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The University of Washington study comes to a very different conclusion than a UC Berkeley report.

So the CEO of a company needs a new CFO and has narrowed his choice down to three candidates: An Engineer, A Mathematician and an Economist. So the CEO asks the Engineer, "What's one plus one . . . ?"

The Engineer types that in his smartphone and shows it to the CEO, "There! One plus one is two!" So the CEO asks the Mathematician, "What's one plus one . . . ?"

The Mathematician scribbles something on the wall and shows the CEO, "There! I have proved that one plus one is two!" So the CEO asks the Economist, "What is one plus one . . . ?"

The Economist leans forward and whispers to the CEO, "How much do you want it to be . . . "

I think there is a South African version of this joke where the Economist is named "Van der Merwe".

Kurt Gödel also postulated, for a given finite set of mathematical rules and a finite set of data . . . there is an infinite set of mutually contradictory correct conclusions can be calculated as answers to the same questions.

Apparently, in private, Gödel chuckled about this when describing the behavior of competing academic camps of thoughts. He once said, "You know . . . it is normal for those of us in these academic groups to vehemently disagree with each other. In the Science of Mathemetics, the tempers run so high, because the stakes are so small. Imagine creating a theory that not only contradicted the work of others . . . but implied by its very definition that the work of others could even exist in the first place . . . ?"

How a Rising Minimum Wage Affects Jobs in Seattle https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

Oh, I see . . . you're posting pay-walled links because you get a "piece of the action" from the New York Times.

"What's the Turk paying you to set up my father, Captain?"

Yes, if you sit with your legs too far apart, you are part of rape culture.

In New York, manspreading is a crime. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men...

In madrid Spain as well. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

Anyhow, it's an interesting DDGo search. I can't get some people to look this stuff up, but the links are there, and there are more of them.

If someone wants to pay a lot less in taxes, they can hide their wealth in off-shore accounts. Paying less in taxes makes them smart.

The New York Times, "How a Rising Minimum Wage Affects Jobs in Seattle": https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

Washington Post, "Seattle’s higher minimum wage is actually working just fine": https://www.washingtonpost.com...

EPI.org, "The “high road” Seattle labor market and the effects of the minimum wage increase": http://www.epi.org/publication...

Seattle Minimum Wage Policy: http://murray.seattle.gov/mini...

We are mid-2017, and on January 1st, Schedule 1 employers with >500 employees and w/o providing medical benefits, now have a minimum wage of $15.00/hr, up from $13.00/hr (in the period that the UW study most recently concluded on.) Schedule 2 employers (w/ $13.00/hr. So by looking at the data for the next few years, we should get a clearer picture on the effects, since whatever effects there may have been, if they were systematic and attributable to the minimum wage increase, they should deepen and be more visible.

Time will tell.

Until the Card-Krueger study, most economists, myself included, assumed that raising the minimum wage would have a clear negative effect on employment. But they found, if anything, a positive effect. Their result has since been confirmed using data from many episodes. There’s just no evidence that raising the minimum wage costs jobs, at least when the starting point is as low as it is in modern America.

Evidence this and evidence that. He doesn't include the usual disclaimer of "more research is needed" that current researchers usually use to indicate the studies are not done and you should still pay them to do more research on the subject. But it's not claiming it as dogma that is proof unto itself.

So... who said it's settled?

The University of Washington study comes to a very different conclusion than a UC Berkeley report.

How a Rising Minimum Wage Affects Jobs in Seattle
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/06...

I am not a big Trump fan, but he is our president. That said, this media BS of bashing Trump every 3 seconds is getting old, and people are seeing it for the partisan BS that it is:

Lets see, Jeff Bezos owns Amazon and owns the Washington Post, but Joe sixpack doesn't know who Jeff Bezos is, but everyone knows Amazon, and Trump associates the two in his tweet. Not really all that inaccurate, just semantics and partisans looking for any negative story that they can put up about Trump without losing their jobs.

The reality is that we now have CNN firing 3 reporters for completely BS stories. We have a CNN reporter admitting on hidden camera that the Trump-Russia thing is total bullshit, and in general, we have 90% of the news stories on Trump being negative. Put yourself in his shoes. He gets elected and immediately gets slammed with this bogus Russia collusion investigation and the media is basically making up stories for months from anonymous sources that turn out not to be true (CNN stating that Comey would testify that he never told Trump that he was not being investigated and then the next day Comey testifies to the exact opposite, i.e. that he had told Trump several times that Trump was not being investigated but refused to make that information public, etc.)

I will not be at all surprised if when we drill down on the Russian collusion scandal, we actually find that this is an Obama/Clinton contingency plan to try to illegally steal an election.

Here are some undisputed facts on collusion with Russia:
- Republicans have been hostile to Communist Russia for 7 decades, Democrats have been friendly.
- Obama was caught on a hot mic telling the Russians that after his re-election he could be more flexible http://www.weeklystandard.com/...
- Hillary Clinton presided over a deal where she allowed 20% of US Uranium resources to be sold to the Russians, after which millions of dollars were donated by the interested parties to the Clinton Foundation, and Bill gave a speech in Russia for around $1M, where his normal fee was around $100k https://www.nytimes.com/2015/0...
- Hillary Clinton presided over the "Russian Reset" an attempt to normalize relations with Russia just a few months after they invaded Georgia (not the US State, the country)... http://www.politifact.com/trut...
- President Obama learned of Russian hacking attempts in the summer of 2016, and yet he chose to do nothing (supposedly out of fear of revealing sources and methods, which is BS; the entire point of intelligence is to protect the country, if you don't do that, there is no point in having sources and methods in the first place), and now he may get his ass hauled in front of congress to explain why he did not try to better secure the election that his party is so upset about losing. http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-...

I could go on, but you get the point. There is a Russian connection, but it is not Trump, it is Obama and Hillary, and the entire Russia-Trump collusion farce was a misdirect to try to thwart the investigation of the real scandals.

The entire Trump-Russia connection consists of a few Trump advisors who had business deals with Russia or Russian interests (try to find a successful multinational that doesn't do business in/with Russia, I bet Amazon has Russian deals) and one Trump advisor who jumped the gun after the election and started talking to the Russian ambasador before Trump was sworn in. Legal scholars say that this could have been prosecuted but highly likel

Trump seems unaware that TrumpCare is a giant tax cut for the rich by repealing the taxes that funded ObamaCare.

A senator who supports the bill left the meeting at the White House with a sense that the president did not have a grasp of some basic elements of the Senate plan — and seemed especially confused when a moderate Republican complained that opponents of the bill would cast it as a massive tax break for the wealthy, according to an aide who received a detailed readout of the exchange. Mr. Trump said he planned to tackle tax reform later, ignoring the repeal's tax implications, the staff member added.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/27/us/health-care-bill-trump-pence.html

It's not that separate and discrete. The executive order stopped all immigrant visa issuances, too, based purely on nationality, which violates the law.

Check out this, from a right-winger even:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

If he had issued an order stating that immigrant visas would not be issued to a certain class of people from the 6 countries, that would be different. That is why I suspect SCOTUS carved out those exceptions.

You really don't see anything odd in these results?

1. Google Maps
https://www.google.com/maps/

2. Maps - Navigation & Transit - Android Apps on Google Play
https://play.google.com/store/......

3. Official MapQuest - Maps, Driving Directions, Live Traffic
https://www.mapquest.com/

4. iOS - Maps - Apple
https://www.apple.com/ios/maps...

5. Google Maps - Navigation & Transit on the App Store - iTunes - Apple
https://itunes.apple.com/us/ap...?...

6. Yahoo Maps
https://maps.yahoo.com/

7. World and USA Maps for Sale - Buy Maps - Maps.com
https://www.maps.com/

8. New Night Lights Maps Open Up Possible Real-Time Applications ...
https://www.nasa.gov/.../new-n...

9. 'Duck Dynasty' vs. 'Modern Family': 50 Maps of the U.S. Cultural Divide ...
https://www.nytimes.com/.../12...

10. From Ptolemy to GPS, the Brief History of Maps | Innovation ...
www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/brief-history-maps-180963685/

11. Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies: MAPS
www.maps.org/

12. Bing Maps - Directions, trip planning, traffic cameras & more
https://www.bing.com/maps

The difference: CNN writers apologise, and even resign. But when Fox is forced to retract a conspiracy theory they had zero evidence for, does Hannity apologise or resign? No, he does not - instead he doubles down and "retracts nothing". Classy as always.

Oh, they might've paid a lost less than a million dollars for it.

From April, 2016:

At a conference on global security in London, a moderator asked James B. Comey Jr., the F.B.I. chief, how much bureau officials had to pay the undisclosed outside group to demonstrate how to bypass the phone’s encryption.

“A lot,” Mr. Comey said, as audience members at the Aspen Institute event laughed.

He continued: “Let’s see, more than I will make in the remainder of this job, which is seven years and four months, for sure.” ...

The F.B.I. director makes about $185,100 a year — so Mr. Comey stands to earn at least $1.35 million at that base rate of pay for the remainder of his 10-year term.

F.B.I. Director Suggests Bill for iPhone Hacking Topped $1.3 Million

So, the new lower bound for the cost of the hack now that we've actually measured how much time Comey really had left is about $170,000.

Faceless, uncountable charity is not a good thing, it is in fact just as bad if not worse than government assistance, and that is why most donations go to real, private charities, churches, etc. that provide assistance but also require accountability. It is high time that we stop pissing away our tax dollars to healthy adults who choose not to work because the over 6,000,000 open jobs https://www.bls.gov/news.relea... are not what they went to school for or it is beneath them, they are drug addicted, etc. If you are concerned for their kids, then take them away and place them with loving families who are not drug addicted (this should be done anyway).

Welfare, food stamps and the like provide no road map to self sufficiency and very little accountability (i.e. drug testing, job searching, etc.) whereas most private charities are much more interested (and by the way effective) in leveraging their funds as a stepping stone out of poverty/dependency. The entire entitlement class created by government exists to buy votes for the Democrats, rather than truly helping people to become self sufficient. (Democrats demonstrably don't care about the needy beyond buying their votes, as demonstrated by their personal behavior: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12...

I personally have donated thousands to private charities with good overhead ratios (google it) and $0 to any Gofundme and I never will because of the lack of accountability, vision, and support structure. If you are truly in need (and don't have thousands in the bank/clothes/shoes/electronics/boats/jet skis/ATVs etc. laying around), you are much better off working with local charities/churches and you are also much more likely to come out in a better position, rather than trying to use Gofundme.

The only caveat here is you need to research where you are giving to make sure they are legitimately helping. I would never donate to the Clinton Foundation for example, because for 2014 (most recent available tax filing) the foundation reported total expenses of a little over $91 million but grants of just $5.1 million were paid out. That’s not even 6 percent of the foundation’s money. Where the rest of that money went and how it was spent is highly suspect. They do other work, but are not transparent about the spending, which for a charity is a huge red flag.

I'm afraid that it's called "theft", and is treated as such by the courts and by most people who actually _write_ and publish such papers. For most standards of civil disobedience, accepting the legal consequences is part of what makes it "civil" disobedience.

I'm also afraid there is an even more severe problem for scientific work. As best I can tell Sci-Hub makes _no_ effort to verify the content or authenticity of what they host. Such a loss of verification or of provenance of the data published endangers even the best of professional journals. and contributes to problems like this:

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

The result is that via unchecked content at places like Sci-Hub, the fake journals rise in search engine ranking and reinforce fraudulent or actively dangerous dangerous scientific claims. Similar problems exist for trade websites, such as https://www.stackoverflow.com/. Good answers get copied from elsewhere, edited down for simplicity or shortness by the copier, and vital safety steps are left out of the most popular answers. The results can be very dangerous when the shortened answers get applied in the field.

>As jobs are automated, their cost of production drops, meaning money is freed up to spend or invest elsewhere in the economy.

Except that that's not what's actually happening. Instead of reinvesting that money, giant companies are content to sit on it, since there is no productive use for it outside of drawing interest. What are these magical jobs that you think the bottom 50% of the talent pool (and eventually the bottom 99%) are going to be? And no, subsidence farming isn't going to make a huge comeback.

Luckily, so far, it doesn't seem like the courts are willing to accept that as evidence ...

I can't help but wonder if it will influence the people on juries though. Some people have a hard time ignoring their partisan beliefs. Just yesterday, people were still chanting, "Lock her up," when Trump mentioned Hillary Clinton at a rally in Iowa -- regardless of the fact that she still hasn't been convicted of (or even charged with) anything.

Not all that cynical, really. The history of IT is filled with stories about massive Government and Military IT upgrades that either don't pan out or run severely over budget and end up cancelled or drastically scaled down. For instance, air traffic control modernization has been a big issue since the Carter administration: https://www.forbes.com/sites/m... Then there's the IRS modernization: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/... And various military software overhauls: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12... https://arstechnica.com/inform...

Actually, automation has played a significant role in the loss of coal jobs. Here's a citation: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/29/business/coal-jobs-trump-appalachia.html. In order for coal to remain competitive with other forms of energy, mining companies have automated a lot of the mining process. It increases the efficiency of the mining operations while also being far safer. Although natural gas has caused the loss of coal mining jobs in the short term, it's led to increasing automation as coal mining companies attempt to remain competitive. In the longer term, that automation ensures that coal mining jobs will never return. Even if the price of natural gas was to dramatically increase, those coal jobs are lost permanently due to automation.

A warmer climate means LESS extremes in weather, because as the temperature grows more water vapor enters the system and it acts on a damper (ha!) for really extreme weather.

So far we have witnessed that first hand, being in an epic lull in terms of major hurricanes hitting the U.S..

It is so sad to see so many be taken in by such obvious fear-mongering, devoid even of what little real science we do know describes how the Earth works in reality... dry portions of the earth are not caused by heat, they care caused by local weather patterns that scrub moisture from the air before it reaches an area. The Antarctic even has a desert after all...

And as mentioned - why even fear anything when it means Ethiopia could simply shift where it grows the crops?? This is what I really don't get about fear mongering, the inability to realize just how good humans are at dealing with change, never mind change that takes place slowly over decades or centuries... why are you so scared of warming? The only thing there ever was to fear was runaway warming and we can see plainly that's not happening (requiring 10 times more CO2 than is currently in the atmosphere, even as countries are gradually ramping down emissions as the increase use of solar power...).

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07...
And anyone remember around 2000, wholefoods.COM (grocery deliveries). And idea too early and sadly timed with the .COM bubble.
Maybe grocery will be Bezos' Waterloo. If Amazon is reduced to a Yahoo! fire!sale! in the future then who was right? Over 90% of food related new business fail. Even established ones can turn bad overnight.

Was a Low-Tech Parent (Sept. 10, 2014) https://www.nytimes.com/2014/0...

Close the N.S.A.'s Back Doors. (New York Times, Sept. 21, 2013)

NSA's own Hardware Backdoors May Still Be a "Problem from Hell". (MIT Technology Review, Oct. 8, 2013)

This 'Demonically Clever' Backdoor Hides In a Tiny Slice of a Computer Chip. (Wired.com, June 1, 2016)

Expert Says NSA Have Backdoors Built Into Intel And AMD Processors. (Eteknix, 2014)

When spyware is detected, that particular vulnerability is fixed:

Red alert! Intel patches remote execution hole that's been hidden in chips since 2010. (The Register, May 1, 2017)

Intel Active Management Technology, Intel Small Business Technology, and Intel Standard Manageability Escalation of Privilege (Intel Corporation, May 5, 2017 ) Quote: "Severity rating: Critical"

You could read this
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

Actual moderates appreciate statements backed up by articles. Like this one, that highlights how donations to the Clinton Foundation was accompanied by approving a deal to cede control of uranium production to the Russians.

You know what else? I find it amazingly convenient that we go to war with Libya, Saudi Arabia's rival and enemy, after the house of Saud donates tens of millions to the Clinton Foundation over the course of a decade. Then she jokes about it. So yeah, maybe a warmonger is a fitting description.

Yeah, the very idea of providing affordable phone service to everyone in America.

Yes, you got it. In a free country, government must not be able to compel anybody to provide service to any one else. It can only be voluntary — motivated either by profit or sincere benevolence.

It would have been much, much better to have private companies only running phone lines to well heeled customers

Of course, it would've been! When the cell-phones finally appeared, they were for "uber wealthy" as well. In 10 years they become affordable to middle class, in 20 became ubiquitous, and now they are handed-out to homeless

.

Without Capitalism to create, your beloved Socialism would not even know, what to mandate ...

Ice breakers getting stuck is so not new.
http://www.nytimes.com/1985/06...

Look at the date. What the article does not say is that this research ship is itself a ice breaker and was already stuck in antarctic ice in 1977 (and will be stuck again in 1991 by the way). Difficult ice conditions can be difficult even to ice breakers.

Not that it did much good. Cellphones of the day tended to leak over onto my police-band radio anyway. And technically whoever blew up Newt Gringrich's reign by publishing a cell call intercepted in Gainesville, Florida should have been prosecuted, but no one was.

Publishing is a different matter, but the couple that actually recorded the call were prosecuted. They took a plea agreement.

Well, since you mentioned it ... Bundy ranch wasn't a riot. It was the Government vs Ranchers (regardless of your view of the subject). wasn't particularly violent.

I called it violence, whatever you call it, you ignored it.

Because they're your sort of people, and you don't mind what they do.

Same with the militia violence.

And in that case, you missed Branch Davidian Compound that actually was.

Did you think my list was meant to be exhaustive? Hardly. I didn't mention the attacks by such fine entities as the Old Order, Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph or the Huttaree.

Malheur standoff (fixed spelling) was violent, but the only violence was caused by the government in an ambush.

Sure man, they weren't threatening violence and trespassing.

What else you going to say? They was good boys, never meaning no harm? But they keep showing their hands, and not their face on TV?

Good Example.

Driving away from police and waving a gun? Yeah, I'll call that violent.

Dylan Roof was a punk kid with a troubled background with mental illness who became (or always was) a racist prick. I didn't forget him, it was an odd case all the way around.

Racist gets a gun. Decides to shoot people. You blame his troubled background and dismiss it as an odd case. And no, I didn't say you forgot him. I said you ignored him. Ignoring and forgetting are two different things.

Benjamin McDowell didn't though.

You might as well pointed out the Dallas shooting then too.

Or the Houston one. No wait, that's police brutality. Another serious problem that you don't want to admit exists.

You want to ignore it, and frenetically rage at your preferred target, BLM. You love that form of identity politics, don't you?

Robert Doggart wasn't violent, because unlike San Bernadino, people reported him and he was arrested before he could do anything because he was suspicious.

Plots violence. Is on tape actually plotting violence. Archangel Michael claims he wasn't violent.

You should probably tell the judge who sentenced him to 20 years.

I say unlike, because people in SB saw suspicious activity and failed to report it for fearing to be "Islamophobic".

Pfft. Enrique Marquez Jr. was not going to report them, nor the other participants in that sham marriage. Nothing to do with fears about being Islamophobic at all. You might as well claim that Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez's family didn't report him because they didn't want to be thought Islamophobic.

Las Vegas Strip Shooting, a hispanic man shot two killing one. No motive had been determined for the shooting, although authorities ruled out any link to terrorism.

Nope, Jerad and Amanda Miller were not Hispanic(not even White Hispanic), and they killed 3 other people. And their motives were quite clearly demonstrated, what with their conduct, if the use of the Gadsen Flag wasn't enough for you.

Sorry, but they're right-wing through and through. And you identify with them. You just won't admit to it.

So, of the five events you listed, two or three are possibly "ri

Turns out a lot of this wind power is coming from "red" states, like Kansas for example. From the nytimes https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0... "Two years ago, Kansas repealed a law requiring that 20 percent of the state’s electric power come from renewable sources by 2020, seemingly a step backward on energy in a deeply conservative state. Yet by the time the law was scrapped, it had become largely irrelevant. Kansas blew past that 20 percent target in 2014, and last year generated more than 30 percent of its power from wind. The state may be the first in the country to hit 50 percent wind generation in a year or two, unless Iowa gets there first. Some of the fastest progress on clean energy is occurring in states led by Republican governors and legislators, and states carried by Donald J. Trump in the presidential election."

Yes AC with Operation Mockingbird
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Mighty Wurlitzer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The US changes to the Smith–Mundt Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...–Mundt_Act
Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand (APRIL 20, 2008)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04...

If Trump wants to look innocent of impeachable crimes

Whatever he wants, I want every and all suggestion of him being a "traitor" to be met with the proverbial: prove it, bitch.

Any money he accepts from a foreign government without consent of Congress is unconstitutional

I'll just leave this here.

I don't have proof that he has violated an emoluments clause, but it seems awfully likely.

There is no question of fact here — he really is getting money from abroad, because he ran an international business before becoming President. The remaining question is that of law — whether or not what he is doing is illegal. But even if it were, it would not have constituted treason.

But there is no evidence of any treason committed by any Republican of note today. A hate-filled enemy of the Republic is you, pal...

Except that Trump conceded that the accusation was true.

He learned it from the President.

He learned it from the El Presidente.

FTFY.

But overall, there are too many idiots on both sides that refuse to listen to the other sides ideas

Do not attempt to make a false equivalence here. The only reason it might seem that way is because one side has a massive persecution complex fed by an outrage machine dedicated to hyping that noise for profit and the other 'side' (described as the reality-based community by Karl Rove) treat such as cases as just another minor news event.

NYC: Linda Sarsour Faces Death Threats Ahead of Her CUNY Commencement Speech | Democracy Now!
Princeton professor who criticized Trump cancels events, saying she's received death threats
Shakespeare in the Park featured a Trump-like Julius Caesar, and right-wing media freaked out - Vox
Greg Gianforte Pleads Guilty To Assaulting A Journalist : The Two-Way : NPR
GOP pressured NPR into firing a journalist who reported on their bigotry / LGBTQ Nation
Lawmakers across the US are finding ways to turn protesting into a crime - Vox
Tom Price commends police who arrested journalist asking questions
GOP rep goes after activist by writing letter to employer | TheHill
Sinclair Requires TV Stations to Air Segments That Tilt to the Right - The New York Times
Oklahoma Governor Signs Anti-Protest Law Imposing Huge Fines on “Conspirator” Organizations
FDA Denies Ordering Employees to Switch Television Monitors to Fox News Channel
FCC to investigate, 'take appropriate action' on Colbert’s Trump rant | TheHill
Jury Convicts Woman Who Laughed At Jeff Sessions During Senate Hearing | HuffPost
Fordham U. blocked formation of pro-Palestinian group: suit - NY Daily News

Riots tend to happen as a result of oppression. That's why the privileged (white) right generally does not erupt in rioting. And why the majority of the left does not either. But let's not act as if conservatives aren't violent:

Abortion clinic bombings, violence against sexual minorities, and transphobia come to mind as common manifestations of violence from the right. And that's to say nothing of the non-violent systems of oppression that many in the right are either fond of maintaining, or oblivious to.

this has been extensively reported on. if you decide to ignore all of these sources, and instead make a decision based on some other unknown source (i.e. internal circle jerk), you might as well be a flat-earther, bigfoot hunter, UFO spotter, and loch ness fisherman. you put an unreachably high bar of evidence on things you don't want to believe, while putting a very low bar of evidence on things you want to believe. you have become that nutcase.

What's not to love about Facebook PR statements seething with contempt for the obvious.

Facebook uses powerful systems to keep people's information secure and tools to keep their accounts safe

Facebook exists entirely to sell out users to the highest bidder. Facebook only keeps information safe and secure from cheapskates unwilling to pay enough for it. FFS how much lower is it even possible to get?

https://www.theguardian.com/te...

and we do not provide any government with direct access to people's data.

Translation: We obviously provide governments with access to people's data.

We will continue to protect our community from unnecessary or overreaching government intervention

Wink wink nudge nudge.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/1...

Still Facebook involvement in this other than it's ridiculous statements are mostly irrelevant. What is probably much more relevant from a western influence perspective is US foreign policy picking a side in regional Muslim on Muslim holy wars directly fueling death and destruction with foreign aid and arms sales and logistics. The predictable outcome is governments empowered to leverage religion to buttress their legitimacy and otherwise justify logically indefensible positions. And hey if your going to pick a winner... why not pick the side that carries out vast majority of terrorist attacks against the US? You know the same side that includes Daesh and our inbred Saudi "allies" who fund Madrassas and did 9/11.

Nobody will name the staffer or say what happened to him.

Nobody will name him? So the thousands of articles that have the name "Charles Delevan" don't exist? This interview with the guy doesn't exist? The front page article in the New York Times (complete with a screenshot of the actual email) doesn't exist? Don't confuse your own ignorance with a conspiracy to keep information from you.

And this is only half of the story. Read this, this, and this...and you might begin to understand the breadth and the scope of what Russia is doing online. The Kremlin has built an entire industry manned by thousands, whose sole purpose is to get online and sew chaos, confusion, and doubt. They are why, when you discuss any issue that reflects poorly on Russia on any major website, you get marginalized and bombarded with talking points.

There are conservatives who mirror the Kremlin's message, but these buildings filled with thousands of paid trolls are the originals and the instigators. This is not a game, read the Times story above and you will see the real world consequences; Russia can create fake hysteria in America, made up disasters, and form political causes out of the ether which sway American policy in the direction they like. Russia, right this very second, and since 2014, and into the future--is at war with you, with me, with every Conservative and every Democrat and every Independent--and they don't care at all what you want. They care what 1 man wants, and what he wants is to say fuck you and your country.

Universities are not the Government.

Except that a lot of them are. Most accept government funding and have publicly elected officials serving on their boards, so that makes them an extension of the government. They are regulated by the Department of Education and they have to abide by special rules as a result of their acceptance of that money. He who pays the piper call the tune.

The 1st Amendment protects your speech from the Government arresting you for what you say.

No, the 1st Amendment protects you from prior restraint. If you use speech in a way that starts a riot, you most certainly can get arrested.

Universities can invite whatever speakers they want and disinvite them as well. Even the proposed law in Wisconsin is not a 1st Amendment issue. It is just a political law that public enforces the rights that everyone already has.

Except that in most instances, recent speakers like Ann Coulter (who I really dislike) were invited by student groups only to be cancelled by the administration. The claim made by Berkeley is that the group didn't follow the proper procedures, but then later admitted that they cancelled it due to "security concerns." And that is the sad state of affairs that we have today. In a civil society, what would happen is a free exchange of ideas. You let a person come & make their speech, then you challenge it in the open marketplace of ideas instead of resorting to violence. Violence is the refuge of people who understand that their ideas don't have any merit, so they must use physical force to intimidate anyone who might oppose them.

Can't we be upset about both?

You might have missed the story about Middlebury students donning ski-masks and trying to beat the hell of Charles Murray, sending another professor to the hospital and giving the body guards a seriously hard time getting Murray safely out of there. (This info is from an interview I heard with Murray, not this article.) Murray's crime was that he wrote a book that focused on societal inclusiveness of different races, attempting to reduce discrimination, which critics lied about (or at least misrepresented). Murray is the guy that publicized the fact that any differences that exist between racial groups basically don't matter, since they're dwarfed by inter-group differences. Basically, he's one of the good guys. And Middlebury students tried to kick his ass, and did hurt a professor that was protecting him. I'm unhappy about that. Aren't you?

We can look at the top end of this, and maybe we forget about the fact that non-competes have been exploding in all industries, including a (paywall) sub sandwich maker. So we erode worker rights by hammering on unions, and now we take even more rights by preventing people from staying in the same career.

For example: Prozac Nation Is Now the United States of Xanax. Basically a drug ad for Xanax. The 90s were about Prozac! The 21st century is about Xanax!!

You didn't read anything more than the title of that article, did you? If you'd actually read it, you'd realize that you are completely wrong. Of course, that implies that you actually care about the facts, but then I'd bet that you don't as long as you can post your moronic opinions..

I've always wondered, if the Iraqi people had the choice to go back in time and keep Saddam and his progeny instead of what they have now, would they? At the time they seemed very happy when he was removed.

How is this even a question?

“...I am one of the political prisoners who was arrested in 1988, but life was better in Saddam’s days, compared with now.”...

If they had such an option they would probably want to return to a point in time to prevent Bremer from disbanding the Iraqi army and delaying Iraqi's from taking control of the government.

...

The problem with Iraq wasn't really the invasion, it was the occupation that followed.

No, the biggest problem was the invasion. I'm not saying you're completely wrong. But to pick out one mistake out of so many is misleading. To begin with the war was based on a lie. So if not WMD, what were the real reasons for going to war? If Jack shoots himself with a gun, then doesn't dress the wound properly, the reason Jack died was because he shot himself.

But anyway, after the invasion, Col. Ted Spain was the guy in charge of law & order, he seems like a great resource to list all the mistakes:

1. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s deployment plans. They didn’t include an adequate number of military police to control the routes during the ground war, and then we didn’t have sufficient military police to control the streets after the ground war.
2. Law and order was not given sufficient attention in the pre-war planning. This failed to provide a police system to provide security to the Iraqi citizenry and to instill a sense of trust in our Army.
3. The issue of detainees. There was really was no clear guidance on the categorization of them. It was really important to me to adhere to the Geneva Conventions, but I really had to make it all up as I went.
4. The flaws in collecting intelligence.
5. Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, an Army Reserve officer who commanded the military police unit at the Abu Ghraib prison. I actually opened Abu Ghraib prison and handed it over to her in 2003. And I explain that she was the wrong leader at the wrong place at the wrong time.
6. Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who was the top commander in Iraq from June 2003 to July 2004 and replaced Lt. Gen. William S. Wallace. General Sanchez was in over his head, and he continued fighting the ground war long after it was over.
7. The Coalition Provisional Authority, under the leadership of L. Paul Bremer III, dismantled the Iraqi Army, and the highest level of the Baath Party. Under Saddam Hussein, the highest ranks could only belong to Baath Party members, so we lost some of the most experienced personnel that were so vital in putting Iraq back together again.
8. The mistakes of the former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik. He was focused on padding his résumé and getting as much camera time as he could.
9. The Iraqi police and the fact that I was pressured to focus more on quantity as opposed to quality.
10. President George W. Bush’s coalition of the willing. The fact is, those countries had less than 50 people in there. There really was not a coalition other than the United Kingdom.

Here you go: The Agency

The NY Times has gone downhill. Nowadays, whenever I see a link to them I think to myself, "What are they trying to get me to believe now?" This is not limited to the Donald Trump / Russia stuff though that's been their main beat since the inauguration.

For example:
Prozac Nation Is Now the United States of Xanax. Basically a drug ad for Xanax. The 90s were about Prozac! The 21st century is about Xanax!! Everybody go pop them pills!

I could find more, but it's pretty obvious that it's a PR rag for a very narrow agenda to anyone who's paying attention. Their modus operandi is to pick a narrative and publish lots of stories that reinforce their narrative by taking any little bit of information, anonymous sources, overheard gossip, basically whatever confirms it and repeat it over and over to a national audience.

The ODNI went into some detail on the matter: https://www.nytimes.com/intera...

This is a perfect example of green-washing. Let's start with their own claimed numbers. "250 grams of particulate matter a day". Let's give them perfect efficiency and say that is 100% carbon. 250 grams x 365 days = 91,250 grams. Divide that by 1000 to and we see that this art installation claims 91.25 kilograms of particulate per year. This is indeed more than the average mature tree that captures 21.7 kilograms of carbon per year.

Now let's compare that to their claim of "greenhouse gases by removing 240 metric tons of CO2 a year.". 240 metric tons = 240,000 Kilograms. We seem to be off by a several orders of magnitude. Perhaps they meant that a bunch of these 'trees' could total 240 metric tons? 240 tons divided by 91.25 kilograms = 2386.02014. Ah, assuming perfect efficiency we 'only' need 2386 moss trees at $25,000 a piece.

That equals a cost of "$59,650,000" to remove 240 metric tons of carbon. That works out to $248,541 per ton to capture CO2. (this of course assumes that have already discovered a perfect disposal plan for the carbon that has been capture. Let's compare this to the cost of something that zero sex appeal that we know actually works - sequestering carbon underground.

"But injecting huge amounts of water along with the CO2 â" 25 tons of liquid for each ton of gas â" adds to the cost. CarbFix scientists have estimated that transportation and injection could cost about $17 per ton of CO2, about twice the cost of transporting and injecting the gas alone."
# https://www.nytimes.com/2015/0...

This isn't an art project, this is a fake news con for gullible people that don't understand science or math.