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You can't sell what you can't build.

Behold the power of our Congress:

They Scrapped the F-22!The remarkable vote to kill the plane and what it means for America's military future.

Enjoy, libtards.

"I think a lot of the lack of R&D goes back to decisions made many years ago by the government. At one point all employee salaries regardless of how outrageous they were were a deductible expense. Congress decided they wanted to tax high salaried people. Therefore companies found ways around those laws. In comes stock bonuses and stock options. The problem with that is that a highly paid employee (most likely a decision maker) will do what is best for them, which is kick up the stock price so that they get higher effective pay. Easy way to do that, kill long term R&D." Not exactly, I don't think tax laws were to blame for creating stock options in the first place. What I think stock options actually came from was agency theory I think, which was the idea that managers should be agents of shareholders. And the obvious way to ensure that was, you guessed it, stock options. But, yes, tax laws did help in making it popular. Here is a good article on this: http://www.slate.com/id/2068693/

Powerbocking looks awesome. I remember seeing it on Time Warp as a powerbocker did a front flip over a car length-wise; and, yea, it does look suspiciously similar to what this "new" patented invention does. It's also similar in concept to the carbon-fiber prosthetic legs used by some athletes. Way to go CMU, you've patented another pre-existing idea.

The allegations are recent and were made by a Swedish tabloid newspaper, see Wikipedia.

BBC News article

CNN article

There have been allegations of an Israeli human body part smuggling ring for years (2003 BBC report).

The new allegations centre around a scandal in New Jersey in which two state legislators and several Rabbis have been arrested for trafficking in human body parts. The Slate article claims that Jewish religious law allow most other laws can be broken to save the life of a Jew ("for the sake of saving a life, a Jew is allowed to break just about any commandment.") and that the Rabbis would see human body part trafficking as a good thing ("They sincerely felt they were not hurting anyone; indeed, by giving life to another, they probably felt they were mimicking the divine. They were in the business of saving lives.") The additional allegation made by the Swedish newspaper is that the IDF were removing organs from Palestinian prisoners who die in custody, and from other sources of dead Palestinian bodies, in order to supply the smuggling groups.

The allegations are recent and were made by a Swedish tabloid newspaper, see Wikipedia.

BBC News article

CNN article

There have been allegations of an Israeli human body part smuggling ring for years (2003 BBC report).

The new allegations centre around a scandal in New Jersey in which two state legislators and several Rabbis have been arrested for trafficking in human body parts. The Slate article claims that Jewish religious law allow most other laws can be broken to save the life of a Jew ("for the sake of saving a life, a Jew is allowed to break just about any commandment.") and that the Rabbis would see human body part trafficking as a good thing ("They sincerely felt they were not hurting anyone; indeed, by giving life to another, they probably felt they were mimicking the divine. They were in the business of saving lives.") The additional allegation made by the Swedish newspaper is that the IDF were removing organs from Palestinian prisoners who die in custody, and from other sources of dead Palestinian bodies, in order to supply the smuggling groups.

Oh, speaking of white people voting, I'll point out that less than half of the white citizens of the U.S. actually voted for the Democrat.

http://www.slate.com/id/2204251/sidebar/2204308/

No Democratic candidate has "won" the white vote since LBJ.

As for your assertion that there is no such thing as racism against whites, I lump that in with "All heterosexual sex is rape." Same reasons, same logic, same effect - being ignored.

I'm not sure what you are referring to. The amount that a lobbyist can give to a member of congress for their campaign is laughably small - in line with what an individual can give. In any event, it's not corruption if it is all out in the open and legal. You can see who a politician takes money from and vote accordingly.

Bob Ney, Michael Scanlon, Neil Volz, Mark Zachares, Italia Federici, Robert E. Coughlin, Ann Copland and John Albaugh have all pled guilty to taking money or gifts from Abramoff while they were in politics. Tom DeLay was involved in the scandal too and received gifts from Abramoff. There is a money trail going from Abramoff to a lobbying firm (ASG), to Christine DeLay (about $300,000 in total). Tom DeLay was majority whip of course, so this happened at the center of US politics.

Furthermore, there are scores of politicians who worked very closely with lobbyists and later were given higly paid jobs by the companies that sent the lobbyists. That is also a form of payment, IMO. Then there are donations to PACs, which can be spent on attack ads and such. Most politicians are pretty lazy, so they will often rely on a few lobbyists to tell them what to think. Then you buy legislation by buying the lobbyists that advise the politicians. That situation is just as bad for democracy as bribing the politicians directly, but it is completely legal.

Someone is going to always control the media, be it a multinational conglomerate, a rich guy, a government, or some combination.

That is just ignorance. There are civilized countries that have independent media that is not beholden to a small elite. Unfortunately, the mainstream media in the US is completely corrupt, since the majority of the US citizens do not seem to care and most politicians favor big business (no wonder, since those are the people who steer their votes).

The guy working two jobs or kneeling in the rice paddy is never going to have a big voice.

My point is that he could have much more influence, if the US political system was more democratic. Unfortunately, you seem to accept your broken system and don't actually care about democracy. Land of the brave? Land of the slaves is more like it.

It's a bit more complicated than that. IMHO, you are right that Americans feel like their vote is wasted, but not because of corruption. It's simply that the federal government is not that big of an issue in most people's lives.

Health care is not a big issue for Americans? Or the enormous national debt that will have to be paid back one day? What about the lack of banking regulations that costs you billions in Chinese debt while the bonusses keep getting paid? Iraq & Afghanistan?

If the American people feel that there are no major national issues that the federal government should address, they are dumbasses. Being disenfranchised is an decent reason not to vote. The national government not being important is not.

I know it sounds lame, but I even know people who won't vote so that they don't get stuck in the jury pool.

You are right, it sounds incredibly lame. Giving up your vote, so you won't have to do your duty to make sure that justice is served = Double-plus unpatriotic.

Also, our de-facto two-party system alienates a lot of people (myself included). I actually take the effort of voting for other parties, but few other people bother. Even I hesitate, as our "third parties" tend to be wackos.

So where is the party that wants to change the system? You could at least make an effort. Other countries do it. Your founding fathers told you to keep improving upon their work. Yet Americans keep pretending that their constition is perfect, while both parties and the supreme court 'interpret' the constitution to mean something completely different from what it clearly says and very few people actually want a two-party system.

There are court cases saying you have to present ID if demanded by a cop.

That I know of there is no law requiring people of have ID in the US, and it's hard to require people to show ID they don't have. Searching... I found this that says "The rules are different for drivers and immigrants, who are required to provide identification upon request."

The woman who made the call has been harassed and ridiculed for the call. I don't see how that's an anonymous tip.

I agree, and I thought I heard someone say on CNN the professor thanked the woman for calling the police.

Falcon

Really good explanation of inflation: Baby-sitting the economy. - By Paul Krugman - Slate Magazine I thought this made a lot of sense and went a long way toward explaining how inflation may actually help an economy. Whatever inflation is... it is a dampening effect. I certainly don't like it that my money doesn't buy as much as it used to.

Here's one article that tries to put some numbers behind this idea (buying new efficient vs. re-using old clunker). It compares a new Prius (plus its manufacturing energy) vs. a used Corolla (no slouch in mpg). The new Prius wins out (573 million BTUs over its lifetime for gas+production of Prius vs. 701 million BTUs for gas only for Corolla).

There's other data out there support this idea. Obviously it depends on the cars under comparison, but there are some winning scenarios under cash-for-clunkers.

Apparently Netflix is stuck on this side of the service (the on-demand shizz) due to the arcane Hollywood studio system that has contracts with cable, premium stations, and others that lock up the movies for literally decades leaving new service providers like Netflix with no options. See discussion here: http://slate.com/id/2216328/

Having the ability to delete books remotely is a huge problem. Amazon may apologize this time and promise never to do it again, but unfortunately they have already demonstrated that remote deletion is possible. It's only a matter of time before a court orders Amazon to delete a book remotely en masse. If digital books with DRM and remote deletion capability become the norm in the future, it's entirely possible to eradicate an entire work from existence. While books have been banned in the 20th century, they could never be enforced with 100% efficacy. Farhad Manjoo has made this case in an article on slate.com.

The cost of allowing cell phones included the lost lifes of others. The claculation was done on society as a whole, as in "Will the average person get more out of allowing or banning cell phone use while driving". And before you ask, the price was probably 4-5 million USD per life, which is about the price americans put on their own lifes.

A recent article in Slate claimed that Honduras lacked a means of removing the President peacefully.

In virtually every other country in the world, Zelaya would have been removed from office. But, peculiarly, the Honduran Constitution does not include an impeachment procedureâ"Congress is entitled to name a new president only in the absence of the current one. So, rather than bringing Zelaya before a judge to be tried for his criminal misbehavior, the army rousted him out of bed and flew him off to Costa Rica in his pajamas. The legislature then voted to replace him with Roberto Micheletti, the head of Congress, who was next in the line of succession.

I had the opposite impression, apparantly supported by most economists: "In recent years, received wisdom among economists has been that the inflation rate has been overstated because of unmeasured improvements in quality." http://slate.com/id/2142241/

But the article I linked to points out some problem with that opinion. So apparantly, the problem is that there isn't one inflation rate, but at most one per category of products. And even that raises the question "How many Walkmans in an iPod?", which must be answered before inflation makes sense.

...the judge is either an ex-lawyer of SONY or has a family member working in a high position in RIAA/MPAA. It always is the case. In fact i wouldn't be surprised if he has a financial interest in a RIAA member.

First, Judge Nancy Gertner is a woman. Second, her private practice work before becoming a judge was primarily criminal defense and civil rights. You may be interested to know that she has a blog, and it is concerned with criminal law and civil rights. She has taught courses at Boston University, Harvard, and Yale, where she primarily taught classes on criminal law and civil rights. There is zero evidence that she or anyone she is closely connected with has anything to do with the RIAA or the MPAA.

Finally, district court judges in the United States do not get to pick and choose cases: most are assigned cases on a rotating basis. Even if Judge Gertner were a corrupt tool of the media companies, she might have gone her entire career without hearing a single copyright case. In any event, the salary and employment of federal judges is guaranteed for life (unless they are impeached by Congress and removed from office), so corruption of federal judges is very rare; they have too much job security and are paid too well to risk it.

factor in how much of your tax dollars when into that and then get back to us with a valid point....

Gee whiz, I don't know whether I can handle the math. Somebody help me out, what's 44 cents minus zero?

How much tax did USPS pay on the 221,000 vehicles? Some of the fleet must be in states which levy tax on vehicles? How much property taxes was levied on the 32,741 post offices nation wide? They list their revenue numbers, but are a little light on the expenses.

Does Fedex/UPS receive equal treatment?

factor in how much of your tax dollars when into that and then get back to us with a valid point....

Gee whiz, I don't know whether I can handle the math. Somebody help me out, what's 44 cents minus zero?

During the cold war, something went flash and a sat noted it. In theory it was South Africa and Israel doing something with a nuke.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vela_Incident
With scientists come the press. They might ask how could South Africa get the bomb?
Who helped them? Where where they getting support from and who let them test?
The political leaders who lied back then, groomed the 30 somethings around them. They are now in power and have learned from past mistakes.
Now if the sat never saw the flash, its just another day in the anti communist "bush war" in southern africa.
Sat data can make a generation stand up and say "No"
http://www.slate.com/id/2211683/
"Google Earth exposes a U.S. drone base in Pakistan."
Its not the "meteor data" its what else could leak or be questioned via the data.
Look up the data now and you might see traces of weather experiments or some other new 'science' that will be spoon fed over the next 40 years as emerging.

neither can ex-cons and felons in most states.

Actually, it is only 11 states that restrict ex-cons from voting. And it is extremely wrong-headed to make that restriction because it breeds an unrepresented underclass.

Anyone know of any court cases involving Japanese sex games? I know they get pretty obscene..

There's been a lot of talk and grandstanding for banning games like "RapeLay" but I don't think there's been a court case or decree. It's pretty difficult to get a hold of through a major outlet though. And I think Japan's version of the ESRB is passing new standards preventing the publishing of games like this. No court cases on US soil regarding this title to my knowledge. From what I've read, it seems to be the most explosively controversial title out there right now.

Bogus, debunked here:

http://www.slate.com/id/2186786/

No. Not unless you are driving a 50 year old car. http://www.slate.com/id/2192187/ is the first google result I came up with. There are plenty more.

If you know about Linux, how the hell can you NOT know about FreeDOS?

For one thing, the old IBM commercials with the little blond boy talked about Linux, but not FreeDOS.

I could not find anything to support your claim of Mr. Tashkin being a "government expert". Can you provide a citation for that claim?

Sure, if you include the NIH! His name came up in multiple studies on pot when I entered his name in the search bar there. He's also referenced here in paragraph 8.

Isn't there another section of copyright saying exactly how many TVs/radios/etc. (and how large they can be) you can have in your business before you infringe?

I believe it came up in this case. And I think that copyright law bars you from having screens bigger than 55" explicitly in one of the statutes. There's more analysis of the law in question in this story about the same case, which links to this law.

Now, I apologize for jumping in here. You're probably right about whatever you're arguing over retransmission and whatnot, but there are other weird parts of copyright law that trip people (and businesses) up. It's probably based on those statutes (and not any retransmission laws) that ASCAP goes after anyone with radios/loudspeakers/TVs/etc.

He's referring to the Guardian's addled plot to sway the voters of Clark County, OH and thus help John Kerry during the 2004 election. See Dear Limey Assholes. Still an incongruous connection the GP is making but there's the background.

you are insane. and also very incorrect.

let's start with something really easy: job creation by presidential party. the numbers don't lend themselves to a nice pithy "party A good; party B bad" conclusion, but certainly the average shows that, on average, we as a country do better on jobs with Democrats in the head office than Republicans.
okay, maybe you don't like "job creation" as the employment metric (there are decent reasons not to). unemployment is more straight-forward to measure and the data comes in regularly and frequently; what's it tell us? try this analysis. i'll save you some reading, since i imagine that's a problem for you; the conclusion, on page 2, includes the punchline: "Over the past 34 years, Democratic Presidents have overseen periods when the unemployed became employed, and Republican administrations were characterized by an increase in unemployment."
alright, alright, it's not fair to focus only on "employment". there are other ways of generating wealth (although where that gets focused is an interesting question), and the employment numbers don't tell us as much about turnover as we'd like. how about some other metrics? well, this analysis is old enough that we don't get to poke at Bush II much, but the numbers are pretty conclusive over modern US history. "...since 1900, Democratic presidents have produced a 12.3 percent annual total return on the S&P 500, but Republicans only an 8 percent return." c'mon, tell me there's a liberal bias in S&P. you'd have to also lump in the Dow (nearly the same numbers). focusing on congress is also pretty damning; the spread is less dramatic, but still statistically relevant.
perhaps the most important macro metric of all - real GDP - follows the same trend as the stock market, at least since 1930.
how 'bout regionally? well, at least up until the current collapse, New England has been growing substantially faster than the rest of the country (left two columns in this chart; right two aren't really relevant). note the increasing spread between New England and the national average, either by percent or absolute dollars, as it coincides with the blue shift in the region over the same time period.
the Republicans got a lot of traction in the last election cycle out of the "redistribution of wealth" phrase, which they're still pimping. but the reality is that modern Republicans are far more guilty of it. take a look at GDP vs. median wageduring the Bush II years. the nominal increase in the economy after the Bush II crash was all focused on the top slice of the economy - doing very little to stimulate overall economic growth and stability.

you make some pretty weird claims about migration. can you show any evidence for a mass migration from blue to red states? i can't find it. instead, the conventional cause for census shifts are taken to be birth rates differing by states (for a good time, compare to teen birth rates when Republican hacks keep talking about the moral center of Real America) and immigration rates differing by states in roughly the same areas. the net domestic migration numbers, which i think are what you want to look at, don't seem to indicate what you want them to, although i could only find back to 1990. since then, there's been a departure from the northeast, midwest, and pacific coast for the western mo

Have faith .. if you ignore the orphan tweets, the remaining messages were only created by 37 people who aren't smart enough to realize that their friends don't really give a crap about what they are doing, or are willing to wait to hear about the important stuff when they get together to do stuff instead of sitting with deer eyes in front of the iPhone waiting for the next tweet to show up.

"The Unknown"

An Amateur poem by Donald Rumsfeld
Feb. 12, 2002

As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.

http://www.slate.com/id/2081042/

How the Web Prevents Rape
Study finds online porn may reduce the incidence of rape
Watching violence and porn could reduce violent crime and rape

You show me a person who says "Yeah, sure" to an offer of blowing up a Synagogue for cash and I'll show you a person with a predisposition to do that anyway.

If you had read psychologists like Stanley Milgram http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_milgram you'd know that most people could be manipulated to do exactly what the Nazis did by someone who is a skillful manipulator -- and informers are skillful manipulators. If you read testimony at these trials, you'll see that the defendants made innocent decisions that would have seemed reasonable at the time, and one thing led to another.

If you had been in that situation, an undercover agent might have manipulated you into going along with the plot.

Prejudice against Muslims? Hardly. You *have* noticed that the people going around doing this are primarily young, primarily Muslim, primarily male, right?

Prejudice unsupported by facts. The Israelis commit just as much terrorism as Arabs and Muslims. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yigal_Amir http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/MDE02/005/2002 And the U.S. has supported many terrorist movements against Cuba, Nicaragua, etc.

If moderate Muslims want Islam to be respected rather than suspected, they need to stand up and denounce terror and denounce terrorists. Even when those terrorists are state actors.

That is such bullshit I don't want to go through the details. You'll have to look up Gershom Gorenberg's articles yourself. Let's just say that I was working to free Muslims from jail who were imprisoned for denouncing terrorism.

What's my race and religion? You can call me Irish Catholic. In some parts of the world, that might have gotten me some extra scrutiny once upon a time and I wouldn't call it unfair. People with names like mine and a religion like mine were planting bombs in London, and some here in the US were helping to finance them. If our terrorism problems here were with people of Irish ancestry and Catholic religion, I'd be quite understanding if that got me secondary screening when I fly, and I wouldn't be whining that it's racism or prejudice.

There's at least one case that I can remember of a group of innocent Irish people who were convicted of terrorism charges in England and who served decades in jail, where one of them died, until it turned out that the scientific evidence against them, of nitrates, was faulty and they were released.

According to this article in Slate, http://www.slate.com/id/1003657/ entrapment requires 3 things:

1. The idea of committing the crime came from law enforcement officers, rather than the defendant.

2. The law enforcement officers induced the person to commit the crime.

3. The defendant was not ready and willing to commit this type of crime before being induced to do so.

Many of these terrorist cases meet all 3 requirements.

Repeatedly, an informer went to American residents who had previously had no contact with Islamic terrorism.

Repeatedly, the informer came up with the plot, and encouraged the defendant to participate by offering him substantial amounts of money.

Repeatedly, the defendant had never participated in this kind of activity before, and would never have done so if the informer hadn't suggested it and facilitated it, often by providing bogus "weapons."

The prosecutors claim that the defendants would or might have some day participated in terrorism anyway. That's speculation which would only convince jurors who are prejudiced to believe that Muslims or Arabs are terrorists.

For example, listen to the case of Hemant Lakhani on This American Life. http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1088 .

This is because the models they're using right now have their image quality degraded from what the sensors see.

The full-quality versions (which can be accomplished by changing a setting on the device) provide extremely intimate detail. Those images have not been released, only the degraded quality images have been released.

From Wikipedia:

It is "possible for backscatter X-raying to produce photo-quality images of what's going on beneath our clothes", thus, according to the TSA, the images have been distorted with the private parts being blurred (Layton). According to the TSA further distortion is used in the Phoenix airport's trial system where photo-quality images are replaced by chalk outlines

([1][2])

In addition these scans can reveal privileged medical information such as whether the traveler uses a colostomy bag.

Re 5th... She is not the only one

http://www.slate.com/id/1007531/
"News reports say that President Clinton's brother, Roger, is considering invoking his Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination when he is called to testify before the New York grand jury investigating Bill Clinton's pardons."

So like I said two sides of a worthless coin

Well, part of the "summer driving season" prices are due to increased demand from more individuals and families taking long car trips on vacations (basic econ: fixed supply + increase in demand => higher prices). Another big difference in costs is that they tend to use different formulations and additives in the summer. Note that the change-over starts happening in May which just might explain the recent price increase you've been seeing. See if your location corresponds to the areas covered by the regulation. Note that even if you aren't you may still be obtaining gas from a refinery in a covered area, which only produces summer RFG for efficiency.

On the other hand, if you'd tried to argue that the gasoline refiners are deliberately shutting down refineries to decrease supplies and increase prices, you might be able to find some supporting evidence.

Firing someone for political affiliation is illegal even in "at will" states.

This is completely wrong. A handful of jurisdictions may have protections for political affiliation; most don't.

One example

Is illegal in DC

There's so much well-publicized complaints by businesses about how hard it is to fire someone, and some legitimately silly lawsuits, that a lot of workers actually think the "at-will" provisions in US employment agreements are just so much ink, and they'd have legal recourse if their boss fired them on a whim.

It is the case that most employers, especially publicly held companies, don't want to fire good workers for non-work related reasons, and don't need the bad PR, so do not generally not allow a boss to use that a reason to let someone go.

But political belief is not a protected category. (Except for government agencies, where there are first amendment considerations, IIUC.)

You know, I did just look up the meaning of literally, in Merriam-Webster.

1 : in a literal sense or manner : actually
2 : in effect : virtually
usage: Since some people take sense 2 to be the opposite of sense 1, it has been frequently criticized as a misuse. Instead, the use is pure hyperbole intended to gain emphasis, but it often appears in contexts where no additional emphasis is necessary.

Perhaps you should read this article by a dictionary editor defending the use of 'literally' for emphasis.

The ground was not especially sticky in Little Women when Louisa May Alcott wrote that "the land literally flowed with milk and honey," nor was Tom Sawyer turning somersaults on piles of money when Twain described him as "literally rolling in wealth," nor was Jay Gatsby shining when Fitzgerald wrote that "he literally glowed," nor were Bach and Beethoven squeezed into a fedora when Joyce wrote in Ulysses that a Mozart piece was "the acme of first class music as such, literally knocking everything else into a cocked hat."

It's been used for emphasis of true statements in english since the 17th century. And it's hardly the only example:

In the case of literally, the "right" meaning is said to be "exactly as described; in a literal way," because that's what the base word literal is supposed to mean. In fact, the literal meaning of literal would be something like "according to the letter," but it's almost never used this way. "He copied the manuscript literally" would be one possible example. So when we use literally to refer to something other than individual letters -to whole words, or to thoughts in general - we are already walking down the figurative path, and if we end up with people eating curry so hot that their mouths are "literally on fire," how surprised can we be?

The trouble with usage criticism of the sort leveled at literally is that it's typically uneven: Parallel uses are frequent and usually pass unnoticed. For every peruse there's a scan for every hopefully there's a clearly; and for every literally there's a really: Or did you expect people to complain when really is used to emphasize things that are not "real"? When Meg, in Little Women, moaned that "It's been such a dismal day I'm really dying for some amusement," she wasn't the one dying.

So really - just get over it.

They've had a feed for months now.

It's because terrorists are stupid.

You're quoting a Wikipedia article about the nutcase Kevin Phillips? And we're supposed to take you seriously?

ROFL!

Kevin Phillips is wrong about everything.

Phillips is nothing more than a populist hack who uses twisted statistics and hyperbole in his sensationalist books. While I applaud his naked ambition, I wish he wouldn't do it in a manner which so badly misinforms his target audience.

To put it another way, your numbers are wrong just like Phillips is.

"Depressives have Prozac, worrywarts have Valium, gym rats have steroids, and overachievers have Adderall."

From a Slate article (Adderall self-test) a few years ago.
http://www.slate.com/id/2118315/

Tort reform is a straw man argument. It's like me complaining that the streets have two many potholes so you pass a law that requires 17 inch tires. It doesn't address the problem, it's just a sneaky way to jam someone's agenda into the national debate.

Slate article
supporting information

it is one thing to steal music to entertain yourself (and we can argue all day about whether file sharing is copyright infringement or fair use) but it is a _completely_ different story to steal something and then try to resell/market it as your own. At least if you aren't paying for use of some creative work, you are at least appreciating it for its greatness. Trying to pass off someone else' IP as your own obfuscates the true brilliance of the creator, making it more difficult for someone else to recognize and purchase their work. Biden has absolutely no moral authority to talk about the theft of IP. http://www.slate.com/id/2198597/

  This is almost as annoying as hearing Al Gore talk about taking the initiative in "creating the Internet" I'd be amazed if Al Gore knew enough about the Internet to explain the difference between TCP and UDP.

Serial IP thieves should should never lecture the masses on the dangers of Filesharing.

Then you must have forgotten the vitriolic hate:

You must have forgotten the part where I was talking about the period after 911. But even the outrage you site is perfectly justified, since Bush stole the election in 2001. If a statewide recount had been conducted in Florida, Gore would have won the state and the electoral vote along with the popular vote, even with all the GOP shenanigans (bogus voter felon list).

So you fail. Again. But at least now we know you weren't a coma patient.

I don't know where you're getting that. Could you cite a source please? And if he is, I wouldn't generalize his torture stance to his eavesdropping or other constitutional issues he inherited from Bush.

I mean, I see President Obama shuttering Guantanamo (soon I hope), but then he's still arguing for the same types of detention at Bangram Airfield in Afghanistan. See this.

Seriously, the change is only cosmetic.

Sadly, that's not the case, which what makes possible to be defamation call "nigger" someone depending on circumnstances, even if he is black skinned.

Can you point to any case law on this? A quick google turns up this link:

http://www.slate.com/id/2212339/pagenum/all

which discusses mostly celebrity responses to public statements that they are gay. The little bit it says about skin colour suggests that the it would no longer be considered defamation in the U.S. to say someone has dark skin.

Interesting that your "faults" relate to interfacing with third-party devices. And as for "Blood Feud"? Interesting idea and I wish I had the energy for something like intense, but having used Apple since the 1970s, and having owned and worked on everything from the original compact Mac on, that would be a little difficult to maintain. I've no feud with Apple, just with Apple Polishers.

If you like to drink Coke or Pepsi while you game, and you live in NYC, then you could soon pay a soda tax.

Iraq - Everyone pretended they could have nukes, but most people knew they didn't

"Before 2003, everyone from neocon hawks to French lefties agreed that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction."

I know this is off-topic, and will hold no grudge if it is moderated so, but congratulations on your bigotry. In another couple generations, my kids will look back on people like you the way we look back on the KKK. Can't let them gays get out from under today's Jim Crow laws, no sir. We have to make sure they get treated differently by the law because of their dirty, dirty genes.