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But but... I thought the arab spring was going to bring a pluralistic western democracy with full rights for women and gays and universal health-care for all! What's this you say? The majority of the people want to fundamentalist Islam? That this was predictable from day one? The majority of the people want to impose their religion on the minority? Why -- shouldn't that be forbidden by the constitution? What's this you say, the Salafists and their enablers are writing the constitution? Surely there will be a referendum on this? Oh? Well that's good. Surely the secular majority will vote for a less religious constitution where Sharia is not enshrined in law. Surely they will!

^ Now here's a message clearly originating from a paragon of rational intellect... ::rolleyes::

Only Republicans believe corporations are people.

I'm pretty sure the vast majority of people, when given a chance to understand the issue, would agree that people do not cease being people when they form a corporation. This includes many people who have better things to do than vote (a group that is vastly larger than any particular party), Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians (who tend to be the least irrational political group), etc. Even intellectually honest Communists (all six of them) would agree that they don't stop being people if they join a voluntary commune (a corporation).

This is why having people actually understand this issue is something that the political manipulators want to avoid...

But they also believe there's a deity out there that gives a shit about their little lives and that the Earth is only 6000 years old.

There is no link between pro-capitalist philosophy (which is the subject in question here) and religion. To the contrary, many advocates of capitalism have been outspoken atheists and some of the most significant contributors to atheist philosophy. Ayn Rand alone should be the end of this argument. Out of the top modern pro-capitalist thinkers, the most religious ones you will find are a couple of followers of Reform Judaism, which is more of a cultural tradition. Even in popular culture, many debunkers of religious hoaxes (ex. Penn & Teller's show Bullshit!) are libertarians.

World-wide, you will find a significant correlation between economic freedom and atheism (excluding belief systems like Juche as atheist). Russia leapt from communist mysticism back to their Orthodox Church with astonishing ferocity, as if they both scratched the same itch. Billions of people in economically unfree nations of the Middle East, South Asia, Africa, Indonesia, and the backwaters of Latin America, are far more religious / superstitious than even the most fundamentalist religious groups in the USA (which are a small minority).

In the United States, you will find that the two "major parties" represent vast agglomerations of opinions stitched together by political pragmatism. Both use religion for their political means. (Democracy is a dirty game that is forced on us, but we might as well defend ourselves - which can involve building some rather bizarre alliances of convenience.) For a significant stretch of their history, D's were the party of the religious south, while R's were the party of the intellectual elite - then political winds have shifted. (Barry Goldwater was an atheist compared to Jimmy Carter!) Those winds may yet shift again... In 2008, Obama was the candidate of choice among many religious groups - Catholics, Muslims, Jews, Black Churches, Scientologists... that's pretty much every group except the tradition of "protestant work ethic", which has been instrumental to the establishment of the modern world. Many of those religious minorities are so religious that, by some measures, they make Dems the more delusional of the two major parties! (And that's without looking at their economic policies.) So all I'm saying is that the party of Stigmata, Salah, The Chosen People, Xenu, and of course Jeremiah Wright probably shouldn't "cast the first stone"...

According to the dictionary, people are: Human beings in general or considered collectively. Last I checked, a corporation is not a human being.

So you look at a corporation and see it as a contractual entity consisting of... amoeba? plants? wookies?

Get your eyes examined. Then (re)read everything I wrote in this discussion.

--libman

Yes he does, but he also describes an actual measurable trend(which doesn't apply to individuals, only the groups in general). There has never been a greater wealth gap between the 55+ demographic and the 18-35 demographic in the history of the united states. And it's REALLY substantial: take a look here. Now I'm not agreeing with the GP's Hitleresque means of addressing the problem, but it IS a problem.

Nonsensical numbers intended to bemuse readers who aren't capable of looking deeper probably for the reason of creating a controversy. At age 35 I had a car, a rental apartment, and approximately $1,000 in savings for a rainy day. At age 40 I decided to settle down and started working as a software engineer. It was the least painful of several choices. I have worked for a number of companies as a software engineer with two excursions into lower management - which went no where. And I finished as a software engineer. At age 68 I have approximately 1.3 mil and a paid off house. All of which may be adequate to retire on if my lifestyle isn't too extravagant. My investments were not managed well. And I have no retirement other than those investments. At age 35 I think the same monetary relationship cited by ikanreed would have existed. Between 40 and 65 I worked and saved. Suggest you quit bit*ching and start working. And pray the republicans don't steal you blind.

Yes he does, but he also describes an actual measurable trend(which doesn't apply to individuals, only the groups in general). There has never been a greater wealth gap between the 55+ demographic and the 18-35 demographic in the history of the united states. And it's REALLY substantial: take a look here. Now I'm not agreeing with the GP's Hitleresque means of addressing the problem, but it IS a problem.

Why does it always have to look like that?

From the article:

Our main target for GNOME3 is laptop use, which I think is by far the overwhelming majority of computing use today - in the non-mobile space. The second target is existing high-performance workstations.

So, basically, they are targeting laptops (which are losing ground to tablets) and expensive machines, ignoring the truly vast numbers of cheap desktop PCs that exist in nearly every home at this point. For the inevitable automotive analogy, it's like they're making car paint that only looks good on Priuses and Teslas.

If they are de-optimizing for over half the installed hardware base it's unsurprising that they aren't satisfying end users.

If you are going to dismiss something as "not true", you could spend five seconds looking for yourself: http://pewresearch.org/pubs/859/what-brain-science-tells-us-about-religious-belief

Back on topic, yes, Enron committed fraud and forced prices higher. But why were they able to do that? If they were pushing prices to artificial highs, and failing to deliver services, someone else should have come in and taken over their market share. Why didn't that happen? The cost of entry is too high in California! Enron was in, and had an oligopoly at best (I don't recall the details, whether there was more than one power production company involved or not), and had some nice government imposed barriers to entry protecting them, allowing them to do what they wanted. It is an example of idiotic deregulation. If you are going to deregulate, you have to remove the barriers to entry BEFORE you remove the rules forcing them to act a certain way. If you don't, you get rolling blackouts.

Yes, I'm sure that governments are very good at completing their boondoggles on time. Sort of like how they built the space shuttle so that it hung off the side of its fuel tank, in what is possibly the dumbest design ever. http://emotibot.net/pix/816.png

You can make all the assertions you want about government vs private sector, but until I see your methodology and data, it is nothing but conjecture.

That is very true. However what's not accounted for in that statistic is voter turnout:

http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/voting/cb09-110.html
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1209/racial-ethnic-voters-presidential-election

So not only did the vote change from approx 90% to 97% democrat, but the turnout among the population increased by 5% (2 million) as well. The African American vote as a proportion of the overall vote increase by 1.1 percentage points. As a result, in 2004 the D vote was 88% * 11% = 9.7%, while in 2008 it was 97% * 12.1% = 11.7%. So overall, the African Americans gave Obama by 2 percentage points vs Kerry, which is pretty comparable to the amount of discrimination found in this survey (especially if you adjust for the population sizes of white/black!)

How much it _actually_ influenced the election, or course, is anybody's guess: How did turnout change amongst demographics are results were reported, how did race map to the electoral college, etc.
FYI, North Carolina (15 electors) and Indiana (12) were determined by .33% and ~1.05% respectively, while Florida(27) and Ohio(20) were 2.82% and 4.59%.

Not an apples-to-apples comparison. Clinton won by a landslide if i recall correctly. His proportion of just about any demographic category would need to be skewed to the high side in his favor when compared to a much closer race like that of Obama v. McCain. Now, if the proportion of black voters going Democrat in a similarly close presidential election are also in the high 90's then your point would be valid.

Besides, I think the more telling measure of his black support is the record turn out of black voters (15.9 million in '08 vs. 13.8 million in '04 according to Pew, or 65.2% of eligible black voters in '08 v 60.3 in '04) combined with his winning almost every single black vote. According to ABC News most of the 5 million vote increase in 2008 over 2004 is attributable to minority voters (which of course includes blacks), with whom Obama, in particular, and the Democrats, in general, do very well. It becomes even more compelling of an argument when you look at Young Black Voters who's participation jumped from 8% in 2004 to 55% in 2008.

Not that I see anything wrong with it, BTW. Just pointing out a better metric to show his record breaking support from the black community. Voting for someone frequently comes down to ephemeral decisions about a persons character, how likely you would be to have a beer with them, or some other equally vague criteria. That being black made young black voters like him more is no worse than any of the other reasons, and arguably better than the refusal to vote for someone becuase of he is black.

That is because so many Catholics become fed up with that sect and leave: 10% of the US population is ex-catholic... http://pewresearch.org/databank/dailynumber/?NumberID=494 Perhaps birth control/population growth played a role... I find it sad that people on /. down-modded the original post. I thought most of us were a little more scientific, and a little less fanatical... But that is the thing with religion... you aren't allowed to question it...

Who needs so called facts when you have Jesus?

I guess you didn't get the memo - thanks to the failing US economy, Jesus and his buddies went back to Mexico.

After four decades that brought 12 million current immigrants -- more than half of whom came illegally -- the net migration flow from Mexico to the United States has stopped and may have reversed.

The standstill appears to be the result of many factors, including the weakened U.S. job and housing construction markets, heightened border enforcement, a rise in deportations, the growing dangers associated with illegal border crossings and the long-term decline in Mexico's birth rates.

Correlation is not causation. :)

Again, plenty of conservatives among academics.
Heck, you want to see a scary statistic - look up incidence of conservatism among elderly.
You can draw all kind of crazy conclusions from that. Like that conservative == wise.

Also, check your data.
It may very well be that the percentage of the elderly (those more likely to have worked and retired with only a high-school diploma or a trade) is skewing your statistics.

Cause, according to the link above, they are toe-to-toe with the liberals among those with graduate degrees.

Four-in-ten Americans with graduate degrees say they are politically moderate, while about three-in-ten say they are either liberal or conservative (29% each).
Among those with no more than a high school education, a third says they are moderate, 41% describe themselves as conservative and fewer than one-in-five call themselves liberal (18%).

Granted, this is just USA. Global statistics probably vary a bit.

I'm just saying that it is not prudent to write away the "other side" as uneducated or stupid.
Or too green, frivolous, weak, ginger, whatever...

They are all about reducing the size, power, and involvement in daily life of government.

Though according to the polls, they're totally okay with the government involving itself in your nightly life, up to and including who you are allowed to share legal marriage benefits with and whether or not you should be allowed to have an abortion.

I don't support them for the same reason why I would never support Ron Paul - whenever they're elected, they have a snowball's chance in hell of getting their economic theories put into to practice (primarily because they wouldn't work, I imagine), so they fall back to trying to enforce their social mores on everyone else since that seems to be the only thing they think they can do.

55% of scientists identify as "liberal" while only 6% identify themselves as "conservative." [source]

I suppose you think it's pure Stockholm Syndrome, since Democrats are so very anti-science.

"Obama gutted the space program."

Do you think the Republican drumbeat of OMG LOOKIT DEFFCIT!!! had nothing to do with that?

"Democrats killed the Superconducting Super Collider."

The Democrats controlled the Senate and House when the Collider was killed. But look at the vote that killed it: Democrats were about evenly split, while Republicans voted to kill it by a margin of 31 to 13.

"Nobody on the left has a bold scientific vision like Newt Gingrich's moon base proposal."

Gingrich's moon base is not a "scientific vision." It's a bizarre geopolitical fantasy about "beating the Chinese" and proving America's undisputed awesomeness.

And when it comes to bold scientific visions, I'd put a 100% renewable grid on par with an evil moon lair. I'd put "reversing global warming" on par. I'd put a "cradle to cradle economy" light years ahead of anything Gingrich has put on the table.

The single greatest challenge we face right now is figuring out how to sustain ten billion people on this planet in comfort, while still leaving room for all the other millions of species. When confronted with this challenge, Republicans give us "drill baby drill" and weak bromides about how capitalism will fix everything, if we just deregulate enough, cut taxes enough. To find bold scientific visions, you have to look to the liberals.

inter-racial relationships are almost always a white woman and a black man.

No.

Look about halfway down the page at a graph showing gender choices in interracial marriages. A smaller fraction of black women intermarry than black men, but the ratio is 22.0 % to 8.9 %. Not "almost always". Additionally, the fraction of mate selection (white, histpanic, asian, other) among those who do intermarry is nearly identical between the genders.

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1616/american-marriage-interracial-interethnic?src=prc-latest&proj=peoplepress

I should know better.. Don't feed trolls, especially cowards... But this whole race thing needs to be stomped where ever and whenever it appears.

>>America is no doubt not pleased with the Bush era spending.

Correct. Though to be fair, the stimulus is both Bush and Obama's fault. And a lot of congressmen from both parties.

>>But you and your TP moron friends are dead wrong as to the solution.

Naturally. Your little mind cannot comprehend those scary "numbers".

50% increase in spending, 20% decrease in revenues, in five years. It might hurt your brain cell to realize it, so I'll explain it to you slowly. We've spent too much money.

We need to reset our budget back to what it was about five years ago. Why five years ago? That was the last time our budget was $2.4T, which is also what our revenue estimates are for 2011.

>>Over 70% of Americans want the Bush tax cuts repealed

Que?

http://pewresearch.org/databank/dailynumber/?NumberID=1136

>>The TP is the epitome of cognitive dissonance, a pretend grass-roots organization

It would only be cognitive dissonance to believe it was a "pretend grass-roots organization" when I have seen with my own eyes it is not. I also don't identify myself with the Tea Party, I just noted that I have friends and family in it, and that it's quite extraordinary that you do not.

The latest (yesterday's) Pew Research Center poll shows that an overwhelming majority (68%) say that "Lawmakers who share their views on this issue should compromise, even it means striking a deal they disagree with."

That sounds like most people want the debt ceiling raised AND they want it done in a bi-partisan, share-the-pain manner.

The last time I checked, the US was still a democracy.

Check again, the US is a republic. We elect representatives to represent our interests in Washington DC. We do not have a direct vote.

Currently, 47% of the country [firedoglake.com] (including me) would prefer to not raise the debt ceiling, while 42% (presumably including you) are all in a panic that not raising it would be a catastrophe.

Please try to link to the actual Pew Research Poll and not a partisan blog. Please note that the numbers you are quoting are for a poll done during July 7-10 and has a margin of error of +/- 4% therefore it shows a virtual tie.

Another poll that was done during July 20-24 shows "Fully 68% say that lawmakers who share their views on this issue should compromise, even it means striking a deal they disagree with. Just 23% say lawmakers who share their views should stand by their principles, even if that leads to default."

What you are proposing that your view must be imposed on everybody in the country, ignoring the views of the other 47% of americans. That's not how democracy works. That's how a dictatorship works. If you like that system, try moving to China or something. In America we try to not allow a minority dictate the majority what to do (even though, unfortunately, it does happen).

So now that 68% of people questioned wants a compromise deal to raise the debt ceiling do you still stand by your convictions? Or will you be the one trying to subvert the will of the people?

Yet a democrat doesn't lose support of the sheep for preaching about global warming from the inside of a private jet, paid by taxpayer's dollars on the way to -hold it- a climate conference.

It's interesting that you probably inherently understand you have to spend money to make money but can't envision the possibility that the jet's emissions might be less than the emissions reduced or prevented by participation at the climate conference.

republicans have to keep into account that their voters are actually relatively poor people, working hard

I also find it interesting that you think that Republican voters are poor people because research indicates otherwise: "Pew surveys also find that Republicans have more money than Democrats -- on average, about $18,000 more a year in annual family income". What you seem to believe is actually the opposite of what is true.

Don't get me wrong, I'm with most of /. on here but you have to understand that it's not really all that controversial in the context of the vast majority of American voters -- i.e. in the context that ultimately counts. We tend to surround ourselves with people that are ideologically similar to ourselves (not a bad thing) but when we then mistake our particular choice for the populace at large we get a myopic view of the whole political spectrum (bad).

This isn't a partisan complaint. I used to live in rural Idaho and was shocked to be confronted by some (not all) residents there didn't realize how far to the left of them much of the rest of the country was. Similarly in Boston I am continually shocked not by the lefty politics but by the complete lack of perspective that some (not all) on the far left have regarding how far out of the mainstream they are.

I wouldn't for the world give up having a country with widely diverse viewpoints, which I think are essential to a healthy democracy -- I'm not out to make us all fickle and bland. Rather, I just want people to get a realistic handle on where there views on a particular topic fall relative to the other electorate. This is descriptive/empirical matter, not a normative/evaluative one -- it doesn't make you wrong to be to the left or right of 70% of the country on some topic but it is foolish not to be aware of where you stand.

See, http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1893/poll-patriot-act-renewal for details on where Americans actually stand. Of course, I would still like to see it defeated, but I'm skeptical that will happen given the poll numbers -- after all, it is a representative government (modulo some unconstitutional elements enjoined by the courts) and even if the votes aren't directly related to poll numbers, there is strong coupling.

I looked over the FBI report and was really shocked at the number of "environmental terrorism" cases they covered. But it ties in really well with our disagreement over what you called irrelevant. If I worked at a Gillette animal testing center, I would be more concerned with animal rights terrorists than I am. All of the Latino terrorist attacks I saw in the FBI report took place in Puerto Rico. Again, more concerning if I lived in Puerto Rico.

Anyway, your 1000000:1 estimate is incorrect. If there are 2 billion Muslims in the world, that's only 2000 Muslim terrorists. I don't know, maybe you don't consider the Taliban to be a terrorist organization, but it's got way more than 2000 soldiers by itself. Al Shabaab has 3000-7000 members and Al Qaeda has 500-1000 members, both according to Wikipedia. Those are big organized groups that are much in the news. There are a ton of smaller Muslim groups with weird names that you don't hear much about in mainstream American news. Of course, not all Islamic terrorist organizations target the US, and not all that do have the capability of carrying anything out. But let's not pretend that only 1/1000000 Muslims are terrorists.

Aside from the scale of the problem, the other big distinguishing factor against Muslim terrorists is the degree of state support they enjoy. Tell me what environmental terrorists have CIA contacts, funding from foreign intelligence agencies, government sponsored sanctuaries where they can train for attacks, and so on. Which country would you say is the equivalent of Pakistan in terms of, say, Latino terrorism? Which country is the Saudi Arabia of funding for extremist environmentalist radicals?

Okay then we have popular support. How many environmentalists support environmental terrorism involving suicide bombing? How many Christians support abortion clinic bombings that result in death? I don't know, it's actually hard to find a poll about those topics. Please share if you have some. It's pretty easy with Muslims though. http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1338/declining-muslim-support-for-bin-laden-suicide-bombing

I find the numbers extremely alarming.

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1572/teens-cell-phones-text-messages from April 2010.

The original report can be found here.
Have a quick read over the original Pew study if you can, there's some decent info in there that could support a really interesting chat. Oh, and 24% of teens are sending under 10 messages a day, girls more than boys, older more than younger, and generally the same across racial and economic groups.

The report from which the numbers are derived can be found here

It's worth having a read of, there's some rather fascinating demographic info in there that could really make for an interesting chat. Oh, and the report shows that 24% of teens send under 10 messages a day, girls more than boys, older more than younger, generally the same across racial and economic groupings.

As you can see here: http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1031/young-voters-in-the-2008-election

This "youth vote" is atypical. You can say they would have voted for McCain instead of simply not voting, but given the turnouts for the last 3 decades, it seems highly unlikely.

That doesn't mean they aren't primed for revolution. It just means that revolution isn't worth it for them... yet.

The problem is, that statement is just as true for the United States, and not a few other western nations.

All you're doing is restating the fundamental political question faced by all societies - will upsetting the current order bring a more favorable situation than continuing to tolerate it? And I have seen no evidence the Chinese people have decided that question in favor of revolution, any more than the US has.

Less so, actually. If you consider the results of this poll, it appears the Chinese are a lot more contented with their situation than citizens in most western nations are with theirs.

Why, I'll bet we Americans could get stumped even easier!! take that, britian!

From links found on the sciencesowhat site:

Are you more science-savvy than the average American? Take the quiz and find out.

While we're at it, answers to why the sky is blue and other questions.

Sorry buddy.

President Bush received a striking 78% of the votes of white evangelicals in 2004, up 10 percentage points from 2000 and by far his highest level of support from any demographic group in the population. As he began his second term in office, the president had an approval rating of 72% among evangelicals, compared with 50% in the public as a whole.

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/78/evangelicals-and-the-gop-an-update

I read a little bit of your site. Your total lack of knowledge of Latin American history is quite impressive. The next time you wonder why the entire region is so poor, you should read the documented and declassified accounts of the CIA training terrorists to kill civilians in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Chile, Brazil, and many other places. Or look back at our wholesale invasions of Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Cuba... I could go on.

The point about political power doesn't mean I like one or the other. But Obama is going to hire people who fit a well educated liberal's idea of qualified, and McCain would have picked someone who graduated from Jerry Fallwell's Liberty University. You can look back over the last 8 years and see how well that worked out.

Oddly enough, I just read that "Liberty" University closed down it's Campus Democrats chapter. At least they know where their funding comes from.

For newspapers to survive they need to quit catering to senior citizens. According to a study from the Pew Research Center the only group of people that had a majority of respondents say they would personally care if their local newspaper disappeared were people over the age of 65

Newspapers need to eliminate the things that other mass media do better. Why do newspapers have sports sections? I can see reporting high school sports for some local papers but why do they cover the professional sports? If someone really cares about yesterday's game wouldn't they either watch it, watch Sportscenter, or look up the results online? Why do they report yesterday's national news when you have 3 (4 if you count Headline News) 24 hour news channels and network news and local television news? Why are there horoscopes and comic strips that haven't been entertaining since the 70s? (of course in most cases horoscopes are little more than filler for the ads on the page)

Focus on things they do better: local news that isn't covered by local television.

Well when the press overwhelmingly describe themselves as liberal (or slanted in a particular direction) its a serious concern: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1919999
http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1001/campaign-media

The problem is, that those that are liberal think of themselves as centralists \ moderates to validate their opinion and that becomes pervasive in their reporting. Now on the left we have MSNBC with their inspiring "worse, worser, worsest" mantra and on the right we have the ever forgiving O'Reilly from Fox. There's also Rush on the right but on the left is Rather, Bill Maher, Moore and a whole slew of other commentators. And in pop culture, SNL \ Daily Show \ Colbert Report \ The View as obvious examples, that are so left leaning. Was there a Lil' Clinton show on Comedy Central that I missed? Perhaps they're going to be adding Lil'Obama...'cos if they weren't biased they'd have done it right?

So you can bleat on all day until you're blue in the face about the liberal bias "myth" but it doesn't make it any less true. Now obviously anyone is entitled to their opinion, that I'm ok with - just don't tell me its not biased.

Public Opinion in Iran and America on Key International Issues, page 10 (Attacks on civilians).

The polled question was: "Some people think that bombing and other types of attacks intentionally aimed at civilians are
sometimes justified while others think that this kind of violence is never justified. Do you personally feel that such attacks are often justified, sometimes justified, rarely justified, or never justified"

The response is that 11% of Iranians felt that such attacks were often/sometimes justified, whilst 24% of Americans thought the same. The same poll in Pakistan showed that 15% thought the same.

The PEW Report Muslim Americans: Middle Class and Mostly Mainstream, page 91, contains the same question asked of Muslims in Europe and the Middle East.

There is more discussion of these results and the media furore surrounding them on Salon.

Feel free to ignore it and read the original research papers.

If you had linked to them, I would have. Since you didn't, I call bullshit.

Instead of calling bullshit, you could have just searched for them yourself. The links weren't particularly hard to find.

Well duh.

Anyone who wants everyone to vote, and everyone's vote to count is a Democrat. It's a commonly known fact that there are more democrats than republicans.

It wouldn't make strategic sense for Republicans to support any attempt at massive, non-partisan voter turnout. Their only sound strategy is to try and rally Republican voters to go to the polls while trying their best to avoid suggesting that Democrat voters go.

Economy: Yes, Bush inherited the dot com bust.

Media: I guess you haven't noticed them fawning over Obama (he's practically media-built), calling Hillary's run for president historic (that's not happening much for Palin), painting the Iraq war in a bad light, etc. McCain went overseas several times with little press coverage, while the big news outlets sent their best people with Obama to Europe.

You don't need to look for lies. You need to look for bias

Care to demonstrate some of these lies

Remember, taking something out of context or only giving partial information in order to give the viewer a false impression is a lie. Get ready for a long read:

Fahrenheit:

The Saudi family leaving: Moore gives the impression they were just allowed to leave with no scrutiny before airspace opened. They were interviewed by the FBI and allowed to leave after airspace opened.

The Carlyle Group Bush Family conspiracy theory with Bin Laden. Fact: Bush Sr. came in after the Saudis dumped their Carlyle investment. Plus, many of Clinton's confidants are highly placed in the Carlyle Group, and George Soros is a major investor.

The scene where Bush is in front of a bunch of rich people calling them his "base." Moore makes it sound elitist and uncaring, but it was at a hospital charity fundraiser where the candidates are expected to make fun of themselves. Gore was there too.

The Saudis own 7% of America. Wrong, they own 7% of the foreign investment in America, which translates to a far, far smaller percentage of all of America.

The Unocal pipeline was supported by the Clinton administration, not Bush.

Porter Goss said he had an 800 number, Moore said he was lying. That is splitting hairs to the point of dishonesty since Goss does have a toll-free 877 number. Anybody knows "800" is synonymous with "toll-free" in America, but Moore leaves the viewer with the impression that Goss doesn't have a toll-free number.

Bush closing veterans hospitals. Oops, forgot sort-of-on-purpose to mention it was part of a larger plan to better serve veterans that included the building of many more veterans hospitals.

He cut up the interview with Rep. Kennedy to make it look like he wouldn't want to help recruit the children of congressmen, but he did in fact say it was a good idea and offered to help.

Flynt is not Moore's home town, it is the white and wealthy Davison.

Now to Bowling for Columbine:

The Heston/NRA footage was full of deception. Moore makes it look like they rushed in, when by law they were required to hold that meeting that had been planned far in advance, and they did cancel days of events, save for that required meeting.

The Heston Denver speech is actually two speeches, one from Denver that was many carefully arranged smaller clips from the actual speech separated by cut scenes in the film, and the "cold dead hands" one was from North Carolina a year later.

Heston having a pro-gun rally in Flynt after a shooting. It was eight months later and was a get out the vote rally. Bush and Gore were there for such rallies, as was Moore himself trying to get votes for Nader. To make it look like Heston went there right after the death he shows an NRA web page with "48 hours after Kayla Rolland is pronounced dead" hilighted. It's presented so fast you can't read the rest, but the rest says something about Bill Clinton being on TV talking about it, not Heston.

NRA/KKK, Moore wants you to think they're parallel groups with the same start year. That's wrong, the Klan precedes the NRA, but the NRA's start year is the year anti-Klan legislation was passed. Grant signed that law and moved to be the head of the NRA after he left the presidency. In fact, the NRA has been staunchly anti-KKK, to the point of blacks joining in order to get access to weapons with which to defend themselves against the KKK.

Getting a gun at the Bank. Moore makes i

i'm not willing to throw our foreign policy for the future under a bus just to get civil unions on a fast track. somethings are more important than others.

You consider foreign policy Job 1? If so, I'd expect that you'd take what the rest of the world thinks into account.

(If by "fringe" you mean calling the Iraq war a mistake back before that was popular, I'll agree with you that Obama is a fringe candidate on the topic. Otherwise, I'm not quite sure how you reach that conclusion). Also, I think that getting Supreme Court justices on the bench who will uphold Roe v. Wade is more important than just civil unions, per se -- they are, after all, appointed for life; Bush has done enough damage in that department already.

Who Harry Reid is or how many troops we've lost in Iraq.

For that matter, 30% of Americans don't know who controls congress. 44% don't know what state Senator McCain is a Senator from.

It's depressing, and it's time to stop thinking polls should control policy. If you want to control policy, you should be able to:

(1) Elucidate the problem to someone
(2) Propose a solution which stands reasonable scrutiny, and can be defended without violating obvious tenets of logic
(3) Propose inviolable metrics which would determine the success or failure, the timeframe, and the response to success or failure

I think all these polls should ask 10 questions on the issue so we can see how educated people are before they cast their votes. Notice how we have polls showing us most Americans are grossly ignorant about basic government facts. How many could explain what a Filibuster or a cloture vote is? How many have read the Federalist Papers, or can even name all three branches of government? Let's poll on an issue like this, and then let's see which side has the larger proportion of ignorance on it.

Before we go crazy, it's worth reading the Pew Research Centre study into Chinese views of the internet.

80% of the population feels the internet *should* be controlled, and 85% of these believe gov.cn is the one to do it. If you follow the trends, it seems that the government's propaganda about the internet seems to be taking, in that less than a third of users said the net was a reliable source of information.

The Chinese also don't censor in the way the UAE or Singapore do either, in that you're going to get a Connection Reset error rather than a Stop! Bad Things! warning if you access something relating to the issue du jour, and they allow VPNs and proxies because 1) they know it's only a small percentage who use them and outside of this group there's little interest in bypassing the government 'safeties' and 2) most external business interests would be very very upset if their VPNs stopped working.

You may not want to know it, but according to Pew Research, "Few in China Complain About Internet Controls":

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/776/china-internet

As popular wisdom says, "can't do the time - don't do the crime." Besides, he got the absolute minimum punishment; one can get more for just being drunk in public. Besides, only Kasparov remains under arrest, other organizers have been freed and can campaign. The organizer who signs the papers carries personal responsibility for the event, that's why Kasparov is where he is - he signed on the dotted line.

Also, how can you generalise in such ways, saying that Russians despise Kasparov specifically?

Inside sources (such as ability to read the whole .ru domain.)

But on the subject of your question, there was time when a certain group of people (dissidents, promoters of human rights, some writers, etc.) promoted democracy a tad too much. When Yeltsin gave them power, and the right to execute on their dream, they failed miserably, and it ended in 1998 IIRC with a default on foreign debts and with a war in Chechnya. Many Russians learned their lesson there and then. Note that not all dissidents belong to this group, some behaved very honorably. And not only dissidents joined the fray - some new names did that too, like one Eduard Limonov, neo-fascist, or Vladimir Zhirinovsky, anti-Semite and a chauvinist. They have their own parties now, all hail democracy. In any case, many early dissidents thoroughly discredited themselves, and the country stabilized only when serious people came to power (after Yeltsin).

Do you work for Putin? I'm seriously asking.

No, but that's immaterial. With 75% approval three out of four Russians will tell you why Putin is a reasonable leader (not a $deity, mind you - just reasonable, considering the choices.) Method of Monte-Carlo in reverse, if you wish. As I said, people like stability, and 6% annual growth of GDP during Putin's years is a good thing - everyone can count their own money. When a Russian buys a new car he knows who made it possible (hint: it's not Yeltsin, and not Yavlinsky.)

I think this is the survey (pdf) the parent was talking about. The second table on Page 5 is relevant here.

Basically, what it says is that 26% of Muslims aged 18 to 29 in the United States said that suicide bombing of civilian targets could be rarely (11%) or often/sometimes (15%) justified.

Frankly, I don't see whats wrong with that. I would like to see a similar study on other groups. I think it is reasonable to assume that a similar percentage of all youth in the 18 to 29 age group would have a similar response.

...remember grandma's aphorism about money not buying happiness? Well, brace yourself, but dear ole grandma may have been misinformed. Our survey shows that nearly half (49%) of those with an annual family income of more than $100,000 say they're very happy. By contrast, just 24% of those with an annual family income of less than $30,000 say they're very happy.

There are numerous studies, that show married people are generally happier and live longer.

I screwed up the URL's sorry.....here they are corrected

http://www.family.org/cforum/briefs/a0041644.cfm
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Depression/story?id=2 298049
http://www.apa.org/releases/married_happy.html
http://pewresearch.org/social/pack.php?PackID=1

There are numerous studies, that show married people are generally happier and live longer.
http://www.family.org/cforum/briefs/a0041644.cfm/
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Depression/story?id=2 298049/
http://www.apa.org/releases/married_happy.html/
http://pewresearch.org/social/pack.php?PackID=1/

So to disprove my position that French prisons are some of the worst in the civilized world, you point to a BBC article about abuses at a US prison? What's your next trick; disprove that guns are deadly weapons by giving me the statictics for knife related deaths?

As for prozac, you may want to look into getting yourself a prescription, you seem to need it much more than anyone else that in this thread so far.

I believe this old article may also help you to face reality. And for that matter, even though you don't appear to be an American, the results from these two studies may also help you deal with your anger issues. You know, the first step towards getting better is admitting you have a problem.

And just FYI, I'm not American nor do I believe that American prisons are necessarily the greatest places on Earth to serve one's incarceration, but I'm sure neither of those points will really mean much to you (see links above).

Introducing grammer/spelling to an argument is generally a sign of a very weak case, even when it is done by the original author as a strawman to try and draw the attention away from his complete lack of debating skills.

As to your P.S. I wouldn't have to be Derren Brown to have figured that out.