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Thomas Drake, William Binney and J. Kirk Wiebe

The NSA has created an irresistable treat for the least moral people in government. Oversight and controls will periodically fail for reasons slashdotters and sysadmins understand well.

Recently
        *Spied on reporters
        *Prosecutors pretend evidence was gathered with a warrant.
        *NSA lied to congress about what was collected.
Previously
        *Threatened U,S reporters with death,
        *Influence the U.S. elections Watergate.
        *Electronic surveillance Martin Luther King, John Lennon, Elvis, It is alleged MLK was blackmailed and the letter demanded he commit suicide before christmas.

Funny
(Unless your former spouse/boyfriend is violent)

            *Appalachee "Love-Intelligence"

This answers (for me) why Snowden left the country.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/09/15/nixon-white-house-plot-to-kill-journalist-jack-anderson.html
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/nsa-analyst-under-bush-we-spied-repor
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/06/16/snowden-whistleblower-nsa-officials-roundtable/2428809/
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/06/16/snowden-whistleblower-nsa-officials-roundtable/2428809/

Only in the US does Obama get called leftist. He is either centrist or moderate rightist.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/the-conservative-obama/

Compare his policies to Ronald Reagan and you will find very little difference. For example both ran huge deficits in order to stimulate job growth.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/11/20/channeling-the-gipper.html

The fact of the matter is that the right wing of American politics has become really extreme over the past 10 years.

You could be right but don't forget that humans have a tendency to not take threats seriously until it really happens. We wait until a really bad accident happens before fixing a dangerous road, we surely do not remember the Bay of Pigs like if what came close to happen had really happened etc.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/08/14/bay-of-pigs-newly-revealed-cia-documents-expose-blunders.html

when was the last time a major newspaper or network broke a political scandal that wasn't sex.

Do you actually read newspapers, or do you just bitch about them?

Where are they when voter suppression is a fact of life in most of the Southern United states?

Why would I give a rats ass about the Zimmerman trial if I wasn't in that community?

Do you even listen to yourself?

For those who think I'm wrong and that these should be mandatory, why don't you go lobby the government (at any level from local to federal) and have some of these technologies mandated for LEO fire arms use. Report back with your results.

A remote kill switch on firearms used by rogue law enforcement or rogue military types would be interesting:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/12/rogue-cop-manhunt-ends-in-shootout.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/nation/fort-hood.html

...but just as impossible to implement as an actual "smart gun" that was 100% effective.

Maybe they could make a "smart gun" that couldn't fire on unarmed target instead?

Problem is he didn't think the problem through. You need to lock up terrorists, or you need to kill them, or you need to let them kill people. It doesn't make a whole lot of difference whether the prison is in Gitmo or Connecticut, the problem remains. The end result seems to be that Obama prefers to kill people rather than hold them in prison.

The funny thing in the whole matter is the repeated history. Clinton inherited a mess in Guantanamo from Bush Sr. He put a bunch of refugees there, and they went on a hunger strike against Clinton. So Bush's have a habit of leaving problems in Guantanamo for their Democratic successors.

worked with states to build resiliency and make our nation's emergency and disaster response capabilities more robust;

So..nothing again. At least, nothing quantifiable, which is pretty much the same thing

I wouldn't say that. Thanks to the DHS, billions have been dumped into police department budges across the nation which has been used to purchase military style equipment and counter-terrorism assault training. It has effectively turned police departments--even in little podunk towns--into paramilitaries with the culture conducive of an occupying military force rather than a civilian law enforcement agency.

No, right-wing news hosts are saying that.

Take off your partisan glasses and face reality:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/04/obamacare-rate-shock-how-big-is-it-does-it-matter.html

The only people who will pay more are companies who are only now required to provide insurance to their employees and therefore have a 100% increase in healthcare costs.

That's simply false. Rates are going up for many people.

Furthermore, the businesses that have a "100% increase in healthcare costs" will pass that on to consumers and employees, and will reduce staff to make ends meet.

Imagine if automakers got together and started measuring the gas mileage of new cars with a cool test of their own making—one in which the cars were rolling downhill with their engines idling. Suddenly you'd have some pretty amazing claims: Why, that three-ton SUV gets 300 miles per gallon! This subcompact gets 500! In tiny print at the bottom of the window sticker you'd find a disclaimer saying that, well, um, you know, your mileage may vary.

Crazy, right? Yet that's more or less what's happening with laptop computers and their battery lives. Right now, I'm looking at a Best Buy flier touting a $599 Dell laptop that gets "up to 5 hours and 40 minutes of battery life." Down in the fine print comes a disclaimer explaining that "battery life will vary" based on a bunch of factors. Translation: you ain't gonna get five hours and 40 minutes, bub. Not ever. Not even close.

From a 2009 article excoriating the practice.

A computer that can function for ten hours is quite useful, but a twenty-five hour battery life is only marginally more so.

Nobody committed fraud by hiding material facts.

Actually, that is exactly the stated problem; though, not surprisingly, Facebook denies any such thing. Reports came to light that information was selectively released in the days before the IPO and that the IPO was inappropriately priced based on that information.

Oh, it's more than that. The IRS is the key enforcer for the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

Your Next IRS Political Audit - The tax agency is getting vast new power in health care
The IRS Is Accessing Your Health Records. You Trust Them?

The US Government needs to get the problems at that agency fixed, now. Between this and the suppression of political groups going on, this is intollerable and undemocratic. What did Franklin say? A Republic, if you can keep it?

The IRS’s Curious Immunity - It’s worse than the PATRIOT Act.

against the free market , guess who's going to win this one?

http://www.stateintegrity.org/north_carolina

http://clclt.com/theclog/archives/2010/05/13/nc-more-corrupt-than-even-sc-and-louisiana

http://www.thedailybeast.com/galleries/2010/05/09/the-most-corrupt-states.html#slide5

No... it's not that the multimillionaires who own auto dealerships can't stand a new entrant with a novel product that makes their look expensive, dirty and lame. It's that they're worried about the integrity of the market place.

Depression meds work no better than placebo.

Since they don't cite which study they are talking about, I can't begin to pick apart it's actual problems. In 2010, there was a study (damned if Scholar isn't finding it right now) about SSRI treatment of 'mild to moderate depression'. It showed, and was widely quoted at the time, that placebos were as effective as SSRI and tricyclics. Sure, sounds damning, except that the definition of 'mild depression' is as vague as the rest of your post makes it sound.

Severe depression, on the other hand, is not vague and "I'm feeling run down". It's "I can't get out of bed, and a general practitioner has ruled out other issues, and I just want to die so can someone hand me that gun because I don't feel like getting up to get it." Yes, JAMA published research has shown that placebos need to be given in studies to see that antidepressants are actually working. Other studies show that, in meta-analysis, TCAs and SSRIs do work; though by narrow margins. And if the article in 2010 was the Kirsch one, you can read the abstract here on what the data says when corrected for what the patients reported or doctor measured (i can't read the article from here) their depression symptoms to be.

In total, you remain wrong in thinking that the statement of "the use of the scientific method in psychology is crap" has any merit. Reading a pop-psy article of course skims over the actual details and avoids bringing up what the statistical values were; that would confuse readers who want it condensed into bite sized bits to throw around. But for gods sake, don't cite wiki in an article complaining about the scientific method.

Mental health is a large subject, let's take a smaller slice for discussion: depression.

Depression meds work no better than placebo. Depression meds have lots of unpleasant side-effects, so being treated for depression is - on average - worse than going undiagnosed.

Depression is a symptom of many diseases - at least 18 of them commonplace. Many cases of depression are the result of 1) underactive thyroid (40% by one accounting), 2) Low levels of vitamin D, and 3) sleep apnea.

And yet, the symptom is treated as a disease in and of itself. Prescription meds which do more harm than good are commonly prescribed under the flimsiest of circumstances:

Patient: "doctor, I feel tired and run down"

Doctor: "It sounds like depression. Try this and see if it goes away".

After all is said and done, a casual reading of the research would suggest that the scientific method used in psychology research is crap. That's a strong statement, but not completely without merit.

Psychiatrists need to stop worrying about publishing the next trivial follow-on paper, and need to stop theorizing by making up stories. Get your evidence first, make theories to explain the evidence, and then throw out theories which have no testable predictions.

Go back to basics, and stop making money from giving people false hope through increased suffering.

(Grrr! A close friend got chewed up and spit out by the medical profession because of depression.)

There need to be t-shirts printed with this picture of Che instead of the typical one used.

Exposing the Real Che Guevara: And the Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him

Sounding a little too much like the 9-11 era all over again (which was punctuated by the anthrax mailings) just on a much smaller scale, overall. Though I think it's likely to be totally domestic this time (including the "main event"; in this case, the Boston marathon).

I wouldn't bet on that.

Al Qaeda recently pushed the use of pressure-cooker bombs.

And Al-Qaeda Propagandist Called for Attacks on Sports Events

The App Store itself has been an enormous cash cow for developers, large and small alike.

Let's test that theory. First up, who's making the big bucks? corporations. In fact, over half make Less than $3,000. There are other stories showing the lack of millionaires pouring out of Apple's "enormous cash cow" as you put it. I mean, besides Apple.

Apple's financial statements tell you exactly how much profit they make on the store (hint: it's extremely low, but it is above zero), and if you think they're lying about that as has been often suggested then file a complaint over fraudulent financial reporting - it's a very serious crime.

And as we all know, fraudulent financial reporting, because it's such a serious crime, doesn't happen very often. Like Enron, the subprime mortgage crisis, the "too big to fail" financial institutions, that debacle with Lloyds of London, and oh the list goes on. There isn't a week that goes by where fraudulent financial reporting doesn't make the news.

I'd be interested to see how you justify Apple making "the majority of any profit to be had" with some actual numbers, or if it's just more rampant, ill-informed Apple bashing as usual.

As opposed to blind fan-boy support? Well, regardless of your religious preferences, let's look at a similar business model and then discuss it: record companies. They also have made their profit by acting as middlemen in the distribution of apps. Essentially, the same business model Apple uses, except the percentages are different. Apple doesn't offer marketing support to its customers, whereas the record labels do. That's where a lot of that difference goes; And here's the thing... if you ever want your app to succeed, you're going to have to do more than just code it up and submit it. You'll need to market it. And marketing, my friend, is not cheap. There's also hidden startup fees. For example, did you know that Apple charges $99 a year to app developers for an 'iTunes connect account'? Now, when most app developers have made less than $3,000 for their entire portfolio, that "30%" starts looking more like "33%"... and when you add in marketing and advertising costs to get an "app of the day" or whatever, push that number higher. How much? Well, that's up to Apple. It's a "per customer" sale.

Now that we've discussed how many different ways you're screwed as a developer, let's look at the overhead costs for Apple: App approval. Distribution infrastructure. So basically, you hire a couple dozen people to evaluate apps and you need to rent space in a data center. For an $8 billion dollar a year service, I'm guessing this amounts to... uhh... dick.

So there you have it: Apple's making money hand over fist, and the developers... well... not so much. Did you really expect a different conclusion? That Apple is somehow different from every other publicly-traded company on the Earth? They have the largest market capitalization of any country on Earth. They didn't get there by being generous.

It would seem that scientific publishing in the current model is on the way out. Let's look at some of the problems.

Tenure and status are influenced [highly] on publication. Thus, there is an incentive to publish trivial results, to publish results using shaky statistical reasoning, and to publish erroneous and fraudulent results. (Example)

Because of the emphasis on "quantity" instead of "quality", few results are independently verified. (Example)

Journals demand that scientists turn over the rights of publication in order to get published. The journals, in turn, charge outrageous fees to view the work - so high, that most of the work is inaccessible to the general public. (Example)

The fees are growing so large that smaller universities can no longer afford journal subscriptions. (Example)

The journals do not pay for peer review, or editing, or (in the modern age) even printing and binding. So far as anyone can tell, they are rent-seekers; they provide no services of note to the scientists, their readers, or the community in general. (Example)

It is entirely possible to masquerade as a scientific journal. In fact, journal quality is a spectrum that contains completely bogus, slightly spurious, mostly useful, and high quality. Being published by a notable company such as Elsevier is no guarantee of quality. (Example)

There is enormous monetary value in published papers which validate the particular positions or opinions. (Example)

These are just off the top of my head. I'm sure people can find other problems with the current system. Sadly, I can't think of any way to fix the current system. It has so many inherent problems that we should probably transition to a different model, but I don't know what should be.

I do not have large batteries that will need to be recycled or tossed into a landfill next year.

This idea that hybrid batteries need to be replaced every year is a thoroughly debunked urban legend. I drove to the office this morning in a Ford Escape Hybrid that has 70,000 miles and is 5 years overdue for a battery replacement, by your count.

And out of curiosity, what's wrong with recycling a battery?

Three,four or six months is not a lengthy jail sentence.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/06/12/mark-regnerus-s-gay-parenting-study-starts-a-political-war.html

Or maybe it is. Depends on which "survey" you view.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/06/12/mark-regnerus-s-gay-parenting-study-starts-a-political-war.html

Of course, you're free to disagree.

The critics think that Congress deserves a lot of blame for not even trying to hold presidents accountable for that.

It hasn't been repeated as far as I know so the results haven't been verfied.

I'm pretty sure there have been additional studies since then.

Many related to health issues other than cancer. A majority of the double blind, human studies seem to show positive effects.

No, not even the prosecutors thought that. Prosecutors told the defense that if it went to trial and he was found guilty on all counts he would be looking at 7 years.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/15/aaron-swartz-s-unbending-prosecutors-insisted-on-prison-time.html

Peters says the prosecution tried to further pressure him by saying the judge was pro-government and a tough sentencer. It was suggested that Swartz stood to get seven years if he lost at trial. Peters felt that any prison time at all would be excessive.

The problem is politics of financing the spending.

Even with unnecessary wars and with serious economic downturn public debt would be in good shape (look at the graph) without Bush tax cuts.

There are some problems that must be fixed in long term but it has more to do with emulating other countries, than just cutting spending. We need to just emulate others and fix this sillyness.

We can fix public budged easily with just small increase to the taxes.

The problem is not spending. The problem is politics of financing it.

Public debt would be in good shape if Bush tax cuts would have not been implemented. See the graph in this page. And Contrary to "Entitlement Society" Rhetoric, Over Nine-Tenths of Entitlement Benefits Go to Elderly, Disabled, or Working Households

Unnecessary wars and overblown and ineffective internal security apparatus are expensive, but surprisingly not even they could not cause fiscal crisis. (Unfortunately) America is so rich that it has money to blow into wars and still go on. What we should do is to fix healthcare. It would not be even hard; Just look at what others are doing and do the same. This is just absurd.

Just increase taxes and cut war spending and America is fine: 2013 United States federal budget / Total revenues and spending.. This crisis is fundamentally just political. This problem is fundamentally caused by GOP and it's lost coherence. John Boehner has no authority to negotiate with Obama, nobody in GOP has any authority to negotiate.

A pretty good article on the subject... http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2006/01/29/the-trouble-with-boys.html

I think I'd start with Defense spending, which could easily be cut in half, and we'd still have by far the largest military on the planet.

I'd be completely okay with this. But my guess would be the person I replied to would not.

So which of the major spending by the government are you ready to do away with? Defense spending, Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid?

I think I'd start with Defense spending, which could easily be cut in half, and we'd still have by far the largest military on the planet.

Nonsense

Your nonsense. All of your examples are from before the end of WWII, before the fourth Geneva conventions, and some territory disputes from long gone empires (Prussia and Ottomans). Not one apples-to-apples modern comparison of Israel's 1967 land grab, following a war it started with a sneak attack on Egypt.

The USA would have to give back a large chunk of territory to Mexico.

And if this were the year 1912 (64 years past the concession), you'd have a great point. But we're a hundred years past that point, so you don't. Whereas there are still Palestinians who have keys to the houses they were forced out of in 1948 (64 years ago), much less 1967 (45 years).

Acquisition of territory by force has happened all through history, is continuing to happen, and will continue to happen for the forseeable future. The supposed illegitimacy of this practice is used as a tool to demonize Israel, but it's completely ignored when anyone else does it.

Demonize Israel? Bitch please. Everyone knows that America was built on apartheid and land theft of the native population. Some of us even know that this happened over a hundred years ago - as opposed to Israel's apartheid and land theft, which is happening right now.

What's the alternative? If Israel evacuated the West Bank today, it would have rockets landing in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem tomorrow.

Drivel. The two recent rocket barrages - first in 2008 and the second in 2012 - followed a cease fire violated by Israel and the Israeli assassination of the Hamas official who was....busy trying to negotiate a cease fire.

The best Israel can do is keep a lid on the violence and make sure it only proceeds at a low-level.

Snort. You say that like you're from some alternate universe where Israel isn't and always has been the primary, secondary, and tertiary aggressor:

For example, in 2011, the projectiles fired by the Israeli military into Gaza have been responsible for the death of 108 Palestinians, of which 15 where women or children, and the injury of 468 Palestinians, of which 143 where women or children. The methods by which these causalities were inflicted by Israeli projectiles breaks down as follows: 57 percent, or 310, were caused by Israeli aircraft missile fire; 28 percent, or 150, where from Israeli live ammunition; 11 percent, or 59, were from Israeli tank shells; while another 3 percent, or 18, were from Israeli mortar fire.

Through September 2012, Israeli weaponry caused 55 Palestinian deaths and 257 injuries. Among these 312 casualties, 61, or roughly 20 percent, were children and 28 were female. 209 of these casualties came as a result of Israeli Air Force missiles, 69 from live ammunition fire, and 18 from tank shells. It is important to note that these figures do not represent a totality of Israeli projectiles fired into Gaza but rather only Israeli projectiles fired into Gaza which cause casualties. The total number of Israeli projectiles fired into Gaza is bound to be significantly larger.

Meanwhile,, you have a greater chance of being killed by a bus in Israel than by a qassam rocket. No, not just car accidents, but car accidents involving buses. Even the IDF admits that "Qassams are more a psychological than physical threat".

Eventually, it may find a real peace partner in the Palestinians.

Israel has no interest in peace, it has an interest in solidifying it's control over it's acquired territory and waiting out the clock. If they delay and deny p

I forget more about the computer revolution every time I sneeze than Krugman will ever know. It's just beginning. Live 10 more years and a computer will drive you anywhere in North America and hump you on the way. We're about to wipe out 'higher' education as we've known it for centuries. Piers Morgan may not get voted off the island via Whitehouse petition but the fact that were having a global debate with Internet petitions to our respective governments isn't funny. We're still puttering along with a couple megabits of capacity in most of the Western world. Gibibit+ will enable use cases we haven't even suspected yet. The second or third next atavist-stan we get ourselves mired in will be fought in-part with armed autonomous bipedal robots. Media is being fundamentally changed on a daily basis. The interval between now and when Krugman's paper goes Newsweek and becomes a glorified blog is probably a lot shorter than the remainder of Krugman's career as a columnist.

Krugman needs to stick to his welfare state statism.

The main problem with 3D in my opinion is that it tends to be dim compared to 2D movies. So scenes that are already murky are even murkier, sometimes making it difficult to tell what is going on. I remember the Alice in Wonderland 3D movie being particularly bad for that, but even in the Hobbit there were a few scenes, such as the troll encounter, where I was unable to get my bearings at times. Roger Ebert has famously complained about this, and other aspects of the 3D experience, more than once.

But notwithstanding the occasional dimness, and Ebert's negative opinion, I generally enjoy 3D movies. I don't understand, though, with regular LCD TV's coming down so much in price, why it is almost impossible to get an inexpensive 3D television, say a 32" model for $459 or so. My feeling is that it would be easier for 3D to gain a foothold in the household if it started off in the kid's room and then once a few 3D blu-rays are purchased, people would be more inclined to maximize their experience with a deluxe 55" 240Mhz "smart" model with all the bells and whistles.

He can't definitely say "I'm not wasting federal resources and money on that shit" because it's still officially illegal at the federal level, and the President is constitutionally bound to follow the laws established by Congress.

Sure he can. He's not saying it because he had found it beneficial to occasionally ramp up raids in CA before and may do so again (for whatever reason).

If he can use signing statements to promise to ignore the law, then he can say anything. (from the article linked):

The signing statement essentially declares Obamaâ(TM)s intention to ignore requirements in the law, including restrictions on data transfers to Russia, new authorities to detain suspected members of al Qaeda, and sanctions against the central bank of Iran.

You should read conservative commentator David Frum on that.

I think you mean T+3 hours. T-3 hours indicates the future.

That being said - at what point is it okay to talk politics? 12 hours after someone shot someone else? 24 hours? Three days? A week? A month? A year? A decade?

Because, believe it or not, the US has seen no less than 17 mass shootings this year, including this one. That's roughly once every 21 days, so if you want people to wait more than a month to discuss politics, then that will never happen. But the first one on that list is from July, so that's 17 shootings in six months, so closer to once every 11 days.

Even worse than that - in the US there are 87 gun deaths a day. That's more than once every 20 minutes on average - so again, if we have to wait more than 15 minutes before talking politics, then that can never happen either.

What you may want to wonder, is why a country like Switzerland, where every household is legally required to have a rifle, has less than one fifth the amount of shooting homicides per capita (0.58/100,000) of the US (2.98).

And if you weren't so blindly upset, you would instead look at the facts freely available to you, and point out that per capita/A, the US (2.98) is in the same "boat" as France (3.00) and Austria (2.94), better off than Finland (3.64), but much worse off than Canada (0.76).

But back to my original point - how long SHOULD you wait before talking gun policy? And does the distance to a crime matter? Does the amount of news coverage it gets matter?

You bitching about it being "too soon" isn't helpful. Tell us when, exactly, it is okay to talk about gun policy, without stepping on your toes.

Don't believe it? Neither did I, but the numbers don't lie: Costco's profits for last year and their revenue from membership fees were about the same amount of money. Quoting from the article:

Their annual membership fee revenue exceeds their net profit--which is to say that the actual business of selling stuff is operating at a loss. They're charging you an annual fee to buy stuff at or near cost. That's a model that works really well with their basically affluent customer base, and not incidentally, a model that allows you to worry a bit less about your cost of sales.

and if you ask the palestinians they'll say that they're responding to aggressive or oppressive acts by the israelis. And on it goes back and forwards in time in a never ending cycle of vengeance. Is it any wonder the rest of us are frankly weary of it. The idea of putting an 'iron dome' over *both* sides is just a wish for a way to break the cycle.

As people have observed before, the palestinians would have got their state 20 years ago if they were prepared to use nonviolence to do it. Where was it; ah:

First and foremost, if they'd been a nonviolent movement, they'd have had their state 20 years ago. No understanding at all of either the Jewish or the American conscience, which resists "resistance" at all costs but melts at the first sight of a person standing before a tank holding a rose.

link

It's the lesson Gandhi taught pretty damn effectively, I thought. Martin Luther King too. But they won't do it. And don't say it's for racial reasons, as they *did* it in Egypt, and Tunisia. In fact sometimes I wonder that the actions of Hamas are so idiotically contrary to the interests of its people that I wonder if their leadership has been infiltrated by Mossad or something...

Statelessness in itself abridges human rights. There's no way to travel legally without a passport, nor do you have any standing in courts to redress your grievances.

Jews many times were objected to this kind of insidious degradation that essentially denies your personhood. All the more saddening to see Israel keep Palestinians in this graceless statelessness for so many decades.

To argue that the Palestinians have a state at this point is extremely disingenuous. They have no sovereignty about trade and allegiances. Are not allowed to keep a military, and their administrations are not recognized as national governments.

Gaza's kids are severely malnourished in this small area that is overcrowded with 1.7 millions. No chance that the land can support the entire population (even fishing is prohibited). Yet, given how populous and unprotected the area is, the IDF is essentially shooting fish in a barrel.

The suspicious timing of the IDF assassination attack on the Hamas leader that kicked off the recent fighting does not help.

It leaves the lingering impression that we are witnessing a most cynical wag the dog maneuver. Nothing like a war to distract the people from their economic hardship this close to an election. It'll be rather depressing if the leaders of Israel were indeed betraying their own people in this fashion.

In about 30 seconds with Google, I found:
- an entire book on the subject
- Greenpeace, for whatever their word is worth, claiming that the Koch brothers have donated over $61 million to the cause of denying global warming.
- a 2007 article from Newsweek about it.

I could keep going, but the point is that this is a demonstrably incorrect counterargument (or the pro-global warming folks have some sort of massive conspiracy that they've been able to keep going for a couple of decades).

Do you mean the TARP program? The same one that earned the government $19.6 billion more than they put into it? Seems like a good investment to me, it both rescued the economy and turned a profit.

There is a reason both Obama and Romney brought up Cleveland Clinic in a debate, they bill as things should be. Doctors work for the hospital, no separate bills for each doctor, each test... the cost for doing something is a base rate that handles everything involved. No surprise bills showing up months after the fact, no extra referals within the system because they're paid the same regardless of how many tests are done. Not surprising there are fewer tests and higher results as profit motivation isn't the major goal. One study shows they do things 50% cheaper.

Sure things are still damn expensive and I don't know how the cost comparison is to other countries. I do know from personal experience that this sort of billing is drastically easier than any other hospital I've ever dealt with. Sad we have just Mayo and Cleveland doing this in the whole country. A quick google points out the highlights better than me http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/11/26/the-hospital-that-could-cure-health-care.html

Forget swallowing or stuffing the c4. The new fear is surgical insertion of explosives. Body bombs. Check out these links:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/05/13/al-qaeda-s-body-bombs-al-asiri-s-next-threat.html

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/officials-fear-terrorists-body-bombs-us-bound-planes/story?id=16245827

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18161870

Daily Beast blogger Megan McArdle recommends the Thermomix. If money is no object, it is the ultra-handy kitchen appliance. She recently answered the question, What's the Most Indispensable Kitchen Machine? on her blog. You might consider asking her for her opinion on kitchen appliances. As noted in the second link, she's looking for blogging subjects. This kind of question seems right up her alley.

In regards to microwaves (the kitchen appliance that I personally use frequently), I find them easiest to use if they have good ways of selecting times from one to six minutes and the ability to add time in thirty second increments.

550 goddamn votes in Florida and you'd see what difference not electing Bush the Lesser would have made, kemosabe.

Would we? Here are a couple of views:

The History of the U.S. – If Al Gore Became President
If Al Gore Had Won in 2000

Here are a few of mine:

Al Qaida was attacking United States embassies and the Cole under the Clinton administration.
It seems pretty certain that 9/11 would still have happened.
If 9/11 happens, it's pretty certain a global war against Al Qaida follows, and very likely war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Invasion? Probably.

Economic crashes? Of course. The internet-centric business meltdown is virtually certain to have occurred, and the housing bubble not much less so. The internet-centric business meltdown was the result of trends started in the Clinton administration. The actual wrong-doing for Enron occurred under the Clinton administration. The housing bubble was a result of policies with broad bi-partisan support.

Iraq? That is more of a wildcard. The US policy calling for regime change in Iraq was set under the Clinton administration. It is virtually certain that there would have been conflicts with Iraq, including armed action. Would it have lead to invasion and occupation of Iraq? Somewhere along the line of less likely to no. There almost certainly would have been bombings though, probably a lot more of them to compensate for the lack of ground forces. Saddams army in 2003 was strong enough to hold Iraq against rebellion that wasn't aided externally. It seems pretty certain that either Saddam or one of his sons would still be in power. They might even have thrown off sanctions due to the "Oil for Food" program bribes and the loss of interest in the world community in containing him. Saddam with no sanctions means a Saddam rearming and continuing to support terrorism (no, not Al Qaida). He might ever do it with a vengence. Would Iraqis be better off? Very unlikely. Saddam used the food money to build palaces and buy weapons while the infrastructure crumbled, and people perished. That is from simple neglect. Saddam's government filled Iraq with large numbers of mass graves. Had Saddam's regime not been overthrown, the killing would have continued.

You may recall that Saddam had to restrain his sons, they were crueler than he was.

How Bad Was Saddam’s Son?

. . . Latif’s first lesson was to learn how to not react in disgust or become sick at Hussein regime cruelty. He was taken to a viewing room holding thousands of videos of torture sessions.

Saddam’s son had learned the same way. “Uday told me whenever he seemed weak or squeamish as a child his father would beat him with an iron bar and then force him to watch videos of prisoners being tortured.”

It worked. “Just wait until I become president,” Uday promised, “I’ll be crueler than my father ever was. You mark my words. You’ll yearn for the days of Saddam
Hussein.”

Now, read this carefully. If there is no US invasion of Iraq, there is not the same opportunity for an Al Qaida supported and led insurgency in Iraq that drew Al Qaida members from around the world to Iraq. That movement generated intelligence and provided opport

You wrote the God delusion. As if God doesn't exist because we can't prove it in a measureable way in the physical world. Since nobody has seen evolution in action, please explain why the God Delusion is any different than your own delusion that natural selection/whatever you are comfortable with is fact. It's just a theory too. It could turn out that so called evolution doesn't exist at all. It could very well be something else that changes an organism into something else. Cosmic ray, bad radiation covering from ozone, many other things.

I've also met some very strong evolution people who changed after a near death experience. A recent article of a Doctor that shows his experience can be found here - http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/10/07/proof-of-heaven-a-doctor-s-experience-with-the-afterlife.html . Read it carefully. You may be too smart for your own good Mr. Dawkins.

Taxi Commissions everywhere don't like Uber. In DC recently, Uber has had to defend its practices because the DC Taxi Commission who is out to get rid of them. Why? You have to get a license to operate in DC and that means revenue for them.

So that's just in DC, where most of the "regulated" cabs are broken down piles of crap that usually don't have A/C in the summer and have tons of other issues.

Now, New York? well New York allows a monopoly on hired car services whether it be hired cars (limos) or Taxis. New York says it's to "regulate" theses business so they don't overcharge and so that the streets are not overrun by cabs, of course that would mean competition and drive down prices. What the city really wants to do is keep getting all those fees and regulations to keep coming at you. Let's see you apply, have to take a test then 80 hours of training then a medical test, then pee in a cup. All of that generates jobs and it's considered necessary to be allowed to drive in a New York Taxi with a hack license. Now if you want to own your own cab, that's more fun. If you want a medallion be prepared to pony up big time and all it does is make cab fares higher and squeeze the guy who's trying to make a living. Try a million dollars for a medallion. What that does is create a monopoly on service and New York likes that...

Oh and you have to have a medallion if you want to be able to pick up passengers in response to a street hail. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxicabs_of_New_York_City

So, Uber comes along and wants to shake things up and make it easier for suppliers and consumers to link up? Do you think New York is going to allow this when it's so lucrative and bureaucratic all at the same time? Not in this life pal.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/09/30/husain-haqqani-muslim-rage-is-about-politics-not-religion.html

Can't be racist since the author is a Muslim.

The basic message is simple: The Islamic powers that be see the decline of the Islamic world and instead of catching up by modernizing their world, they seek to keep what control they can by creating theocracies, where the rule is to not question those in charge. It keeps the population dumb and controllable but also backward and unable to matter in the real world.

A perfect example was shown with Olympics. Saudia Arabia had fielded a female Judoka but insisted she would be allowed to wear a headscarf. Probably the first thing you picture when thinking of Judo is the standard uniform, which has no head covering. It never had, wasn't needed to appease any country ever before. But Saudia Arabia needed to be appeased because else they might withdraw. So the woman was allowed to disregard safety, disregard tradition and wear a piece of kit nobody else was allowed to wear...

AND LOST

Immidiatly, she didn't stand a chance! Not even the slightest. She was the worsed to ever take part in the modern olympics.

She wasn't put into her countries team to win or even to compete, she was put in to be harmless enough to not upset Saudi Arabians while at the same time playing the "the world hates islam" card by hoping she would be barred because of the headscarf. She wasn't and it became clear thar SA biggotted nature simply meant they had no women worthy of competition.

It is easier to shout loudly "rah rah us" and blame everything on them, then to risk modernizing your country and have the people wonder why this old men are in charge. England works that way, "trust us the 1% conservatives, we will fix your country because you are great, trust us". The USA loves its rousing "We are #1" waving made in China banners.

And around the world, were the powers that be have made a mess of things, religion is a good card to rally your troops around the leaders in support rather then looking for a handy rope.

Why do you think backwater North-ireland had religious strife? Because it was managed so well economically? Why do you think the orthodox church is back in power in Russia, because the last time they were in charge, they did so well economically?

No, but in economic hard times when people can't improve themselves or society, they become susceptible to religious control telling them they are right and everyone else is wrong.

Because keeping the people stupid is a good way to control people, but when times are hard, people also prefer to be kept stupid. Easy answers are so much easier.

Some people do exactly that

Ask Osama about his experience in international affairs.

Killing Bin Laden was indeed a military and intelligence coup, but in his success he is indebted to others. (He didn't build that, at least not alone.)

To Get Bin Laden, Obama Relied on Policies He Decried - By Michael Barone
The president deserves credit—but so does his predecessor.

For one thing, it apparently would not have happened without those infamous enhanced interrogation techniques — “torture,” according to critics of the Bush administration.

The enhanced interrogation techniques reportedly led to identification of the courier who eventually led our forces to bin Laden’s hiding place. Critics of waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques assured us that “torture” could not produce reliable information.

Ahh. Reported by whom? Of course former members of the Bush administration. There is no single evidence that Osama was found based on "enhanced interrogation techniques", we'll have to take the torturer's words for it.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/03/osama-bin-laden-was-not-caught-because-of-torture-but-in-spite-of-it.html