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Back in the day, the malls had a person with a thumb-clicker counting people as they walked through doors. I didn't consider it a privacy issue. And I assume while I shop online that my movement is being tracked much more closely. But more to the point, shopping malls are going the way of the dodo. The Mall company may find it a pretty depressing set of data. http://themoderatevoice.com/27443/economys-latest-victim-shopping-malls-are-closing/

"... While these things have temporary effects on the movements of money, in the long run we benefit from having other people making discoveries alongside us, rather than continuing to scrabble in rice paddies."

I think you're somewhat right but I get the feeling that this model is wrong when one side is nobbling currency rates and locally incentivising the newly arrived industries to the point where, for instance, nearly all Vitamin C worldwide is produced in the country that gave us melanine-laced milk and automotive-exhaust-dried tea. Is that smart for any of us? The only safeguard is that QA for export-bound products are stricter because other countries' regulators are more transparent, therefore more accountable and reliable. But market forces only work well when there are no well-established bullies (especially not 147 colluding ones) or even determined alternative rule-set writers.

And lest anyone think I'm fear-mongering, what about solar panels? The markets are only fair when the rules are all becoming more stringent on all players regardless of source and buyer and where the measures used for exchange are equitable. My hope is that greater public wealth will lead to greater openness and accountability, but it hasn't always panned out very well.

Still, I also look forward to the day when some kind of abundance is available to everyone, when we all get much better at use and re-use as opposed to use and using up. Science and technology can get us there if the greed of the few doesn't prevent it. I think our vision as a race tends not to be big enough (worrying about our own rice bowls, all too often, all too appropriately) and we're way too short-sighted and too prone to getting into shouting matches over individual issues in the larger overall programs available to our imagination.

cheers...ank

Under normal operation, coal plants emit a few time more radiation than nuclear plants - a few time more than an irrelevant amount is still an irrelevant amount.

You have no idea whatsoever what you are talking about, and should stop now. Actually, you should have stopped before you started. Under normal operation, coal plants in the USA emit more radioactive waste every year than has been released by all former accidents and bombings prior to fukushima. Not sure how fukushima actually changes the context, but Chernobyl released approximately "6 t of fragmented fuel", "Four hundred times more radioactive material" than the bombing of Hiroshima, while (as per first link) in the USA, yearly, "the average coal power plant releases 5.2 tons of uranium (containing 74 pounds of fissile U-235, used in both power plants and bombs) and 12.8 tons of thorium". And that is one fucking plant. Furthermore, electrical power only accounts for about half of our coal consumption... the cleaner half. And remember, this is in the USA alone. There are nations with cleaner coal plants, but there are nations with far dirtier ones, too. China has been putting up shitty coal plants as fast as they possibly can.

They are supposed to be scrubbing CO2 and capturing radioactives in the waste but I personally know someone who used to climb stacks for the government and my landlord is someone who used to coordinate sampling and you can find emissions out of spec as fast as you can pay people to climb towers.

Because it is the principled thing to do? Because it would net trillions of dollars in savings? Because it wasn't sunny enough to play basketball that day???

BUT IT WON'T END THE WAR. All of his replacements in the Republican party are pledged to continue it. And spread it to Iran, for that matter.

Now this right here is total BS. I'm only illustrating how the Executive has control over his own branch of government. I'm not discussing anything covered by Congressional powers at all.

Read this slowly: The cabinet departments are created and sustained by Acts of Congress. The president is not a CEO, he cannot recreate his organization; he's bound by law.

Which is all I'm proposing. Let's elect someone who exhibits the leadership to give us what we want - smaller, less expensive government.

Nobody really wants that. They want government smaller, except for every program from which they derive benefit. No political actor in our system, Republican, Democrat, Tea Partier, Green or Religious Rightist has proposed a specific plan for spending reductions that could win majority support. People like their wars and social security and medicare just fine, and when you propose something that reduces the deficit, it's a "death panel" or it "hurts seniors" or it "hurts the troops." The Tea Party campaigns for lower deficits in the abstract, but no Tea Party candidate or group (while they're not dressing like SS officers or gaybashing or lying on their resume) has committed to a budget, and those that have, like Paul Ryan, have been marginalized and their proposals spiked, because the Tea Party is demographically loaded with Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries, and their leadership in the Republican Party is institutionally committed to the security state.

The USA's founding fathers are hardly homogeneous bunch of people, which almost makes "what the founding fathers meant" almost a moot point, especially if you simply refer to one or two people.
For the moment, let's disregard that and have a look at your quotes.

No let's not disregard the Founding Fathers. If it wasn't for them you wouldn't be enjoying your life as it is. They fought an overbearing and tyrannical government and wanted to make sure the government of the new nation would not become overbearing and tyrannical itself. And that was a homogeneous desire. There's no way around it. If they didn't believe it the then they would not have fought for independence. Instead they would have joined the Loyalists.

What they fought for was not a moot point no matter what you think.

The spending and taxing clause, however, is a fairly specific clause, it states how the Congress may attain money, and for what reasons.

And where is health or medical care mentioned? Hint, nowhere. And as I already said you can't use "General Welfare" either. If you don't like it try to amend the Constitution. I bet you and those like you don't try because you fear the people will not consent to it. So instead you use back doors and "vague phrases", which when written had specific meanings.

Guess what Nanncy Pelosy said when asked "Madam Speaker, where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate?" Her answer was "Are you serious? Are you serious?" Just goes to show what she thinks of the USA Constitution. it's TP to her. And unlike you she never even mentions "General Welfare". I wonder why, perhaps because she knows it won't work.

But he is actually one of the people, which were for a more limiting meaning of the law. For a different point of view, may I refer to Alexander Hamilton

Yes let's look at what Hamilton said. His writings, including the Federalist Paper, showed he had a narrow view of the phrase General Welfare. In Federalist 83 he wrote "This specification of particulars [the 18 enumerated powers of Article I, Section 8] evidently excludes all pretension to a general legislative authority, because an affirmative grant of special powers would be absurd as well as useless if a general authority was intended." In the Federalist Paper 78 he writes "No legislative act ... contrary to the Constitution can be valid. To deny this would be to affirm that the deputy is greater than his principal; that the servant is above his master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people themselves; that men acting by virtue of powers may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid." Of course Alexander Hamilton wasn't consistent in his approach to government. In the Federalist Papers and other early writings Hamilton advocates a small and limited federal government but once he became president he sought to expand his power.

Of course even if Hamilton had been for an expansive General Welfare clause all along that's still your one Founder pro expansive versus my two Founders pro limited government. As the page The General Welfare Clause: The Two Most Abused Words in the Constitution.

Falcon

The Republicans say that health care is not in trouble. Well it probably isn't in "crisis", but there are difficulties with it.

The Republicans have made several suggestions designed to address some of the problems with the healthcare system in the U.S.. ( http://themoderatevoice.com/43992/the-real-republican-health-care-proposal/ ) This link contains links to specific legislation, so you can check the author's interpretation of those bills against the actual bills.
All of the Republican proposals seem to follow to a greater degree than any of the Democratic proposals I am aware of what I consider to be legislative best practices: keep it short and focused.

Karl Rove is about to be indicted for playing with the ohio election. Of course, in the end, my guess is that if this proceeds too fast, or if McCain gets in, it will not matter. Either W or McCain will pardon Rove. After all, the pub party ALWAYS comes before the nation or morality.

If you miss that universal health care is a fascist play to control you "for your own good", then the propaganda has indeed worked well.

And if you're like ArcherB who seems to be utterly clueless about what a fascist is (other than "what them thar nazis were so anytime anyone brings them up I cry and scream and wet my diapers about godwin"), then obviously we shouldn't bother reigning in the power of government, and we should just sit around and wait for it to get worse before doing anything. Me? I'd start with requiring the president to follow the same rules everyone else does. If he doesn't think he should obey FISA because it's "unconstitutional" then I suggest he take the various cases he's made up (Jiminez, etc) and try to convince the scotus that he has more standing to challenge FISA than that lawyer who got the transcript of his wiretap in the mail does to challenge the president's wiretaps. If that slows government down to a crawl, congrats! The smooth operation of government will no longer be a priority over the individuals it crushes to lube the gears, and fascism (real fascism, which makes no requirements with regards to the direction you lean, where innocent individuals are sacrificed on the altar of Government for the "good of the whole") will become nigh impossible.

Also, lol, if you're going to claim that universal healthcare is a ploy to let the government force the fatties to get up and move at least once a day for their own good, at least people should say that rather than whining and crying about having to pay for the fatties' diabetes. The fatties would make sure it never gets voted in.

OK.

If you're against the war, you agree with bin Laden: linky
If you agree with bin Laden, you're a terrorist.
If you're a terrorist, you should be watched.
58% of the public thinks the president lied about WMD, agreeing with bin Laden.

At least half of the public should be under surveillance, Q.E.D.

It's simple, really.

"So, you think Amnesty Internation was exaggerating about SAVAK?"

They have exaggerated before. Recently, they called the US camps in Cuba "the Gulag of our time". This is in a world where we have North Korea and its extensive prison camps where prisoners are routinely killed due to various forms of mistreatment within a few years of being incarcerated. Is this surprising? Not when you find out that the top leaders of Amnesty International are heavily involved in Democratic Party politics. It becomes clear that the main goal of their reports is to make Bush look bad.

The information in this article shows Amnesty International admitting that they lied about Guantanamo Bay intentionally. "Don't you think that there's an enormous difference?" I asked him. "Sure," he said, "but after all, it attracts attention to the problem of Guantanamo detainees."