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we Want a Government controlled infrastructure of the internet as our current providers are expensive and often have bad habits

You have Government-controlled infrastructure already and that is why it sucks. Government can not get public schools right for decades and continues to mismanage even the high-profile things. You want them to take over the Internet service-provision too?

You are a fool, which would've been fine with me, except you want them to further take over my Internet-access too — not just yours...

Pretty much everyone I know that's GOP-leaning and not a nutjob seems to simply disregard the "Crazy GOP" faction and act as if they're not relevant to the conversation.

Because they aren't. The 'nuts' on the right are a small minority. The only ones pay attention to them are the media, who take any opportunity to try to paint everyone on the right with the same brush.

As opposed to those one the left, whose nuts, also a small minority are help up as leaders and push the left more and more toward authoritarianism.

As for the 'Southern Strategy' you can peddle that lie all you want, but it still won't be true. Democrats were the party of the KKK. The south as race became less and less of a focus, grew more and more Republican. There was no giant sweep, just a steady drift away from the race obsessed Democrats.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/a...
http://townhall.com/columnists...

Trump has a lot of negatives, yes.

And that might matter - if he were not running against Clinton.

Read Looking back: How Trump Beat Hillary

It's pretty amusing how much your posts parallels all of the people claiming Trump had no chance of winning the Republican nomination... The fact is you simply do not understand the vast majority of voters, women and men, white and black, hispanic or any other racial groups.

You've not even factored in how much more strongly Trump is against big banks than Clinton is (not hard to do since the Democrats have for some time been deeply intertwined with the likes of Goldman Sachs, which Trump has taken very little money from banks and has a natural animosity towards them having had to go through them in dealing with business ventures).

All that really needs to be said is Hillary is powerless to stop Trump among just about ALL voting groups, read :

Looking back: How Trump Beat Hillary

Unless the Democrats are smart enough to actually nominate Sanders, which they are not.

It's obvious that she's taking a year off only because it's a presidential election year. I'd want to avoid being part of a circus as well

America's princesses have Secret Service protection even after daddy leaves White House. And the children are not part of the "circus" — unless they place themselves there — it is considered very bad form to target them otherwise. Not that Democrats haven't, but a Democratic princess is safe.

In other words, your excuse for her is not.

More pollution and more trash are by products of people using more resources.

I've seen visual proof that is false. Over the past 20 years, the sky over Denver has become much less smoggy, even as resource consumption increased. Why? R&D departments, funded by capitalists, developed internal combustion engines that burn fuel more completely.

Socialism tries to make it capitalism more efficient

A generous description of socialism is that it seeks to address social ills in the short term, at the expense of economic growth that would provide a more sustainable way of addressing those ills in the long term. (A less generous description is that socialists get off on exercising control over the fruits of others' labor.)

Owners of capital naturally seek the highest possible return on their capital. And high-return-on-investment endeavors, by definition, create more and better jobs than low-return-on-investment endeavors. So it is axiomatic that when government coercively directs capital into endeavors other than those that capitalists would choose, fewer jobs are created than otherwise would be. (Providing for the national defense is an exception. Building roads and bridges is not an exception.)

If you want people to have healthcare capitalism will always fail at that.

Another easily-disproven assertion. Over the decades before purchasing health insurance became mandatory, the number of uninsured people dropped drastically. Why? Economic growth, caused by capitalism, gave more and more employers the means to provide this benefit (and it gave governments a lot of additional tax revenue, enabling the creation of Medicaid and Medicare for citizens who don't work). As such, capitalism caused a huge, organic decrease in the number of uninsured people. Allowing this trend to continue for a few more decades certainly would have made health insurance universal, with minimal coercion.

It's claimed that the non-free-market tinkering of the "Affordable Care Act" has accelerated the decrease in the number of uninsured people. If true, it happened in a coercive, very non-organic way that certainly puts a dent in economic growth -- and $101 trillion in unfunded liabilities make me pessimistic that the approach is sustainable.

It's going to take some work.

Trump is winning out because the saner vote is still split.

Saner vote?

Stop insulting us and start addressing the issues. Insulting people is the sure way to get them to dig in their heels.

Trump is winning because the people want him.

In fact, the only ones who don't like Trump are the elites: talking heads, mainstream media, big corporations, and so on. The "establishment". The Republican side is starting to be completely open in their dislike for him.

The Koch brothers started a super pac specifically to combat Trump. A direct quote from Charles Koch about the Republican primary:

"You’d think we could have more influence"

Here on Slashdot, for the last 16 years we've bemoaned the corruption in politics, how campaign money from corporate interests gives us politicians who are for corporations and against the people.

And when someone who runs without taking money from corporations, their response is: "Anyone except HIM!!!"

(A relevant recent political cartoon)

The current hate dejour is "he's not very presidential". As if leading us into war under false pretenses, ordering an American killed using a secret law, or lying about having sex in the oval office is completely unimportant.

Really.

If this keeps up, we're going to get the president we deserve, not the president we need.

I hope you haven't phoned in a pizza order.

this is my pet cause, yes, it's in a different tier than lynch mob, but the suppression of opinion is in the same class. People might not have the same fear of death as back in the civil rights movement, but they have the same fear of loss of economic livelihood.

And yes, you might say, "good those dirty racists should be forced onto the street" because that's where this is going, people organizing to drive individuals out of, jobs, out of homes, out of society, but what happens when the noun following that "dirty" swings around to describe you? or your friend?

will you still feel the same way about how our society allows itself to bully those "of different beliefs and opinions" when you or your friend are the ones being bullied?

Remember, Brendan Eich was forced out of a position he was eminently qualified for, because he donated to a political movement, and would not recant his religious beliefs.

bleh... you just made me agree with krauthammer.
http://townhall.com/columnists...

but the title is at least true, in just the way we describe each other i think. Liberals are stupid according to conservatives, but conservatives are straight up malicious according to liberals. I think that that distinction is important and telling.

Actually, he was *NOT* arrested. He was detained.

If you're being booked, you've been arrested.

Of course, the police report also reads "Arrestee being in possession of a hoax bomb at MacArthur High School." Maybe you should call the Irving police and explain to them how you belive that he was not arrested.

Ah, this is the one I was thinking of with respect to Boeing: http://labornotes.org/2015/09/...

That's the union perspective, here's another one: http://townhall.com/columnists...

They didn't go on strike, they sued Boeing before the National Labor Relations Board.

So a union sued a company to prevent it from adding jobs in America, because it was in a state that didn't have a machinists union. This was to be a second production line so they could fill their huge backlog of orders more quickly and take market share from Airbus. They were not moving jobs, they were not laying off people in Washington state... the union prevented Boeing from adding NEW jobs for other Americans.

When increasing numbers of our younger citizens believe that the US Constitution is an out-dated relic with no contemporary relevance, it's no wonder our leaders behave with such contempt of the document.

When the governments blatantly ignore it can you blame young people for seeing that the constitution is barely worth the paper it's written on?

When increasing numbers of our younger citizens believe that the US Constitution is an out-dated relic with no contemporary relevance, it's no wonder our leaders behave with such contempt of the document.

ProTip: They don't care about you unless you have your own army or a mountain of cash.

When increasing numbers of our younger citizens believe that the US Constitution is an out-dated relic with no contemporary relevance, it's no wonder our leaders behave with such contempt of the document.

Well, that's a shitty excuse.

Those relics we vote for who represent us should fucking know better, because they aren't the ignorant youth. Shit, they were probably around for the last half-dozen Amendments to be ratified. Using the attitude of the ignorant is no excuse to understand the law you should be following.

When increasing numbers of our younger citizens believe that the US Constitution is an out-dated relic with no contemporary relevance, it's no wonder our leaders behave with such contempt of the document.

20+ posts already, and no one mentioned Global Warming yet? How could you, guys, miss this opportunity to refresh the fear in the hearts of your followers? If you keep burning fossil fuels, our planet too will become an airless desert devoid of life. Whether it will heat up or cool down is an impolite question, but something will happen, unless you install solar panels on your roof.

The "point of now return" — like the second coming of a deity of some unscientific cult followed by the unwashed — has been within "only a few years" for the past 4 decades.

Gebyy zl gnvy.

There was 235 MILLION registered voters in the 2012 election. Hundreds of thousands is a statistical fluke. A difference of a few degrees outside is also likely to affect turnout by 0.05%. New Hampshire typically schedules their elections on a Tuesday in March, sun or snow. Heck, a few years ago turnout was so low our vote on a town policy didn't reach quorum. A strong effort to boycott the election may also have helped. Yes, you read that right. (The difference between a "No" vote and a failed vote had something to do with how the measure could be re-introduced later.)

Check your claim that it "overwhelming tends to be poor/minority/democratic" voters, too: Much Ado About Nothing? An Empirical Assessment of the Georgia Voter Identification Statute

Substantively, the law lowered turnout by about four-tenths of a percentage point in 2008. However, we find no empirical evidence to suggest that there is a racial or ethnic component to this suppression effect.

Voter ID laws don't suppress democrats, either. Well, not living ones, anyways.

I don't like encouraging the spread of ID requirements by the government either... you know, having to get permission from the federal government to TAKE A JOB comes to mind. But voting? Seriously? It's a state ID for a state purpose.

Great retort.

MGuire AFB is not guarded or patrolled by the TSA. It's an Air Force base. You has a point there, I know but it's not just invalid. It's oblivious to reality.

So far, every test by the FBI etc that we have been informed of has shown the TSA is spectacularly inept at finding contraband that agents have tried to smuggle on board an airplane. They've relieved me of several Leatherman Micras over the years, though. My pen is equally dangerous. Go figure.

Do we know if the TSA has discouraged anyone from attacking a plane? I don't really care. I'm interested in if they have prevented anyone form attacking a plane. How many passengers have they dragged off in cuffs from the screening area? Two?

Actually it was.

http://m.townhall.com/columnis...

For the people that think my post is a troll:

http://dailycaller.com/2012/04...

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/k...

story

Oracle paid Bill Clinton a huge amount of money to give a speech as they were requesting favors from the State Department under his wife at the time. I suspect this is just some additional "favors" promised from their donation to Bill Clinton. This is a direct payment to Clinton, does not involve their foundation (which is another pot of corruption).

So it looks like Oracle basically paid the current executive branch to side with them in this and other things they are dealing with.

Having worked in academia for some time, I'd like to call bullshit on many of your points.

...

Actually, though a minority, there are many Republicans (usually leaning more Libertarian) in academia.

Interestingly, this article was in the news just a few days ago: Report: Harvard Faculty Supports Democrats a Whopping 96% of the Time

You want to know why this shit is expensive? I saw a dozen "Non-emergency" patients in the waiting room ...

Coincidentally, just read this article, today - Surprise: ER Visits Still Going Up Despite Promises Obamacare Would Bring Them Down .

Actually, we did. Like most Americans, sadly, you know nothing of history beyond, say, 1980 or some such. If you did know some history, you would know ...

Like many people on Slashdot you seem to have a defective knowledge of history and the church.

If one were to look into the history they would find that you either grossly exagerate on these matters, or are simply wrong. Many of the early colonies were formed by religous sects coming from Europe. Once in America they adopted the European customs of institutionalizing the church with the government. Although in some colonies other sects were persecuted, few were killed. In any case it was nothing like the scale or severity of European persecution. Other colonies had different views. Rhode Island was formed with the ideal of religious tolerence, and other colonies were adopting laws for tolerance by 1650. Eventually all of the colonies adeopted the US Constitution, became states, and moved past that.

As to the "Christian justifications for the genocide against American Indians" I have to ask, what genocide are you referring to? There wasn't one.

Reject the Lie of White "Genocide" Against Native Americans
Were American Indians the Victims of Genocide?

As to your claims about "lines of Christian preachers submitted tons of briefs, all saying that their Christian God had deemed that black people were inherently inferior and not worthy of any basic human rights" in the case of Loving vs Virginia, which briefs are you referring to? The only brief I see listed from an organization claiming church affiliation was against Virginia's law.

LOVING v. VIRGINIA, 388 U.S. 1 (1967)

Briefs of amici curiae, urging reversal, were filed by William M. Lewers and William B. Ball for the National Catholic Conference for Interracial Justice et al.; [388 U.S. 1, 2] by Robert L. Carter and Andrew D. Weinberger for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and by Jack Greenberg, James M. Nabrit III and Michael Meltsner for the N. A. A. C. P. Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc.

T. W. Bruton, Attorney General, and Ralph Moody, Deputy Attorney General, filed a brief for the State of North Carolina, as amicus curiae, urging affirmance

So it looks to me that your disparagement of Christians is based on what is essentially one half-truth and two whole lies.

Now that would be bad in and of itself, but you also overlook the many positive contributions made by Christians.

The abolition of slavery - Christian and churches drove the abolisionist movement. Perhaps you could start with this man:
      William Wilberforce - the story told in this wonderful movie: Amazing Grace, released in 2007
Higher Education - Many of America's first colleges were formed by churches.
Health Care - Many hospitals have been founded by churches, or with church backing.
The Civil Right movement - Once again many churches were participants in the Civil Rights movement

There are many more that could be added to that.

Yeah, you Christians are really, really superior to other religions....

Moving past the half-truth and falsehoods you wrote certainly seems to make for a better record to reflect upon.

Where do you go to school? I had that hammered into me in grade school.

Hammered is probably the right word since it was PC indoctrination, not education.

To the point: Reject the Lie of White "Genocide" Against Native Americans

Detailed: Were American Indians the Victims of Genocide?

The ubiquitous Start-Up NY promotional campaign has cost taxpayers $53 million since the program's inception in late 2013, while it has led to $1.7 million in private investment so far, state records show.

        The state spent $47 million on the ads alone since the program started in December 2013, and the total cost included production expenses and other marketing efforts through last month, according to Empire State Development Corp. In July, the agency said $28 million had been spent on the ads.

"if we can bring sleazy amoral switzerland to heel, we can do this"

As a Swiss, I would just like to say that the story looks rather different from this side. You are presumably in the US, and have the US media's version of events. This is the wrong thread to go into many details, but let's just take a couple of highlights:

- The US likes to apply American law to citizens and companies in other countries. With sufficient political pressure, and sometimes outright extortion, it sometimes even succeeds.

- There is no particular reason why Swiss banks should provide their customer information to the US government (FATCA), though this is what they have been forced to do - quite literally via extortion. Interestingly, the Swiss government asked "so can this be bilateral - your American banks provide equivalent information to Switzerland on Swiss citizens?" The answer was basically laughter, with the explanation that doing so would be far too burdensome for US banks.

Finally, there is an almost global acceptance of something that is really odd, if only you step back and take a fresh look. Your personal finances are a private matter: you don't want your neighbor looking at your bank statement, or you employer, or indeed really anyone. So why, exactly, does the government have the right to know every detail of your financial life? In Switzerland, the government does not have insight into your personal finances and your entire personal life, and it cannot confiscate your money without a court decision.

By Swiss law, if the government wants private information about you, it must show evidence of wrongdoing and get a warrant. If it wants to take your property, it must win a court decision. Why is Switzerland "sleazy" and "amoral" for providing people with privacy and due process? Yes, our banks are now being forced to remove these protections from foreign citizens. Why is this a good thing?

Past supporters of RFRA acts include Barack Obama (who voted for one as Illinois State Senator) and Bill Clinton (who signed one into law as President). So Tim Cook's position is not in the political mainstream and in fact it is even outside the liberal Democrat mainstream. The news here is Tim Cook inappropriately dragging Apple into a political war to endorse his own radical politics, not anything going on in Indiana.

Cooks' statements are also not based on any actual facts. See background on RFRA here.

Not long ago Apple stood for fanatical devotion to great design. Now it stands for tasteless bling and Tim Cook's political agenda. We all know the heartbreaking history of that company. It is made even sadder by Cook's failure to stay true to the vision.

from:

Apple: Insanely great design.

to:

Apple: Indiana is a bunch of Anti-homosexual Christian Bigots.

Tim Cook is not qualified to lead Apple. Not because he is gay (nothing wrong with that in my opinion) but because he is ruining the corporate image by putting his personal politics ahead of Apple's interests. If any other employee at Apple used the Apple name to endorse his own personal political views, that employee wold be fired. The same policy should apply to Cook.

Because .... Obama just found out about it in the news (really!!)

http://townhall.com/tipsheet/k...

Haven't we seen that exact same excuse before, is he out of touch or what? He didn't notice the non .GOV email address?

Banned already via BATFE fiat. http://townhall.com/tipsheet/k...

About two-thirds of the way through the morning I questioned the whole process. I stated that if someone walked into to my office who was receiving the [Obamacare subsidy] that I would not accept them as a client. The cost of preparing the paperwork to get them properly qualified to receive the benefit would exceed anything I could reasonably charge them. The instructor, a fine fellow from Iowa, stated he unfortunately had to agree with me. So now tax preparers will have to decide whether to accept clients based on our health care system — just like doctors.

There’s lot more. Read the whole thing.

None of these things (particularly 1 and 2) prove Obamacare is (present tense) a disaster.

I consider it like a landslide. The disaster starts some time before people start dying and property starts getting buried. There is a point when disaster and the harm it causes is inevitable. I believe we are past that point for Obamacare now.

You've really got to stretch credibility to argue that a program that is perfectly sustainable during a massive recession will magically become unsustainable in the next decade.

It's "perfectly sustainable" in that a) large portions of the program have been deliberately delayed in implementation, and b) most of it which has been running, has done so for only the past year. Calling a system which hasn't quite fallen apart in its first year "perfectly sustainable" is an abuse of the English language.

There are a number of dynamics which are ignored here. First, that the subsidies perfectly insulate from the cost of the insurance. Once you've chewed through the deductible of the insurance, you have no further reason to care about reducing the cost of your healthcare.

Medicaid provides similar insulation, but it has the cost control feature that health care can simply be withheld either directly or by various games such as delaying service or making the act of getting service more onerous.

As health care and health insurance costs continue to rise (since most people don't actually have incentive to consume less health care no matter how expensive it gets), then we get to the next dynamic, a strong incentive to dump more people onto Medicaid. But those people vote. The bigger that group gets the harder it'll be to cut back on service.

Insurance companies meanwhile have an assortment of incentives encouraging them to aggressively take on risk. The ones who make poor risk choices will be subsidized by those who didn't.

I think that's going to encourage a headlong rush into bankruptcy for a bunch of insurance companies. But not in a way that fails in the first year of operations.

Can you name single country which has actually had either a) universal health care, or b) a manned space program without the government footing the bill?

The US. You're playing semantics games with the terms, "universal health care" and "manned space program". For example, paying for your own health care is just as universal as any government scheme. You just don't like the level at which service is set for those who can't or won't pay for their health care. Similarly, we already have a number of private manned space programs in the US. They just haven't yet put people into space. That strikes me as a strong indication that we'd have many of these even in the absence of NASA money.

Everyone knows fracking is perfectly safe.

It's on the internet so it must be true.

If you think that is so, then I would say you aren't very observant.

But where you respond with poetry, I'll respond with prose.

Iraq's WMD: The Shameless New York Times Moves the Goalposts

Now comes the 10,000-word, eight-part story in The New York Times. The front-page story, called "The Secret Casualties Of Iraq's Abandoned Chemical Weapons," says WMD were in Iraq: "In all, American troops secretly reported finding roughly 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs, according to interviews with dozens of participants, Iraqi and American officials, and heavily redacted intelligence documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act."

Moreover, the soldiers were told to keep quiet about the WMD:

"Troops and officers were instructed to be silent or give deceptive accounts of what they had found. ?'Nothing of significance' is what I was ordered to say,' said Jarrod Lampier, a recently retired Army major who was present for the largest chemical weapons discovery of the war: more than 2,400 nerve-agent rockets unearthed in 2006 at a former Republican Guard compound.

"Jarrod L. Taylor, a former Army sergeant on hand for the destruction of mustard shells that burned two soldiers in his infantry company, joked of 'wounds that never happened' from 'that stuff that didn't exist.' The public, he said, was misled for a decade. 'I love it when I hear, 'Oh there weren't any chemical weapons in Iraq,' he said. 'There were plenty.'"

Cheers, and on a wild guess I'll recommend that maybe you should cut down on your "recreational" use of controlled substances

Before I comment on WMDs in Iraq I will remind you that there were something like 20 causes of action against Iraq, many of which were clear cut and indisputable. Others were also confirmed after the invasion, such as finding Iraq's banned long range missiles, and unfilled chemical warheads for those missiles. There have been hundreds of mass graves found in Iraq which amply testify to the many crimes against humanity committed by the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, not to mention his wars and acts of aggression against many of his neighbors.

As to the WMDs, approximately 5,000 chemical and biological weapons were found, and the allowable number was zero (0).

Iraq's WMD: The Shameless New York Times Moves the Goalposts

Now comes the 10,000-word, eight-part story in The New York Times. The front-page story, called "The Secret Casualties Of Iraq's Abandoned Chemical Weapons," says WMD were in Iraq: "In all, American troops secretly reported finding roughly 5,000 chemical warheads, shells or aviation bombs, according to interviews with dozens of participants, Iraqi and American officials, and heavily redacted intelligence documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act."

Moreover, the soldiers were told to keep quiet about the WMD:

"Troops and officers were instructed to be silent or give deceptive accounts of what they had found. ?'Nothing of significance' is what I was ordered to say,' said Jarrod Lampier, a recently retired Army major who was present for the largest chemical weapons discovery of the war: more than 2,400 nerve-agent rockets unearthed in 2006 at a former Republican Guard compound.

Some of those weapons were still being held in a major Iraqi military base overrun by ISIS.

I hope that helps.

But we are too chickenshit, and perhaps more importantly in debt to China, that both NK and China will get away with this shit.

"in debt to China" TL;DR. Vast majority of the debt is domestically held, saying China "owns" the U.S. or any other country for that matter is nonsense.

And while I'm tossing blame, Sony itself is to blame for its crappy Security. How the hell does Muti-terabytes of data leave your network, without even a HINT of it. I'm sure that whatever cost savings they were going for when IT budgets came out was well worth it. I hope Sony gets it pants sued off (see first paragraph) by the likes of all the actors, crews and other employees.

Wonder if their IT was outsourced?

the composition and political thrust of the parties changed dramatically with the Republican southern strategy of the 60s

Let me put you some f'in knowledge.

And more.

And even more.

On top of that, how do you explain the Democrats' only really starting to lose their stranglehold on southern-state governorships and legislatures in the '90s and later?

You toppled a government, but you sure as hell didn't "conquer" them.

Of course, we did.

You barely got out of there with your asses intact

There are more people dying from guns in Chicago, than were in Iraq.

and every single justification for going in there in the first place was provably false

Wrong. But off-topic...

And now you've left a giant power vacuum which has destabilized the entire region.

Yes, this — withdrawal of troops for political expedience, rather than because the situation really allowed it — was a mistake, which I consider shameful.

Being in Iraq was such an epic failure

Not at all — we did destroy Saddam Hussein's regime and caused himself to be duly punished. Iraq stopped being a threat to its neighbors and was on its way to becoming a decent country. If only we stuck around for longer...

the world doesn't want any more of your "help"

Your other alternatives are China and Russia. Make your pick...

The Iraq war?

The Iraq war what? Do you have any data supporting the claim, that Americans have joined their military because of their Christian beliefs, which compelled them to kill Muslims? Put up or shut up...

I didn't claim that. I claimed that some Americans were joining the military for the same reasons that some Muslims become terrorists, to defend their religion and culture against its perceived enemies.

And yes, this occurs:
Coded references to New Testament Bible passages about Jesus Christ are inscribed on high-powered rifle sights provided to the United States military by a Michigan company, an ABC News investigation has found.

...

This is hardly the first time something like this has happened. We’ve had soldiers painting Bible verses on turrets of tanks and on bombs on airplanes. We’ve had soldiers handing out Bibles to the locals. The Pentagon and the American government seems to understand that this is very, very bad for American credibility in the Muslim world because it sends the message that this is a religious war of Christianity vs Islam.

And don't forget Ann Coulter

We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war.

That sounds a hell of a lot like terrorist ideology to me except she's able to carry out her religious war via army instead of suicide bomber. Don't you think there were a few people who thought like Ann Coulter and joined the military? Enough to rival the number of Muslim terrorists?

I'm not saying Iraq war=terrorism or Drone attacks=terrorism, but I will say that a lot of people who turn to terrorism in the Middle East would be able to fulfil those urges as soldiers in the West.

I said nothing about "preaching". I said, Muslim faithful are compelled — by their religion — to fight for spreading Islam world-wide and to establish a Califate.

There is nothing of the kind in the Bible.

He's fighting and promoting, same way the IRA did.

IRA's fight was purely secular — nothing in Catholicism insists nor mandates the sort of things they've done. Muslims, once again, must fight other religions — in order to remain good Muslims. Because Koran — which they believe to be the word of God verbatim — says so.

Crusades? Residential schools? Inquisitions? The mechanisms are different but Christianity has it's own long history of aggressive attempts to spread the faith.

Funny you should say that since the Libs want to:

- control what I do in my bedroom
- control my social life
- control what I talk about
- control who I do business with
- control what I believe
- control what business I'm allowed to engage in

It's time to reassess your opinion on who wants to to micromanage your life.

Roughly two months ago, we explored the question of whether Republicans were headed for a "wave" election victory in 2014. The results are in, and the verdict is unequivocal: Yes. As of this writing -- in the wee hours of the morning -- Republicans appear poised to win their largest House majority in well over half a century. They have won the United States Senate by a decisive margin, netting eight seats outright, with a ninth almost certainly on the way. They will actually gain a number of governorships -- building on their already-remarkable 30-20 advantage. And they've expanded their dominance of state-level legislative chambers. A comprehensive blowout. There are many things for conservatives to celebrate. An incomplete list, in no particular order:

(1) Senators-elect Cory Gardner, Joni Ernst, and Thom Tillis are all winners of formerly-blue seats in states carried by Barack Obama at least once. Gardner tossed a perfect game in his race, beating Sen. Mark "Uterus" Udall soundly (by six points, with 89 percent of the vote counted). He neutralized the "war on women" nonsense and outperformed among Latinos. The national party should turn Gardner's win into a case study. Joni Ernst dominated Bruce Braley, winning by eight points. Adding insult to injury, Democrats also lost Braley's House seat. These 'precriminations' told the story. And Thom Tillis, who trailed in the polling average for the entire race, came from behind and ousted Kay Hagan.

(2) The last time Republicans defeated more than two incumbent Democratic Senators in one election cycle was 1980. In 2014, they've gotten four (Pryor, Udall, Hagan, Begich), with a fifth -- Mary Landrieu -- looking like a sitting duck. Landrieu garnered just 42 percent of the vote in Louisiana, compared to 55 percent for her two GOP rivals. She will need a miracle to win the December 6 runoff.

(3) The polls were, in fact, skewed. Toward Democrats. Significantly. Mitch McConnell won by 15 points in Kentucky. David Perdue beat Michelle Nunn by 13 points, easily avoiding a run-off. Tom Cotton absolutely destroyed Mark Pryor. Tillis wasn't supposed to win. The polls were way off in all of these races. And, I'm happy to add, the disgusting race-baiting failed.

(4) If the GOP takes Louisiana as expected, and if Maine independent Angus King decides to caucus with Republicans -- which he's reportedly open to doing -- the party will control 55 seats in January. Republicans were at a 60-40 disadvantage in the upper chamber as recently as early 2010. That's a breathtaking turnaround, mirroring Democrats' Senate gains from 2004 to 2008. Question: Might Sen. Joe Manchin be thinking about pulling a Jim Jeffords and switching parties, given what just happened in his state? That would be 56.

(5) Democrats insisted that Obamacare was not a big issue in this campaign. Republicans' campaigns blew that theory out of the waterand then there's this (a tally that doesn't include Begich or Landrieu):

almost half! MT @mkhammer: Damn. RT @philipaklein: w/ Hagan’s loss: 27 senators who voted for Obamacare won't be part of new Senate — Guy Benson (@guypbenson) November 5, 2014

(6) Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker has now beaten the Left three times in four years. And each win has built on the last. He beat Mary Burke by nearly seven points in a race that was supposedly "tied" two weeks ago. The Marquette poll nailed it again. Walker has been rewarded by voters for his courageous and successful governance in a state that hasn't been carried by a Republican presidential ticket in decades. And this perspective is just delicious:

So Charlie Crist lost as many races as Scott Walker won in the last four years. — Daniel Ehlers (@DanielEhlers) November 5, 2014

Three Crist losses, with three different parties. Good riddance.

(7

his online payment processor Stripe has decided that his companies, all of them, qualify as forbidden "weapons and munitions; gunpowder and other explosives" services.

This is yet another manifestation of the tactics employed by Obama's Justice Department. Unable to outlaw a particular activity (such as ammunition sales, or escort services — or even cigar-sales) itself, they lean on banks and payment-processors threatening them with audits if they don't stop serving the "undesirable" merchants and services-providers. The name is "Operation Chokepoint" and it has been in the news for a while. About time it made it to Slashdot too.

This — "the most technologically-advanced Administration in history" — is what all the cool kids (not a few /.-ers among them) voted for in 2008 and 2012...

Note, the DoJ is not even alleging any illegality — only "high likelihood" thereof. Nor are they threatening actual prosecution — only an audit. Unfortunately, the audits themselves — even if you end up fully clean at the end — are sufficiently painful and expensive, that banks choose to drop the few clients to avoid the experience.

It is particularly evil, because it is not the result of a prosecution, that is used to cow the victims to comply with the government's whim, but the very process itself. Results, you see, require the Executive to argue its point in front of the skeptical Judiciary. The process, however, can be made very painful without any repercussions — DoJ don't need to prove anything to cause a person or a company as much pain as they please.

I hope that the government gets shut down for real, not show off nonsense, but an actual true shutdown, all checks stop flowing, bonds are no longer issued, no more new money created out of government's ass (and no, the Fed is not independent, Alan Greenspan confirmed it in a public way, as if people didn't know)

I hope no new laws are passed, I hope all existing government systems stop working completely and people have no choice, but to live without government.

After reading this, please let me know what would be so awful about 100% toll roads.

This makes an easy comparison.

Currently, you pay a gas tax, per kilometer. No-body cares *what* you do with the gas at that point, or where you go. You can drive on freeways, you can commute to work, you can roadtrip across the country, you can just drive around the block for hours on end if you want. The only limit is the physical ability of the roads (expressed as a speed limit).

Conversely, a toll road will charge you for each segment of road. Suddenly, *where* this road is and what it connects to becomes a huge factor. If I own the major route, I can charge more (forcing you to pay or take a longer but cheaper detour) If I own the road that goes past the supermarket, I can charge more for that segment because it's popular (and the limit of what I can charge is "as long as it's cheaper than driving to the next furthest market"). If I own this movie theatre and the road in front of the competition's theatre? I can make it prohibitive for anyone to do business there. Just think how much fun you could have with speed limits. And how much is access to the road in front of your *house* worth?

And if you own a whole lot of roads, you can change speed limits to encourage traffic to go to stores you like/own, and away from competition.

This is the world the ISPs want to live in - they control all your roads, and they want to be able to adjust the toll road pricing so it's "cheaper" to go to their stores instead of their competition.

After reading this, please let me know what would be so awful about 100% toll roads.

All roads are already toll roads, in that their maintenance is paid for by gas taxes. What would be so awful about that money going to an efficient enterprise, as opposed to an inefficient bureaucracy?

Toll and tax are distinct. Also, not all enterprises are efficient and not all governments are bureaucratic.

After reading this, please let me know what would be so awful about 100% toll roads.

All roads are already toll roads, in that their maintenance is paid for by gas taxes. What would be so awful about that money going to an efficient enterprise, as opposed to an inefficient bureaucracy?

Having an "equal opportunity" President is proving to be so popular, I can't wait for Mr. Jackson to be treated by an "equal opportunity" heart surgeon...

fessed up to having a tech workforce that's only 1% Black, apparently par for the course in Silicon Valley.

Not only is Silicon Valley young and Illiberal, they are also working on developing their businesses and would not sabotage their start-ups' success by turning away real talent.

Whatever the problem is, Silicon Valley's "racism" ain't it...

Your analysis of the Mohammed quote:

A quote from Mohammed. No value judgement made. On its own, a statement of fact (assuming Mohammed did actually say these things). No incitating to kill Jews, let alone all Jews.

Prominently featuring this quote in the charter counts as endorsement of the ideas espoused in the quote.

My point is that both sides are wrong.

But Hamas will literally stop at nothing, while Israel is at least trying to minimize civilian casualties (warning people to get out of buildings, etc.). Hamas won't even honor humanitarian ceasefires.

Neither side is perfect, but I reject any claims of moral equivalence between the two sides.

At $67K/yr 'average' teachers each earn more than the average US household.

Their income is, by definition, above average.

http://finance.townhall.com/co...