even if Americans stop burning coal, it is still a valuable export commodity.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

For many in the world, where billions of people still live without any electricity, it is the only realistic solution.

Here's a few more instances:
The chemical, perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, has been linked to kidney
cancer, birth defects, immune system disorders and other serious health problems.
So scientists and administrators in the E.P.A.’s Office of Water were alarmed in
late May when a top Trump administration appointee insisted upon the rewriting of
a rule to make it harder to track the health consequences of the chemical, and
therefore regulate it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/1...

In the weeks before the Environmental Protection Agency
decided to reject its own scientists’ advice to ban a potentially harmful pesticide,
Scott Pruitt, the agency’s head, promised farming industry executives who wanted to
keep using the pesticide that it is “a new day, and a new future,” and that he was
listening to their pleas.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

How many more instances until we call this a trend?

Here's a few more instances:
The chemical, perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, has been linked to kidney
cancer, birth defects, immune system disorders and other serious health problems.
So scientists and administrators in the E.P.A.’s Office of Water were alarmed in
late May when a top Trump administration appointee insisted upon the rewriting of
a rule to make it harder to track the health consequences of the chemical, and
therefore regulate it.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/1...

In the weeks before the Environmental Protection Agency
decided to reject its own scientists’ advice to ban a potentially harmful pesticide,
Scott Pruitt, the agency’s head, promised farming industry executives who wanted to
keep using the pesticide that it is “a new day, and a new future,” and that he was
listening to their pleas.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

How many more instances until we call this a trend?

http://www.businessinsider.com/devin-nunes-clintons-probe-us-russia-uranium-deal-2017-10

The New York Times reported in 2015 that "as the Russians gradually assumed control of Uranium One in three separate transactions from 2009 to 2013, Canadian records show, a flow of cash made its way to the Clinton Foundation." The Times' reporting built off of "Clinton Cash," a book by the conservative author Peter Schweizer that the Clintons dismissed as partisan conspiracy-mongering.

The Hill's report largely echoed those claims, alleging that Russian officials tried to "ingratiate themselves with the Clintons" by transferring "millions of dollars from Russia's nuclear industry to an American entity that had provided assistance to Bill Clinton's foundation."

The Hill further alleged that the FBI had found evidence that the Russian official who oversaw Russian President Vladimir Putin's "nuclear expansion inside the US" had been engaging in bribery and extortion.

So, this company, whose service is providing chairs and tables and coffee, just bought a $850 million building? What. The. Fuck??

From what I can find with a quick search online, commercial leases in New York are around $75/month/sqft. If they can rent out a quarter of that building (the article says it's 650k+ square feet), they'll make back the $850 million in under 10 years.

WeWork isn't some cool new startup business, they're just a commercial landlord.

First, this is now news. Second, could you possibly find a worse source of information on the subject? For example, how about this article from 2013: https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com...?

Anyone that has a child knows not only that young children regularly use smartphones and tablet but also that school systems are regularly using tablets as educational tools. In fact, the school system my daughter is in requires it and has done so since the 2nd grade. This is not a new thing. This has been going on for several years. My daughter has been playing video games since she was 2 and started using a tablet around 4. By the time my daughter was 3, she was pretty good at Mario Kart for the WII.

Some other things you might be surprised to know exist: 1) After school clubs for writing video games, 2) After school clubs for building robots, 3) Teachers using mobile apps to teach kids basic programming skills like hopscotch. Young kids soak this stuff up like a sponge and they're going to be running circles around many of the adults that are around now when they become adults.

This should come as a surprise to no one, especially slashdot. The good paying jobs of the future are largely going to be in the STEM fields. School systems have modified their curriculum accordingly.

This is actually pretty impressive from Microsoft.

But I find it absolutely amazing that some people who advocate privacy and fight facebook/microsoft/apple in regards to data retention, completely forget about the biggest of all thefts and criminals: Google!

And more amazingly, the very same people go about using Chrome, Android, Google Mail, Search, etc!
It's well known from Snowden's revelations that Google is the back office arm of NSA, to various degrees and extent.

Google has no problem in handing over any private/personal data, as long as there's money involved. Thus we never hear Google fighting for privacy, unlike Apple!

So, this company, whose service is providing chairs and tables and coffee, just bought a $850 million building? What. The. Fuck??

There's another option apparently becoming more popular recently. (Skeptical me thinks it's probably an advertisement.) I can't say I appreciate worrying about the carbon footprint of cremation, though...

Yeah, medical - Four for College, One for Bad Feet. His medical condition was so bad that he could only play football, tennis, squash & golf.

"The others didn't go so well..."

Has Bill Gates been successful in spending his money? Is there evidence he has deep knowledge about technology? Is there evidence he has deep knowledge about programming, for example?

Over many years, I have seen almost no evidence of Bill Gates having depth of thinking.

Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold wrote a very poor book together, The Road Ahead. Quote from the Wikipedia page:

The New York Times review called the book "bland and tepid" and reading "as if it had been vetted by a committee of Microsoft executives"; it is "little more than a positioning document, sold in book form with accompanying CD-ROM and designed mainly to advance the interests of the Microsoft Corporation."

That New York Times book review suggests that Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold were deliberately engaged in fraud, and deliberately eliminated anything of value from the book before it was printed.

Yes his was code was analyzed. It's a very very old story here on Slashdot from early last decade. Bill Gates is one of the most successful CEO's in history. He mad a shitty OS a monopoly and was ahead of the technology curve for the 80's and 90's before it went to shit when Balmer took over.

We know Windows wasn't great but he is good with investments and running a company. His tactics and agreement with IBM gave us the DOS/Windows monopoly we all hate but I give him credit for it in a business sense.

"Those who can do, those who can't teach."

Fuck You. Public education is failing because of assholes like you. I don't know a single teacher that recommends entering the profession because of this type of bullshit.

Blame teachers for all social problems, and go out of your way to pass laws to restrict their right to unionize. Make sure that teachers have no due process, and no professional respect. Be sure to siphon off money to for-profit charter schools who often do not teach high school students because extra curriculars are more expensive. Don't hold charter schools accountable when they mishandle public funds, fail to report progress numbers to the State, or refuse to provide services to special education students. Couple that with abysmal pay and benefits in most districts, and the reality is that there is a massive shortage of teachers across the U.S.

Try teaching kids who are hungry, exhausted, and homeless. Students who have no support at home, and nobody to advocate for them fall easily through the cracks. Everything revolves first and foremost around the parents, but many have abdicated their responsibility long before a student meets a teacher.

Take some time out of your important life to volunteer in a school and you will see the reality of the situation. If public education is failing it is precisely because you are not there to make a difference.

I'll bite Mr. AC, you and your short memory. Obama took over after a certain W spent a surplus away with tax cuts for the rich (that didn't improve the economy or create jobs) and a WAR that we're still fighting over WMD's that didn't exist and that they told us would pay for itself. Obama turned that around. Hell, he permitted the government to save the U.S. auto industry - remember GM about to go belly-up - when Mitt Romney said in his own words to let it go bankrupt. Everyone driving a sweet, new, spanky Camaro today should friendly thank you to Mr. Obama for preventing the Rominator from letting the "market" slice GM into whatever would have turned a fast buck. Funny thing, facts: they don't always agree with the prejudice you want to maintain.

Here's another one: GDP tends to go up under Democratic administrations, down in Republican ones. I suppose Trump is still enjoying the fruits of Obama's hard work, here in his first year. But as he keeps throwing monkey-wrenches at the health-care and insurance markets with his Tweets and executive orders, instead of just leaving it alone, health care and health insurance is only going to go up, up, up as insurance companies can't predict what to charge to cover their asses. Does that affect rich people? No, billionaires and Senators can pay cash to the best doctors and hospitals. But it affects YOU, hits YOUR paycheck or, if you don't get health from your boss, hits you with bankruptcy when that pain in your gut turns out to be cancer, when that traffic accident with that uninsured drunk in the pickup kills your kidneys and puts you on dialysis for the rest of your life, hits you as you get old and your knees start to give out. Trump will get his knees replaced, and tax-payers will pay for it. YOU will just live with it, buy a walker from Walgreen's and shuffle around between your bed and your TV couch. Dammit, what happened to the Fox News? Had to choose between the pain pills and the cable bill - guess which one's more addictive.

The New York Times review called the book "bland and tepid" and reading "as if it had been vetted by a committee of Microsoft executives"; it is "little more than a positioning document, sold in book form with accompanying CD-ROM and designed mainly to advance the interests of the Microsoft Corporation."

That New York Times book review suggests that Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold were deliberately engaged in fraud, and deliberately eliminated anything of value from the book before it was printed.

No, the Bend Bulletin is republishing the op-ed that originally ran in the New York Times.

That's why the Bend Bulletin specifically credits it to the New York Times news service.

Amazon and Microsoft contribute to making Seattle a MISERABLE place to live. The world, not just Seattle, needs better city management. (Posting this again, with improvements.)

Amazon: Worse than Wal-Mart: Amazon's sick brutality and secret history of ruthlessly intimidating workers (February 23, 2014)

Amazon: Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace (August 15, 2015) Quote: "The company is conducting an experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers..."

Amazon: Amazon Under Fire Over Alleged Worker Abuse in Germany (February 19, 2013)

Microsoft: Microsoft Is Filled With Abusive Managers And Overworked Employees, Says Tell-All Book (May 23, 2012) The Microsoft headquarters is in Redmond, part of the Seattle metropolitan area.

Seattle: Together with Amazon, Microsoft, and inadequate city management, Seattle is an extremely miserable place:

Traffic: Seattle one of the worst U.S. cities for traffic congestion, tied with NYC (March 31, 2015) Quote: "An additional 23 minutes a day spent in traffic may not sound like much, but when it adds up over a year it becomes 89 hours." (Whoever wrote that must be accustomed to Seattle misery. An additional 23 minutes a day spent in traffic sounds HORRIBLE.)

Slow internet: Many areas of Seattle have poor internet connections. See the article, These places have the slowest Internet in the country. (June 25, 2015) Quote: "... Seattle ... CenturyLink (CTL) customers trying to access particular sites from 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. will have unbearably slow speeds."

Important questions for city managers and residents of Amazon's new city: 1) Do you want to invite a company to your city that has a history of abusiveness? 2) Could the managers of Amazon's new city manage Amazon's growth, or would it be almost completely out of their control?

Yes new incoming teachers and cops will have to pay more to live, and in smaller spaces. But some of that SHOULD be made up by significantly higher salaries for those positions as well, and if they are not getting said salaries that is a direct fault of the local government, and no-one else.

Seattle doesn't have the authority to decide how much to pay teachers; that's a state-level decision. In a state which education funding that got the state legislature held in contempt of court for being too low. This is the most egregious example, but in general, Seattle has been held back from government that makes sense for an urban area due to the state government (for similar reasons to federal government) being slanted toward the rural areas.

but what about all of the cops and teachers that had been living there already for decades before? It is a massive windfall for them.

Housing policy in the US is centered on two contradictory goals: everyone should own a home as their largest investment and everyone should be able to afford a place to live. You're right, for the people who had those houses as investments, this is great. But that's a tiny proportion of population that the benefit is going to. And because they are attached to those rising house prices, they are vehemently against any policies that would make housing less expensive. Which gets us to the local politics being a mess: a lot of local Seattle/King County politics can be seen as an argument between the home-owners and the renters (see: the current mayor race).

Uranium One's chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors.

And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.

At the time, both Rosatom and the United States government made promises intended to ease concerns about ceding control of the company's assets to the Russians. Those promises have been repeatedly broken, records show.

American political campaigns are barred from accepting foreign donations. But foreigners may give to foundations in the United States.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-foundation-as-russians-pressed-for-control-of-uranium-company.html

Here's an interactive graphic in case you're having trouble following this developing major scandal.

Uranium One's chairman used his family foundation to make four donations totaling $2.35 million. Those contributions were not publicly disclosed by the Clintons, despite an agreement Mrs. Clinton had struck with the Obama White House to publicly identify all donors.

And shortly after the Russians announced their intention to acquire a majority stake in Uranium One, Mr. Clinton received $500,000 for a Moscow speech from a Russian investment bank with links to the Kremlin that was promoting Uranium One stock.

At the time, both Rosatom and the United States government made promises intended to ease concerns about ceding control of the company's assets to the Russians. Those promises have been repeatedly broken, records show.

American political campaigns are barred from accepting foreign donations. But foreigners may give to foundations in the United States.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/us/cash-flowed-to-clinton-foundation-as-russians-pressed-for-control-of-uranium-company.html

Here's an interactive graphic in case you're having trouble following this developing major scandal.

Well it's not a secret. On their own website there's even a timeline of the NYT endorsements of Democrats candidates:

https://www.nytimes.com/intera...

But the cozy relationship between the DNC and media goes far beyond that. Look at the leaked DNC emails.

For instance, here's one email where the Clinton campaign members discuss the questions that CNN will ask Trump:

From: Dillon, Lauren
Sent: Monday, April 25, 2016 12:00 PM
To: Freundlich, Christina; Roberts, Kelly; Sarge, Matthew; Graham, Caroline; Walker, Eric; Bauer, Nick; Brinster, Jeremy
Subject: RE: Trump Questions for CNN

CNN said the interview was cancelled as of now but will keep the questions for the next one :(

Good to have for others as well.

Updated here:

- Who helped you write the foreign policy speech you're giving tomorrow? Which advisors specifically did you talk to? What advice did they give you? Did they give you any advice that you chose not to take?

-A number of Republicans and think tanks including the Heritage Foundation have suggested tying defense spending to GDP, most often suggesting defense should be funded at 4 percent GDP. Is that something you would do/we'll see in your plan?

- You've said you look to Ambassador John Bolton for military advice and called him "terrific," but he was one of the architects of the Iraq war. How do you explain your praise for Bolton if you also claim the war was a mistake? What advice have you taken from him?

[...]

https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emai...

Another example, a CNN analyst asking the DNC to approve her editorial points:

From: Maria Cardona [mailto:Maria.Cardona@deweysquare.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 18, 2016 10:21 AM
To: Patrice Taylor; Miranda, Luis
Subject: URGENT - DRAFT CNN OPED ON NV
Importance: High

I want to make sure it is not to heavy handed. Please let me know asap! Thanks!!

https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emai...

Here's an email from the New York Times:

From:john.podesta@gmail.com
To: nconfess@nytimes.com
Date: 2015-02-11 14:54
Subject: Re: good times

Off the record. No, mostly about Brock's eccentricities shall we say.
On Feb 10, 2015 1:36 PM, "Confessore, Nicholas"
wrote:

> Hi John,
> I am sure you have lot and lots of downtime these days to talk to
> reporters, and so this question no doubt is well-timed.
> But can you offer any wisdom on whether this contretemps between Messina
> and Brock tells us anything about the future of the other Obama alums who
> have found places, or are seeking them, in Greater Clintonland?
> To put the question more directly--is this blow up over Media Matters
> going to make it harder for the Clinton folks to bring in and use
> effectively the best of the Obama alums?
> Seems you are among the few people widely respected in both camps. So your
> opinion would count for a lot.
> thank you,
> Nick
>
>
> --
> Nicholas Confessore
> The New York Times
> W (212) 556-5911
> C (917) 456 2446
> gchat: @nconfessore
>

https://wikileaks.org/podesta-...

If you don't like those examples, no need to nitpick, there's a search engine on wikileaks, it's worth doing a bit of research to see for yourself. There's so much stuff in there that is damaging to the Democrats and mainstream media, no surprise they're all using the red scare to distract people from this.

Brace yourself for an onslaught of "muh Clintons" mental retardation from the dogshit dimension.

When even reddit is getting investigated, it would be real nice if Slashdot would consider doing something about the vatniks drowning out conversation on here.

The Brooklyn Bridge is made of substandard steel. That was over 100 years ago and there were no Indians or Chinese involved unless they happen to have been employed in the US at the time.

Exactly.

It's very obvious what the Marxists in the EU want to do, and it isn't about "fighting" common criminals.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/...

It is about muzzling the ordinary citizens who want to speak out against the immigration and political policies of the PES (Party of European Socialists, i.e., the Marxists) who currently rule the country under various pseudonyms.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/0...

Increasingly, people are resorting to VPNs, Tor and anonymous email accounts to register, browse and post their opinions on line because they know, as China, Russia and the EU has repeatedly proven, that speaking the truth against the EU's new-speak can land them in jail. They are also resorting to end-to-end encryption to send messages and to keep their personal business just that ... personal.

The American political environment is progressing toward the George Orwell 1984 state as well, with Twitter, Google, Youtube and the MNM censoring comments from half the political spectrum.

Most of those under 25 are too young to remember when the Left in America pushed the V-chip as a means of controlling what people could watch on American TV. The trial run was blocking "unsuitable" content on children's programming, but if it can block one type of program, and it could, then it could be used to block any type of program, depending on who was in power. TV sets made as recently as 10-15 years ago had a V-chip in them and YouTube is filled with videos showing how to deactivate them. What killed the V-chip was the Internet.

Over the years, various technologies have been explored with the goal to enable authorities to identify the owner of a particular IP address present in a series of IP packets. Microsoft, with its GUID, and its extensive registration database combined with credit card information from point of sale transactions, had the ability to identify connection ownership and China used Microsoft more than once to identify dissidents, in exchange for the "privilege" of doing business in China. However, not everyone used Windows, so Microsoft's power was limited.

The powers that be will, sooner or later, return to a form of the "v-chip" by requiring that ISPs tag each IP packet with a special code identifying the sender of that packet. It will be easier with IPv6 because each device can be assigned its own IP address. Then it won't matter which OS, browser, or even encryption that you use. Your "fingerprint" will be on every IP packet that you send and every packet that you receive will contain the special code of the source of packets sent to you. Even P2P networks and meshes won't stop that monitoring as long as people have to go through central ISP severs to connect to the Internet. When that happens dissidents will return to radio frequency networks and to what the Berkeley campus dissidents in the 1960s used to coordinate protests -- "underground radio". I leave it as an exercise for the reader to discover what "underground" means in that context.

Citation needed.

http://time.com/4783932/inside-russia-social-media-war-america/
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/07/us/politics/russia-facebook-twitter-election.html
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/06/trump-putin-and-the-new-cold-war
https://www.newsmax.com/Politics/james-clapper-absolutely-russia-interfered/2017/05/30/id/793102/
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448931/vladimir-putin-russian-election-interference-american-incompetence-weakness-helped-it

I'd lay off the magic mushrooms.

Yeah, I know-- don't bother saying it: you're not going to read any of these because "that's all fake news because the mainstream media lies". Yeah. When you dismiss everything that confronts your entrenched position, yes of course you will never change your mind.

You're avoiding the reality that the unions were a short term cudgel until progressive-era laws were put into place to prevent the abuses you refer to. Once political power was in the hands of a Teddy Roosevelt, let's say, or his nephew, things changed rapidly.

Riiiiight. Companies that exploits workers limb from literal limb are a thing of the past, like racism, sexism, and forest fires.

But even if there weren't happy to let your dumb bootlicking ass die in a fire to save a few bucks, unions are also a necessary pushback against corporate greed. Like when companies in the midst of all-time-high profits lay off thousands of workers or demand they take pay cuts so the stockholders can make even more obscene amounts of money.

If you really want the truth about the activities of the Clintons and their various similarly named foundations, start with the investigations by Charles Ortel, then check out the actual claimed accomplishments of the Clinton Global Initiative. The Haitians are either ungrateful or have a legitimate beef with the Clintons, you decide.

If you haven't decided to ignore all of that because it causes cognitive dissonance for you, feel free to dig a little further. The list of organizations set up by the Clintons to accept money and distribute it is long. Don't forget about the CGI and related orgs, the William J. Clinton foundation, not to be confused with the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation, and see if any of the tax filings actually make sense. Some have pointed out that filings in different states or countries actually contradict each other. Donations have been listed that pre-date the formation of some of the organizations.

It's for charity???

Care to list some other cherry-picked bull shit to show that the system which has consistently produced better education outcomes

Its kind of funny you complain about cherry-picking. Because that's what you did by focusing on the one item in the entire article which the authors literally spell out is the single statistic that the charter school supporters like to cite while ignoring all the others like:

Notably, the state’s charter schools scored worse on that test than their traditional public-school counterparts, according to an analysis of federal data.

Critics say Michigan’s laissez-faire attitude about charter-school regulation has led to marginal and, in some cases, terrible schools in the state’s poorest communities as part of a system dominated by for-profit operators.

The results in Michigan are so disappointing that even some supporters of school choice are critical of the state’s policies.

The summary is that charter schools in rich areas work out great just like public schools in rich areas work out great because being rich is great. But charter schools in poor areas work out worse than public schools in poor areas. And since black americans, on average have just a 14 cents for every dollar that white americans have, that means black people will end up attending the shittiest charter schools.

Furthermore, multiple independent researchers studying the three of the largest voucher systems in the country have all found that vouchers uniformly produce crappier outcomes than public education.

NYT: Dismal Voucher Results Surprise Researchers as DeVos Era Begins

But even as school choice is poised to go national, a wave of new research has emerged suggesting that private school vouchers may harm students who receive them. The results are startling — the worst in the history of the field, researchers say.

The new voucher studies stand in marked contrast to research findings that well-regulated charter schools in Massachusetts and elsewhere have a strong, positive impact on test scores. But while vouchers and charters are often grouped under the umbrella of “school choice,” the best charters tend to be nonprofit public schools, open to all and accountable to public authorities. The less “private” that school choice programs are, the better they seem to work.

And for those that still insist on spouting FUD, here is another good read for you, or to ignore if you want to remain ignorant.

Fear vs. Radiation: The Mismatch

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10...

This author also has written a good book on skewed risk perceptions in general. It maybe helps explain why some folks here exhibit irrational fears and remain so deeply rooted in them even when readily available facts don't support them.

Even nobel prize winners are trying to make a quick buck from publishing their books, instead of spreading their ideas to a bigger audience free of charge. Definition of irony?

Obama won a Nobel prize for peace, then went on to spend the most money on the military in the history of the USA, on top of vastly expanding NSA spying programs and establishing a formal kill list.

Think I'm kidding?

Mr. Obama has placed himself at the helm of a top secret “nominations” process to designate terrorists for kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical. He had vowed to align the fight against Al Qaeda with American values; the chart, introducing people whose deaths he might soon be asked to order, underscored just what a moral and legal conundrum this could be.

Mr. Obama is the liberal law professor who campaigned against the Iraq war and torture, and then insisted on approving every new name on an expanding “kill list,” poring over terrorist suspects’ biographies on what one official calls the macabre “baseball cards” of an unconventional war. When a rare opportunity for a drone strike at a top terrorist arises — but his family is with him — it is the president who has reserved to himself the final moral calculation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05... ^ yes, NY times, not breitbart or fox news

It's more hypocrisy than irony, though.

It's a difficult job to be president. The alternative to your narrative is that there are very bad people in the world who wish to kill lots of innocent people. The decision to eliminate such people is one that should not be taken lightly. Escalating this decision to the top executive shows that these decisions are taken very seriously.

Giving Obama the Nobel Peace prize was a huge mistake in both timing (too early) and merit (undeserved). But the President should be involved directly in drone strike targets. Otherwise these decisions would be made by unelected military officials, and that sounds very troubling to me.

Even nobel prize winners are trying to make a quick buck from publishing their books, instead of spreading their ideas to a bigger audience free of charge. Definition of irony?

Obama won a Nobel prize for peace, then went on to spend the most money on the military in the history of the USA, on top of vastly expanding NSA spying programs and establishing a formal kill list.

Think I'm kidding?

Mr. Obama has placed himself at the helm of a top secret “nominations” process to designate terrorists for kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical. He had vowed to align the fight against Al Qaeda with American values; the chart, introducing people whose deaths he might soon be asked to order, underscored just what a moral and legal conundrum this could be.

Mr. Obama is the liberal law professor who campaigned against the Iraq war and torture, and then insisted on approving every new name on an expanding “kill list,” poring over terrorist suspects’ biographies on what one official calls the macabre “baseball cards” of an unconventional war. When a rare opportunity for a drone strike at a top terrorist arises — but his family is with him — it is the president who has reserved to himself the final moral calculation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05...
^ yes, NY times, not breitbart or fox news

It's more hypocrisy than irony, though.

Yes!
and like this drug company "giving" their patent to Native American tribes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

wow. Another idiot who knows NOTHING about this issue, but will speak about it at length.
Here, lets go to the TRIVIAL lies of yours. The Chinese gov, the CHinese oil companies, AND their academia say that they have pretty much hit peak oil and expect it to drop QUICKLY. They have exactly 3 choices which is 1) to militarily fight for ocean bottom that does not belong to them from the nations that I mentioned before, 2) import a lot more, which they are growing their imports, but absolutely do NOT want to do so, and 3) move off oil over to coal with EVs. The later is what the CHinese gov wants.
So, you claim that CHina is burning less coal, that new plants are replacing old one, and that they have turned on all of the pollution controls. Ok. Assume that is true? Then why is pollution getting WORSE, not better? about 85% of China's visible pollution comes from their coal plants and their not using pollution controls. If coal use REALLY dropped, then the air would actually clean up WRT all pollutions. If pollution control was turned on, then visible pollution will drop (regular unseen pollution such as SOx, NOx, etc would continue ). If new plants were replacing the old ones, then again, TOTAL pollution would drop. BUT, that is not the case
for the last couple of year, pollution improved slightly, but that was due to their economy dropping on the industrial side. Now it is picking up as the idiots in Europe try to cozy up to them like they did with Hitler
2016, along with 2017, saw major increases.
And here.

New plants are not being built and what few are simply replacing old ones?
Nope. Only the idiots make such wild claims.
China is the largest builder of new coal plants. Much of that will still go into china, but China continues to push this all over the world, in spite of their claiming to be on-board with paris accord. As was pointed out, Trump talks about restoring coal to America, but the fact is, that unless he gets MAJOR subsidies for coal, which has nearly zero chance of passage, we will not be building anything new. In fact, America's will continue to drop.

As to your personal hatred of America, whatever. Go live in China, Russia, North Korea, etc. Please, go have a good time.
But claiming that America is polluting the world, is total BS. We emit no mercury of any amount. It is Canada, Australia, Europe India, Russia and esp China that do all that.
SOX/NOx? America emits a fraction of that.
And as has been shown by OCO2, America's emission of CO2 is about right on to what we claim, while Europe's, South Korea, Japan's, China, etc are MUCH HIGHER. And for the last decade, America has dropped the most CO2 emission of all nations.

Maybe it could help put the brakes on the recent suicide epidemic.

Maybe actually treating depression would help.

Instead it's been trendy to complain about "over-medicating" people, to be anti-ECT, etc.

It seems to me that companies have discovered that most people don't have much knowledge of technology, and are easily manipulated. So now it seems to me that companies are competing to see who can be most abusive. A few of the many examples:

Microsoft: Window 10 Spyware

Microsoft: Microsoft Is Filled With Abusive Managers And Overworked Employees, Says Tell-All Book.

Apple: Cupertino Mayor Says Apple 'Abuses Us'

Apple again: Criticism of Apple Inc.

Adobe Systemes: Adobe Flash, The Spy in Your Computer â" Part 1 Adobe seems to me to be one of the original abusers. The company demonstrated to others that average people cannot protect themselves from technology abuse.

Adobe Systems rents software: Software as a Monthly Rental

Maybe it could help put the brakes on the recent suicide epidemic.

And the IBM folks felt so insulted that they'd refused to even schedule a second meeting? And then went with a different outfit that had never written an OS?

Might have had something to do with Bill Gates' mom serving on the board of United Way with the chairman of IBM.

China is building 700 coal plants, with 80% of the energy generation capacity within China. And that's just in the next few years. I guess when China deploys an order of magnitude more power generation as coal rather than wind or solar it's considered a "clean energy win"?

But they're still a part of the Paris Agreement, so they have that going for them. ;)

China is building 700 coal plants, with 80% of the energy generation capacity within China. And that's just in the next few years. I guess when China deploys an order of magnitude more power generation as coal rather than wind or solar it's considered a "clean energy win"?

Those Hollywood liberals and their drug use:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04...

Words can have a powerful effect on your nervous system. Certain types of adversity, even those involving no physical contact, can make you sick, alter your brain - even kill neurons - and shorten your life.

Your body's immune system includes little proteins called proinflammatory cytokines that cause inflammation when you're physically injured. Under certain conditions, however, these cytokines themselves can cause physical illness. What are those conditions? One of them is chronic stress.

Your body also contains little packets of genetic material that sit on the ends of your chromosomes. They're called telomeres. Each time your cells divide, their telomeres get a little shorter, and when they become too short, you die. This is normal aging. But guess what else shrinks your telomeres? Chronic stress.

If words can cause stress, and if prolonged stress can cause physical harm, then it seems that speech - at least certain types of speech - can be a form of violence.

That's why it's reasonable, scientifically speaking, not to allow a provocateur and hatemonger like Milo Yiannopoulos to speak at your school.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/opinion/sunday/when-is-speech-violence.html

They are not saying it's a matter of decades from now when it will blow. It about how long it took for magma to move into the system until an eruption. The current study says decades, versus a previous study of another volcano that said millenniums.

There's still debate about about pinning down "the precise trigger of the last Yellowstone event."

None of these super volcanos are going to erupt anytime soon. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/1...

So clam down. You're much more likely to get hit by car crossing a street then by a super volcano.

From the NYT:

"Israelâ(TM)s 2014 intrusion into Kasperskyâ(TM)s corporate systems."

"Kaspersky Lab did not discover the Israeli intrusion into its systems until mid-2015"

No. Stealing South Korean military intelligence is not their business.

This is their business: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/07/business/north-korea-embassies.html

You might have suspected before Snowden, but he provided the proof that was necessary to take it from conspiracy theory to urgent threat.

We'd had leaks about some of this stuff before Snowden, for example Carnivore (in 2000) and ECHELON (in 2001). So while Snowden did provide some revelations, he did not reveal to the public that essentially all communications were being monitored. He didn't let us know that all snail mail may be monitored, or that the address information from each and every piece of mail scanned is handed to the feds for collation.

I'm not trying to diminish what Snowden did, but pretending we didn't know that our communications were generally government-monitored before Snowden is nonsense. Maybe you didn't, but much of this stuff was general knowledge to anyone who cared.

Surely the War On Drugs has been won now right??? Or we're at least really close??

What, no?? But how can that be! All other drug dealers must have seen the life sentence and were immediately deterred, no?

Look, drugs like oxycodone/heroin/opiates and cocaine are extremely dangerous and can have devastating consequences when they're abused. Nobody is denying that. But they can't be forcibly eradicated. Given that, drug policy should seek to *minimize* the harm these drugs cause; but prohibition instead *maximizes* it.
To repeat what I said last time this came up,
The real problem is our inability accept facts and logic. Eliminating drug abuse by forcefully stopping it wasn't an entirely unreasonable thing to try, especially back then when the issue wasn't well studied. But it's 100 years now since the first drug prohibition, and >40 of the modern War on Drugs. It has been demonstrated beyond any doubt that no matter how harsh the penalties, even the death penalty for drugs some countries have, prohibition does not work. Anybody can get any drug they want, even in maximum security prisons. Our 4th Amendment rights are nearly dead largely because of this. Loads of other rights are seriously damaged. Police becoming heavily armed soldiers with us as the enemy are a consequence of this. You might be able to justify all that, and the millions upon millions of lives ruined, and the hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars spent, if it was eliminating or seriously reducing the harm drugs cause to society... but it unequivocally is not.
Drugs like cocaine, heroin, and meth have horrific consequences when they're abused; to the user, to their family, and to society. Since eliminating them is absolutely never gonna happen, we should instead pick the policy that minimizes the harm caused. Most people are simply incapable of accepting that criminal prohibition instead takes these very harmful substances, and increases their harm by orders of magnitude, and strips everyone of their civil rights.
If you want to:
-Minimize the number of addicts,
-Minimize the number of ODs,
-Minimize acquisitive crime (property crime to raise money),
-Minimize violent crimes,
-Maximize opportunities for people with abuse issues to get help,
Then you have to provide tightly regulated, but legal, access, to all drugs. There's been extensive studies on this, it's not some random idea, it's a thoroughly studied and validated fact. Use does not increase. Portugal decriminalized all drugs for personal use; use went down. Turns out there's not loads of people saying 'gee, I sure wish heroin wasn't illegal, I'd try it otherwise'; something compounded by the fact the people most likely to develop an abuse issue are the least likely to be deterred by legality. All of the money currently spent on prohibition would instead go to education, prevention, and treatment- every dollar spent on that reduces drug abuse more than a dollar spent on prohibition. The money taken away from violent criminal organizations would completely cripple them. There'd be more cooperation with police who weren't constantly breaking down doors and shooting dogs, or sexually assaulting people on the side of the road with cavity searches (seriously, google roadside cavity search). There'd be less harassment when police couldn't bump their numbers with petty drug crimes.
It's a hard fact to swallow, because you see the damage drugs can do, and desperately want that to never happen. But since that's impossible, you have to instead mitigate. However bad you think a given drug is, prohibition makes it worse. Whenever you say "Well, $x shouldn't be illegal because $y", $y is made worse, not better, by keeping it illegal.

Additionally, Portugal has gone farther down this route than any other country, decriminalizing even cocaine and heroin for personal use. The result? The number of addicts plummeted, and remains far below the rest of Europe. Violent crime went down. Drug usage didn't go up. The NYTimes just covered this.

The President will be flying to Puerto Rico tomorrow to view the devastation, ...

Nope: Here are Trump comments from the same day.
1) He said "two hurricanes" hit Puerto Rico - FALSE
2) He said Maria was a "Category 5 hurricane" - FALSE
3) He said there were winds "over 200mph" - FALSE

1) Irma & Maria - True, even if that is not quite what Trump said.
2) Maria was CAT 5 when it hit the Virgin Islands, Dominica, Cuba, and some other locations. It had slightly slower winds when it hit Puerto Rico. It is reasonable to refer to Maria as CAT 5 as the New York Times did. Rate this as true too.
3) Where in that link did he state the wind speed? I didn't see it. Even if he did are you claiming there were no wind gusts that fast? How would you know? Almost all of the wind gages in Puerto Rico were destroyed (by "gentle winds"?).
I'll rate this as a fabrication by you.

And, he didn't get anywhere near the "devastation".

Yes he did, both on foot, and by helicopter.

Soros's payroll?l? Is it "funny" because it's true?

I’m actually not even sympathetic b/c country music fans are often Republican gun toters.

Sorry bro. Your kumbaya fantasy world isn't viable. Daily we're presented with undeniable evidence of the contempt and disdain the powers the be and all their left wing sycophants have nurtured in their hate filled hearts.

Headline from yesterday: Decades of Sexual Harassment Accusations Against Harvey Weinstein

And how does he play it?

I've decided I'm going to give the NRA my full attention. I hope Wayne LaPierre will enjoy his retirement party.

Left wing shitheels coming at us one way or another Every. Single. Day.

So no, if we hadn't already picked a side we're left with no choice but to get on one;