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Most of the US cities were designed by semi-intelligent humans.

Most US cities would have grown out of farming and fishing communities, and things like bodies of water would have shaped them. Those cities weren't "designed", they just sorta "happened".

When you've got a greenfield install, you do it the Right Way.

Which is why so many of those "city of the future" type things are bullshit ... sure, if you could build a fresh city from scratch and someone else was going to pay for it, you could do all of these cool things. But you won't have that option, so it'll never happen.

But what's up with Charlotte?

According to this,

The locations of Charlotte's streets were platted by surveyors into four sections, called wards, in 1770. These wards are still part of Charlotte's architectural landscape.

So, basically it sounds like the core of it was done in the 1770s when the way you built a city would have been entirely focused around horses as transport and other things more relevant to them.

I don't find it surprising at all that older cities aren't nice and neat, because they were built to serve entirely different needs and situations than we have today.

Did you mean Seward's Folly?

How about Canada, the UK, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand? They all have a lower tax burden on workers... What would you consider their quality of life?

If you look back in the 50s, we see tax receipts were around $620 billion (in 2009 dollars). That was for about 161 million people. Federal tax receipts are now about $3,000 billion in 2009 dollars, and the population has roughly doubled to 330 million. Meaning taxes are up about 2.5 times per capita, versus the 50s. Is our quality of life that much better?

Look at the "big wartime" years of the 40s - you'll find the same thing, Government taxation (and spending) has exploded well beyond historical norms, and it seems our labor force participation rate is low, poverty is up, and crime is much higher. Is quality of life better? You be the judge...

How about YOU read! To everyone else reading, he's playing the "technically correct" card and leaving out quite a bit of details that make his argument facetious. The link is about the Dixiecrats. The parties swapped and have swapped multiple times since the 1st Continental Congress. Lincoln was a Republican technically. Does anyone honestly think a Republican from today would free the slaves? I sure as hell don't.

The US has had them before, such as in World War 2

Here you go, Bremer controls Interim government who authorize ALL candidates for the "Purple finger" "election".
U.S.Military governor, Paul Bremer that is.

Actually General McArthur (or was it Patton) wanted to nuke Beijing also, but was denied...

President Truman had reprimanded MacArthur on several occasions for publicly disagreeing with him over the general's proposal to pursue the Chinese across the Yalu River into China during the Korean War. The president relieved him of his command in April 1951. In secret, they had even discussed the possibility of using nuclear bombs against the North Koreans and the Chinese.

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h2021.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAVAK

I'd suggest you are wrong. It's people like you, who are willing to defend murdering sociopaths, that caused this problem in the first place. THE reason Iran hates us today is because of what a bunch of sociopaths did to the country back in 1953. Sadly, sociopaths never seem to fucking learn.

I'd be very interested in a citation -- everything I've read (and my grandparents, who were born about the turn of the century) said it was more like 25-35%.

Not six months after the crash. Those high levels of unemployment came later in 1932 and 1933.

"The core of the problem is that government has gotten too big" Fixed.

Oh fuck you.

The core problem is not that government has gotten too big. The core problem is that businesses have become bigger than government, big enough to engage in regulatory capture and rent-seeking behaviors.

This is something that's happened time and again. The British East India company essentially took over the British government for far too long, leading to the ruin of Britain as a nation for some time. In the early 1900s, we needed a major slew of trust-busting activities BY the government because of abusive companies like Standard Oil and Nortnern Securities who had engaged in regulatory capture and were exerting unfair monopoly controls, slowly taking over more and more sectors of the economy.

Sound familiar? Strike any parallels at all to the incredibly abusive megacorporations of today that gobble up sectors at an alarming rate? Or did you notice - for instance, that of the "fast food chains" in the US, more than 50% of them are actually owned by ONE company, "Yum Brands", which is itself owned by Pepsi - which also owns Lay's potato chips, Ruffles, Lipton, Doritos, "Quaker" brand, and on and on...

Still think there's any real competition left in the bullshit "free market" the Republicans worship so much? Might as well melt your coins down to a golden calf right now, buddy. There's not a real christian left on the "religious right", they're worshiping greed instead.

We need STRONGER government and another major round of trust-busting. Not weaker government like the Retardicans keep shouting. They're all either fucking clueless, brainwashed Rushtards or their goal is complete regulatory capture of government and rule by their aristocrat masters.

Neither actually make the idea any less retarded.

Noted

This would touch the American voter far more seriously than WW2 rationing ever did - and I think modern generations are far less willing to accept that sort of hardship.

Did the citizenship of America have significant rationing in WW2 at all?

There was rationing. I don't know how you define "significant." No one starved, but rubber, food staples, farm equipment, gasoline, and cloth were all rationed...there is a list here, and a general article here.

That's actually a misconception. Teddy Roosevelt gets a lot of credit as a "trust-buster" but Taft had significantly more impact in that area.

I'm agog that you're attempting to argue this.

Are you aware of the Interstate Commerce Act and more specifically how it came to be? http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h743.html

It's obvious that you don't know much about the history of railroads and the U.S. Government.

I mean really, the Government RAN some of them until as late as 1987!

Here's a compressed history: http://www.laughtergenealogy.com/bin/histprof/misc/railroads.html

Have you ever seen the intermodal regulations that apply to the railroads? It's gigantic, and by that I mean it's an enormously large pile of regulation spread across no less than TEN government agencies.

The RR industry is probably one of the most heavily regulated in the United States. How can problems they've suffered NOT be somehow related to government?

It's much the same with Health Care. There is an enormous body of government regulation in Health Care. I mean absolutely mindbogglingly huge. We should junk the whole thing and replace it with the public option.

Science is much the same. One idiot legislates against the federal funding of stem cell research and another legislates for it. One idiot says to "To Mars!" and another says "Don't leave L.E.O.!".

Government legislation / regulation is one constant in all of these cases. Pick a direction and go for it but don't waffle back and forth and then claim that the Government has nothing to do with the ills of an industry.

I'm no anti gubbermint goober but c'mon, much of this stuff is as plain as the nose on your face once you start looking into it.

But, over two year and at least one or two defrags (I'd hope), the data would have been overwritten and unrecoverable.

You would hope, but what really stands out in this case is that the family agreed to an unwarranted search!

About a year later, FBI agents showed up at his family's home. The family agreed to let agents examine the computer, and at first, they couldn't find anything.

No court order or search warrant mentioned in the article, or any of the others searched up. The family let the feds into their home - then they LET 'em search their computer! Game over.

Know your rights. When police, federal agents or any other badge-and-gun-wielding officer shows up without warrant, DO NOT INVITE THEM IN. Hard to believe that Joe Citizen has completely forgotten one of the main reasons the U.S. fought a revolutionary war for independence - overbroad searches via writs of assistance.

“Allow neither policemen nor vampires to enter your home.” -anon.

Well, it's not authoritative (I'm at work and don't have time to dig up primary sources), but here's an overview of what happened:

Studios flee to Hollywood[1]

In the early 1900s, filmmakers began moving to the Los Angeles area to get away from the strict rules imposed by Thomas Edison's Motion Picture Patents Company in New Jersey. Since most of the moviemaking patents were owned by Edison, independent filmmakers were often sued by Edison to stop their productions.

To escape his control, and because of the ideal weather conditions and varied terrain, moviemakers began to arrive in Los Angeles to make their films. If agents from Edison's company came out west to find and stop these filmmakers, adequate notice allowed for a quick escape to Mexico.

Working without disturbance from Edison, the Biograph Company moved west with actors Blanche Sweet, Lillian Gish, Mary Pickford, Lionel Barrymore, and others, to make their films. After beginning filming in Los Angeles, the company decided to explore the neighboring area and stumbled across Hollywood.

Biograph made the first film in Hollywood, entitled In Old California. After hearing of Biograph's praise of the area, other filmmakers headed west to set up shop.

The first motion picture studio was built in 1919, in nearby Edendale, just east of Hollywood, by Selig Polyscope Company, and the first one built in Hollywood was founded by filmmaker David Horsley's general manager Al Christie in 1911, in an old building on the southeast corner of Sunset Boulevard and Gower Street. Movie studios began to crop up all over Hollywood after Christie's appearance, including ones for Cecil B. DeMille in 1913, the Charlie Chaplin Studio in 1917, and many others.

[1]: http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h3871.html
[2]: http://webpages.dcu.ie/~flynnr/hollywood_history_1891_-_1917.htm (interesting timeline)
[3]: http://www.cobbles.com/simpp_archive/edison_trust.htm (details on Edison's monopoly, which Hollywood broke)

Primary sources would take longer than I have to dig up, but you get the idea.

While Teddy Roosevelt may have indeed expanded government, it was back in 1901-1909. I believe the Roosevelt you were referring to was good ole Franklin D.

Both Roosevelts expanded government. When I said Teddy did, though I didn't say it, I was thinking about his Trust Busting. Teddy went after several monopolies from JP Morgan to John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil. Teddy also sent in the Marines to fight the Barbary Privates in the Med. There was justification for that though, pirates had taken American citizens hostages as well as attacked US ships. Actually he did the same thing Thomas Jefferson did.

Falcon

Why would I have to be high in order to know American history?

The Monroe Doctrine in 1823 set the stage and then the first Roosevelt extended it to the Latin countries with his Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine which eventually got us involved with Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Then eventually, Our strategy ws changed right before WW2 to the good neighbor policy. At the Conference for the Maintenance of Peace in Buenos Aires in 1936, the American nations agreed to mutual consultation if there was a security threat to any of the nations within the hemisphere.

Now this mainly stands for invasions from countries outside north and south America invading America's but it is there. Also to point, with the cold war, there had been many many other policies as well as treaties that attempt to show the same willingness of intervention. Have you ever wondered why countries like Germany never set eyes on the Americas? I know there were plans and people argue over their actually intentions as well as the threat it would have imposed, but outside that there really hasn't been any threat of Europe on the Americas since before the late 1800s. It might not be in the same shape as it was, but it is there and was there.

This logic is the essence of the Bush Era. The theory is entirely devoted to power. All that matters in life is to whom you defer in power. If Bush acknowledges that a court, a Congress, or a TV audience has any power over him, that's the end of the issue. Only after an apocalyptic fight with every resource possible, including illegal means, torture, spies, assassinations, exposing covert agents, bribes, anything to attack the force asserting power over them. Then, when it looks like the new power will win, they try to bargain for changes to allow them to do what they were doing in exchange for admitting they used to do it, then claim "we were right all along". If they still lose, they take whatever lumps are offered (until now, practically nothing except perhaps purely symbolic, from their Republican Congress), then just do it anyway in secret - or through proxies, either corporate or overseas.

Because all that BushCo has learned from politics is the Nixon philosophy "it's only a crime when you get caught". Because the Bush admin made its bones in the Nixon admin.

These people will do anything for tyrannical powers, including use ones they don't actually have to get them. The Constitution is designed to stop such criminal tyrants: impeachment. It works only while the Constitution still has more power than the tyrants attacking it.

Do I get called a terrorist if I say I FUCKING HATE BUSH for abrogating the 4th amendment to the bill of rights?

"Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constituti on.billofrights.html

Wouldn't I be a coward if I didn't hate him for this breach of our fundamental rights? I assure you if the British had such a system for sifting all communications for treasonous intent we would still be the British commonwealth of the Americas. After all some of the original American REOVLUTIONARIES (can you say violent overthrow of the "legitimate" British government) communicated through committees of correspondence:

"In an era before modern communications, news was generally disseminated in hand-written letters that were carried aboard ships or by couriers on horseback. Those means were employed by the critics of British imperial policy in America to spread their interpretations of current events.

Special committees of correspondence were formed by the colonial assemblies and various lesser arms of local government. The committees were responsible for taking the sense of their parent body on a particular issue, committing it to a written form and then dispatching that view to other similar groups. Many correspondents were members of the colonial assemblies and also were active in the secret Sons of Liberty organizations."

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h675.html

Can you say secret terrorist organiztion boys and girls I knew you could. Of course the British had a right to monitor their public communications (letters), right? Afterall if they were doing nothing wrong...

Sony reported that over the past eight months it shipped more than 4.7 million CDs with the so-called XCP copy protection.
Source

Figure a thousand dollars in damages per.
Actually Texas is suing for $100,000 per documented instance, but I will be lenient and generous on this one.

That's a potential for maybe $3Billion.

Germany was on the hook for about $33B - so yea, I was off by a power of ten, but don't forget I was using a very light $1,000 per, not the $100,000 per that Texas is suing for - if I was, it would be a dollar total 10x the amount of damage (dollar figure, not adjusted for inflation) caused by Germany in WWI.

I was wrong, but only by a single order of magnitude - which is close enough when you are dealing global disasters (which in the long run I envision it to be, at least for music sales /grin)

Yes, and there were the Alien and Sedition Acts, and the Sedition Act of 1918, and the McCarthy "witch-hunts", and a certain amount of "hate crimes" legislation and campaign finance regulation that concern me today - but to my knowledge there are, in the United States, no ideas which it is illegal to express. That is not the case in much of Europe: Germany, Austria, and France (at least) have laws against denying the Holocaust, and several European countries have (rarely enforced) laws against blasphemy or insulting religious beliefs (as do some U.S. states, though those laws are void because they are superceded by the first amendment to our constitution). I'll stand by my assertion: legally, practically, and certainly historically, the U.S. does have stronger protection for the expression of ideas than most of Europe (again, despite our continued puritanism when it comes to "obscenity").

I did appreciate your witticism re "Free Speech Zones", though; sorry if you didn't mean to provoke a serious response.

This decision is worse than the Dred Scott decision. Notice that even in this case, however, that the Court's position was that Congress did not have the authority to deprive citizens of their property (Scott being deemed "property".) Now, the Supreme Court has decided that we have no private property, because the state can sieze it and sell it to another private owner for a profit (more taxes). In addition, today's ruling strips the rights of homeowners and places them in the same effective position that Scott was placed in 150 years ago -- that of a dehumanized legal construct with no rights in the courts.

I must grudgingly acknowledge that I underestimated the current makeup of the SCOTUS. They have managed to make a ruling worse than what are arguably the most unjust rulings (it took more than one ruling for Dred Scott) in the entire history of this country. They have wiped out private property and reduced homeowners to rightless slaves, powerless to challenge the whims of the state and deep-pocketed developers.

And this court did it all in one decision.

By that logic, Gore should have wone the 2000 elections, you moron.

Check your friggin' facts before you mouth off. Amazing how population increases and voter turnout increases cause the raw number of votes to go up.

Just FYI, the population of the US around the time General George Washington was elected president was about 2,205,000 people. The population of the US during the time of Abraham Lincoln was about 31,443,000. The population around the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt (World War II) was about 151,326,000.

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h980.html

I'm absolutely sure that all three of these men garnered fewer votes than George W. Bush. The Electoral College vote counts for George Washington on the election of 1789 records President Washington getting only 40% of the votes. Roughly, 40% of the population (voting and non-voting) in 1789 would be 1,571,700. Ralph Nader got more votes in the 2004 election than Washington got in the 1789 election. Are you implying because GWB had massively more votes than George Washington that GWB is a better president? For that matter, Ralph Nader?

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h980.html

Get a brain. Stop repeating what pundits and political hacks are feeding you. Grow a set of huevos and think for yourself.

62,028,772 = Bush
59,026,150 = Kerry

(56.2% of the Voting age population estimated to vote)

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0922901.html

50,999,897 = Gore
50,456,002 = Bush
2,882,955 = Nader

(51.3% of the Voting age population estimated to vote)

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0876793.html

Mark

By that logic, Gore should have wone the 2000 elections, you moron.

Check your friggin' facts before you mouth off. Amazing how population increases and voter turnout increases cause the raw number of votes to go up.

Just FYI, the population of the US around the time General George Washington was elected president was about 2,205,000 people. The population of the US during the time of Abraham Lincoln was about 31,443,000. The population around the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt (World War II) was about 151,326,000.

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h980.html

I'm absolutely sure that all three of these men garnered fewer votes than George W. Bush. The Electoral College vote counts for George Washington on the election of 1789 records President Washington getting only 40% of the votes. Roughly, 40% of the population (voting and non-voting) in 1789 would be 1,571,700. Ralph Nader got more votes in the 2004 election than Washington got in the 1789 election. Are you implying because GWB had massively more votes than George Washington that GWB is a better president? For that matter, Ralph Nader?

http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h980.html

Get a brain. Stop repeating what pundits and political hacks are feeding you. Grow a set of huevos and think for yourself.

62,028,772 = Bush
59,026,150 = Kerry

(56.2% of the Voting age population estimated to vote)

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0922901.html

50,999,897 = Gore
50,456,002 = Bush
2,882,955 = Nader

(51.3% of the Voting age population estimated to vote)

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0876793.html

Mark

Well, other points aside, your argument that cellphones are lagging in the US because of its size, is bordering on the ridiculous. The EU is as large as the US, yet the mobile phone penetration has been far higher ever since the mid 90's. Up here in Finland, there is only a population of 17 inhabitants per square kilometer. In the US the same figure is a little over 30 (use google to convert to metric). So, you seriously need to rethink your argument about why the US is lagging in mobile technology.

I sure do.

And I say that the people that are CLAIMING to represent us DO NOT REPRESENT US and in fact are robbing us "under threat of pain".. (If you understand that.)

Then the one loony who does vote will elect an extremist leader who will make irrational decisions affecting the whole world.

On the other hand you could all vote and get the same result.

Question: Why is it a federal crime for non-citizens to vote in any federal election, but those non-citizens can be taxed federally? Whatever happened to "No Taxation without Representation"?

I don't think you know what taxation without representation means... here are some facts, as you requested: American view of taxation without representation, A related court case and definition. Consult google for more.