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No: https://www.theguardian.com/te...

Those seven countries do not have infrastructure such that they can provide documentation to Customs/BP/DHS/State so background checks or vetting can occur. It's hard to get someone's police record from the "government" of Somalia so you can see whether or not they're a criminal.

Many people from these countries have been vetted before and so far it's worked, that is, there's no history of peole coming in from these regions committing acts of terror in the US. Obviousuly the vetting is hard and takes time, but that's not a good reason for an across the board ban, as opbviously cases exist in which vetting can (and has) be successfully done.

Saudi Arabia has a functioning government

They're a totalitarian theocracy. They have a 'functioning government' in the same sense North-Korea has a 'functioning government'.

Or would you like Saudi Arabia added to the list because they're muslim?

No, I don't think banning entire countries is a good strategy to begin with. I support giving refuge to anyone fleeing the totalitarian government of SA just as I support giving refuge to those fleeing isis. My point was an is that Saudis are the primary source of monetary and ideological suport for ISIS. They share a good deal of values, as SA is also a strict islamic theocracy.

If the goal is to combat radical islam, then doing so without putting pressure on the Saudi government to stop aiding extremists groups and funneling them money is a useless effort.

Also, trusting the Saudi officials is also not likely a safe strategy. The declassified 28 pages of the 911 report make it seem pretty likely that Saudi intelligence is lackluster at best, and in league with the hijackers at worst.

Perhaps most intriguingly, the 28 pages reveal that Osama Basnan, whom the documents describe as a supporter of two of the 9/11 hijackers in California, received a cheque from Prince Bandar, the former Saudi ambassador to the US.

“On at least one occasion, Bassnan received a check directly from Prince Bandar’s account,” it says. “According to the FBI, on May 14, 1998, Bassnan cashed a check from Bandar in the amount of $15,000. Bassnan’s wife also received at least one check directly from Bandar.”

Basnan lived across the street from two of the hijackers – Khalid al-Midhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi – in San Diego and told an FBI asset that he had helped them, according to the document. Basnan was allegedly a supporter of al-Qaida mastermind Osama bin Laden and spoke of him “as if he were a god”.

Obviously the official conclusion of the FBI is still that SA was not complicit in the attacks, because admitting that while continuing to hold them as a military ally would be impossible.

Whatever the case is, either the Saudi officials are so incompetent in their monitoring and record collecting that they missed their own former ambassador wiring money to an extremist. Or they did not miss that and simply let it slip. Anyway, in this light, were I american I would be heavily skeptical of any 'vetting' or other such intel provided by Saudi officials and their 'working' government, which shares more of its core values with ISIS than it does with western democracies.

It's impossible to simultaneously say that ISIS is evil but there's nothing wrong with Saudi-Arabia, and this is the key cognitive dissonance that american politicians, officials and the public will have to face if you want to address the issue of militant Islam without seeming totally clueless.

It's hard to have a peaceful revolution, because there's no non-facist party. Trump is nutty, but just look at the left here - we have a power and attention hungry man, who changed into a woman, so he could complain that women were horribly oppressed and harrassed and things are so hard - as a woman, and things would be better if women were treated like men are. I'll try to lay this out. - He's a man - Chooses to become a woman - Once a woman - Spends all his/her time complaining that women are "oppressed" and harrassed and mistreated and the only reason he/she has problem is because they're a woman - It's been widely showed and rumored that this person created accounts to harrass themselves so they could continue playing the victim This person is nuts. They make Trump look sane and safe in comparison. You know how pissed some people are that Trump banned immigrants from certain countries? In Canada they something similar, they just banned single males: https://www.theguardian.com/wo... I see no difference in philosophy between these 2 kinds of facists.

Dropping widely-used products is the other big issue. This is out of date, but still true:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/mar/22/google-keep-services-closed

Which shows a mean time of 1,459 days before Google kills a product.

Actually Daesh is former al-qaeda in iraq. They doubled down on the crazy and brought in unemployed iraqi military from baathist regime.

- Green-card holders included in ban.
- Muslim travellers turned away from US after Donald Trump's ban as Google 'recalls overseas staff'.
- President Trump's Muslim ban excludes countries linked to his sprawling business empire.
- Donald Trump bans citizens of seven Muslim majority countries as visa-holding travellers are turned away from US borders.
- In Twitter, #muslimban has been quite active during the whole day (although its worldwide trend status is a bit unstable).

Without coming into the assessment of all this (including media coverage), my point is that things can happen very quickly and with the sole participation of Trump.

I have already written a lot (other comments in this thread) and think that my position is very clear. So, I hope that you will not mind me stopping the chat here.

This was embarrassing.

Yes, an embarrassing set of hysteria from the right wing, who forgot the truth on their way to their latest outrage.

Tell us about the curtains, the birth certificate and the training exercise.

The Mexican president canceling a meeting in a huff? Not so much.

Oh oh, oh, ooloorie, you forgot, Trump said it was "mutual" so you are passing the wrong story.

Of course, now he has to meet with another populist radical, who wants to advance her own agenda over the wishes of the actual elected government which only now is she spinning as what she intended to do all along.

I guess we can start calling it AirStrip One.

One study predicts that the Persian Gulf will be uninhabitable due to increase temperatures by 2100. The people living there will have to move to cooler areas, wear environmental suits or die off.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/10/27/world/persian-gulf-heat-climate-change/index.html

Silicon Valley will be under four feet of water by 2100, as it was built on a flood plain. No one yet is talking about building miles of levees to keep the water at bay.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/22/silicon-valley-sea-level-rise-google-facebook-flood-risk

It wasn't Social Justice Warriors that tried to remove slavery from American history books. https://www.theguardian.com/ed...

Uh no. This is the bullshit that social justice has created. People are screaming "SJW" because social justice warriors are the ones pushing the bullshit claiming that kimono's are cultural appropriation. Or wearing Halloween costumes are racist/sexist/misogyny or some other bullshit. They're the ones lining up to try and ban people from making speeches, and saying that people who don't follow the group think need to be banned. You know, like Peter Tatchell or Germaine Greer. You are authoritarians, you are engaging in authoritarian behavior. You think you're the good guys and you're not. You're everything you claim to fight.

As the CNN megapixel graphic showed, the Trump crowd was larger than reported. This seems a silly thing to fight over, since Trump's supporters are less likely to attend an inauguration than a rally anyway.

Really, though, why does this matter at all? Hint: it doesn't. The fuss over this was generated to take some attention away from the rally on the next day. This administration will seek to control journalists by distracting them and diluting their ability to ask the tough questions.

Their campaign used concepts from books like Trust Me, I'm Lying to great success; why change now? The agenda appears to be a libertarian one - elites have been put in charge of departments they have a direct interest in destroying. The future is probably closer to this kind of crazy. We live in hope they do all fuck off and leave non-sociopathic humans alone.

Yes Boss.

Just business as usual, Boss.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/may/25/exxonmobil-climate-change-scientists-congress-george-w-bush

http://www.cfr.org/climate-change/political-interference-climate-change-science-under-bush-administration-december-2007/p15079

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=17926941

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/bush-appointee-at-nasa-resigns-over-censorship-6109603.html

Lynmouth says hi!

or more like "blub blub"

As they are clowns, they have a clown car, there are probably about 20 of them in the car, total IQ of about 1/2 a person. Actually that's a lie, Boris is quite bright and, in my opinion, sociopathic: https://www.theguardian.com/co... see last few paragraphs, an evil clown therefore. Trump, don't know, but I fear the worst.

Having read biographies on both, I would say Boris might be slightly sociopathic, but Trump is outright crazy.
Boris wants to give the public appearance of a clown, but Trump wants to appear so serious.
On the other hand, they're both New Yorkers, and have hair issues.

As they are clowns, they have a clown car, there are probably about 20 of them in the car, total IQ of about 1/2 a person.

Actually that's a lie, Boris is quite bright and, in my opinion, sociopathic: https://www.theguardian.com/co... see last few paragraphs, an evil clown therefore. Trump, don't know, but I fear the worst.

It created blurred vision in Washington and was implanted in the new press secretary so that the crowds he saw at the inauguration would look much bigger. The results are called "alternative vision".

http://thebulletin.org/rising-...

âoeThe most reliable estimate of the cost of decommissioning [a nuclear power plant] is 10-15 percent of the construction cost, contrary to some highly inflated estimates ... Modern serious studies of the disposal problem indicate that satisfactory isolation is technologically feasible, even for the long term.â So wrote MIT nuclear engineering professor David Rose in the November 1985 issue of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

How misguided that view seems now, with the advantage of decades of experience. The Yankee Nuclear Power Station in Rowe, Massachusetts, took 15 years to decommissionâ"or five times longer than was needed to build it. And decommissioning the plantâ"constructed early in the 1960s for $39 millionâ"cost $608 million. The plantâ(TM)s spent fuel rods are still stored in a facility on-site, because there is no permanent disposal repository to put them in.

---

Look, it's late and I'm tired but I've had this exact conversation many many times. I'm not just "spewing" out random crap.

That plant was suppose to cost 6 million to decommission. Adjusting for inflation, it would have cost 39million (the same as it cost to build it but with inflated dollars so really just a nice coincidence). That's $560 million more than estimated and paid for in utility bills along the way.

---

https://www.theguardian.com/en...

The company wants to try out the idea for the first time on the northwest coast of England, at the notorious nuclear dumping ground at Sellafield, which holds the world's largest stock of civilian plutonium. At close to 120 tons, it stores more plutonium from reactors than the U.S. and Russia combined.

While most of the world's civilian plutonium waste is still trapped inside highly radioactive spent fuel, much of that British plutonium is in the form of plutonium dioxide powder. It has been extracted from spent fuel with the intention of using it to power an earlier generation of fast reactors that were never built. This makes it much more vulnerable to theft and use in nuclear weapons than plutonium still held inside spent fuel, as most of the U.S. stockpile is.

---

By 2025, Germany is to have no more than 45 percent renewable power. The U.S. should too.
It has a quarter of our population but total US GDP is 16.77 trillion dollars while germany is only 3.77 trillion dollars.
We can do this and almost permanently cap the price of coal and oil.

---

Really we are quibbling.

I think we both agree a smart mix of alternative energy, nuclear energy, and even coal makes sense for the near future (say 2045) and that increasing the percentage of alternative energy will reduce consumption and prices of fossil fuels.

I showed that breeder reactors produce plutonium dioxide which must be secured against terrorists and backed that up with the actual experience of a breeder reactor in England.
I also showed that decommissioning costs for nuclear plants are underestimated by over and order of magnitude.

Ah yes, how very typical for neonazi crybabies bemoaning themselves as victims even though they are the ones who get violent.

https://www.theguardian.com/co...

http://www.zeit.de/politik/deu...

Fuck you and your patron saint Breivik.

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

I don't believe you.

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

1. [citation needed]

2. Islam isn't a race.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. [citation needed]

2. argumentum ad nauseam

1. Refer to your own reply. So meta.

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

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

1. He's not.

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

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

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

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

Clinton believes in using American power to maintain American Hegemony

FTFY. Unless you'd care to explain how Honduras, Ukraine, Haiti, Iraq, Syria and Libya have been "improved".

Her Iraq war vote isn't really evidence of anything other than the fact

...that she's an incompetent warmonger. This is the same lady that lost sleep at night because her college was going to protest the Vietnam war. Hillary never saw a war she didn't like, and was gung-ho on ramping up to WWIII by enforcing a no-fly zone over Syria, when Russia is the only military that was invited by the Syrian government.

Russia are a lot more likely to try pushing into Eastern Europe as they did in Ukraine

You mean they didn't take it lying down when the U.S. overthrew the democratically elected government of Ukraine. If Russia had done the same to Mexico or Canada, you'd bet the Pentagon's response would have been a bit more muscular.

Iran and talking about scrapping the deal that eased relations and halted their Nuclear weapons program

They didn't have a nuclear weapons program as even Mossad can tell you. Of the U.S. and Iran, only one is in violation of the NPT - for ignoring the sections on disarmament.

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

I don't believe you.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. [citation needed]
2. argumentum ad nauseam

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

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

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

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

Why did they just study women?
It seems like anything that affects women gets attention, while society doesn't even value men.

While I'm not familiar with this particular study and can't explain why the researchers chose to focus on women exclusively, I'd like to call your attention to this exerpt from a Guardian article from 2015:

For several reasons, female subjects have historically been excluded from toxicology or biomedical research, says Tamarra James-Todd, an epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School. While progress has been made since 1993, when the National Institutes of Health mandated that women and minorities be included in any government-funded health research, there’s still a long way to go.

Indeed, this trend of including females in studies at all is relatively recent, and females are still underrepresented in study populations in general to this day. Please consider that your perception of an unreasonable focus on women when it comes to medical research seems at odds with the empirical data that we have.

It's £11.1M. That was released by Scotland Yard, who have the biggest cause to lie in the opposite direction because it's embarrasing for them.

Here is a guardian article.. basically, they don't want green energy. I have no idea why they give a shit. This is capitalism at work. Of course, energy sector is old energy, and they got plenty of lobbyists who know how to grease politician hands, maybe green energy hasn't figured how to do that?

* But commuting Manning's sentence is great or something, so leaking sensitive information that got people in Afghanistan killed? All good as long as it's politically damaging to nazi-Bush.

I am going to need a citation, wait found one. https://www.theguardian.com/wo...

I don't understand why heads of state don't assume they're being spied on.

By allies? You think there wouldn't be consequences if Greece was caught tapping Obama's Blackberry? This is hand waiving.

I assume all my countries allies are listening to POTUS's unencrypted phone, and all of congressmen's.

But if they do something about it, then we should ramp up for WWIII.

A fifty year old speech from MLK is apropos, just change "white moderate" to "liberal":

I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice..."

This is the line of thinking that leads people to be more outraged by whistleblowers than they are by the fact that their taxpayer dollars are supporting boy-fucking on military bases - a practice revealed by Wikileaks.

Given the past help? (12 July 2013)
Recall the PRISM slides and the years for each US brand?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Microsoft handed the NSA access to encrypted messages"
https://www.theguardian.com/wo...
If you want a secure OS find one. Use Microsoft for games and DirectX 12 support.
Let Microsoft enjoy the computer game feedback on Windows 10.
Do any real computing with a more secure OS.

They don't have to cheat to make lots of money.

Unless your name is Donald J. Trump, in which case your casino loses money:

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/0...

http://www.motherjones.com/pol...

https://www.theguardian.com/us...

What pills are you taking? The pharmaceutical industry, along with tobacco and alcohol industries, are the driving force behind marijuana's continuing illegality. https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/oct/22/recreational-marijuana-legalization-big-business

Delusionally a new president will change direction

Obama's mistake was in believing in restraint. He had it, so he believed others will too.
If there is one thing we can all agree on, Trump is not a man of restraint.

John Lewis just baited the guy in to attacking the last living speaker from MLK's March on Washington, during the MLK holiday. Even republicans have chastised Trump for that.

Indian restaurants are closing all over the UK because of a visa requirement that experienced chefs need a job offer of over £35k in order to get a visa.

https://www.theguardian.com/li...

In my opinion it is close to impossible to develop a good drone in San Francisco (or in the USA for that matter). There are so man useless regulations. It is practically impossible to fly.

The market leader, DJI, produces its vehicles in China.

Nearly 70,000 birds killed only in New York in attempt to clear safer path for planes https://www.theguardian.com/wo... , and birds fly all the time, not only couple of times on weekend. Birds also have no understanding comparable to a human pilot.

Yes, your link trumps mine. The Figaro article from July certainly says that, and there are other reports of the word "fire" from the voice recorder, so I guess they did recover data from it, and the Wikipedia article could use an update. The whole thing seems to be a bit short on official comment, this latest being hearsay from "a source from the investigation".

Baseload is one of those talking points which get repeated and repeated again, but no one actually enumerates the baseload. How much energy do we have to provide constantly at a minimum?

The Dutch Railways are now completely wind powered as of Jan 1 2017. Apparently they don't need baseload power plants.

I've yet to read about PF correction in a non-grid electrical setup. Not to mention 3 phase. I'd love to see that stuff.

The Dutch Railways are now completely wind powered as of Jan 1 2017. Apparently they don't need baseload power plants.

https://www.theguardian.com/en...

I already explained the "debunking" is both selective and silly and gave you the source to watch. The same "standard" isn't held for any of the facts in the report, which are dropping like flies. The fact that you want FISA warrants to look into 4chan erotic fanfics just makes this even more hilarious.

I mean, you haven't even caught on to half of my throwaway jokes yet...

I love that you do not provide any actual evidence here. Please note what qualifies as a evidence here. I want real docs, not anonymous rumors laundered through the press, so spare me the CNN, NYT, BuzzFeed, WaPo, etc. links and look at who they claim to have gotten it from and what they have to back it up. You've got what? Basically, this MI6 opposition researcher who sources absurd erotic fanfics while writing the DNC's "research"? The same anonymous fake agents whose tricks I took the piss out of both last week and in my last post?

I'll save you some time, it appears to start with this story by Louise Mensch, then laundered through Julian Borger at the Guardian, which ultimately claims there are "two separate sources with links to the counter-intelligence community." Why yes, I do love unverifiable info from anonymous people who are allegedly part of our most secret and least trustworthy court! That's practically the golden standard of proof these days! We can't provide you with our evidence, it's classified! But we can totally feed random nonsense to BuzzFeed, CNN, and the rest of the fake news.

The funnies part is that I thought they'd learned their lesson by now, but no, they just had to swallow that ridiculous BuzzFeed story about pissing on Obama's bed. Yes, it's really that absurd if you haven't seen it yet. It's on page 2, bullet #3:

However, there were other aspects to TRUMP's engageement with the Russian authorities. One of which had borne fruit for them was to exploit TRUMP's personal obsessions and sexual peversion in order to obtain suitable 'kompromat' (compromising material) on him. According to Source D, where s/he had been present, TRUMP's (peprverted) conduct in Moscow included hiring the presidential suite of the Ritz Carlton Hotel, where he knew President and Mrs OBAMA (whom he hated) had stayed on one of their official trips to Russia, and defiling the bed where they had slept by employing a number of prostitutes to perform 'golden showers' (urination) show in front of him. The hotel was known to be under FSB control with micropohones and concealed cameras in all the main rooms to record anything they wanted to.

Exercise for the reader: Next time you get anonymous crap, try looking into the journalist whose byline appears instead of pointing to the anonymous secret agents. Find other stories they've written. Look at patterns and "sources."

So, remember how the FISA court is essentially a rubberstamp for surveillance warrants?
As in they have only refused 0.03% of warrant requests?

Well, guess what warrant the FISA court did refuse?

The Guardian has learned that the FBI applied for a warrant from the foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court over the summer in order to monitor four members of the Trump team suspected of irregular contacts with Russian officials. The Fisa court turned down the application asking FBI counter-intelligence investigators to narrow its focus. According to one report, the FBI was finally granted a warrant in October, but that has not been confirmed, and it is not clear whether any warrant led to a full investigation.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/10/fbi-chief-given-dossier-by-john-mccain-alleging-secret-trump-russia-contacts

WTF?

So I am assuming by your post that you are Canadian, and from what I have read above, it is still pervasive in Canada that retailers will hide a few of an item in a low traffic area at a jacked up price for 30 days so they can then advertise a sale that is not really a discount from what they would actually sell it at. So the only difference from the US and Canada is that you are regularly suckered into paying average or more on a "sale" that is not really a discount from the actual price and you THINK you are protected, but in the end are still getting gamed regularly by retailers.

In the US we were smart enough to see how easy such a law could be manipulated and instead focused on fostering competition (as an earlier post cited, US Amazon lists new from multiple sellers/used from multiple sellers on top of the sold by Amazon direct price and it is trivial to check other retailers as well.) Competition allows savvy consumers to check prices at a few competing stores online (everyone I know does this on any purchase over around $50). Thus, one retailer can play the game of discounting from MSRP or from a higher price, but it is relatively easy to check another retailer and compare prices. Because of competition, and especially online where moving your purchase to a different source is 5 seconds of typing, retailers cannot afford to be un-competitive on pricing. The net result is lower prices all the time for all consumers in the US. Are there exceptions where this breaks down? Of course, but overall, I will take my system over yours any day, as it gives a better result in the real world and is much harder to circumvent by retailers looking to boost their bottom line.

People around the world like to bash on the US (with only 319 million people), but when shit hits their fan, they always come to us begging for help, and guess what, we always do (3x more humanitarian aid than the EU with 743 million people and China with 1,360 million didn't even make the top twenty). Yes we are the richest and most powerful (which was not an accident by they way, it was a combination of hard work and the best, most fair social and economic structure on the planet for 200+ continuous years), and you better pray to whatever god you worship it stays that way, because if China or Russia ever becomes the dominant superpower, be prepared to bend over and kiss your ass goodbye.

https://www.theguardian.com/ne...

I do knot know what GP believes or knows, but one would have to be have been living under a rock for the past one and a half years not to know that the use of defeat devices is very widespread in the industry. Some reports and articles easily found with your favourite search engine:

The emissions test defeat device problem in Europe is not about VW
Dieselgate At GM? Defeat Devices Claimed To Be Found In Opel Cars
Test of Fiat diesel model shows irregular emissions: Bild am Sonntag
Report on France’s Renault emissions probe omitted crucial details
French government ordered to hand over full details of Renault emissions study
PSA Group Raided by French Fraud Office in Emissions Probe
Nissan faces suit over alleged emission fraud
#Dieselgate continues: new cheating techniques
RDW emission test programme - Results of indicative tests for the presence of an unauthorised defeat device
VW, Daimler, Nissan, Mitsubishi, GM: Can We Finally Agree That Dieselgate Is An Industry Problem?
Revealed: nearly all new diesel cars exceed official pollution limits
Many car brands emit more pollution than Volkswagen, report finds

Defeat devices are hardly a recent phenomenon:
How Common Are EPA “Defeat Devices” In The Auto Industry?
Carmaker Cheating on Emissions Almost as Old as Pollution Tests

There are different ways to cheat, too:
`Shameful' Mitsubishi Fraud Risks Pushing Carmaker to Brink
This is the world now: Suzuki also admits to cheating on fuel-economy tests

It's not hard to find more. Pretty much every manufacturer cheats or has cheated in one way or another.

I do knot know what GP believes or knows, but one would have to be have been living under a rock for the past one and a half years not to know that the use of defeat devices is very widespread in the industry. Some reports and articles easily found with your favourite search engine:

The emissions test defeat device problem in Europe is not about VW
Dieselgate At GM? Defeat Devices Claimed To Be Found In Opel Cars
Test of Fiat diesel model shows irregular emissions: Bild am Sonntag
Report on France’s Renault emissions probe omitted crucial details
French government ordered to hand over full details of Renault emissions study
PSA Group Raided by French Fraud Office in Emissions Probe
Nissan faces suit over alleged emission fraud
#Dieselgate continues: new cheating techniques
RDW emission test programme - Results of indicative tests for the presence of an unauthorised defeat device
VW, Daimler, Nissan, Mitsubishi, GM: Can We Finally Agree That Dieselgate Is An Industry Problem?
Revealed: nearly all new diesel cars exceed official pollution limits
Many car brands emit more pollution than Volkswagen, report finds

Defeat devices are hardly a recent phenomenon:
How Common Are EPA “Defeat Devices” In The Auto Industry?
Carmaker Cheating on Emissions Almost as Old as Pollution Tests

There are different ways to cheat, too:
`Shameful' Mitsubishi Fraud Risks Pushing Carmaker to Brink
This is the world now: Suzuki also admits to cheating on fuel-economy tests

It's not hard to find more. Pretty much every manufacturer cheats or has cheated in one way or another.

German defense minister got her fingerprints "stolen" in a similar fashion two years ago.

Exaggeration, hyperbole, and confusing a personal opinion with a law of nature... Man, you hit the trifecta there.

Uh... exaggeration and hyperbole are the same thing. How exactly can they make up two parts of a trifecta?

Anyhow, this is far from merely a "personal opinion." Monopoly has been criticized ever since it was originally rejected by Parker Brothers for game play that grew too long and tedious. They only picked it up after it became a minor "craze" in the mid-30s. It certainly had novel elements that made it appealing, but that doesn't mean it also didn't have serious flaws.

Anyone who has played a lot of Monopoly knows a number of the major flaws for family gaming. But don't listen to me on this. Here's just one post which sums up a lot of the major issues:

It suffers from problems that most game designers nowadays try to avoid. First, players can be eliminated. This is no fun -- unless, of course, the eliminated player finds something better to do than play Monopoly -- and games are meant to be fun. Second, there is often a runaway leader. Someone can snap up a juicy monopoly early on, and that quickly becomes that. The rest of the game is pro forma and boring. And games aren't meant to be boring. Third, there is what's known to game designers as a kingmaking problem. A losing player can often choose, typically via a lopsided trade of properties, who wins the game. This is also no fun and negates whatever skill was required to begin with.

Oh, and it also takes a really long time to play.

This is hardly the only criticism of the game. See for example here or here. And if you want some more criticism along with recommendations for better, more engaging games, see here.

None of this means a given person can't or shouldn't like Monopoly. It just means that most people who spend a lot of time playing a variety of board games tend to think Monopoly has serious flaws. And if you're trying to meet certain common goals of family gameplay (e.g., long-term engagement for most people, avoiding long drawn-out concluding play between a minority of players that is exceptionally unlikely to actually change the outcome, etc.), Monopoly has only one advantage -- it's well-known. If you're willing to try out "new things," there are a lot of really good options out there.

The whole point of corporations in the US is so that nobody's liable for what corporations do. Corporations can't/don't go to jail, and a member of a corporations going to jail for something done under the auspices of the company is rarer than lightning strikes or lottery winners.

This is the result of corporate lobbying over the last 20 years, and the growing view (among the wealthy elite) that white-collar crime isn't really a thing. After the savings-and-loan collapse in the 1990s, over 900 bankers were convicted of criminal offenses; after the most recent (and much worse) financial crash, nobody in the banking industry has spent even a night in jail.

Look, a solar panel never makes in it's usable life the amount of energy it takes to produce

That hasn't been true for several years now. By 2020 it's estimated that solar panels will pay back all the energy they've ever taken to manufacture all of them.

the same with wind power.

Wrong again. Did you actually bother to research any of this? 20 Seconds on Google would have corrected your false assertions.

A coal plant returns the power it took to build with all parts in less than a month.

At the cost of dumping massive amounts of pollutants (including CO2) into the atmosphere for decades. When coal actually has to pay for the full energy (and financial) cost of mitigating the pollution it costs then you might have a fair comparison.

Can you supply any references for the debunked consensus? When I originally looked into the matter, I found several papers confirming the consensus, but it has been a few years since I looked

Comment on ‘Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature
a 2016 survey of american meteorological society members about climate change Initial Findings graph on page 11 shows 33% of AMS members believe the climate change is at least equally or more attributable to natural causes.
Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the literature: A re-analysis
Climate Consensus and ‘Misinformation’: A Rejoinder to Agnotology, Scientific Consensus, and the Teaching and Learning of Climate Change
Climate Consensus Con Game
Sorry, global warmists: The ‘97 percent consensus’ is complete fiction
The claim of a 97% consensus on global warming does not stand up
Global Warming “Consensus”: Cooking the Books
Climategate 3.0: Blogger Threatened for Exposing 97% "Consensus" Fraud

It's a more sophisticated "er" or "um". That said, it should be destroyed.

Statement validation : https://www.theguardian.com/me...

Richard Tol, professor of the economics of climate change, was coordinating lead author for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

I think he may have been upset when they pointed out that that he'd swapped a minus sign for a plus sign in his study. When you use the correct sign the economic outlook is less rosy. He ultimately admitted to the mistake and issued a correction to the original paper.