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Many politicians have stronger than average narcissistic tendencies.

That's not the same as being a narcissist.

https://www.psychologytoday.co...
https://www.psychologytoday.co...
http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...

Anything that "creates jobs" makes no sense to get rid of, no matter how pointless or financially bloated.

However, government never seems to get smaller nor can it realize a mistake. It only perpetuates (in this case) an unnecessary bureaucracy.

I hate it when facts get in the way of a "Gub'ment is bad!" rant, but at least since 2008: "Private payrolls have added 7 million jobs over Obama’s presidency, while government payrolls (federal, state and local) have contracted by a combined 634,000 jobs." http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...

Here's your link for the Islam numbers. Short version: The number of places under Sharia law is growing, and - more shocking -- the number of Muslims in western countries like the US and the UK who *wish* they were living under Sharia Law and would like to see their country change its legal system to one that was theology based is *growing.*

47 percent of all American Christians identify themselves as "Evangelical," although only 62 percent of those "Evangelicals" believe that abortion should be illegal in all states, so they're probably not what you would describe as a real Pokemon-fearing Evangelical. Link with stats

Look, I'm not here to do your homework for what is common sense to anyone who is not a dyed-in-the-wool Jihad apologist. Radical Islam is an existential threat to western civilization, and it's growing. Christianity is NOT an existential threat, and their numbers are diminishing. Get your head out of your ass and start doing some of the research yourself.

This is not a hard game to play. Education is as as simple as a goddamn web search and attempt to read. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Sharia deals with many topics, including crime, politics, marriage contracts, trade regulations, religious prescriptions, and economics, as well as personal matters such as sexual intercourse, hygiene, diet, prayer, everyday etiquette and fasting. Adherence to sharia has served as one of the distinguishing characteristics of the Muslim faith historically.[5] In its strictest definition, sharia is considered in Islam as the infallible law of God.[6][not in citation given]

It is ILLEGAL under SHARIA to be Gay! It is ILLEGAL under SHARIA to ignore Muslim religious requirements. You can be Christian but you better face East and Pray when they do, or you are a criminal.

Saudi Arabia lives under Sharia Law, which is why you can not freely travel to that country and do so at your own risk by US Law. Show us how peaceful the Religion is by paying a visit and publicly announcing you are a gay. Even better, go publicly announce your Jewish faith and read some Torah in the public square. You are a feckless lying twat who would do no such thing because you know you would be beheaded by those "peaceful" Muslims following their Sharia Law.

I have facts to back my statements, not bullshit. Where are your facts exactly? Oh yeah, those things are bad.

I just proved your statements false, and further repeated attempts at lying are going to be ignored. Not because you are Anonymous, but because you are a liar attempting to hide behind anonymity.

Here is the poll I mentioned. Not that a lying liar like you would read any such inconvenient facts but the bystander may.

Feckless and dishonest, quote the resume you sport.

Which one? How about both points I made:

http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...

http://crimeresearch.org/2015/...

Somehow the gun control crowd thinks that it's worse now than ever, but the available evidence just doesn't support that claim.

How do you determine what "real" GDP growth is? Again, you seem to imply that how it was done in the 1970's and 1980's were the "correct way".

If you're going to draw comparisons between different decades, you need a standard measurement. Keep the way inflation was calculated, and you'd find the GDP would be about 10% lower - because that's the impact of inflation on it. And by that measure - we're still in the recession that started in 2007.

All I hear is that people "feel" like they aren't as well off compared to some rose-colored memory of decades past. That "feeling", of course, is greatly affected by what kind of narrative their favorite media source paints.

Lowest labor force participation rate in 2 generations. Record levels of food stamps use. Record numbers on welfare. Stagnant wages. A Federal Government adding $4 billion in debt every day. It's not all roses now, not at all...

Middle class is generally defined as between two-thirds and double the local median wage. Depending on the context that local wage may be within your city, county, state, region, or country. In 2014, that put the middle class at about $42k-$125k nation wide.

According to Pew Research the percentage of people in the middle class has dropped by 11.3% from 1971-2014. 2.3% (20% of the total) went to a lower income level, and 9% (80% of the total) moved into a higher income level.

So I actually remembered the numbers incorrectly just not in the direction you thought. Four fifths of those moving out of the middle class were moving upwards, not two thirds.

I think you are confusing 2/3 of your friends and acquaintances with 2/3 of the actual middle class.

I grew up in a small farm town (12k population), so far less than 2/3 of my friends moved up into the upper classes. Probably closer to 10% of my former and current friends have moved into the upper middle class or higher, because those on the lower end of the opportunity spectrum tend to do worse in their careers. Things didn't turn around for me until I got at least 70 miles from my former home, where you basically had to be a local business owner to have a nice income.

Also, your premise is flawed. More guns = more murder. https://www.washingtonpost.com...

Have you actually read the paper in your first link? Here's data from their Table 2:

Gun ownership 1.009 (1.004, 1.014) .001 For each 1 percentage point increase in proportion of household gun ownership, firearm homicide rate increased by 0.9%
Percentage Black 1.052 (1.037, 1.068) .001 For each 1 percentage point increase in proportion of Black population, firearm homicide rate increased by 5.2%
Gini coefficient 1.046 (1.003, 1.092) .037 For each 0.01 increase in Gini coefficient, firearm homicide rate increased by 4.6%
Violent crime rate 1.048 (1.010, 1.087) .013 For each increase of 1/1000 in violent crime rate, firearm homicide rate increased by 4.8%
Nonviolent crime rate 1.008 (1.003, 1.013) .002 For each increase of 1/1000 in nonviolent crime rate, firearm homicide rate increased by 0.8%

Well, the proportion of households with firearms has been debated ( http://dailycaller.com/2015/03... ). That article suggests that the proportion of firearms owners has been either constant or increased. Which, according to the study you linked, SHOULD increase firearms deaths, all other things being equal. Of course, things are not equal. But consider the changes in America over the past ~10 years:

-reduced economic security
-persistent high unemployment
-amplified racial tensions
-increased use/abuse of prescription drugs
All of these should ALSO contribute to higher firearms deaths. And yet the numbers have declined. How to do you reconcile this?

Some studies suggest that ownership rates are declining, yet firearms continue to sell because existing owners are stockpiling. ( http://www.independent.co.uk/n... ) A doubling of firearms from 4 to 8 is a huge proportional increase, but we haven't seen a commensurate rise in violent deaths within this gun-owning demographic, which is disproportionately rural, middle-class, white men. ( http://www.pewresearch.org/fac... ) How do you explain this, given your assertion that more guns = more murder?

Let's concede that in an absolutely literal sense, firearms and deaths are positively correlated....in the way that 0.00001 is technically a positive non-zero number.

From the table above, income inequality has 5x as much of an impact on violent deaths as firearms proliferation. Same for the pre-existing violent crime rate.

Taking steps to fix society's other ills will do more to reduce the violent death rate than purely controlling the number of firearms. Given that time and labor are limited resources, allocating them efficiently to solve problems is paramount. If the weapons proliferation alone is a small fraction of the cause of deaths in America as I've demonstrated above, then focusing our efforts here is a misallocation of our energy.

And this doesn't even touch on the logistical difficulty/inefficiency of trying to collect 300 million+ weapons from a country the size of a continent. If the US's War on Drugs is anything to go by, expect an abject failure in a weapons crackdown.

In most countries, you'd be right to heap scorn on anyone feeling threatened by an emoji or an email.

But this is the US, where guns are easy and cheap to get, and people get routinely shot over the dumbest shit. Dude might be a bit of scaredy cat, but he's certainly not insane.

Gun violence is at an all time low
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...
http://www.cnsnews.com/comment...

I know, pesky facts. Who cares about'em

Once RNN reaches a point of being able to validate sources and use human comment input from social authorities (individuals with high reputation for wisdom, education and intellect) then people will gravitate more. Trust in the major networks has declined over the years. http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...

Well, maybe if the US hadn't gotten rid of every democratically elected government in the region and replaced them all with 'friendly' theocratic dictators the region wouldn't have had so many of them.

I'm not in favor of the US toppling democratically elected governments, but what exactly is your claim here? That the Middle East was a region full of flourishing liberal democracies before western interference? Or simply that US intervention contributed to an already messy region full of autocratic rulers and patchwork states? Because I'm totally onboard with the second sentiment but it's hard to make an argument for the first. In fact, my take on the elections for the countries we've invaded and wrecked up has always been to allow them to elect whatever kind of crazy people they want to elect and eat the shit sandwich they want to make for themselves. Us trying to meddle with the elections in Iraq, for example, just made us obviously complicit in whatever tribal conflicts would ever come from bringing in new leaders. In places where sectarian conflict is almost guaranteed, putting our thumb on the scale during elections just means we own part of the pain and suffering that follow.

Whenever a country elects a crazy hard-liner and the press asks the President, "How did you let that happen?" his answer should be it happened because I don't run their government, and we should stop acting like we have veto power on every foreign election.

Of course you conveniently ignore that most of the countries at war with ISIS now are not ruled by theocrats - they are the same countries that, over the past ten years, got rid of the US-installed dictators and replaced with with new democratically elected governments - many of which are secular and now have secular constitutions.

Can you list those countries, specifically? This is very hand-wavy, using terms like "many" and noting "secular constitutions" instead of coming up with actual numbers and looking at the actual de facto forms of government. One could argue that hardly any Middle Eastern countries are theocracies by a strict definition simply because the clergy don't directly run the country, but the reality is one of widespread autocracy and religious repression.

And it's not like the Muslim population have a larger percentage of hateful bigots among them - if they did, Donald Trump would never have been the republican nominee.

This is another very spongy claim with soft equivalancy that doesn't really survive close scrutiny. Among the problems:

1) Again, it's very hard to figure out what your actual claim is. Are you asserting that the US and the assorted majority Muslim countries have precisely the same level of "bigotry" ingrained in public discourse, law, and politics? If that's the claim you want to push, I'll gladly let you define "bigotry" however you want and give you the floor.

2) Electing a weirdo in a primary doesn't really mean all that much. There were about 28M votes in the Republican primary and Donald Trump received about 13M of them out of a country of 330M. I'll absolutely grant that that's an alarming number given the positions he has taken, but if we're to grant that the opinions of about 5% of the population who took the time to pull the lever for Trump is representative, we should look at the Pew survey results on the favorability of ISIS in various countries with large Muslim populations. The majority of Muslims were not positive, but an alarmingly large minority had a favorable view, and a very alarming percentage "don't know." And of course, getting back to my original point, you don't have to support ISIS to be at least moderately in favor of a bunch of their more extreme beliefs about how societies should be ruled

The group that has guns?

Nope.

CDC 2013 stats: total number of firearm deaths: 33,636; number of suicides with firearms: 21,175. Now 21175/33363 = 63.5%, or two thirds of all gun deaths.

I find it interesting that you are making up your firearms figures, and include no links to back up anything you say.

Here is a comparison of total firearm deaths, firearm suicide deaths, and firearm homicide deaths published October 21, 2015. Firearms deaths by suicide have been trending up since 2006, homicide declining steadily over the same period (and, again, showing that 2/3 of firearm deaths are suicide). Please provide your link showing that "last year was a record year for gun homicides", the FBI and CDC have not yet released final figures for 2015 as far as I can tell.

Why progressives/liberals dismiss so easily the real concerns of most voters?

I think you've got a lot of emotion here masquerading as numbers. Here are some actual statistical facts:

"Most voters" are in fact not white males. In 2016 white males will be about 34% of all eligible voters. That means 66% of the electorate has to deal with being from an unprivileged group every day of their lives. (actually more, as I'm not counting GBT white males). So if liberals (and in fact conservatives) were not looking at issues of "privilege", they would in fact be ignoring the real concerns of most voters.

Trump voters are, on average a lot wealthier than either Sanders or Clinton voters. He is not getting elected on the votes of the disgruntled "working class" in general. That's a myth.

Exit poling has shown the best correlation voting for Trump has with any position is with belief that Obama is not an American. I'm not even sure this should be news. He's been the standard-bearer for birtherisim for 8 years now. His supporters have also been shown to be far more racially and religiously intolerant than the average Republican voter.

I know it's ugly to think that a major party nominated a candidate based on what essentially amounts to White Supremacy. But we don't do ourselves any favors at this point by ignoring the plain truth.

Thank you, go take a god damn civics class, and don't post on anything happening in the Congress again until you do.

Wait... Things are happening in this Congress? I thought we discussed their inaction before.

Here's one. It basically says that opinions set in the late teens/early 20s, and that voter generations tend to vote together. Feelings for the president when you turned 18 matter more than age. People disliked nixon, so people in that generation vote democratic. People liked FDR, so they do as well. People liked Eisenhower, so that group votes R.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...

If the media wanted to highlight the alignment of Democrats with white supremacists on some issues like abortion, they could. But they don't want to. Why? Because divisiveness doesn't sell? Come on.

No, because there's zero reason to even think or suspect that any of the Democrats are in favor of abortion for the same reason the white supremacists are. In the case of Trump, the motivation behind the agreement looks potentially pretty similar, especially because it isn't any single issue.

That link shows that 30% of blacks support more immigration. It isn't even about illegal immigration, which is Trump's main issue.

First, Trump is pretty strongly in favor of general reductions in immigration. Second, the link was being given to deal with the specific claim that blacks are against immigration. Third, if you do want to focus on illegal immigration there are actually studies showing the same thing there. See e.g. http://www.pewresearch.org/2006/04/25/attitudes-toward-immigration-in-black-and-white/ which shows that blacks are much more in favor of policies which help illegal immigrants.

People do have a tendency to call people racist when they really mean they disagree about race relate political issues. But that isn't what is going on here. Trump's words far exceed any sort of attempt to enforce current immigration laws. For example, his claims that Mexico was deliberately sending its criminals to the US http://www.laweekly.com/news/heres-a-fact-check-of-donald-trumps-mexico-bashing-5754639 which was demonstrably false. He plans on making a wall between Mexico and the US and making Mexico pay for it, despite the fact that the number of illegal immigrants has in the last few years been stable or declined http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/11/19/5-facts-about-illegal-immigration-in-the-u-s/. He's claimed that a judge in a legal case was biased against him purely under the basis that the judge was Hispanic http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-02-27/trump-university-argues-ex-student-can-t-bow-out-as-trial-nears. And then there was the bit where he refused to disavow the KKK and then lied about it, claiming it was due to mishearing the question when his response indicates he understood exactly what was being asked http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/28/politics/donald-trump-white-supremacists/

And this is before we get to the fact that many of his other policy ideas about immigration have nothing to do with enforcing current rules (e.g. his ideas about banning all Muslims from entering the US).

I don't know if Trump is racist, but he's made a lot of comments that certainly move in that direction, and if he isn't racist he's making a concerted effort to appeal to racists and general xenophobic sentiments.

then hipsters and Millennials will find a way to severely abuse it to suppress any and all discussion they disagree with.

Implying they are the problem rather than the preceding generation which bubble wrapped their little preciouses while they were growing up?

What generation would that be?
I assume you're talking about the Boomers...
...definitely not the Xers.

I will never understand why minimum wage is not tied to inflation rates - this is a ridiculous argument to have Every Five Years.

If minimum wage was tied to inflation since it first started, then today it would be at about $4.25 an hour.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...

Trickle down hasn't worked in over 30 years. Just ask Kansas how well it's working for them. Yet somehow "conservatives" think this works.

You cannot make people more people successful if you attack the people who make them successful.

You cannot make more people richer by only giving them crumbs.

I'm not a socialist. I'm one of the dying breed of real conservatives. However, when I hear multi-billion dollar companies whine they can't pay their people more yet have no problem giving out multi-million dollar bonuses to people already making a million or more a year AND have billions socked away overseas AND go to the taxpayer for either bailouts or tax breaks or have them build something, it's disingenuous at best and arrogant at worst for them to claim how horrible things are.

We always hear why certain people are paid huge salaries, because the companies want the best, yet by their actions these same companies are showing they don't want the best people working for them in other capacities because they're not willing to pay them.

If trickle down had ever worked the salaries of people wouldn't still be the same, adjusted for inflation, as they were 20+ years ago.

Minimum wage jobs are there for supplemental income and those who are just starting work for the first time.

That seems like a false statement. According to this, 49.6% of minimum wage workers are 25 years of age or older. It's not clear that people in this demographic are only working "for supplemental income" (What does this even mean, anyway? That they're independently wealthy and only flipping burgers on the side for fun?) or "just starting work for the first time". According to this, 54% work full-time, so it's not clear how that could be "supplemental income" either. That second reference claims that "half are older than 30". 27% of minimum wage earners have one or more children of their own.

If this was November, I would agree with them. It is February. I believe that the average time to nominate and vote on a potential Supreme Court Justice is around 2 months, a vacant seat has never lasted more than 4 months. And the Republicans want to do nothing for 10 months?

Recently, you are correct on the average time; however, the longest time was a lot longer than 10 months. I agree that the Senate should consider nominees, but the Democrats threatened to do the same to Bush near the end of his second term (although they ended up not following through on the threat, so kudos to them, I guess).

"stopping immigration" Unless you're a Native American, shut the fuck up.

I take no responsibility for things before my time. I will say that the current Indians in my neck of the woods are all silly rich due to casinos. They did quite well in the end.

"Educating and feeding millions of people who shouldn't be here" Who are you talking about? The Mexicans? Care to provide a source?

There are millions of "citizens" who arguable shouldn't be here. Source: http://www.pewresearch.org/fac... On a more personal note around 40% of the local elementary school is ESL (English Second Language) so dollars to donuts they are all born to illegals or illegal themselves. That means that the school could improve the student to teacher ratio by 40% if we only looked at legit citizens. To those who say it doesn't impact me - you're wrong.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...

Yeah... You are wrong.

1/3 of the US's Tax revenue comes from Payroll tax, which is born more by the poor. The majority of the wealthy's income is either not subject to this tax, or above the limit to apply. This graph shows only 46% is income tax, of which around 50% is from the wealthy.

So, it looks like the wealthy are shouldering about 25% of the federal tax receipts, sounds like a good deal considering what they get.

Its also far from almost all.
I always wondered how people could say, "The rich pay most of the taxes," and "Taxing the rich at 90% would only cover a small part of Federal spending."

This is a look behind the mirror for anyone without the time to dig in themselves.

Actually baseball bats are more commonly used in assaults than rifles.

Most firearms homicides are with pistols of some sort, not rifles or shotguns.

http://www.breitbart.com/big-g...
http://blogs.marketwatch.com/c...

Further, most firearms deaths are suicides.:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...

Further, homicides are a poor indicator of how many crimes are committed with different weapons:
http://blogs.theadvocate.com/b...

If laws can drive industry away, they can keep it around too.

There is little evidence for that. [...] Do you think America would be richer if we produced more t-shirts and fewer aircraft and CPUs?

About 20 years ago when the original NAFTA and its ilk came into being, people complained about exactly this issue. The meme of the day was "a giant sucking sound" as jobs and manufactured goods went South to Mexico.

The non-governmental economists claimed that wages would stagnate.

The government economists responded by saying that wages would stagnate, but the markets would be flooded with cheaper goods, so overall purchasing power would increase.

Here we are 20 years later, wages have stagnated for most workers, and there are Chinese dollar stores everywhere.

It's exactly as the economists predicted.

Do you still like your free trade?

uuuuhuh... Only one problem though, Europe isn't christian, the wast majority of our population is either atheist or agnostic.

Nope. 74.5% Christian in 2010.

NASA is actually quite popular.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...

In US schools are funded from property taxation, except for low income areas which, logically, cannot afford their schools and get funded from the state or federal funds.

School funding per pupil is 4 times what it was in the 1960s. FOUR TIMES. Even if we assume the poor districts increased by a smaller portion, and the rich districts by a large portion, how wide a skew could it possibly be? There's a lot more poor people than rich ones. Even if we assume poor districts only doubled, and rich ones octupled, that still means that spending on poor pupils STILL DOUBLED.

So where's the results? 35th place in math and 27th place in science. Something changed between the 1960s and today, but it sure isn't a lack of funding that's causing it.

Chigaco is not, and never has been, the murder capital of the country.

That is a myth.
That FBI releases the numbers every year.

Chicago is not even close to being the most dangerous city in the US.

In fact, the 3 most dangerous cities actually have lows against passing ANY gun control ordinances, whatsoever

6 cities have held the title 'murder capital' since 1985. None was Chicago.

In fact the city most often claiming the title, is New Orleans.
And it's one of those that is barred from crafting any firearms ordinances by state law.
What state is that? Why, Louisiana, the 2nd most dangerous state I the nation, with some of the weakest gun laws in the nation.

And at the other end of the spectrum, one of the safest cities in the country is, repeatedly, New York City, replete with its very strict gun control.
Located in New York state, one of the safest states in the nation, a state with tough gun control, and already closed the gun show loophole among other things.

Funny how you types always leave that out.

And some more reading:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...
http://www.kansascity.com/opin...
https://www.washingtonpost.com...

Honest citizens are still mostly badly trained dumbasses.

And yet, GP's point is still correct. Taking guns away from the law-abiding would not decrease your risk.

Do you live your life by real numbers or just gut feelings?

Oh, real numbers, definitely.

Since 1992, the number of unintentional shootings has declined by 57% in the USA:

http://sssfonline.org/nssf-report-unintentional-firearms-fatalities-historic-low/

Since the early 90's, the number of intentional shootings has also fallen roughly in half. It fell more quickly than the unintentional numbers but then plateaued. Note that this statistic excludes suicides... properly, IMHO, as I don't believe that guns cause suicide.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/10/21/gun-homicides-steady-after-decline-in-90s-suicide-rate-edges-up/

And both of these declines are despite the fact that there are more firearms available than ever before. This article has a chart that starts in 1996; it shows that in 1996 there were less than 250 million firearms in the USA, and currently there are over 350 million firearms in the USA. That's over a 40% increase in the number of firearms.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/10/05/guns-in-the-united-states-one-for-every-man-woman-and-child-and-then-some/

Therefore, the increase in guns must prove that the guns caused the reduction in violence, right? Well, no. Correlation doesn't prove causation.

However, these numbers do show that guns don't magically cause violence. If guns caused violence, then the massive increase in the number of guns should be correlated with an increase of violence rather than a decline.

So: if you "live your life by real numbers", and you want to argue in favor of taking firearms away from the law-abiding, then please provide some statistics that support your plan.

Women’s college enrollment gains leave men behind

Even though college enrollment rates among young people have risen in recent decades, a Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data shows that females outpace males in college enrollment, especially among Hispanics and blacks.

In 1994, 63% of recent female high school graduates and 61% of male recent high school graduates were enrolled in college in the fall following graduation. By 2012, the share of young women enrolled in college immediately after high school had increased to 71%, but it remained unchanged for young men at 61%.

A similar pattern is seen among young Hispanics. In 1994, among Hispanics who completed high school, about half of men and women immediately enrolled in college. Nearly two decades later, college enrollments for both groups improved, but women outpaced men by 13 percentage points.

For black high school graduates, there’s a different story. In 1994, young black men were more likely than young black women to be enrolled in college immediately after high school. By 2012, the pattern had reversed: The share of young black men enrolled in college remained stagnant, while the share of young black women enrolled in college increased to 69% —a 12 percentage point gap with black men.

Conservatism isn't about what you do, it's about what you want to force everyone else to do.

And that is not limited to say just 'religious people' or 'republicans'.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...

People who consider themselves liberal have a very interesting idea of it. They are liberal only when it comes to their own ideals and act in the very manner they accuse others of doing.

But virtually every Christian condemns abortion clinic bombings, where a terrifying number of global Muslims support terror, Sharia theocracy, death for apostates, punishment for homosexual activity, the abolition of freedom of expression in the name of suppressing images they find offensive, etc.

See: http://www.pewresearch.org/fac... , http://www.pewforum.org/2013/0... , and virtually any other similar survey.

>> surveys done of French Moslems (by the Pew Research Institute if memory serves well), that tend to prove they are the least radicalized and best integrated of all European Moslem communities

I believe you're referencing this 2006 Pew Research, which showed that a higher percentage of French Muslims wanted to adopt the customs of their host country than in other European countries.
http://www.pewresearch.org/200...

However, that's ten years old, and the high unemployment and changing immigration trends could have changed attitudes. I've love to see an updated report.

[Citation Needed]

Illegal immigration is pretty damn high, but I guess you have numbers to show this significant reduction.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...

The numbers are about half of what Trump says the numbers are though:

http://www.politifact.com/flor...

Ever looked at international Doctor Salaries? Or lawyer salaries?

Part of the reason those are through the roof is that they have very good lobbying arms. The people who actually run the country (unlike the Dems claim, it isn't the 1%, it's more like the top 20-25% who make $100k. The basis of their power is they always vote, even in odd-year-Mayoral elections, the cheating bastards) distrust unions, so actual unions are quite restricted. But Doctors and lawyers are key components of the hundredthousandocracy, can quite clearly and cogently defend their interests, and arrange it so that even proposals designed largely to screw them (ie: anything that reduces health costs, any form of Tort Reform) don't do that shit.

There are 4 millionish IT Workers in the US. If a few hundred thousand organized themselves into an association, hired lobbyists in every state and in DC (or, more likely, hired some of their members to lobby), they would be quite powerful. They aren't a union, so the GOP won't go into crazy-kill-death mode. Unlike Zuckerberg or San Fran tech entrepreneurs, they look and act like the suburban white-collar types who dominate the country. They say "we want these contracts investigated because we think that the rules weren't followed," and no politician has the stones to get in the fucking way.

Once again how is that "Hope and Change" working out for you

Meh, slightly better than the last guy.

Or how is the Orwellian affordable care act serving you ?

I've got some news for you: The ACA is LAW, it has dramatically increased the number of insured, and...(wait, wait for it)....the economic sky didn't fall! In fact, the CBO says the ACA is saving the government money.

Do I need to bring up the masterful, Obama, Clinton, Kerry foreign policy that is setting us up for WWIII in the middle east ?

No, you don't. I'm well aware of the missteps of the current administration. But again, certainly no worse than the last guy.

BTW, I can't help but notice that you failed to provide a lefty example of willful stupidity.

You know conservatism and creationism only have two things in common, they begin with a C and end with an M.

That's the kind of bumper-sticker retort one expects from the willfully stupid. Here's the reality.

Define "fair share" please.

I can tell you what its isn't. It isn't executives getting paid the current exorbitant salaries- nobody is worth that. And they rarely seem to answer for failure. And it isn't living on $40K-$60K annual income in the US right now either.

You two seem to be arguing your positions on the premise that socialism and capitalism lie at exclusive and opposite extremes. The two can coexist. We have social security and free market economy, but both are in need of change. Here's some numbers you requested: http://www.deptofnumbers.com/i... and http://www.pewresearch.org/fac... and http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...

I think they show it is getting harder out there for working stiffs. Would you agree executive salaries are out pacing worker gains?

Define "fair share" please.

I can tell you what its isn't. It isn't executives getting paid the current exorbitant salaries- nobody is worth that. And they rarely seem to answer for failure. And it isn't living on $40K-$60K annual income in the US right now either.

You two seem to be arguing your positions on the premise that socialism and capitalism lie at exclusive and opposite extremes. The two can coexist. We have social security and free market economy, but both are in need of change. Here's some numbers you requested: http://www.deptofnumbers.com/i... and http://www.pewresearch.org/fac... and http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...

I think they show it is getting harder out there for working stiffs. Would you agree executive salaries are out pacing worker gains?

Outbreeding, now there's a solid strategy for the future.

It seems to be working. At this rate, we'll be able to simply outvote you consistently. God help you if we're ever unified into a single voting bloc. But hey, Trump might actually manage that. Of course, it won't be in his favor, or that of the (R)s...

Guy, it's a good thing you don't speak for your whole country

I'm just stating facts, if they make you uncomfortable, that's your problem and not mine. Even with a reduced projection due to ongoing economic failure in the USA (which some of you are still in denial about, in spite of the figures from the labor department proving it... and secondary indicators like this) we're still the fastest growing demographic.

No, the reason you're uncomfortable is because of what this fact implies: that white people are fucking Mexicans left and right, and that makes you angry. How else do you get more mixed-race Mexican-Americans? We're not just fucking amongst ourselves, we're fucking your seeester

Because, like the ipad, it keeps the parent free to ignore parenting a little bit more. Inevitable, I guess, but sad.

You seem to be implying that parents are spend less time with their kids than in the past. There is plenty of evidence that you are wrong. Parents, and especially dads, spend more time than ever with their kids. Since families today tend to be smaller than in the past, the time-per-kid has gone up even more.

iPads don't replace parents. They replace TVs. Since they are more interactive, that is likely a good thing.

A recent Pew Research Survey shows that the common man has very little understanding of basic science. Such things come as a result.

Being chased out of a bad neighborhood because you're white is not the same thing as institutional racism, not even close.

Slavery and discrimination has had significant effects on black people all the way through the 1950's. That's why the average black household has less wealth than the average white household, even if their wages are increasing. Many white families in America have had generations to accumulate wealth, and were also able to take advantage of government-sponsored housing loans in the early 1900's that were specifically prohibited for people of color.

Black people learned how to be gangsters from white people in the 1920's.

Contact with actual black people will reduce racism, not cause it. If you're a racist, there's a good chance that it's probably because you don't actually know any people of color, other than the ones you see on TV.

The ones I see on TV are mostly doctors, lawyers, executives, politicians, wise religious leaders, etc. If only real blacks were mostly like them!

Being chased out of a bad neighborhood because you're white is not the same thing as institutional racism, not even close.

Slavery and discrimination has had significant effects on black people all the way through the 1950's. That's why the average black household has less wealth than the average white household, even if their wages are increasing. Many white families in America have had generations to accumulate wealth, and were also able to take advantage of government-sponsored housing loans in the early 1900's that were specifically prohibited for people of color.

Black people learned how to be gangsters from white people in the 1920's.

Contact with actual black people will reduce racism, not cause it. If you're a racist, there's a good chance that it's probably because you don't actually know any people of color, other than the ones you see on TV.

Typical obfuscation.

Gun deaths are more frequently fatal.

The total number per capita of homicides and attempted homicides are higher in the US than any other developed nation.
They aren't just replaced with knife attacks or other methods. The gun is immediate, powerful, requires little thought or skill to inflict harm, and ir much more likely to be fatal.

It's a simple fact: countries without strict and cohesive gun laws experience fewer homicides (not to mention fewer mass shootings).
The US has averaged 1 mass shooting every 3 weeks for the past 8 years.
Australia hasn't had one since 1996.
UK since 1994.
Sweden had 1 in the past 10 years.

The US homicide rate is 4.1 per 100,000.
The next highest peer nation is the UK at 1.2.
Australia is 0.6.
France is 0.4.

And it's not just crime either.
The rate of police killing citizens is also far lower in other nations.

Seriously, there is no excuse or other relevant factors. Even within the US we see a consistent trend: where guns are more prevalent, crime and death is higher.
New York city is one of the safest in the nation, having a large area with unified and consistent laws, and similar state laws that further unify the law.
This is the part where you bring up Chicago, but here's the thing: Chicago itself banned handguns, but not the outlying suburbs nor the rest of the state, who had wholly different and much laxer laws. One simply drove a few miles, out of city limits, bought a gun, and returned.

In fact, the idea of Chicago as the murder capital despite its gun laws is largely a myth. The towns with the highest murder rates are the ones with the most guns. Dallas, New Orleans, Detroit, Memphis, Birmingham, and a few dozen more are all higher on the list than Chicago.
http://www.pewresearch.org/fac...

I cited many examples of people talking about poll inaccuracy.

I don't give the smallest fuck over your many irrelevant citations. I'm simply telling you that your claim about how election polls "very rarely match up with the actual election" is complete horseshit.

Election polls in the US have a long track record of accuracy going back DECADES. The fact that you refuse to recognize this - even when you're pimp-slapped with actual data - just shows how utterly out of touch you are with reality.

As to opinion polls, actually the topic is about Pew Opinion poll.

No you pinhead, the topic at hand is your statement:

...look election polls prior to the election. They very rarely match up with the actual election. Why is that?

Why do you have to constantly be reminded of your dimwitted remark? I guess if I were you, I would want to forget about it too. After all, the only thing dumber than saying it would be defending it...oh wait.

Kill yourself. No really. Put down the keyboard. Get up. And stop wasting oxygen.

What a childish little twat you are.

As to ignorance regarding poll participation... You really did zero research in your short life didn't you?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

Yes, poll response rates are falling. Yes, declining rates can introduce selection bias. I guess it's a good thing I didn't claim otherwise.

But declining response rates don't automatically cause a poll to be inaccurate. How do I know that? Because the SECOND FUCKING PARAGRAPH of your huffpo article reads:

"Yet the study also finds evidence that on most of the wide variety of measures tested, the declining response rates alone are not causing surveys to yield inaccurate results."

Talk about doing ZERO research. Protip: read through an article BEFORE claiming it supports your position.

What a pitiful display. Your ability to embarrass yourself with a constant flow of ignorant, self-contradictory statements is simply breathtaking. And your multiple sorry ass attempts to move the discussion away from your original statement isn't going well for you. Apparently you are oblivious to that fact.

The world is better place now that you're gone. There is one less moron. :D

I'm not going anywhere, nimrod. I've got lots of free time to help you continue to humiliate yourself.

...look election polls prior to the election. They very rarely match up with the actual election. Why is that?

Why is that? Because you made it up, you fucking retard.

The truth is polls are rarely wrong. for national elections.

You constantly pepper your arguments with made up shit. I guess you think that you think your long bullshit posts won't be examined by anyone. Well, this is the internet, and you're not the only one with no life who can spend all day posting on /.