Slashdot Mirror

Just ask Dennis Hastert.
http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...

Actually, Justices Kagan and Scalia were hunting buddies... really...

You liberals just don't understand that all of Washington is the same. You seem so desperate to hate on Republicans, but every attribute you come up with actually applies to both parties.

Brain cells and associated nerve connections are necessary to operate muscles. If you exercise more, or perhaps even hone a skill associated with exercise (playing basketball or tennis perhaps), then you would also expect the brain to grow connections associated with these activities.

So yes, the brain grows. Does it make a person smarter? Not necessarily, it makes a person more able to move that muscle with finer control.

Also, this seems to be a repeat of the same study in the past, though its first occurrence on /.?:

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/10/study-people-who-exercise-have-larger-brains-later-in-life/264017/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2013/10/13/how-exercise-makes-your-brain-grow/#18d2c88248c1

"It's not all pointless. The nutjobs need to be dealt with"

Sorry, but the 2nd Iraq "war" was utterly pointless. It cost lives and money for what - to remove one psychopath under bogus pretenses who at least held the region together, and allow him to be replaced with 10s of thousands of psychopaths who have created anarchy in the whole region and europe. Way to go USA!

This.

And not just Iraq. You would think that a person running for president would have learned that lesson from Iraq, but we have a person running who was actively involved in making the exact same mistake in Libya.

Is it still our policy to have regime change in Syria?

These people shouldn't have to learn from history -- these are recent events that they all lived through.

Enemy combatants are NOT afforded constitutional rights by the military, they can be killed, detained without charge and questioned without a lawyer present even after they request legal representation. PLEASE tell me you understand why this is and why you don't want to change it.... So, if you put them on trial, what do you suppose the FIRST motion their appointed lawyer is going to make?

Well that's the problem isn't it - some of the people in question may not actually be enemy combatants.

With regard to constitutional protection, I am referring to American citizens who have such protection to protect them (us) from the government. I do not believe that these rights should be thrown away out of convenience or fear of what the 'terrorists' might do.

You're more likely to be killed by furniture falling on you than by a terrorist attack so you really should get your capital letter hysterics under control.
http://www.theatlantic.com/int...

And in the cost halved so everyone can now afford to... http://www.theatlantic.com/bus...

As a general rule, people are most liberal when they're young, particularly in college. Those who don't go into academia or some other traditionally liberal profession tend to drift towards the center or become conservative as they age.

I agree that sometimes political correctness can get out of hand. LIke anything else, it's possible to take a good thing too far.

But I'm with the kids on taking on the kinds of issues most of us would shrug our shoulders at, but which are important symbols to their community.

This whole discussion seems to be based on a false report. See the update at http://www.theatlantic.com/pol.... The original story from the Des Moines Register appears to be a collection of anecdotal reports with perhaps a measure of confirmation bias thrown in: once reporters were looking for cases of Hillary coin toss wins they found them. Even by late last night there was at least one official saying Bernie won the toss in her precinct, making the story at best 6 of 7, not 6 of 6. Today a party spokesman said Bernie actually won more tosses than Hillary. Since these were precinct delegates at stake, who in turn elect delegates to some kind of intermediate district caucuses, who in their turn elect the state-wide delegates who elect the Iowa delegates to the national convention, these coin flips are each of minuscule importance, which is probably why everyone is cool with using them.

An actual link to useful information? This is not the slashdot I have come to know....

http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...

This whole discussion seems to be based on a false report. See the update at http://www.theatlantic.com/pol.... The original story from the Des Moines Register appears to be a collection of anecdotal reports with perhaps a measure of confirmation bias thrown in: once reporters were looking for cases of Hillary coin toss wins they found them. Even by late last night there was at least one official saying Bernie won the toss in her precinct, making the story at best 6 of 7, not 6 of 6. Today a party spokesman said Bernie actually won more tosses than Hillary. Since these were precinct delegates at stake, who in turn elect delegates to some kind of intermediate district caucuses, who in their turn elect the state-wide delegates who elect the Iowa delegates to the national convention, these coin flips are each of minuscule importance, which is probably why everyone is cool with using them.

An actual link to useful information? This is not the slashdot I have come to know....

http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...

http://www.theatlantic.com/pol...

Anyway, insisting on only one spelling is stupid, whether it is from language fascists trying to halt evolution, or someone who insists "potatoe" is the only correct answer versus those who were equally wrong in insisting "potato" is the only valid one. Language changes, deal with it.

I respectfully disagree. English spelling is already a nightmare for children and newcomers learning the language; allowing different people to spell the same word however they liked would only make it worse. Personally, I think we should simplify the spelling on all words using standard phonetics, and just have a cut-off date for transition, after which "old English spelling" would only be an academic option for those interested in transcribing older works.

There is evidence that children in English-speaking countries learn at a slower rate than their peers with a more logical and consistent spelling.

It takes five minutes to run the numbers on that and find that it takes way more energy than could ever be considered reasonable.

Actually it doesn't. See, for example, this article from a few days ago: http://www.theatlantic.com/tec.... Heating the road can sometimes be much less expensive than traditional approaches with snowplows and chemicals.

Probably worried about our stategic reserve.

Seriously though, laugh if you want, but maple syrup is worth ~50x as much as oil per barrel. It's big business in Quebec and Vermont.

Min

In 2010 Quebec produced about 8 million gallons and Vermont did about 1 million gallons. New Brunswick did about 200,000 gallons but, in my opinion, it's the best maple syrup you can buy.

Vermont maple syrup just doesn't cut it, it just doesn't have the robust flavor and tastes lighter. Maine maple syrup is similar to New Brunswick maple syrup (it should be, they border each other) and is what I buy when I run out.

Probably worried about our stategic reserve. Seriously though, laugh if you want, but maple syrup is worth ~50x as much as oil per barrel. It's big business in Quebec and Vermont. Min

What do you call the guys down in Nevada during the Cliven Bundy situation who had federal agents in their sites?

Invoking WW2, the tired redneck yankee meme. You're not "merited" anything for what you had fuck all to do with. And by "your people", you mean all of Europe?! Heh amazing broad strokes there. Speaking of bailouts, how are you enjoying the last one after 2008? http://www.theatlantic.com/int... If there's any Empire in line to fall, it's the U.S.

Well, they do exist; they just don't get elected. Largely because they believe the political process is rigged and not worth engaging themselves.

It's a bit like how some people argue there is no wage gap because different lifestyles/jobs etc, ignoring the fact that those things are often the product of biases against women.

I take it then that you've known a lot of men that were pregnant, or left the workforce because they wanted to spend time with their children while they were young?

How many women players are on your favorite professional football team? What is the league average? Why do you think those numbers are the way they are? Is it simple bias?

We are often told by feminist advocates that women bring different perspectives to a workplace. If that is true, do you think that different perspective might lead to different priorities and behaviors, and ultimately choices?

Wage Gap Myth Exposed -- By Feminists

The Biggest Myth About the Gender Wage Gap
The real gap isn't between men and women doing the same job. It's between the different jobs that men and women take.

Really? FTA:

"This week’s all-AAS town hall was the first since Marcygate. Hundreds of members attended the meeting, which was intended to address sexual harassment, with a view toward fixing the culture in astronomy, but also science more broadly, and society at large. It was an ambitious goal for a town hall, but astronomers like to dream big." http://www.theatlantic.com/sci...

It's rather obvious.

The tiny stuff could be nuked easily enough, but the really big stuff would just create a lot of really big (and now somewhat radioactive) rubble to carpet-bomb whatever place gets the impact.

This is a common myth. The reality is that simulations show that nuclear weapons can readily both deflect large asteroids without destroying them, or alternatively destroy them into bits too small to pose a threat and with too much momentum to reform into a large impactor. And even if that wasn't the case, there's also significant dispute among experts to the popularly repeated concept that a bunch of small pieces are worse than one big piece, as smaller pieces come in at varying time and thus spread out the heat load, ejecta load, etc, experience more burnup, produce much less powerful tsunamis that don't "echo" around the Earth as much, etc.

There's really no other option that has the sort of combination of A) near term technology, B) little lead time to deploy, C) minimal lead time required for effective deflection, D) low odds of failure, and E) capability of deflecting very large objects with small payloads - nuclear detonation, whether via standoff deflection or explosive disassembly, in is better than all or almost all competitors in every single category (kinetic impactors are slightly better in some categories but provide orders of magnitude less deflection capability for a given payload size)

We're seeing it in the form of increased productivity rendering jobs obsolete. With fewer jobs people have to work more hours to make the same pay, resulting in yet more productivity and still fewer jobs. The Atlantic has an article on it. tl;dr: Our productivity gains kept pace with what Keynes predicted but hours worked stopped dropping in the 70s, resulting in massive inequality and stagnant wages for workers.

Or the abusive spouse problem:

http://www.theatlantic.com/nat...

Smart guns would prevent that.

Lets be honest here. Smart guns would NOT prevent that. Wanna know why? Because when you and your spouse got the gun, you had it registered so that both of you would be able to fire it.

I'm not entirely sure but I think the Chipmunks were in "night shirts"

Which fits in with the apparel of John Darling and Mickey "the Yellow Kid" Dugan, which are called nightshirts in canon. In fact, the big reason that men don't dress that way all the time is because of cavalry. But now that vehicles have replaced horseback riding, trousers are obsolete technology.

Where'd you pick it up?

I buy most of them from the men's section of AlHannah.com. When I explain it to others on the bus, I sometimes call it "Al and Hannah's" to disguise that it's an Islamic clothing store. You can find other places selling them by searching the web for "thobe" or "dishdasha". When it gets cold, you can wear over-the-calf socks and a shorter (knee-length) flannel nightshirt under it. Just make sure to wear typical western-world headgear with it, not anything obviously Arabic, and don't grow a long beard.

Fortunately, there's no copyright on the act of wearing a nightshirt with a top hat. US law largely considers costume designs "useful articles" rather than works of authorship unless they have a pictorial work printed on them. It's "fruits of one's labor" yet not subject to exclusive rights.

The coddling of the American Mind:
http://www.theatlantic.com/mag...

Sigh

They're a big thing here in Nawth Ca'lina where we have literally thousands of poultry and hog factories. And a hell of a lot of animal abuse too, by the way.

http://www.theatlantic.com/hea...

That is the state making a law, which they can do. This case is an employer trying to prevent an employee from taping a conversation even though the law allows it and specifically banning taping as an act to prove that a supervisor told them to do something.

Slight difference.

They're a big thing here in Nawth Ca'lina where we have literally thousands of poultry and hog factories. And a hell of a lot of animal abuse too, by the way.

http://www.theatlantic.com/hea...

The idea that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were responsible for the housing bubble and subsequent crash has been pretty well debunked: http://www.theatlantic.com/bus...

The goal of terrorism is terror. A populace living in fear is a victory for terrorists. It's as simple as that.

That's like saying the goal of kicking a football is to have it fly in the air. That result will happen, obviously, but winning the game by making a field goal would likely be the true goal of the person who kicked it.

ISIL are terrorists. They don't have the means to take over the world and they are well aware of that fact. What they can do is employ guerilla warfare and terror tactics to sow seeds of uneasiness or outright fear so that those who don't belong in their clique will think twice about opposing them or even badmouthing them.

No, they do want to take over the world: http://www.theatlantic.com/mag...

Politicians just take advantage of the openings creating by such terrorists.

We agree, and I'd argue they've won at this point. Care to differ?

New York Times story and responses:

New York Times story: Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace Quote: "The company is conducting an experiment in how far it can push white-collar workers to get them to achieve its ever-expanding ambitions." Another quote: "The internal phone directory instructs colleagues on how to send secret feedback to one another's bosses. Employees say it is frequently used to sabotage others." (New York Times story posted Aug 15, 2015. There are 5,858 comments!)

Response from Amazon: What The New York Times Didn't Tell You by Jay Carney, "Senior Vice President for Global Corporate Affairs at Amazon. Previously, he served as White House Press Secretary and spent 20 years as a reporter for TIME." (Posted on medium.com, October 19, 2015.)

Response from the New York Times: Dean Baquet Responds To Jay Carney's Medium Post by Dean Baquet, Executive Editor, The New York Times. Quote: "As I said in the beginning, this story [the New York Times story linked above] was based on dozens of interviews. And any reading of the responses leaves no doubt that this was an accurate portrait." (Posted on medium.com, October 19, 2015.)

Business Insider stories:

Amazon employees on 'ludicrously comical' NYT story: 'Some people don't belong here, maybe' Quote: "She said she enjoys the culture that pushes her to work harder." (Aug. 15, 2015)

Employees confess the worst parts about working for Amazon (Aug. 21, 2015)

Amazon abuse is an old story. From 4 years ago:

Atlantic Magazine: "... 8-12 hours shifts with no overtime for $8.72 an hour." In the Wake of Protest: One Woman's Attempt to Unionize Amazon Quote: "As that first month dragged on, I tried to tell myself I was organizing, but what I was really doing was driving across town in a beater car working 8-12 hours shifts with no overtime for $8.72 an hour." Another quote: "Time magazine named Jeff Bezos 'Person of The Year.' Yet Amazon had failed so far to show a profit and stockholder pressure was on. In January, five days before fourth-quarter earnings were to be published, Bezos laid off around 150 workers, nearly 2 percent of its workforce, and posted its first-ever gains. I was hired the following week." Another quote: "He was the one who told me Bezos was going to close the Seattle warehouse. It was too expensive to run. Huge fulfillment centers were springing up around the country. In Nevada, they were getting $5.15 an hour and people had to work 12-hour shifts, five days a week."(Dec. 12, 2011, 4 years ago)

Most teachers in the other countries are union members too. Thus this can't be the problem. It's the scapegoat.

And do those unions in other countries require dues to be paid by all members, and then turn around and funnel those dues into political contributions almost entirely to one political party? In an environment where if you don't have big donors giving you big money, you don't get elected?

It ain't the union in and of itself - it's the creation of a system where candidates are funded to win by groups of government employees forced to fund those candidates by mandatory union dues whether they want to or not. That's government by the government, for the government.

It ain't the teachers - ask any teacher how much their hands are tied by the rules they have to work under. And guess who approves those rules?

And in this case - the kids be damned.

I'm guessing the answer is "NO! It's not like that in other countries!'"

Wonder why Wisconsin Democrats when absolutely ape shit when Walker got rid of that mandatory union membership and the funneling of those dues to Democrats?

Part of the goal of companies in doing this is that the US is almost unique , in that it taxes the profits on foreign sales, after they have been taxed in the country of sale. Very few other countries do this. Most countries don't double tax like this.

People really need to understand this before jumping on the "Evil corporation dodging taxes" bandwagon. The U.S. has an illogical tax policy. And it doesn't just cover corporations - it applies to individuals as well. If you're a U.S. citizen, the IRS will want to tax any money you make even if you're living abroad and working for a foreign company. You hear about people who are dual citizens of the U.S. and another country? Sounds convenient if you want to travel, right? Well it's a total nightmare if you don't live in the U.S. and don't file annual tax returns.

The U.S. government's "solution" to this illogical setup is tax treaties, where if the country you're working in has a tax treaty with the U.S., taxes you pay in the other company can be used as credit against U.S. tax obligations. But it doesn't cover everything. I ran across this when I was working in Canada. I was liable for Canadian taxes because I was living in Canada, and I was liable for U.S. taxes because I was a U.S. citizen. The tax treaty between the two countries meant the Canadian taxes I paid (they have the higher tax rate) essentially zeroed out my U.S. tax on wages. But the tax treaty didn't cover certain types of unearned income. Interest I earned on my Canadian bank account got double-taxed. If I'd bought a house in Canada and sold it when I changed jobs, I would've been double-taxed on the capital gains.

The problem here isn't Apple or other corporations in a similar situation. The problem is that U.S. tax law needs to be changed to make sense - if you make the money outside the U.S., the U.S. has no business trying to tax it.

Good luck with the current police unions in place. A copy pretty much have to go to jail before they'll get tossed out, and cops can get away with practically anything. Even if they do actually get charged, the odds are still slim against a conviction.

I am pointing out how destructive and barbaric real war is. It's interesting how your response to this is "YEAH, WE NEED REAL WAR!!"

As for ISIS, the solution is easy: Get the fuck out of the middle east. They thrive on attention and adversity. They want a huge apocalyptic East-West war. It's their entire philosophy. http://www.theatlantic.com/mag...

The world would be much better off without people like you. Kindly collect with your like-minded ISIS maniacs in a remote region of the planet and bomb each other to death.

Here's an excellent article called Moondoggle (after a 1964 book condemning the space program) that summarizes many of the complaints.

Despite modern perception, the Apollo program never had majority support - instead, 50-60% of people felt that the space program was OVERfunded. Most social activists felt that this money would have been better spent helping people on Earth. The Civil Rights movement and Black leadership were very outspoken about this. One prominent speaker stated that whites were willing to let "thousands starve on Earth" so they could "ruin the pristine splendor" of the Moon with their flags.

There was a great deal more about this back in 2009, for the 40th anniversary of the landing. It was pretty unpopular, and it was due entirely to US social program's greed for the funding that so much of the space program was adjusted, scaled back, or just plain cut. It wasn't just the Left, or fiscal conservatives - it was the people, and both parties played to the people.
So don't just blame the politicians, all you young folks - blame your parents too.

http://www.theatlantic.com/hea...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...

If that were the only thing, muslims would be rising up against ISIS, because ISIS kills many more civilians than the US. And not accidentally: they kill them in brutal ways, on purpose. This is good reading, too.

The vast majority of Muslims don't want to kill Americans, and the vast majority of Americans don't want to kill Muslims (other than daesh). We're happy to live in peace.

By benefiting (mostly) rich white people instead of (mostly) poor minorities, it helps rake in campaign contributions from the Right People

Your entire post was hilarious; but I especially loved this bit. You've obviously never ridden on an urban mass transit system of any kind.

Nice way to except a quotation from GP without context and earn yourself some karma.

But while GP's post was over-the-top, his general point that buses are more important to the urban poor and subways tend to be built without the poor in mind is largely accurate. If you don't believe me, you might start with some articles like this and this, or maybe this recent survey of public transport riders in NYC, which showed the median income was significantly lower for those who used the bus as well as the subway, and even lower for those who used the bus alone.

Basically, for most big cities in the U.S. it works like this:

- Rich people have their own drivers.
- Upper middle class people who live in the suburbs drive themselves. If they live in the city, they take taxis.
- Most middle class people who live in the city take the subway. If they live in the suburbs, they drive to a commuter rail and take that.
- Poor people can't afford cars. They can't live in the suburbs, and if they do, they usually can't afford to live in the ones with convenient commuter rail service. If they live in the city, they often can't afford to live in the more popular areas right next to subway lines. (Those that can often live in rent-control neighborhoods which prevent the convenient subway-adjacent areas from being overrun by young professionals with more money.) The poor disproportionately live in the areas of the city that aren't served by subways, so they end up taking buses (because they can't afford cars) or doing a hybrid commute by bus until they can get to a subway line.

It's clear from this post and another reply that you don't understand the reality of where subway/rail lines get constructed. They are VERY expensive, and poor areas tend not to have the tax revenue to justify them. So, poor areas get the much cheaper buses.

You see a lot of poor people riding subways and light rail in the city for two reasons: (1) the subways run through the most popular business districts in major cities, so even if a poor person starts on a bus, they likely find a connection to a subway convenient to get to work, and (2) dense urban areas tend to have a lot of poor areas located between middle-class and richer areas. So when a subway/rail is built to connect the middle-class areas, it will likely end up running through poor areas anyway.

If you look at most major cities in the Northeast U.S. which have had subways for many years, you'll likely find plenty of examples of poor areas that have been promised a subway/rail line for decades. But they rarely get built. It's much easier and cheaper to extend a new commuter rail line to another suburb, and it's more lucrative to get middle-class riders who can pay premium fares. Expanding the inner-city subway system often requires expensive and complex digging through dense areas, and for what? To get the relatively low fares that the city mostly gets from poor people on buses or taking subway connections from buses anyway.

It's lovely that you see some minorities in your subway commute, but GP had a legitimate point about the expense of rail vs. buses and where the former gets prioritized. The poor generally end up taking the bus in most cities.

Here's a decent article that explains the difference: http://www.theatlantic.com/tec...

those of us who aren't sociopaths

Easy with the name-calling. Please, don't hate.

Glass ceilings are a real thing.

Whether that's true or not, there is not one in Linux (nor FreeBSD) project. And yet, the ratio of females there is even worse, than at Microsoft.

People don't have to be enslaved for a workplace to be a very bad place.

If the free people willingly choose to work somewhere, then it can not be that bad.

there is clear and unambiguous evidence that if we allow discrimination based on those criteria that the results are bad both for society and for the individuals

Such a claim sounds rather hollow without citations. Got any?

Your "anti-discrimination" (poorly) fights symptoms, not the problem — which only gets worse because of your efforts, as we are forced to wonder, if a protected minority occupying an important post really deserved it, or got it thanks to the color of his skin. Racial relations today are worse than before — with Blacks especially alienated.

Your approach demonstrably failed. Decades ago we surrendered an essential liberty to your kind in exchange for a promise of harmony, and now we have neither the liberty nor the harmony. Look at Baltimore — despite having Black mayor and Black police commissioner, it still got racial tensions like nowhere else... It is such an egg on your face, your wisest now blame lead paint!

You are a pathetic failure. And yet, instead of pulling back to reflect on what went wrong, your kind doubles and triples down with new charges. Today even the belly-dancing or yoga are off-limits to the Whitey.

Constitution is junk to you — you may preach "tolerance", but wish to ban "hate speech". And that includes everything that makes you uncomfortable.

The market demonstrably cannot fairly deal with this problem.

Because it is not a market problem. In fact, I am not convinced, it is a problem at all. But, if it is, you and yours are the least qualified to address it.

Irving schools look pretty mainstream to me:

They're still in Texas.

http://www.houstonpress.com/ne...

https://nonprofitquarterly.org...

http://www.theatlantic.com/edu...

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

Don't be so sure.

The big issue with dealing with ISIS is that governments are treating ISIS like Al Queda, when they are completely different. Al Quada is closer to an evil corporation than what ISIS is.

ISIS is an end-times cult prodding the west to attack so Armageddon can start and they can move into Israel which will bring the second coming of Jesus. Jesus is the second most important prophet in Islam.

They put themselves ahead of all governments, so they can't even be negotiated down into sanity. Governments could negotiate release of Al Queda prisoners, it is impossible to do that with ISIS.

Oh, and they want to destroy Saudi Arabia for believing in a slightly different Islam.

Fun fact: You could move to Syria, bow to them and pay some sort of fee and they will let you live in peace. Since they are very liberal on social things, you could get free food, dental, medical, etc.

They are terrorists only in the sense that they are trying to pick a fight.

They are scary as fuck, but the way they have been handled so far won't work. They want the end of the world.

http://www.theatlantic.com/fea...

My only issue with that is that I don't necessarily really know that ISIS is about irrational bloodthirsty marketing campaigns.

In Western media we never actually get to hear the other side of the story

You're just not bothering to consume the media that actually informs on this subject. Read the recent Atlantic article about ISIS . You'll get a thorough and well researched view into their history, motivations, and vision. You, by the way, fit into their vision as a dead guy.

The CBO report is wrong. It purports to consider payroll taxes, but the bottom quintile has average before-tax income of 15,500 or 24,600, however you want to count it, and 500 in Federal taxes. At that income, the payroll taxes on 15,500 alone would be in excess of a thousand.

Just because the the payroll tax at the average income would be X doesn't mean that the average payroll tax is X.

hat's the most highly taxed income. Go up some from my income and the FICA taxes hit a cap.

I should hope so, since FICA is for capped benefits. FICA taxes already strongly favor low income recipients.

Go up considerably more and we start getting into people who get a lot of their income on capital gains

First of all, capital gains are effectively corporate profits, and the effective rate on that is already higher than your income tax. In addition, there is no logical reason why capital gains should be taxed at the same or higher rate than income.

or at least have enough money to arrange things to owe less in taxes.

Nice theory, but not really true in practice: http://www.theatlantic.com/bus...

If productivity has gone up a lot from 1980, and median family income in constant dollars has been flat, the money's going somewhere, and it isn't into my pockets.

Leaving aside the question of whether that data really means what you seem to think it does, why should it go into your pockets? You are part of the top 20%, you just said so. You contribute to inequality in the US, and if you want to reduce inequality in the US and raise the median family income, the top 20% of income earners are the primary source of people who need to pay more. You aren't going to get that kind of money from "the wealthy"; they don't have enough money, and even if they did, there is no tax policy you could devise to get it from them, because the very fact that they have much more money than they need gives them nearly infinite flexibility in how to allocate it.

I think your comments reveal what really bothers you: you are part of the top 20%, you're educated and skilled, and you look at the billionaire peddlers of soft drinks and Chinese plastic crap, and you think that the world isn't fair and that you deserve better. I understand, I'm part of the top 20% too, and I see your attitude all around me. But the world isn't fair, and attempts to make it fair by means of taxation and government intervention will hurt people like you and me even more. And such policies won't even benefit the remaining 80% of the population that they ostensibly help.

If even the staunchly illiberal publications like New York Times and The Atlantic complain about there being too many grievances, it must, indeed, be a real problem.

Nah. They just hate Festivus and are against the very principles this country's founders exposed in the Declaration of Independence. So, basically, they hate America.

See, that was easy, wasn't it?

If even the staunchly illiberal publications like New York Times and The Atlantic complain about there being too many grievances, it must, indeed, be a real problem.

A problem, they helped facilitate, I might add. Because, when people are simply pursuing happiness, one can get a (sorely mistaken!!) impression, everything is right in the land of Capitalism — so, if causes for real complaints are gone, we must dig deeper to rouse up new ones. Somebody complimented your demeanour? They must be RACIST!.. Girls learn belly-dancing — to stay fit and please their boyfriends? They are appropriating! And so on.

Actually, it may be even more than that. According to the Atlantic article What ISIS Really Wants, the goal of ISIS is to bring about the apocalypse and thus end the world. So maybe, they want to be evil, with a capital E. Because, I don't think you can get much more evil than wanting to kill everybody everywhere.

Roper is clearly the "SJW" in the original text. More's determination to stand by his principals over temporary outrage places him in the role of the that professor at Yale during the Haloween costume debacle.

It's worth nothing that More was the one eventually beheaded.

H1-Bs and green card holders are still guests, not Citizens.

And yet, by your own logic, simply because they can not vote, they don't have to pay taxes nor obey other laws.

On this new topic you raised:

Residents of D.C. do deserve to vote and it's well past time to fix that.

No, they don't "deserve" to vote in the slightest — their physical proximity to the seat of government already gives them undue advantage over the political process.

Look at what happens every once in a while in countries, where capitals are regular cities, rather than ones created for the purpose of hosting the government (like in the US or Australia):

• Russia
• Ukraine
• Mexico
• Thailand

The physical proximity to the government allows residents of the capital to stage protests and demonstrations — if not outright coups/revolutions and assassinations — at far lower costs, than what residents of remote regions of the same country would have to bear. Disenfranchising capital-critters was a very wise decision by the Founding Fathers. No new arguments for "fixing it" have appeared since the founding of the Republic.

I denounce you, kamrade, for being sexist and for body-shaming people you don't even know. So shallow... Your derogatory use of the term "gorilla" smacks of anthropocentrism and specieism so disgusting, I can't go to work now and will require days of therapy and counselling to deal with the pain you caused me. Fuck you — you should not be able to sleep at night!