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Always add the word "debunked" to your google search before you embarrass yourself.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/STS-75_incident

I suspect the average astronomer and the average particle physicist are both more competent at climate science than the average climate scientist

What this claim smells of

This Project Veritas? The one that likes to ask vague and/or leading questions, then quote-mine the responses?

Just wanted to make sure we're talking about the same organisation.

Comcast is not going to throttle small web sites unless they enter into private deals.

Are you the CEO for Comcast? No? Then don't presume to state what they will and will not do. *Especially* when they already have a track record for pulling dirty tricks.

Your argument is so breathtakingly absurd it's incredible. So because Twitter censors in ways you don't like, you feel it is completely reasonable to hand the few major ISPs the ability to do the exact same thing, but to the entire internet? Do you know that ISPs have *already* done the very same censoring that you are so upset about, in the past before NN provisions were in place?

Do you even understand what Net Neutrality is?

Net Neutrality is looking more and more like a case of projection (in the psychological sense) by highly censorious people who are attempting a bait and switch that just so happens to line their pockets more.

No, clearly you don't. And based on that statement, you're so far into left field that you're not even wrong.

RT 9/11 conspiracy theories playlist: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/...

RT "Climategate" conspiracy theories playlist: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/...

They are associated with Infowars too, regularly interviewing Alex Jones and reposting Infowars content.

RT 9/11 conspiracy theories playlist: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/...

RT "Climategate" conspiracy theories playlist: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/...

They are associated with Infowars too, regularly interviewing Alex Jones and reposting Infowars content.

If you want news, you'll have to get at least two opposing sides of propaganda and realize that the truth lies somewhere in between.

"Some people say the Earth is a globe, others say it is flat. Therefore it is an upturned bowl. I am so clever!"

You're talking complete and utter garbage, in other words a textbook example of the balance fallacy. Not all news sources are equal, not all opposing sides present equally true or valid opinions, motive matters.

A common schoolyard negotiating tactic is to start with a far more extreme position than the one you would like, and allow negotiation to compromise to the one you originally intended. You are easily manipulated.

Is there any objective and consistent working definition and/or test of "bug" versus "bad design"? I suspect there is a lot of gray area such that Laynes Law will reign over such discussions.

https://rationalwiki.org/w/ima...

Yeah, I know, DFTT

> People use closed source software knowing full well that the product may be discontinued, or it may go unmaintained at some point. The risks are well known and understood.

The software being open or closed is irrelevant to the discussion.

> All we need to do is look at GitHub, SourceForge, or Apache to see that most open source projects do in fact end up dead. Of course, open source advocates don't admit to this.

[[Citation]]

The _difference_ is when Vendor A goes out of business you are _completely_ fucked for future updates. Good lucking fixing bugs in a closed source program.

When an OSS project stops being maintained the source is _still_ there. You have the _option_ of hiring a competent programmer to fix bugs in it -- with closed source there is no option.

The _real_ problem is that you picked an OSS project that wasn't popular enough. What The Fuck were you doing when you _evaluated_ the software in the first place??? The _first_ thing you do when picking ANY software from a business POV regardless if it is closed, or open, is to evaluate:

a) the _community,_
b) _support_, and
c) a BACKUP plan. That is, what was your _migration strategy_ for WHEN "this software is no longer available?" What's that? You didn't _think_ of THAT scenario? Blaming OSS for your own short-sighted stupidity is a moronic attempt at trying to pass the buck for your incompetence.

> myth is probably that open source software is somehow "better".
> Open source products are just as buggy as closed source software products are.

As opposed to the FACTs that closed source is buggy-as-shit ???

In fact, the most recent report (2013) found open source software written in C and C++ to have a lower defect density than proprietary code. The average defect density across projects of all sizes was 0.59 for open source, and 0.72 for proprietary software.

It is hard the get an accurate bug count with closed source because closed source is too embarrassed to tell the truth but here are some stats:

* Windows 2000 had 63,000 bugs,
* Windows 7 had 2,000 bugs,
* Windows 10 1,300 bugs

No one pretends OSS is some silver bullet. But it has numerous advantages that closed source will NEVER have (by definition.) Every disadvantage that OSS has is _also_ the exact same closed source.

You can't put a price on freedom.

Mod parent -1 troll.

What about "what about"? Hmmm?? What about?

That's because state's rights is dog whistle politics for racism.

If you take the phrase at face value it does appear to be hypocrisy. But that's not what it is actually supposed to mean, so it only appears to be a contradiction.

While you are not explicitly suggesting precious metals, it's worth a look at how they behave as currency.

Aside from the obvious inconveniences, they are also need to be standardized. This makes them subject, in practice, to chaotic manipulation. This transcription of a very libertarian historian's lecture recounts the tale of manipulation and inflation in ancient Roman currencies.

The lecture was intended as a cautionary tale about economic government management, but one important aspect of it is that, despite a currency based on precious metal coinage and an exchange economy based on that coinage and bulk precious metals, Rome still had essentially all the same problems people worry about with fiat currencies.

(For those unfamiliar with it, Mises is a libertarian think tank, and largely horseshit, but I rather like that lecture. Example of silliness: Road signs and lights that regulate driver behavior at intersections are an abominable menace to society")

You have the choice not to do business with those companies.

Technically correct, but it ends up being a Hobson's choice. Some businesses are monopolies, such as the power company, the water company, the natural gas company, and in many cases the wired Internet company. Good luck doing without those, especially if you are a landlord who is required by law to offer these utilities to tenants.

This is a non-story

The remainder of your comment relies on relative privation.

with their advanced spam filtering and PageRank system that tends to push less popular sites down the search results.

These are bad examples because they are both done for practical reasons (namely, helping users sort signal from noise.) You can find much better examples here:

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/G...

I guess we all knew it would eventually come to this: Slashdot hawking supplements.

Meet the new Slashdot editor - Gorilla Mindset Juicebro & His Magic Jism.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/M...

"Anyone who disagrees with me must have been indoctrinated."

This part is a straw man argument.

Uh... no. That part is definitely called "poisoning the well", a type of logical fallacy where you discount the credibility of people who may be able to present a logical argument against you by pre-emptively priming the listener(s) with adverse information about such opponents before they can actually express their argument. A strawman where the arguer attempts to suggest that some because some particular preposition (that is usually a distorted form of the dissenter's argument, but may also be completely fabricated) is false, and in particular their opponent did *NOT* actually say, that this somehow will extend to discrediting their opponent's actual view. The problem with it lies in the flawed assumption that the view that they are talking about was ever one that was actually held by the dissenter.

Suggesting that "anyone who disagrees with them must have been indoctrinated" does not do that... while it does present irrelevant information that the opponent did not say, it does not try to show how this information is actually false. Instead it simply directly attempts to the discredit a dissenter by pre-emptively calling into question the integrity of any argument they might try to make, specifically by announcing (unproven) information which could cause the view to be perceived as something less than rational and unbiased to other listeners.

Poisoning the well is actually just considered a special type of ad-hominem attack.

Again where did your $100M estimate come from?

An educated guess. Point remains, there is a gaping omission in TFA... So gaping, so obviously contrary to the journalistic rules and traditions, that it can only be deliberate. A lie by omission.

By your logic when reporting on the Holocaust, journalism must present the Nazis in a favorable light.

You didn't finish reading the page I linked to... But you did trip over Godwin's Law.

Remember to logout.

I guess you're into denial about American Christian Fundamentalists who are pushing the same shit on women as the Muslim Taliban does.

That's ridiculous. Companies don't get bailed out by governments in capitalism!

That sounds like a No True Scotsman fallacy.

In true capitalism, we celebrate when companies fail because they get replaced by a greater number of stronger companies.

That's not actually true. A company will be replaced if the demand still exists, but there is no requirement that the company be replaced by more companies or stronger companies. And "a greater number of stronger companies" is a highly unlikely scenario. In fact, in a competitive market, the company that failed is most likely to be replaced by its already existing competitors. So it will most likely not be replaced by any new companies. Although, it's competitors will each become stronger because of the reduced competition. Note, this is generally bad for the customers of those corporations because competition has been reduced and each player in the field now has an increased ability to raise prices. Finally with fewer competitors, collusion is now both easier and more profitable. Of course, the destruction of the remaining competitors is also more enticing so that full power over the marketplace can be established, and then the market's customers will really pay.

My point is that you don't seem to understand Capitalism very well. Maybe you should be a cheerleader for something you do understand?

Really, you want a Federal act about science education? Are you sure partner? Maybe I should rephrase it to avoid arguing against a unicorn, you want James Inhofe, Randy Weber (Chairman House subcommittee on energy) and the rest of them to be in charge of science curriculum?

I am straining my brain to think of any possible way in which this is a good idea.

True, but a greater wrong's existence does inform the optimal allocation of a given set of resources toward correcting wrongs. See the "scarce resources" exception to the "not as bad as" fallacy.

I wish ESR would stop writing entirely. I don't like to see him being given a platform here. Not only does he have a history of being a racist fuckwit, but he also has a nasty habit of appropriating bits of Unix culture. I don't know if this article quite counts, but the video game he released recently certainly does. "Here's the source code for this old game! I just rewrote it in C98." And the damning one is the Jargon File, which he took and 'improved' it into something unrecognizable. Generally, he's an attention-seeking twat who has done as much damage as good for Open Source, and I don't think that Slashdot should be promoting his writing any longer. His days of relevancy are long since past.

I suspect international courts in 20 years will be really receptive to the idea when willful ignorance played such a big part in the US's choices around climate change denial.

The notion of listening to "international courts" is a slippery slope. Is some 3rd world country going to sue for one hundred trillion dollars and get it - maybe. Politics can drive such absurdities. However I think much of the US will say come and try and take it.

Can't really blame a guy for following through with his campaign promises.

You can blame all the people that voted for him though. When climate change costs your nation money, you ought to sue the US and others for damages. I suspect international courts in 20 years will be really receptive to the idea when willful ignorance played such a big part in the US's choices around climate change denial.

That bit about believing it rings especially true here...

So I agree that he was wrong, but so was capitalism. And in the end we did get socialism with weekends off work, pensions, holidays, health care, firefighting, etc.

That isn't socialism. Socialism is where the government owns the means of production; that is to say that the people who create goods that you consume work directly for the government, and the government also sets prices.

There are very few examples of socialism in the US. One example would be municipal water supplies.

Capitalism is where the means of production is privately owned, in addition free market economics. Free market economics means that the prices are set by the market forces of supply and demand without influence from i.e. government.

Also, contrary to popular belief, things like food stamps aren't socialism, rather they're welfare. That is, the government isn't producing your food, rather it effectively gave you money to buy food. The food was actually produced in the private sector.

Ditto for medicare, i.e. the government isn't providing healthcare services, rather it is paying on your behalf for health care. This is in contrast to say England where the health care workers work directly for the government in most cases.

So in that way he was right as well, and so was marxism.

No.... /facepalm

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/B...

We don't do *anything* that Marx had in mind. At least, not in the US at any rate...Some countries yes, but they are all third world hellholes, i.e. Venezuela and North Korea, and even then, those countries do very little of what Marx wanted, primarily because Marxism was just so flawed in concept that it fails within a very short period of time from when it is implemented. (Icarians are a wonderful case study on why Marxism fails, if you ever want to read up on them.)

Furthermore, Marx wouldn't even like the idea of socialism, because it implied the ownership of things (something he said was bad) and in socialism indeed you can own stuff. Marx also wouldn't like the idea of a quid-pro-quo, i.e. he would view it as immoral that a doctor would expect payment for services, mainly because he viewed money itself as being immoral.

Because departments run by LGBTQ and similarly "disadvantaged" people produce such high levels of scholarship:

http://www.skeptic.com/reading...

That white men should just quit- just get out of the way of people of color, whom they are repressing :

http://www.dailywire.com/news/...

Look in a money and resource limited environment, we have to make hard decisions about what and who is important and what and who is not:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Because feminists have sooo much to offer science, so much keen insight:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

That it would be a pity to let the entire social justice left be excluded merely on the basis of their inability, their differently abledness:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Like the Revivvalism of the turn of the century and Scientology today, social justice is a literal cult. Unfortunately it's a cult that threatens the rational and scientific basis of Western civilization and if left unchecked, which it largely has been, will reduce the West to Feminist Lysenkoism and a and ethnic and gender-based totalitarianism.

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/...

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/L...

The time for passivity and tolerance in the face of civilization-deconstructing psychosis is past. It's civilization or it's the race hatred, gender-cidal cult of social justice. It won't be both. I know I have re-engineered my career to effect the total, permanent and irreversible extermination of this disease and I enjoin anyone of good will- man woman white black brown gay or straight- to join me.

>Well, either way you want to term it....he's STILL better than Hillary.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/B...

What does this have to do with your game? Gor is a series of novels written in the 1960s. The author advocates slavery and oppression, women are literally chained in the kitchen and rented out for the profit of their owners.

Did you seriously think it's only something that exists inside your game? *BOGGLE* Damn that's provincial and small-minded. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/G...

Read. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/G...

Goreans are, all too often, nutters who have taken the works of a science fiction author way too seriously. The term "Gorean" comes from the Chronicles of Gor series of novels by John Norman, set mostly (where else?) on the planet Gor. The society in the novels is a patriarchy in which women are enslaved and bought and sold as property (there are some male slaves as well, though they're rare). In fact, on the planet Gor, gravity itself seems to be sexist. Tarl Cabot, the Earth-born hero of the series, is described as having much greater strength on Gor, as his muscles developed to function under Earth's higher gravity. However, Earth women have no such experience and find themselves physically helpless before Gorean men.

The Goreans justify the subjugation of women using a mixture of recycled eugenics (or dysgenics, to be more technically accurate) and Social Darwinism. In short, back when men were men and women were women, skull-cracking cavemen roamed the Earth who were better adapted for survival because of their superior combat skills and penchant for kidnapping women. This kept the riff-raff from reproducing until the advent of modernity, industrialization, and feminism.

These values are incompatible with the values of the Drupal project. No platform.

Goreans are, all too often, nutters who have taken the works of a science fiction author way too seriously. The term "Gorean" comes from the Chronicles of Gor series of novels by John Norman, set mostly (where else?) on the planet Gor. The society in the novels is a patriarchy in which women are enslaved and bought and sold as property (there are some male slaves as well, though they're rare). In fact, on the planet Gor, gravity itself seems to be sexist. Tarl Cabot, the Earth-born hero of the series, is described as having much greater strength on Gor, as his muscles developed to function under Earth's higher gravity. However, Earth women have no such experience and find themselves physically helpless before Gorean men.

Many Goreans simply use Norman's setting for the purposes of BDSM role-playing. However, vocal proponents of Gorean "philosophy" actually think the series is a good blueprint for society, which has led to the creation of Gorean sex cults. The Goreans justify the subjugation of women using a mixture of recycled eugenics (or dysgenics, to be more technically accurate) and Social Darwinism. In short, back when men were men and women were women, skull-cracking cavemen roamed the Earth who were better adapted for survival because of their superior combat skills and penchant for kidnapping women. This kept the riff-raff from reproducing until the advent of modernity, industrialization, and feminism.

A splinter group from the Goreans called the Kaotians, founded by Lee Thompson, was raided in May 2006. In 2008, Thompson was sentenced to three years in prison for forcing his girlfriend to have sex with a number of other men.

From http://www.goreanliving.com/ph...

It is recognized that men, on the whole, tend to be the naturally more dominant, logical, larger and physically stronger of the human species and that women generally tend to be more submissive, nurturing, emotional, smaller and physically weaker. With that in mind, gender roles within the Gorean construct are that of men as the leaders and women as the followers, for the most part.

The majority of those who seem to fall outside the natural norms actually do not, but rather, have subscribed too long to societal teachings that encourage the stifling of natural behaviors and thinking in favor of simulated equality and have developed habits and views that suppress and circumvent our true natures.

Just have a look at the Wikipedia page for Goreanism to see the photo of the woman there. No wonder this philosophy is so repellent. Social Darwinism and eugenics are both totally discredited and deserve no platform, anywhere.

There have been worse horrors than Yemen. What's your point?

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/N...

The Salem Hypothesis neatly describes the sort of delusional belief that many engineering types have in their own abilities, and confusing engineering with science. Not that some engineers can't be scientists, but it's not something that just automatically comes with the qualification. The Salem Hypothesis original applied only to Creationism, but seeing as how much of the anti-science rhetoric first developed by Creationists is basically being recycled for the AGW pseudo-skeptic movement, I think it's fair to extend the hypothesis to most engineering types who somehow assume that they have some special insight into fairly complex and specific areas of science.

That's a different claim, though, than the one about conditional probability.

Which is as I said, that's the thinking straight out of Animal Farm.

Just to clarify, you're right, I just say that anti-racism is nothing that came out of Christianity. "Race" is a matter of flesh, and therefore of the material domain, which is irrelevant to Christ's spiritual teachings.

I'm not saying Christianity is racist. I'm saying it was also not anti-racist. "Race" was simply not an issue addressed by Christianity (except to say that God is the God of all races), and I don't think you'll find the history of Western Civilization before the middle of the 20th century to be full of the impassioned screeds of moral philosophers (Christian or otherwise) against the evils of racism. To my knowledge no one ever considered that racism (that is, the noticing of differences in ethnic groups of people) to be a bad thing until Leon Trotsky pointed it out, and he was a communist atheist Jew. And today, "racism" is the Original Sin of the predominately atheist materialist left, not Christianity.

So while I agree with you that anti-racism or racial egalitarianism is something out of Animal Farm, I hardly think you can attribute that to Christianity when we had 1900 years of racist or not-anti-racist Christians before a communist atheist Jew said "racism is a bad thing," and the rise of anti-racism and leftist thought in the west coincides with the decline of Christianity.

Neither racism nor anti-racism are Christian concepts, because those are matters of flesh, not spirit.

The summary mentions Russia Today and Fox News, but not CNN?

Russian Toady and Faux News? CNN doesn't even come close to the same level of alternate.

It is well known that Russia Today is a mouthpiece for the Homicidal Russian regime. Fox news doesn't even come close to that level of depravity, though as everybody knows, hemlines and cleavage matter more in that forum than balanced reporting. CNN is a veritable bastion of virtue by comparison, though to be honest I do not waste my time with it. What really disgusts me are the trumpist shitmodders who camp on Slashdot now. Surely they are outnumbered by real people.

Educate yourself about Russia Today. Downmod this and prove that it is true.

That's all very well and good, and I credit Mr. Raymond for his accomplishments, but I'm afraid that he has a sufficiently bad reputation for making crazy statements that I am unwilling to take his opinion on any matter, That may not be fair to him as a technical expert, but he has earned distrust for his far-too-numerous non-technical opinions and general batshit craziness. It's not my job necessarily to issue proclamations for the groupthink here, but I am pretty sure that I'm not alone in feeling like this, and I suggest that you might want to put in some sort of explicit disclaimer or endorsement, to the effect that, "this is one of the times when ESR is actually worth listening to." It's a shame to have to say something like this. There are things he has written, however, that are crazy enough that I wish I could unread them. I am of course merely offering this suggestion on the basis that you might not be aware of his reputation.

I think less of people like you because you watched an adult mock a disabled person in front of a crowd and still supported him.

I don't believe you.

I think less of you because you saw a man spouting clear racism and backed him.

1. [citation needed]

2. Islam isn't a race.

3. Illegal immigrants do not have a right to be in this country... by definition.

1. http://lmgtfy.com/?q=racist+quotes+trump

2. Islam, like Judaism, is considered an ethno-religious group, granted not to the degree that Judaism is. Even if you don't want to concede that point and so it's not racism, it doesn't negate Trumps discriminatory remarks and proposed plans, which would fall under the larger umbrella of bigotry.

3. A person's immigration status isn't an invitation for racist remarks.

I think less of you because you listened to him advocate for war crimes, and still thought he should run this country.

If you mean that he would waterboard ISIS then I'm having a hard time feeling sorry for ISIS.

One way to judge a society is by how it treats its prisoners.

I think less of people like you because you watched him equate a woman’s worth to her appearance and got on board.

If your wife or girlfriend isn't fat and ugly then you may be a hypocrite.

If you think Hillary is better on this point-- considering that she enabled her husband's infamous behavior-- then you're a hypocrite.

You just equated a woman's worth to her appearance. Wow. Just wow.

"But Hillary!!@!11?!" A person's sexism isn't measured relative to someone else. Also Hillary isn't to blame for Bill's transgressions. Next you're going to tell me a rape victim had it coming because he/she wore a provocative outfit, was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and was asking for it. If you're going to say that Hillary "enabled her husband's infamous behavior" then you should look into becoming a gun control lobbyist because those pesky gun manufacturers definitely enabled those bad gunmen to do bad things.

It is your personal willingness to support racism, sexism, and cruelty.

1. [citation needed]

2. argumentum ad nauseam

1. Refer to your own reply. So meta.

2. Yeah, this is getting to be a rather nauseating argument.

You sided with a bully when it mattered and that is something I will never forget.

1. He's not.

2. Just because someone directly challenges you or your opinions or ideas doesn't make them a bully. The internet isn't a safe space.

1. Fine. Again a technicality in terms of labeling. He's not a "textbook bully". Even so, that same article points to the fact that Trump is aggressive. The nice way to put it would be uncivil. But as nice as that label is, it doesn't erase the negative connotation that goes with it. On top of aggressive, he is rude, insulting, and disrespectful. He may not be a bully, but he certainly employs the tactics of one. Is that a duck I see?

2. The internet isn't a safe space. Better keep Trump away. I hear he doesn't like him or his ideas and opinions being directly challenged.

So, no people like you and I won’t be “coming together” to move forward or whatever. Trump disgusts me, but it is the fac

I think less of people like you because you watched an adult mock a disabled person in front of a crowd and still supported him.

I don't believe you.

I think less of you because you saw a man spouting clear racism and backed him.

1. [citation needed]
2. Islam isn't a race.
3. Illegal immigrants do not have a right to be in this country... by definition.

I think less of you because you listened to him advocate for war crimes, and still thought he should run this country.

If you mean that he would waterboard ISIS then I'm having a hard time feeling sorry for ISIS.

I think less of people like you because you watched him equate a woman’s worth to her appearance and got on board.

If your wife or girlfriend isn't fat and ugly then you may be a hypocrite.
If you think Hillary is better on this point-- considering that she enabled her husband's infamous behavior-- then you're a hypocrite.

It is your personal willingness to support racism, sexism, and cruelty.

1. [citation needed]
2. argumentum ad nauseam

You sided with a bully when it mattered and that is something I will never forget.

1. He's not.
2. Just because someone directly challenges you or your opinions or ideas doesn't make them a bully. The internet isn't a safe space.

So, no people like you and I won’t be “coming together” to move forward or whatever. Trump disgusts me, but it is the fact that he doesn’t disgust people like you that will stick with me long after this election.

Virtue signal received; we're reading you loud and clear.

• Projection. Check.
• Gish Gallop. Check.
• Overt threats. Check.

While I am not a holocaust denier by any means, it is [...]
Once again, I am not a holocaust denier but [...]

Please see http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/I......

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/E...

A Day in the Life of Joe Antigovernment Conservative:

Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards. With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised.

All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer's medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance -- now Joe gets it, too.

He prepares his morning breakfast: bacon and eggs. Joe's bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.

In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.

Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for the laws to stop industries from polluting our air.

He walks on the government-provided sidewalk to the subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe's employer pays these standards because Joe's employer doesn't want his employees to call the union.

If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he'll get a worker compensation or unemployment checks because some stupid liberal didn't think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

It is noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe's deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe's money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.

Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime. Joe also forgets that in addition to his federally subsidized student loans, he attended a state funded university.

Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards to go along with the taxpayer funded roads.

He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers' Home Administration because bankers didn't want to make rural loans.

The house didn't have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn't belong and demanded rural electrification.

He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn't have to.

Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn't mention that the beloved conservatives have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day. Joe agrees: "We don't need those big-government liberal

I'm not the AC above who first claimed they were employees... also I'd thought things like me saying "something something... communism?", my incredibly wrong interpretation of the already nonsense "pizzagate" allegations, my assertion that pizza and jewellery rings were liberal conspiracies, and my hypothesis that these brainwashed children would somehow be able to retroactively abort their grandparents to change the outcome of World War 2 would've been a slight hint I was joking :) If you actually believed I thought that though I'll think no less of you, as it's becoming depressingly easy to unintentionally Poe even smart people on the internet lately. And I do apologise if my sense of humour wasn't to your taste, I'm British and grew up with the magnificent Chris Morris shaping what I found funny :D

Watching Veritas' videos exposing campaign disruptions and voter corruption in the Democrat Party and the shenanigans the Republicans pulled trying to defeat Trump as well.
https://www.youtube.com/channe...

Watch what? Words out of somebody's mouth? Why didn't we get videos of ACTUAL buses being driven around? Why do we never get that?

Critical analysis shows the failure.

No matter how much editing Snopes claims O'Keefe has done, the entirety of all videos are available for examination AND there is no denying that the Democrat operatives said what they said and no reason to disbelieve that they did what they said they did.

Actually, Jerry, based on what O'Keefe's done in the past, including the result of the Planned Parenthood investigations that came out of his lies, there is zero reason to believe anything he produces. That you cite him, so uncritically, is a reason to disbelieve you.

When I think of government-involvement with school textbooks, I immediately think of the Texas Board of Education.

I welcome government efforts to reduce the price of textbooks (and thus the price of education.) It's government-involvement with their content that would concern me.

Oh look, unprocessed whole food woo. We should avoid vaccines too?

Most people are kind of shocked to learn a poorly-tuned fast food diet (yes, even McDonalds) is actually as healthy (or more) as a heavy-tuned fruits-and-vegetables diet, so long as you avoid eating too god damned much. The problem is meats and complex foods in general (that is: hamburgers with ketchup and onions and lettuce) contain an average amount of nearly all nutrients; various plant-based foods are high in specific nutrients, although have to average out in a mixture and so equate to similar (or lower) levels of micronutrients than fast foods; and people generally eat 1000-1800 calories in a single fast-food meal, including nutritionally-devoid sodas and french fries.

Vegetables are mainly the only source of vitamin C (great and important) and fiber (not important), along with resistant starch (highly supportive of important gut bacteria). Meats are a better source of minerals like zinc and silicon, as well as several vitamins, notably Vitamin B12 (the form in plant-based foods isn't metabolically-available to humans) and Vitamin A (Retinol is six times as active as Beta-Carotine, which itself is greatly more-active than other plant-based vitamin A vitamers). There's some debate over whether plant-based food or animal-based food provides more calcium, except for seafood of any sort (fish or seaweed) being superior in that regard; and nobody seems to mention that meat contains a surprising amount of potassium, which is actually hard to get even from a plant-based diet.

I'm kind of unsurprised, considering people claim a home-grilled hamburger or a bagel sandwich with sausage, egg, and cheese is a healthy, home-cooked meal, while a hamburger from McDonalds or a nearly-identical sausage, egg, and cheese bagel sandwich is "unhealthy fast food". It's the kind of double-think Orwell warned us about.

Tl;dr the foods that give the most nutrients per calorie are debatable. Typically meat seems to fill that if you want to consider a broad spectrum of nutrients at average levels; vegetables can fill that for single nutrients, but lose nutrient density when attempting to include all nutrients, to the point that even fast food burgers are more nutritionally-complete with higher levels of individual nutrients than a balanced vegan diet.

Oh, and low-fat diets have been shown to have severe negative health effects on and off, but nothing so alarming as to break the back of the campaign completely. Most research shows that the benefits of a low-fat diet are dubious; some research shows lower testosterone in men on low-fat diets, and other research shows no benefit to cardiovascular health or cancer rates in women on low-fat diets. Science is having a hard time lauding the virtues of a low-fat or a high-carbohydrate diet; although the low-carbohydrate diets (10% or less of calories) are also not well-backed. There's a great span of distance between carbohydrates as 70% of your calories and as 10% of your calories, though.

I always get a kick out of people who have no clue what they're talking about.

That article you linked is written by someone who claims yoga can heal the body of illnesses such as Alzheimer's and Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Here's some reading material:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

http://science.howstuffworks.c...

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/C...

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/...

http://contrailscience.com/

Now to my point:

Why in the hell would we deplete California's forestry? What's the endgame, buddy? Even if it was true(which it isn't), there's no reasonable explanation as to why we would want to destroy an entire ecosystem. If anything we'd want to bio-engineer MORE rain so we have MORE trees because that would make us MORE money! It's completely asinine that people would think that it's some grand global conspiracy to destroy millions upon millions of acres of trees in the most populous state in the US. It doesn't benefit anybody!

But please... continue with your wackjob conspiracies.. What's next.. the Illuminati are out to destroy the Almond industry?

The biggest lies I see on news channels these days are lies of omission. It's not really what they are telling you that's important, it's what they aren't telling you.

> you should look into John Podesta's BFF — "investigating" Hillary Clinton?

Yeah, the guy that Trey Gowdy (who spent the last year presiding over the 9th hyperbolic benghazi 'investigation') just said "is not a decision maker, he is a messenger." Conspiracy!

> who tipped her campaign before,

Who 'tipped' her campaign to a publicly announced subcommittee hearing. Conspiracy!

Jesus Hussein Christ! You gullible idiots keep finding conspiracy theory after conspiracy based on nothing more than your ignorance of the full story. How many times do you have to be utterly wrong before you start looking in the mirror and asking "what the fuck is wrong with me?"

First clue should have been that your sources are two of the most notorious conspiracy mills in operation: zerohedge and thegatewaypundid (aka the stupidest man on the internet).