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You would need to completely rewrite all the computer vision software to have it kill any divers, much less enemy divers.

Just cut'n'paste that part from the UBER software to target people. I'm pretty sure thats how it works.

No. ACA was sold as a way to reduce uninsured and healthcare costs for those people. It wasn't sold on the basis of reducing costs to insured people at all.

Look, I gave you the three objectives of the ACA according to the US government. You're entitled to your own opinions, self-serving as they may be, but not to your own facts.

Look in the mirror. Repeat what you just said. The 3 goals of ACA. Looks to me like it was primarily... oh no, a vehicle to reduce uninsured and healthcare costs for those people. I was potentially incorrect i stating it wasn't to lower costs of insured folks, because there is a clause that it will "support innovative medical care delivery methods designed to lower the costs of health care generally" which would include insured folks, but not specifically.

The US has not had a free market (3) in healthcare in about a century.

Interesting, because the first real attempt at US laws on any form of healthcare were in the 1930s with the New Deal, and the AMA forced the removal of universal health care.

What we have had was an attempt at (2) but it failed again and again, with the ACA just being the latest instance of that failure. So, (1) and (3) are the only options; good luck selling voters and the AMA on (1).

The AMA is actually in favor of universal healthcare. Like any other unchecked rampant capital enterprise, the AMA was all for no gov interference in health care until their own creation got away from them, and they had a total change of heart as evidenced by AMA's support of universal health care in 2009.

Well, you certainly give an excellent example of the kind of beliefs and vitriol that are so common on the left these days. And that's why people like me (classical liberal, gay immigrant) have left the Democratic party and the progressive movement, and we won't be coming back.

I'm actually a classical fiscal conservative and I have no party because of that. I'm certainly not left, although I hold some opinions in common with them. I also hold some opinions in common with the current right. Being a realist and seeing what's happening in the world today and where it's going in the near future, I see that our past course is no longer sustainable and that different things need to be tried here.

And, no, you don't live in the real world, you live in an economic fantasy world that inevitably will come crashing down around you; the question is only whether it's a little sooner or a little later.

And yet you keep wanting to go back to things that have been proven failures. What do we call that when you keep doing the same thing over and over looking for a different result?

So I write a book, take it to bunch of publishers, it doesn't get printed. You "happen" to write a similar book and it gets published or made into a movie. Guess what?

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/0...

etc.

https://www.google.com/search?...

Antifa has a long history of using violence to achieve their goals.

Didi did more than allow an appearance-rating system to emerge. Apparently, they recruited male drivers using suggestive ads, hinting that hook-ups and relationships with female passengers could be a possibility, and promoted a case where a male driver who ended up marrying one of his female passengers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0...

Good analogy, I think.

So, by this analogy, the subprime mortgage industry was a frustum whose bottom face kept getting smaller and whose height and top face kept getting bigger.

Let's see... where was government in this?

It is certainly possible to find prime mortgages among borrowers below the median income, but when half or more of the mortgages the GSEs bought had to be made to people below that income level, it was inevitable that underwriting standards had to decline. And they did. By 2000, Fannie was offering no-downpayment loans. By 2002, Fannie and Freddie had bought well over $1 trillion of subprime and other low quality loans. Fannie and Freddie were by far the largest part of this effort, but the FHA, Federal Home Loan Banks, Veterans Administration and other agencies--all under congressional and HUD pressure--followed suit. This continued through the 1990s and 2000s until the housing bubble--created by all this government-backed spending--collapsed in 2007.

https://www.theatlantic.com/bu...

and

The housing bubble was inflated by federal policies created by President Bill Clinton, then expanded by President George W. Bush. The policies were supported by Senator and then President Barack Obama.

The policies were intended to help low-skilled Americans — especially African-Americans — and Hispanic immigrants gain housing wealth by pushing down mortgage requirements, such as down-payments.

But the government policy had the reverse effect, and the housing collapse after 2007 eliminated much of the wealth held by African-American and Hispanic families.

http://dailycaller.com/2013/07...

and

And he pushed to allow first-time buyers to qualify for government insured mortgages with no money down. Republican congressional leaders and some housing advocates balked, arguing that homeowners with no stake in their investments would be more prone to walk away, as West did. Many economic experts, including some in the White House, now share that view.

The president also leaned on mortgage brokers and lenders to devise their own innovations. "Corporate America," he said, "has a responsibility to work to make America a compassionate place."

https://www.nytimes.com/2008/1...

and

The seeds of the mortgage meltdown were planted during Bill Clinton's presidency.

Under Clinton's Housing and Urban Development (HUD) secretary, Andrew Cuomo, Community Reinvestment Act regulators gave banks higher ratings for home loans made in "credit-deprived" areas. Banks were effectively rewarded for throwing out sound underwriting standards and writing loans to those who were at high risk of defaulting. If banks didn't comply with these rules, regulators reined in their ability to expand lending and deposits.

These new HUD rules lowered down payments from the traditional 20 percent to 3 percent by 1995 and zero down-payments by 2000. What's more, in the Clinton push to issue home loans to lower income borrowers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac made a common practice to virtually end credit documentation, low credit scores were disregarded, and income and job history was also thrown aside. The phrase "subprime" became commonplace. What an understatement.

https://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/2...

I covered this one here: http://www.amerika.org/politic...

Down that path lies the third rail of discussions about IQ - Douglas Murray tried that and got electrocuted.

You're probably thinking of Charles Murray. Douglas Murray is strong on topics of Islam and immigration, but has stayed away from IQ questions.

It's a shame, because it really matters when it comes to things like immigration. If you're going to mass import people with lower IQs, at the same time society is moving towards more and more automation, with a less need for manual labor, then you're just setting up your country for disaster.

The United States is a perfect example -- blacks will always blame racism, historical or imagined, for not doing as well as whites, despite the strong evidence for the link to IQ, success, and races. That Asians do better than whites in "racist" America, so much so that they are discriminated against in college applications, is telling.

There is no straw man - see all the poutrage directed at Black Lives Matter protestors.

You mean the leftist hate group that was founded by leftists that idolized a cop-killing, black supremacist that fled to Cuba? A group that drummed up a phony narrative that there was an epidemic of blacks being killed by police? A group more concerned about a tiny number of controversial police killings versus the vast majority of black-on-black murders?

You mean conspiracies like 350 newspapers publishing the same editorial topic on the same day, without it being disclosed beforehand? That kind of conspiracy?

So much worse than ~200 TV stations forcing their anchors to read a "fake news" script on pain of being fired, without disclosing it beforehand, during, or even afterwards. That's not a conspiracy, because they all have the same corporate overlord!

Meh. Just look at history.
It was Europe that spread the bulk of slavery around the world.

With over a billion people and with several "racial" groups of its own to subjugate, to date China has been able to produce all the slaves it needs right at home. Automation is replacing slavery with people starving in the streets anyway. These days, China is known less for forced labor and more for organlegging. If you cause trouble, they break you up for parts.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0...

Everyone knows. The cultists can vomit the party line until they dry heave talking points.

The issue is not whether this is happening. It has.

The issue is instead what to do about it now that it has happened and the assholes aren't being honest about it.

Solutions include setting up alternative social networks, decentralizing power out of these compromised corporations, and as usual poking fun at the obvious liars if only to enjoy them squealing.

That's it. That there is bias is not credibly deniable. The issue is instead how to address the problem now that it is established.

Not too many chickens fly from China to Mainland America.

According to TFA:

At least four research institutions have relied upon... H7N9 samples from cases in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

If the chickens flew to Taiwan, they surely made it to Korea and Japan.
I understand Xi, but what's the deal with Moon and Abe withholding samples?

That said, Hong Kong going rogue against Beijing is actually the bigger story.

363 meetings between White House officials and Google employees.

Yeah, so what? You can't draw any conclusions from anything without first estimating the base rate.

When you compare it to other tech companies, telecom companies like AT&T etc, all of them combined do not have this many visits.

Not a bad baseline for comparison—not if you compare Google in the 2010s with AT&T from the 1920s.

History of AT&T

National long distance service reached San Francisco with the First transcontinental telephone call in 1915.

Transatlantic services started in 1927 using two-way radio, but the first trans-Atlantic telephone cable did not arrive until Sept. 25, 1956, with TAT-1.

Of course, you'll normalize your baseline for the 90-year difference taking into account the relative ability of people to visit Washington, and the pace at which the world now runs. You'll of course factor in the Snowden revelations of 2013 on Obama's rush for close contact with two central players in the larger drama—including technical staff to answer pointed questions about technical capabilities and postures. You'll also have read Michael Hayden's view of the momentous issues going on the behind the scenes between the intelligence community and the behemoths of modern social media (not as if they were actively reshaping the world, or anything like that; not as if they were principle driving engines of the lethargic post-Bush American recovery).

Playing to the Edge, by Michael V. Hayden — 6 March 2016

You'll take into account that Obama was one of the few technology-savvy president of living memory:

OSTP Initiatives

President Obama held the first-ever White House Maker Faire in June 2014 to celebrate the Maker Movement.

He also issued a "call to action" to Federal agencies, mayors, companies, universities, schools, libraries, museums, foundations, and non-profit organizations to expand opportunities to participate in Making.

The Maker Movement has the potential to inspire more young people to create and invent, and to promote entrepreneurship in hardware and manufacturing.

Obama was an innovation junkie. Will Trump follow in his footsteps? — 16 November 2016

There's no shortage of reminders of Obama's soft spot for tech.

Upon being elected, he fought to keep his Blackberry. (Presidents traditionally hadn't been allowed to use email.) The Obama administration has hosted an annual global entrepreneurship summit since 2010.

(Continue reading, the article soon partially supports your side of this.)

You'll also take into account that pretty much the entirety of the net neutrality debate transpired during Obama's term. (I can't recommend Tim Wu's books highly enough.)

And after considering all these base-rate factors, you'll decide whether you need to pile yet another agenda on top of this (subtype: nefarious) to explain the Obama White House visitor log.

But only if you really give a shit about the coefficient of narrative baloney.

You get an awful lot more people using that road, so the cost per person is far less. Estimates are that it costs an average of ~$1-3million per mile to build a rural paved 2-lane road ($3-5million in the city).

Interesting numbers but my observation is that when discussing roads in urban areas the costs are an order of magnitude higher. And heaven help you if you want to add a lane like these guys https://www.nytimes.com/2016/1...

How short our memories are.

When Obama first took office there was an outcry from both the left and right about the pressure the Obama administration put on news organizations that caused the purge of many journalist. There were articles everywhere about the purges on people getting fired all over the place to keep the administration happy - then silence - then most of the old articles slowly got purged from the archives. The only remnants of that era that are still in the "public memory" are the Fox News spats.

Unlike the previous administration - and the combined corporate efforts of corporations against their political enemies today - Trump hasn't done anything to stop the press. He just makes fun of the organizations he disagrees with mercilessly. Fox and other right-wing / independent media were straight up barred from the White House during much of the previous administration with other pressures outside of that.

To accuse President Trump of being anti-press when all he's doing is having name calling sessions with the ones he doesn't like and pretending he's the first president to have disagreements with the press is disingenuous at the least. This was even brought up on Slashdot in the past.

In reality, you have 1 to 3 plans your employer signed up for

Yes, the inexplicable connection between employment and health-insurance, which the federal government caused back in the 1940ies with its price-controls, and continues to encourage today with tax-credits, ought to end. Adding more government will not fix it.

all from the same insurance company with the same provider network

This sucks, but if a particular provider becomes too abusive, your employer is likely to change them. There is still some need for them to listen to customer feedback. On contrast, if the glorious "single payer" system is ever implemented, you'll be stuck with the same no matter who you are or what you do. To put into the terms you're sure to understand: Do you want President Trump to run your healthcare?

We already have the public school monopoly — for which we now pay 4 times more than 50 years ago without any improvement in quality...

Medicare is the only insurance program in the US with a >50% approval rating in polls

Curiously, you aren't citing anything to back up this claim.

underfunding the VA or NHS

Another unsubstantiated claim...

Here's one of the so called failures of Communism in the Soviet Union's planned economy:

https://www.nytimes.com/1981/0...
Citing some of the thousands of letters reportedly received on the subject, Pravda said farmers were complaining that in some areas bread was being fed to cattle and hogs. A writer from Kursk said: ''I often see people walking out of a bread store with 15 to 20 loaves. Clearly it's not for them - it's to feed their pigs, chickens and ducks.'' Less Bread, More Meat

If the farmers get feed grain cheaply, they can produce cheaper meat and poultry - and thus lower consumer dependence on bread. That, in turn, would free more grain for feed and help achieve the Government's longstanding goal of balancing consumption of meat and bread.

Now see this news item a couple years back:
https://www.reuters.com/articl...
KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Reuters) - Mike Yoder’s herd of dairy cattle are living the sweet life. With corn feed scarcer and costlier than ever, Yoder increasingly is looking for cheaper alternatives — and this summer he found a good deal on ice cream sprinkles.

“It’s a pretty colorful load,” said Yoder, who operates about 450 dairy cows on his farm in northern Indiana. “Anything that keeps the feed costs down.”

As the worst drought in half a century has ravaged this year’s U.S. corn crop and driven corn prices sky high, the market for alternative feed rations for beef and dairy cows has also skyrocketed. Brokers are gathering up discarded food products and putting them out for the highest bid to feed lot operators and dairy producers, who are scrambling to keep their animals fed.

In the mix are cookies, gummy worms, marshmallows, fruit loops, orange peels, even dried cranberries. Cattlemen are feeding virtually anything they can get their hands on that will replace the starchy sugar content traditionally delivered to the animals through corn.

“Everybody is looking for alternatives,” said Ki Fanning, a nutritionist with Great Plains Livestock Consulting in Eagle, Nebraska. “It’s kind of funny the first time you see it but it works well. The big advantage to that is you can turn something you normally throw away into something that can be consumed. The amazing thing about a ruminant, a cow, you can take those type of ingredients and turn them into food.”

Gun culture is about advocating and practicing responsibility and safety.

Maybe at one time. Not for a long long time, though.

If gun culture is sick, then where are the mass shootings at ranges?

Oh, there are plenty of shooting deaths at gun ranges. Yee haw!

https://www.cnn.com/2013/02/03...

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/0...

https://lmgtfy.com/?q=gun+rang...

Study the biographies of those who commit mass shootings. They are not part of gun culture, but usually loners with histories of anti-social behavior.

So, the guy with a bunch of guns and bump stocks who murdered 53 and injured like 900 innocent people was not part of "gun culture"? Sorry, friend, you're full of shit. The NRA was fund-raising off that mass shooting before the place stopped smelling of cordite.

I seem to be in the minority here.

I had a great time binge watching most of the first three seasons, despite recognizing all its faults right away. Sure, the original Penny was a vaguely slutty, nondescript door matt, and Howard was creep, and Raj was a head case, and Sheldon was a vegetarian Jeffery Dahmer, and Leonard—what the fuck was Leonard, anyway?

Extreme Doormat
Heterosexual Life-Partners
Butt-Monkey
Translator Buddy
With Friends Like These...

—but there was plenty of meta-humour and the delivery was lively and offbeat.

Before the series started shipping glue, it was Leonard that finally the series unwatchable for me.

Shipping

After my happy binge, I've never watched another episode, since (though I do know the modern characters, mainly from YouTube outtake reels).

Before Leonard, it was mainly Raj that made me frequently avert my gaze. But I knew that stupid premise (mutism) simply couldn't last much longer. (First they invented alcohol as a clumsy, but temporary off switch, in a truly kill-me-now "it was all a dream" micro reversal.)

Maybe you can argue that Leonard stayed for the girl. But it was played without the oppressive bars of captivity confining Leonard inside a crazy-making zoo full of insecure-yet-egocentric middle-schoolers with PhDs.

I managed to ignore these problems long enough to really enjoy many moments from the first three seasons, especially as Penny became less nondescript, and actually managed to worm her way inside Sheldon's grill.

All in all, it was not so different than watching The West Wing, which is not that much closer to reality than TBBT, though you have to dig further under the surface to see this.

But Leonard ... he became harder to comprehend as a real person than Trump-loving Manafort juror Paula Duncan.

Manafort Jury Holdout Blocked Guilty Verdicts on 10 of 18 Charges, Juror Says
Do not pardon Paul Manafort, says Trump-supporting juror who convicted him
'I did not want Paul Manafort to be guilty, but he was,' says juror who supports Trump

I can almost understand Paula, but ultimately not Leonard.

Yeah, but bots and fake accounts are REALLY important to the right.

Calling every right-leaning user a bot is REALLY important to the left. It's the narrative they cling to after Trump got elected. Meanwhile, the left uses bots and propaganda too:

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

https://www.americanthinker.co...

I like the light that Halogen bulbs give off, but they also emit lots of far-ultraviolet radiation and can cause cancer without a UV cover. A friend of mine got cancer of the hand after many years of exposure doing intricate desk work.

The sooner we can get rid of Halogen the better.

Don't be so quick to condemn Halogen. When you need a color spectrum that Halogen provides, only sunlight is better. Certain UV wavelengths are bad for skin, bad for eyes, even some tints of blue is bad and literally blinds, causes permanent eye damage. These wavelengths also come with sunlight, apparently. The color spectrum of LED is drastically different, usually shifted to the blue and cool end, and there is more blue than any other color... the UV might taper off, but if it is white LED, its brightness comes from blue, and most commonly, the very blue that causes eye damage leading to blindness.

The major point here is Halogen (and incandescent in general) is not necessarily bad, and LED can be worse. LED is commercially still kind of new and we are actually already bumping up against theoretical max efficiency of LED by 2020. Incandescent is lagging behind in efficiency, but theoretically and most likely, eventually... maybe in 50 years or less... incandescent lighting technology efficiency will surpass LED efficiency. But LED will always be cheap.

What turns out not to be cheap is to create artificial light that is natural, like the sun, which LED won't do (and the closer it gets the worse its efficiency becomes). Bulbs aren't that expensive, just compared to LED they are. How much is natural light worth to you? What are the long term effects of exposure to LED light (and its less than ideal color spectrum)? Looks like Europe is going to find out, hoping for the best.

So the major problem with your argument, "Halogen is bad because of UV and that causes cancer" is that though it is true Halogen light creates UV, ultraviolet can't go through glass, and since most bulbs are made of glass specifically doped to block UV, your argument (presumably promoting LED) that "Halogen is bad because of UV" turns out to be a straw man argument (UV [i]is[/i] bad, though Halogen does produce UV, it is surrounded (generally, some bulbs are not doped) by UV blocking glass).

Halogen is bad because we created the carbon/energy crisis (human industry polluted the carbon leading to climate change, and humans are energy hogs) and decent lighting takes energy. Fun fact, turns out how good anyone feels can be directly correlated to how much sunlight (or an identical color spectrum light, or one close enough, such as an ordinary Halogen) gets in their eyes.

I like the light that Halogen bulbs give off, but they also emit lots of far-ultraviolet radiation and can cause cancer without a UV cover. A friend of mine got cancer of the hand after many years of exposure doing intricate desk work.

The sooner we can get rid of Halogen the better.

Hey at least he's not chaining the doors to cut down on pilferage. That's the other guy that does that.

Mueller is not on a "witch hunt" for Trump.

Yes he is. He stacked his team with Democrats. He's gone further and further afield from what he was initially supposed to investigate. He's gone hard after Trump associates, while soft on Clinton associates like Tony Podesta. He referred Trump's personal lawyer for a criminal investigation, which resulted in his office being raided. He's on a witch hunt.

There's lots of people who wanted Obama out of office for various reasons and he didn't always have a same-party Congress like Trump has.....and yet it was never a debacle to this level.

Indeed, because there was no independent counsel. You have to go back to the Bill Clinton era for a similar level of ridiculousness. Monica Lewinsky = Stormy Daniels.

The simple fact of the matter is Trump is causing this.

Yes, Trump Derangement Syndrome. The establishment hates Trump. A lot of people collectively flipped their shit when Trump got elected.

He's shady, hung around shady people

Just like all other politicians? Do you realize who he ran against? Even Saint Obama has skeletons in his closet (sidenote: that's akin to Trump taking a smiling photo with David Duke).

You can't blame the media

Sure I can. Why the incessant focus on Trump, when the facts show it was the DNC and Clinton campaign engaged in a Watergate scandal combined with McCarthyism? You just can't make this stuff up. We live in bizarro world.

Here you go.

Oh oops, that wasn't fake news, only a reminder of the garbage humans that are paid to shit on forums. See the title of your response? That's trash from the gutter you just picked up and posted for everyone to see.

That's an argument for judges to decide, not Cohen. For everyone's sake, I hope judges don't go with the "nevermind the 6th Amendment" attitude.

Yes. The point I was trying to make was, it isn't Cohen deciding -- the judge has already appointed a 3rd party to go thru all seized documents and make a determination. Both the prosecuting and defense attorneys play a role as well. There is even the option of a "taint team" being assigned to assist the defense, if the judge thinks it is needed.

There is a detailed process and it looks like it is being followed carefully, from what few reports I've seen so far.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/04/nyregion/cohen-special-master-review.html/

If the FEC rules on the payments to Stormy Daniels, Trump should abide by the ruling, just like other candidates.

The FEC isn't going to rule, because Trump's campaign didn't ask for an opinion -- they denied the payment occurred originally. The legal problem started when candidate Trump signed the form attesting to the correctness of his filings. He already excluded the payment and swore the numbers were correct. To this day he still denies *he* made a payment, that it was an independent act of a third party -- if it happened at all. Like Nixon before him, this issue will revolve around what the President knew and when he knew it.

Ah yes, a conspiracy theory believing nutcase. For Trump to not have had relations with those women requires three people to lie:

• The porn actresses in question (both of them)
• Michael Cohen also has to be lying under oath

Keeping in mind that Trump's story is inconsistent, the evidence shows that

• Trump had relations with both women
• He paid them both hush money

But, hey, if you believe conspiracy theories, maybe you're also one of those idiots who believe the Earth is flat

Giving porn stars he fucked with hush money. This is a federal crime, especially during a presidential campaign.

To quote that article:

But a media company makes an illegal corporate contribution if it acts outside its "legitimate press function" in coordinating with a campaign to spend money to influence an election.

Got any sources for those bold claims?

Why yes, I do.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.co...

The NYT has a more readable summary with the key graphs: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/0...

How about this, you stop using food as entertainment and find something else. Also, vanity works far better as a reason to lose than health.

If you really believe that people are fat because they use food as "entertainment" then it rather undermines your advice to them. Also, if vanity worked then obesity would be cured by the magazines in the doctor's waiting room. The constant bombardment of images of thin bodies and the promotion of that standard of beauty would have fixed the problem long ago.

Shaming and depression are discredited as weight loss methods. In fact they tend to have the opposite effect. Fortunately medical science knows that and is making progress towards real solutions.

1. Illegal immigrants can obtain driver's license in California.
2. Anyone obtaining a driver's license in California (and in many other states) can check a checkbox to also register to vote. It is the person's own discretion, scruples, and fear of prosecution, that decides it.
3. Anyone registered to vote, can come and vote — no verification is done at the time of voting.
4. Indeed, various cities — including San Francisco — encourage non-citizens to vote now. Ostensibly, they are only supposed to vote for local issues only (such as school boards), which is legal. In practice, there are no checks preventing them from voting.

It is possible. It happens. Attempts to quantify, how wide-spread it is, are sabotaged.

As with other possible exploits, we must assume being compromised... Which is unfortunate...

I suspect what's actually happening is that the real causative factor is that people in towns with high immigrant populations are getting fed up with the local immigrants and are taking to Facebook to complain about it

This is a very reasonable thing to suspect, yet it turns that it is more complicated. The TL:DR version is that anti-immigrant backlash really only gets up a head of steam once politicians start pointing fingers at the immigrants and labeling them as problems.

Then, once the the anti-immigrant memes start flowing, Facebook becomes their preferred breading grounds.

You are incorrectly informed. Please read HIS 2015: Prof. Phil Koopman - A Case Study of Toyota Unintended Acceleration and Software Safety for more in depth details on what really happened, and more up to date information on the settlements and fines that Toyota received over this.

this covers the results of the NASA investigation that occurred in 2011, and was not covered by your Car and Driver article.

Also recall that Toyota settles for $1.6B. And Oklahoma court records clearly indicate that punitive damages were assigned in the Bookout trial.

And finally, in 2014, U.S. Attorney General investigation leads to $1.2B in fines for concealing safety defects

Remember how the politicians insisted the nation shift to more reliable "electronic ballots" after Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote in 2000 - Help America Vote Act.

I think it's great that now they want to go back to paper, because, I guess, nothing like the Butterfly Ballot Fiasco could ever happen again, right?

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/0...

https://www.bloomberg.com/poli...

"Koch Brothers’ Budget of $889 Million for 2016 Is on Par With Both Parties’ Spending" D's spent about $1.5 billion R's spent about $1 billion Koch's spent and additional about $.9 billion. Republicans as always spent more particularly when you consider down ballot races. But in general yes. R's are far better at the "politics" part. Too bad they suck as governing.

To be fair.. if keeping a tally of election meddling, according to the NY times: A Carnegie Mellon scholar, Dov H. Levin, has scoured the historical record for both overt and covert election influence operations. He found 81 by the United States and 36 by the Soviet Union or Russia between 1946 and 2000, though the Russian count is undoubtedly incomplete. link

1970 - 2013 America is clearly higher than China, why are you making things up? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... https://www.nytimes.com/intera...

I did not watch the video. I searched for the phrase that you gave, and then read this accounting. He apparently was using the word "truth" as a metaphor for "retelling of events." As in "Comey's truth" is Comey's recounting of events, and that stands in opposition to "Trump's truth."

This is dumb and inaccurate, of course, but this is not an unfamiliar phrasing. People do use the word truth in this way sometimes.

It was both in the most infamous incident

It's worth remembering that Kindle already has had something get poof'd despite being 'sold' to people--ironically enough, it was 1984. (NYT and this site.)

Oh, and Amazon still may use DRM like this despite having been forced to settle the lawsuit about the disappearing Orwell books.

Personally, I'm somewhat fine if the agreement on both sides is that yes, I'm just getting access to a lending library--fee-for-access is not a new model for libraries, having it be a digital one just makes it smoother. I'm just not a fan of DRM meaning I cannot trust that I actually own what I've bought on the understanding that I am being sold the item itself...regardless of if I'm getting a digital or a physical copy. (Breaking DRM and general DRM issues on both differ, and in some cases my preference is more or less set by "Which one can be more easily/successfully jailbroken?")

Actually? The reason she "got away with it" (wasn't prosecuted) was because hundreds and in fact thousands of other similarly positioned officials also did, including Jeb Bush, Colin Powell, and... https://www.nytimes.com/2017/0...

Rules for using a personal email server are well-established, as are the rules for sending classified data.

She got away with it because she destroyed evidence of the latter, which should have been plenty to prosecute.

Also, let's be realistic. She got away with it because Bill "Tarmac" Clinton stepped in.

You mean this Supreme Court (link to to NYT article from June 25, 2013: Supreme Court Invalidates Key Part of Voting Rights Act)? I don't think they're likely to be very helpful in protecting the rights of minorities to vote from the state they live in.

It is the same reason the New York times ran a bogus op ed about Georgia voter suppression in preparation for Stacey Abrams, the first black woman nominated to run for governor, losing.

I mean, sure, you can claim that the Georgia thing is bogus.
But, since they have the history of destroying evidence of election fraud pretty recently it seems pretty likely that they are going to keep doing crap.
Criminals are gonna criminal and all that.

Total BS. Nelson is losing and he knows it, so he's starting the "Russians stole it" crap to try and de-legitimize Scott's win. Claire McCaskill of Missouri is saying the same thing.

It is the same reason the New York times ran a bogus op ed about Georgia voter suppression in preparation for Stacey Abrams, the first black woman nominated to run for governor, losing.

Considering the left leaning Atlanta Journal Constitution says Black, nonwhite voters on the rise in Georgia, AJC analysis shows that must mean who ever is working to suppress minority voting is doing a piss poor job.

This is all the Democrats have. They have no message, they are running either as socialists or as Trump resistance. In other words, they want to take every thing you have or they want your vote because you're supposed to hate Trump. They know this is a losing argument so they have to start now claiming "muh Russians did it".

Apparently ripping off others work is 'innovation' these days. https://rendezvous.blogs.nytim... https://www.techinasia.com/chi... This is just another example.

The beautiful thing about private charity is, you're in control. If you feel gay youth are underserved, that's where you can direct your dollars. You don't have that power when you write a check to the IRS.

Apparently you're not familiar with CharityNavigator.org. If you choose charities that have earned four stars from CharityNavigator, your dollars will be spent exceptionally efficiently and griftlessly.

Again, that's better than government attempting to do social good. It's terribly inefficient at that. I have participated in legal grift when I traveled on government contracts. The per-diem allowance is so extravagant, I was always able to stay at four- or five-star hotels, and enjoy fine dining every evening. That's totally unnecessary for someone at my level. I would have performed the job just fine, and taxpayers would have been much better served, if my lodging had been restricted to two-star hotels.

The PITA scholarship application process you described is what happens when privately-funded scholarship dollars are scarce. As the number of such dollars increases, the process will necessarily be relaxed somewhat, because it wouldn't be possible to give away all those dollars if the process remained as stringent as it is today.

It's true that private charities are more willing and able than government to make judgements about who is truly needy, and who is merely lazy. Don't act like that's a bad thing. For as long as the social safety net remains finite in size, it will be important to direct resources more in the direction of the truly needy, and less in the direction of the merely lazy.

Medicare alone is 702 billion dollars per year. 402 billion isn't going to cover it.

That's why I said "Within our lifetime, we might see voluntary charitable contributions exceed the size of coercive government wealth redistribution programs." I pretty clearly acknowledged that we haven't yet reached that point.

That reminds me. Private charities do not build up unfunded liabilities. Government entitlement programs, on the other hand, have built up $210 TRILLION in unfunded liabilities. In other words, $210 TRILLION in future obligations, for which we currently have no idea where the money will come from. The unfunded liabilities will inevitably begin to come due, like an apocalyptic balloon payment. This fact alone should make everyone want to make a shift toward private charity, rather than doubling down on the programs that created the unfunded liabilities.

I've heard people describe Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" programs as "successful," but they couldn't possibly be aware of the unfunded liabilities while making that characterization. Johnson himself, if his advisors had been able to foresee and warn him about the unfunded liabilities, never would have endorsed his Great Society programs. He didn't have a deathwish for his country's economy.

Mangled URL was supposed to be.

It's apparently not so easy to investigate voter fraud, at least at the federal level. All it does is generate lawsuits... https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0...

These gun nut assholes think it's ok to shoot somebody for knocking at your door for directions, or trying to get help after a car wreck. You might also notice a pattern in the victims of these crimes. The default solution to problems in America seems to be "shoot first, ask questions later."

To be fair, his knowledge about the debt appears to be a bit lacking.

One thing everyone here is missing is that U.S. Steel and Nucor Steel have been fighting every single exemption request companies have put forth to the U.S. Commerce Department. These companies want exemptions from the tariffs so they can continue to get steel at reasonable prices and/or quality and type they need.

Instead, the two largest producers of steel in the country have raised their prices and told the Commerce Department the exemptions are bogus because they can make the product, even though in at least one case, a company stopped buying steel from U.S. Steel because of quality control issues.

Of course politics plays a big role in all this:

Charlotte-based Nucor, which financed a documentary film made by a top trade adviser to Mr. Trump, and Pittsburgh-based United States Steel, which has previously employed several top administration officials, have objected to 1,600 exemption requests filed with the Commerce Department over the past several months.

To date, their efforts have never failed, resulting in denials for companies that are based in the United States but rely on imported pipes, screws, wire and other foreign steel products for their supply chains.

In one case, a company stated “the sole U.S. producer of high speed steel material appropriate for cutting tools is not currently ramping up any production to expand this aspect of their business and has not shown any interest in quoting new business.”

As the tariffs take hold, expect prices of finished goods to rise substantially and more businesses to either go under or relocate out of the country. The largest nail manufacturer in the country has already laid off 12% of its workforce, cut hours for the remainder and is still on the brink of extinction, so it has to make such a decision.