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Which implies that you still -- almost sixteen years later -- reject the findings of every recount -- both official and unofficial -- that found George W. Bush to be the legitimate winner.

1.) State and federal law and international treaty put a variety of requirements on the Florida 2000 selection of electors. These laws were not followed. Ergo Florida never sent a legitimate set of electors to cast their ballots.

2.) The complete Florida recount done by researchers found that, despite the illegal disenfranchisement of many voters, using the "clear intent" standard Gore got more votes in 2000 in Florida than Bush did. The press coverage universally buried the lede and talked about how the limited recounts Gore called for would have left Bush the winner.

Those are the facts. Those of us who push for history to recognize them, and for the political system to make sure the situation does not re-occur, are not "holding a grudge".

The vast majority of casualties in 2015 (about 400) come from ordinary "I just felt like it" shootings.

No, they mostly came from "ordinary" criminal violence, largely gang-related. Shootingtracker.com is a source of noise: there have not been hundreds of mass shootings this year, unless you re-define the term.

You mean other than: Muslim with a gun shoots people?

The vast majority of casualties in 2015 (about 400) come from ordinary "I just felt like it" shootings.

No, they mostly came from "ordinary" criminal violence, largely gang-related. Shootingtracker.com is a source of noise: there have not been hundreds of mass shootings this year, unless you re-define the term.

But there is no such choice in the single most important sphere of all: the children education.

Really? There is no choice? No private schools, no charter schools, no home schooling?

I'm all in favor of arranging public education to grant more choice to students; smaller and more numerous schools and let a student go to any public school in their county/city/state (depending on how taxes are allocated) they like. Maybe even vouchers for secular private schools that take the voucher as the whole tuition (no public funds for religious education, no letting rich kids use tax dollars as partial payment at a school for the 1%ers), though I'm not sure on that point. But to claim that the current system offer no choice is simply inaccurate.

Since 1960-ies the per-pupil annual cost of public schools quadrupled (inflation-adjusted), while the quality of education remains the same (if it has not gotten worse).

Public schools have increased the array of services provided -- free and reduced-price meals, special education, vocational education, and services for disabled or ESL students -- in that time.

Overall, public schools have equivalent or better outcomes than private schools with the same level of spending per student.

And Texas's public school spending is near the bottom compared to other states, so trying to link this to some supposed overspending on schools does not fly.

No way they just Taser you for refusing to answer questions.

You can be tased or beaten by cops pretty much at their psychotic discretion.

Boy tased for refusing to wash cop car

Man tased for not giving up his phone

Man beaten to death for not providing ID

We live in a police state, and it's not going to stop until either 1) we raise standards and pay for cops, or 2) we liberalize CCW laws and recognize the right of self-defense against bad cops.

Everything. And at some level, society needs to be built around facilitating and accommodating business. Again... they pay for EVERYTHING.

Ultimately what pays for everything is labor. All value is created by the labor of human beings.

We've created a fscked-up system where the ability to exchange one's labor is dependent of the pretense of large businesses, powerful organizations under the control of a small ruling class of "owners". And the sort of labor one can exchange is subject to the desires of that owning class. There's plenty of work that needed to be done, cleaning up the planet, fixing the infrastructure, caring for children and the infirm and elderly, moving the production of food and energy on a sustainable basis...which has little or no value to the owning class.

So we either need to kowtow to that ruling class, building everything around facilitating and accommodating those large business, so that they can continue to be parasitic upon people who do the actual work and return some crumbs to the masses until the whole thing collapses from its inattention to the demands of physics and chemistry...or we need to fundamentally change the system.

Looks at Detroit indeed. That's what happens when your town builds its economy around a big business: if it leaves, you're boned. The lesson is not, "kowtow better".

And before someone talks about the evil corporations, lets get something straight... look around the country in more business friendly areas. Take texas or South Dakota or either of the Carolinas.

"More business friendly areas"...you are suggesting that California, where Silicon Valley and Hollywood and a tremendous amount of agribusiness is located, is not "business friendly"? Your facts are disordered, my friend.

Congress has the authority to regulate certain aspects of interstate travel that relate to commerce.

Airlines by nature engage in interstate commerce. (Perhaps there are a handful of strictly intra-state carriers, but let's leave aside edge cases for now.) Congress can, under its deliberately broad Constitutional power to regulate commerce, regulate the fsck out of airlines.

For every time a gun is used in self-defense in the home, there are 7 assaults or murders, 11 suicide attempts, and 4 accidents involving guns in or around a home.

Citation? The lowest number I've seen on defensive gun uses is 64,000 year. That's via a methodology expected to undercount, but even if we assume that it's an overcount and take *half* of it, then defensive gun use is likely to be more than three times as common as homicide via firearm.

Other estimates -- highly controversial ones, to be sure -- put the annual number of DGUs in the millions.

More importantly, those homicides by firearm are mostly being committed by people who already have criminal records. People who are legally barred from getting guns. But laws keep bad guys away from guns as well as drug laws keep junkies away from heroin; and keeping good citizens -- the sort who are unlikely to murder anyone but might come to someone's aid -- away from guns is not only a waste of resources and corrosive to liberty, it's counter-productive to crime prevention.

Firearms accidents are actually rare and you are far more likely to drown or die in a fire than be accidentally shot to death. Suicide is sad but the means are irrelevant, people manage to kill themselves quite well in Japan despite a lack of guns. And comparing DGU "in the home" with felonious shootings "in or around a home" -- a lovely bit of rhetorical misdirection and intellectual dishonesty.

..because "corporate backing" rules out "liberal," right?

Yes, pretty much. "Liberal" is supposed to imply at least a bit of leftism, and leftism mean policies that benefit ordinary working people instead of the aristocrats who control capital. Anything that benefits well-to-do stockholders at the expense of working people is a right-wing policy.

Things like the ACA aka "Obamacare" is exactly what the NOT CONSERVATIVES do when they have an iron grip on Capital Hill.

The ACA is modeled on "RomneyCare" and the idea of exchanges was pushed by the Heritage Foundation for years -- as early as 1989, in fact. It's fundamentally a right-wing plan that continues to fatten the wallets of insurance company stockholders and executives, does little to restrain corporations so massive that their profits -- not revenue, but profits -- are larger than some state budgets, maintains the fiction that a market approach is appropriate for health care, and does fskc-all to reign in the medical industry's practice of grossly overcharging people.

You know that the U.S. Constitution really hasn't mattered ever since Lincoln wiped his ass with it and went to war with half the nation, right?

Strange history you've got there.

First, Lincoln fought -- and crushed -- a pro-slavery domestic terrorist group. The so-called "Confederacy" fired first. It was -- ahistorical right-wing fantasies aside -- not a group of citizens resisting government oppression, but a gang of violent terrorists using force to ensure the continuation of slavery. If you want to see armed citizens justly resisting government, look to the civil rights era, to the Deacons for Defense and the Black Panthers.

Second, politicians wiping their ass with the Constitution long pre-dates Lincoln. Adams's Alien and Sedition Acts were signed in 1798, just a few years after the Bill of Rights was ratified.

For example, look at like 99% of the federal laws that rely on the Commerce Clause as their justification for existence.

The federal government was intended to have strong powers over commerce, so that's entirely appropriate. Madison's "original intent" was a federal government with more power over commerce and taxation than the British Parliament had had, and that would take such power away from the states.

Not to excuse there blatantly illegal searches, but to thing the whole system is some corrupt entity that s out to get everyone is simply wrong.

Sure. Even the Nazis weren't "out to get everyone" -- just troublemakers. Good Germans had nothing to fear from the SS.

(Yeah, yeah, Godwin's law, I lose, whatever.)

If you're a middle-class white American of mainstream religious and political beliefs, someone whose idea of a wild time is drinking four Bud Lights at a Kenny Chesney show, of course you've got nothing to fear from massive government surveillance. (Well, unless you used to date someone who worked at the NSA or something.) You can scamper about on your merry way knowing that the state is only interested in spying on deviants. You know the type. Malcontents. Dreamers. Granola peaceniks.

Good citizens like you have nothing to fear. You can feel safe, knowing the government is your friend. Heck, almost family! It's like having a protective old sibling watching you. I mean, watching out for you.

The US government stopped worrying about the Constitution a long time ago.

True. That goes back to at least 1798.

Just recently, they decided they had the power to mandate that every single US citizen purchase a specific product or be fined (Obamacare).

Under the Constitution, the feds can tax you, or not tax you, pretty much any way they like. Paying a tax if you don't have health insurance is no more a violation of the Constitution than paying a tax if you don't have a mortgage. The ACA's mandate is bad policy, but is entirely Constitutional.

Congress and the Supreme Court are a huge part of the Constitution. If they don't work...

Sorry, but did you just wake up from a long nap? Congress has been badly broken for decades, and the SCOTUS is a wretched hive of scum and villainy featuring at least one justice who apparently doesn't believe women are people and one who is a known liar, not to mention Bush v. Gore and Citizens United.

the State has no power to overturn economic realities

Right. And one of those economic realities is that health care is not an area where a "free market" can efficiently allocate resources. Buyers and sellers do not meet in the marketplace with equal power and full knowledge.

If you think corporate profits are the only reason, or even the major factor in the exorbitant expense of health care, you are naive. It's expensive because it takes vast resources to do the job.

It takes no more resources to provide an American citizen with health care than a German or a Japanese one. Yet every other developed nation has better outcome at less cost. The difference is the obscene profits realized by companies like United Health.

As unfortunate as it is, some people don't want to be educated

And when you're an adult, capable of having meaningful wants, you don't have to be. The "wants" of children, on the other hand, are substantially less meaningful. And if parents don't want their children to be educated, that's child abuse.

If you want to improve education in the US, start by fixing the dismal quality being offered in the K-12 arena.

K-12 education is good where there is money and bad where there is not. We don't have a public school system in the U.S., we have thousands, run at the local level; some are excellent, some are crap, and there's a pretty good correlation between poverty and crappy schools.

I know it's fashionable to bash public schools, but the bashing is largely unjustified: the fact is that public schools have equal or better performance to private schools with similar per-student spending.

Don't need to buy a white (actually, pink) noise generator when you've got a computer. Get sox. Simple white (actually, pink) noise script, with many comments and variations, here: http://unreasonable.org/node/303. (Someone even ran with the idea and made a fancy, documented script and put it on github: http://gist.github.com/1209835.) And/or, if you have an Android phone or tablet, try the Relax and Sleep app. (Free as in beer.) Kept me napping on a long plane ride to Japan last year in the midst of coach-class noise.

Well, but for the past few decades with the over extention of the federal power due to the bastardization of the interstate trade clause....you could.

No. The United States government is not a federation of states, and has not been since the Constitution was adopted. It's "We the People", not "We the States."

As Madison wrote, "It was generally agreed that the objects of the Union could not be secured by any system founded on the principle of a confederation of Sovereign States....Hence was embraced the alternative of a Government which instead of operating, on the States, should operate without their intervention on the individuals composing them..."

Constitutionally, the majority of the powers in the US IS supposed to reside with the states and not the federal govt.

Again, no. The Constitution grants wide powers to the federal government, and removes powers needed for sovereignty from the states. This is especially clear in the area of commerce. Again, quoting Madison: "As to the remark that the States ought to be under the controul of the Genl. Govt. at least as much as they formerly were under the King & B. parliament, it amounts as it stands when taken in its presumable meaning, to nothing more than what actually makes a part of the Constitution; the powers of Congs. being much greater, especially on the great points of taxation & trade than the B. Legislature were ever permitted to exercise..."

While there is legitimate debate to be had about the balance of powers in federalism, the "states rights" crowd is mostly ignorant of history and still buying into bullshit promulgated by anti-civil-rights conservatives in the 1960s.

apple is evil, amazon is not

If you believe that, you have not been paying attention...patent abuse and censorship put them on the "evil" list for sure.

Except the US has this thing called The Constitution.

Indeed it does. And that document says that "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government." Which, contrary to the way it's probably read in Texas, does not mean control by the GOP, but control by a fairly elected state government. Having neutral international observers present at elections is a valid way for the U.S. to make sure that states are respecting the people's right to republican (in the old meaning) government.

If you're going to invoke the Constitution, don't be an Ee'd Plebnista-er -- actually read the damn thing.

The rich, on the other hand, use their capital to employ the labor of the common folk, in order to increase their wealth.

In other words, the rich use their state-granted and enforced control of capital to increase their wealth through parasitism on those who actually work.

This benefits the laborer, because he is paid a wage from which he can live.

In other words, the workers can enjoy the scraps from the king's table.

Slavery was only the excuse.

Sigh. No, slavery was the root cause for the terrorist organization that called itself the Confederacy, by the terrorist's own admission. "Those [non-slaveholding] States have assumed the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of Slavery; they have permitted the open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace...property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection." -- Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina From the Federal Union

A stronger federal government contrary to the beliefs and intents of the Founding Fathers. The point of a weak fed was to keep massive government stupidity on a local or state-wide level, not to allow it to infect and infest itself across the entire country.

Double sigh. The whole point of the Constitution was to create a strong federal government, because the weak one of the Articles of Confederation failed. The "original intent" of Federalists like Madison was that the federal government would have more power over things like commerce and taxation than the British Parliament had had.

And, if you haven't noticed, this whole discussion is about how a state -- not the federal gubbmint -- is doing something in violation of people's rights. This is exactly the sort of behavior where the fed should step in to guarantee that a state respects citizens' due process rights.

Some public school administrators are largely a joke.

And so are some private school administrators. Private schools can mostly be divided into expensive, mostly secular, ones, which do well; Catholic schools, which do on average a little worse than public schools, and conservative religious schools, which are generally crap.

Private schools tend to be run more like companies and lousy administrators don't last.

Where does this myth that private sector companies somehow are run competently and effectively come from? Have people not worked

Believe it or not, all these exploited workers in china are living the great dream.

Yes, people living the dream are often known for jumping off buildings.

But they are condemned to lives of either being peasant farmers who could never read, write or get any actual health care, or being underpaid overworked factory workers.

And of course, no other option could ever even be thought of. There is no imaginable socioecnomic system where people could be peasant farmers who can read, write, and get actual health care, or be fairly paid humanely treated factory workers.

Remember, there are still 2.7 billion people living on less than 2 dollars a day,

The fallacy of scraps from the king's table.

Because hiding the meaning is precisely the point. It's not supposed to be a dissertation with a well supported thesis; it's a clever little puzzle that people enjoy composing and analyzing.

No, it is not. A poem is most certainly not a riddle, and any so-called poet who attempts to pervert poetry in such a manner ought to be keel-hauled.

A poem is an expression with emotional content, an attempt to illustrate or convey a state of consciousness. As Emerson tells us, "For it is not metres, but a metre-making argument that makes a poem,--a thought so passionate and alive that like the spirit of a plant or an animal it has an architecture of its own, and adorns nature with a new thing. The thought and the form are equal in the order of time, but in the order of genesis the thought is prior to the form. The poet has a new thought; he has a whole new experience to unfold; he will tell us how it was with him, and all men will be the richer in his fortune."

A poem does not "hide" behind metaphor, it uses metaphor a means of communication. Now, in order to understand a metaphor, you need some background knowledge about the metaphier; but that's not the poet hiding anything from you. When I say "Oh, that's like Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra," and you don't know who Darmok and Jalad are, we have a communications fail, but not because I'm hiding anything. Maybe I shouldn't expect you to know who Darmok and Jalad, or maybe your education has been deficient, but there's no attempt to create a puzzle.

(Some recent thoughts about poetry here.)

With an iPhone, you're less likely to default to using google services on an iPhone.

And instead you're stuck with Apple's version of the cloud bullshit. Apple is certainly at least as evil, and probably more so, as Google.

My Android phone does not sync with GMail at all. You don't need to root the phone to turn it off, it's right there in Settings -- Accounts and sync.

And of course I created a separate GMail account for the phone, which I don't use for anything. (Not that I really use my main GMail account for much other than testing -- why in the world would I want to hand my e-mail over to Google for scrutiny? I'm a geek, I have a VPS.)

Relying on "the cloud" -- whether it be Google's cloud, Apple's cloud, Amazon's cloud, whoever's -- to preserve your data, is not an informed and rational choice. Fortunately, Android users do not have to make that choice.

and Amazon is not obligated to explain why it has chosen to take offense.

And we are not obligated to do business with censoring fucktards who should be first against the wall when the revolution comes. This is not a first offense. Anyone still doing business with Amazon is either clueless or does not care about freedom.

This is why we need Libertarians to control Congress and the White House so they will get rid of government (especially Federal government) supporting this kind of theft, and promote a fully Free Enterprise system where anyone can invent whatever they want and not worry about the government stealing it.

Big-L Libertarians -- as in the Libertarian Party -- want to shrink or eliminate entirely the regulatory functions of government, not the wealth-concentrating ones. Their 2008 VP candidate was a patent troll. These right-wing propertarians have little interest in patent reform: patents are just another form of property, and in their view the state exists to create and enforce the "property rights" of the owning classes. (Still, I'll take the Libertarians over the GOP any day, at least they're not trying to bring the state into my bedroom.)

Actual libertarians -- libertarian socialists, a.k.a. anarchists, from whom the right-wingers stole the appellation "libertarian" -- want to eliminate the wealth-concentrating functions of government.

(As for Ron Paul, specifically, he's a grade A loon who is disconnected from consensual reality on abortion, evolution, and the separation of church and state, and is a liar who is either a racist or is incompetent to run a 'zine. Please, folks, get over the crush on him.)

This is why we need Libertarians to control Congress and the White House so they will get rid of government (especially Federal government) supporting this kind of theft, and promote a fully Free Enterprise system where anyone can invent whatever they want and not worry about the government stealing it.

Big-L Libertarians -- as in the Libertarian Party -- want to shrink or eliminate entirely the regulatory functions of government, not the wealth-concentrating ones. Their 2008 VP candidate was a patent troll. These right-wing propertarians have little interest in patent reform: patents are just another form of property, and in their view the state exists to create and enforce the "property rights" of the owning classes. (Still, I'll take the Libertarians over the GOP any day, at least they're not trying to bring the state into my bedroom.)

Actual libertarians -- libertarian socialists, a.k.a. anarchists, from whom the right-wingers stole the appellation "libertarian" -- want to eliminate the wealth-concentrating functions of government.

(As for Ron Paul, specifically, he's a grade A loon who is disconnected from consensual reality on abortion, evolution, and the separation of church and state, and is a liar who is either a racist or is incompetent to run a 'zine. Please, folks, get over the crush on him.)

A state cannot require a retailer in another state to collect taxes for it.

Unless, of course, the retailer has a presence in that other state. Which Amazon does, have affiliates all over the place.

That's besides the point, though. Quite aside from their tax strategy, given that Amazon is a bunch of patent-abusing censoring bastards, no sane and informed person can call them "reputable".

Where is the left wing crying "censorship"?

Right here. I've called Apple a bunch of censoring bastards before, and this doesn't change that.

And the crew on the Death Star were just innocent bystanders.

May I introduce you to the concept of fiction, and its overly simplistic portrayal of "good" and "evil"?

But let's stick with that for just a minute. Remember what Luke, our hero, wanted to do when we first meet him? He's talking to his aunt and uncle about applying to "the Academy" -- presumably, an Imperial military academy.

Let's imagine some guy just like Luke, a farm kid looking for something better, but whose daddy isn't a Sith and who doesn't have a pair of droids fall into his lap and call him to adventure. Farm kid goes to the academy, gets trained to follow orders, maybe has an occasional doubt or twinge of conscience but does as he's told. Why? Because it's human nature to follow authority. Until he graduates and gets posted to the Death Star...

Armies are full of "innocent bystanders", people who individually are generally ok but are part of a structure designed to nullify their conscience and judgment. The guys who dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were no more fundamentally evil than most of the folks you meet every day.

D) Semi-reliable, always connected hardware to run it on.*
E) Semi-reliable, fairly-fast, connection to run it through.**
F) Sufficient, reliable income to afford a commercial DSL or better internet connection because hosting such a site over most residential plans is a violation of TOS.***

My VPS costs me less than $20 a month at Linode. I run my blog and several other sites off of it. Less full-featured hosting is available even more cheaply. Why would I buy my own hardware to run a web server?

I have FaceBook pick up my RSS feed. My FB "friends" can read my posts there, but if FB collapses I still have my content.

In Europe they talk about States Rights without any of the baggage. Basically - they argue France, Germany, Poland, and so on reign supreme over the central government, and they have the right to nullify any act the EU passes which whose power was not granted by the Lisbon treaty. The same thinking should apply in the US too.

No, it shouldn't, because the EU is a group of sovereign nations in a loose union, whereas we have a Constitution under which the states gave up most of their sovereignty.

We tried something like what you're suggesting. It was called the Articles of Confederation, and was an abject failure. So a bunch of guys -- the Federalists -- came up with a plan for a strong central government. How strong? According to leading Federalist James Madison:

As to the remark that the States ought to be under the controul of the Genl. Govt. at least as much as they formerly were under the King & B. parliament, it amounts as it stands when taken in its presumable meaning, to nothing more than what actually makes a part of the Constitution; the powers of Congs. being much greater, especially on the great points of taxation & trade than the B. Legislature were ever permitted to exercise... ... ...it cannot be unknown that they represented the strong prejudices in N. Y. agst. the object of the Convention which was among other things to take from that State the important power over its commerce and that they manifested, untill they withdrew from the Convention, the strongest feelings of dissatisfaction agst. the contemplated change in the federal system

That's right -- the "original intent" of James Madison was that the federal government would have more power over commerce and taxation than the British Parliament had had, and would take such power away from the states.

Bet you won't hear any of the Ee'd Plebnistaers who like to talk about the Founding Fathers quoting him on that.

I think a lot of people would be surprised to know that he's been on something of an anti-vaccination crusade, especially when it comes to flu shots.

The threat from influenza is overstated,and according to the available evidence flu vacccines are not useful for the general population or for the elderly. (There may be a benefit for the immune-compromised.) That makes widespread flu vaccination at best a waste of resources, at worst an exposure to risk of various side-effects without gain.

Understanding this is not not the same as being opposed to vaccinations against more deadly diseases. I never get a flu shot; but I got my Tdap booster a few months ago. And even though it made me feel like crap for a day or two, for serious diseases like tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis it's worth the risk of a reaction.

He basically is of the position that the whole campaign to inoculate people against H1N1 is in and of itself a conspiracy.

The WHO actually changed the definition of a pandemic in May 2009 so that H1N1 would qualify, removing the qualification that an outbreak must cause "enormous numbers of deaths and illness". And it estimated that 2 billion H1N1 cases were likely -- 1 out of 3 human beings on the whole planet -- even after the winter season in Australia and New Zealand showed that only about one to two out of 1000 people were infected.

It did this while taking advice from people with financial and research ties with Big Pharma companies that produced antivirals and vaccines; one researcher who wrote key guidelines had been paid by Roche and GlaxoSmithKline.

There is definitely questionable behavior, conflict of interest, and lack of transparency here. Business as usual for Big Pharma.

You certainly ought to get kids vaccinated again polio, MMR, and other real threats for which effective vaccines are available. Influenza, however does not appear to fit into that category.

I think a lot of people would be surprised to know that he's been on something of an anti-vaccination crusade, especially when it comes to flu shots.

The threat from influenza is overstated,and according to the available evidence flu vacccines are not useful for the general population or for the elderly. (There may be a benefit for the immune-compromised.) That makes widespread flu vaccination at best a waste of resources, at worst an exposure to risk of various side-effects without gain.

Understanding this is not not the same as being opposed to vaccinations against more deadly diseases. I never get a flu shot; but I got my Tdap booster a few months ago. And even though it made me feel like crap for a day or two, for serious diseases like tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis it's worth the risk of a reaction.

He basically is of the position that the whole campaign to inoculate people against H1N1 is in and of itself a conspiracy.

The WHO actually changed the definition of a pandemic in May 2009 so that H1N1 would qualify, removing the qualification that an outbreak must cause "enormous numbers of deaths and illness". And it estimated that 2 billion H1N1 cases were likely -- 1 out of 3 human beings on the whole planet -- even after the winter season in Australia and New Zealand showed that only about one to two out of 1000 people were infected.

It did this while taking advice from people with financial and research ties with Big Pharma companies that produced antivirals and vaccines; one researcher who wrote key guidelines had been paid by Roche and GlaxoSmithKline.

There is definitely questionable behavior, conflict of interest, and lack of transparency here. Business as usual for Big Pharma.

You certainly ought to get kids vaccinated again polio, MMR, and other real threats for which effective vaccines are available. Influenza, however does not appear to fit into that category.

I think a lot of people would be surprised to know that he's been on something of an anti-vaccination crusade, especially when it comes to flu shots.

The threat from influenza is overstated,and according to the available evidence flu vacccines are not useful for the general population or for the elderly. (There may be a benefit for the immune-compromised.) That makes widespread flu vaccination at best a waste of resources, at worst an exposure to risk of various side-effects without gain.

Understanding this is not not the same as being opposed to vaccinations against more deadly diseases. I never get a flu shot; but I got my Tdap booster a few months ago. And even though it made me feel like crap for a day or two, for serious diseases like tetanus, diphtheria, and pertussis it's worth the risk of a reaction.

He basically is of the position that the whole campaign to inoculate people against H1N1 is in and of itself a conspiracy.

The WHO actually changed the definition of a pandemic in May 2009 so that H1N1 would qualify, removing the qualification that an outbreak must cause "enormous numbers of deaths and illness". And it estimated that 2 billion H1N1 cases were likely -- 1 out of 3 human beings on the whole planet -- even after the winter season in Australia and New Zealand showed that only about one to two out of 1000 people were infected.

It did this while taking advice from people with financial and research ties with Big Pharma companies that produced antivirals and vaccines; one researcher who wrote key guidelines had been paid by Roche and GlaxoSmithKline.

There is definitely questionable behavior, conflict of interest, and lack of transparency here. Business as usual for Big Pharma.

You certainly ought to get kids vaccinated again polio, MMR, and other real threats for which effective vaccines are available. Influenza, however does not appear to fit into that category.

Maybe 30 years ago, but you really don't see much of that now.

I still see plenty of assholes who think that displaying the flag of the terrorist organization that styled itself the "Confederate States of America" is cool. And I don't mean in the deep South, I mean in Maryland (which was not a Confederate state) and even Pennsylvania (which is north of the Mason-Dixon line and is in no one's definition a "southern" state). I recently had to write a letter of protest to a national vendor who thought that pro-slavery terrorist logos were cool enough to put on their merch.

I would like to invite you to add to that notion - parks are general an example of doing good - by listing a few areas where you are under the impression the government is doing good.

I heard about this thing that government-funded researchers were working on called the ARPANET. Sounded kind of neat. Might end up having an impact on the world.

I certainly have my disputes with the federal government (as I discuss, for example, here: "the government that gave us the Dredd Scott decision, Prohibition, McCarthyism, MK-ULTRA mind-control experiments with LSD, the Bay of Pigs, the Vietnam police action, Watergate, Iran-Contra, the House banking and Post Office scandals, the Waco [assault], and 20-page MILSPECS for brownies"). But anyone who puts forth the proposition "the federal government has never done anything worthwhile!" on an Internet forum, as I have often seen, demonstrates ignorance that is so ironic that it's entertaining.

Not quite true. If I don't like the way "big business" is regulating the Internet, I'm free to start my own business to compete with "big business," one which is less expensive and provides more features to customers. This is still possible even in today's heavily regulated free market economy.

No, it's not possible to start your own business to compete with multinational megacorporations, not in any meaningful or useful sense. Everybody hates all of the cell phone carriers, everybody hates their cable company, but very few people have meaningful choice available -- at best it's giant douche vs. turd sandwich. Why? Because big business doesn't compete on cost and features; it "competes" on controlling the market. As James K. Galbraith, explaining his father's work, put it, "Corporations exist to control markets, and often to replace them. Business leaders reduce uncertainty not through clairvoyance (or 'perfect foresight,' as the economics textbooks call it), nor by confident exploitation of probability ('portfolio diversification'). They do it by forming organizations large enough to forge the future for themselves."

UnitedHealth Group's revenues are about the same as the total GDP of the nation of Bangladesh. Exxon-Mobil's profits -- not gross receipts, but profits -- are several times the budget for the entire EPA. The idea that corporations of this magnitude are controlled by market forces or are subject to competition from entrepreneurs is sheer fantasy.

On the other hand, I am not free to start a competing government and remain an American citizen.

But you can take over the existing government, if you get a majority of voters to back you. You can't take over an existing megacorporation, or compete with one, unless you get a majority of the dollars to back you.

While there is truth to the assertion that some private schools are much better than others, this doesn't take into account how bad many government schools are.

Nor does it take into account how good many government schools are; nor does it take into account that private schools get to select their students, while public schools systems don't.

We do not have a public school system in the U.S. -- we have thousands. Each county generally runs its own system, with a bit of oversight and funding at the state level. I live in a narrow strip of Baltimore County between Baltimore City (an independent city, Baltimore is essentially a county unto itself) and Howard County.

Where I live, the schools are decent-to-good; half of Baltimore County public high schools were ranked in the top six percent of high schools by Newsweek, and 85% of graduates go on immediately to higher education. But in a few minutes I can be in Baltimore City -- as seen on The Wire -- which a few years ago had one of the lowest on-time graduation rates in the country, less that 40%, and 11 schools were failing so badly that the State of Maryland tried to take them over directly; there has been marked improvement the past few years, but it's still an underperforming system. Or in a few minutes I can be in Howard County, one of the richest counties in the U.S., where the graduation rate is over 93%, and average SAT scores are over 1100 on the old 1600 point scale.

As one last aside, note that since 1970 real spending per pupil at government schools in the U.S. has more than doubled, with - so far - nothing to show for it.

Nonsense. Since 1970, public schools have had to provide increasing special education, more ESOL education, more free and reduced price meals. They've also introduced more gifted education and AP classes, which didn't exist (or at least, weren't widespread) in 1970. Schools have also become a delivery point for a wide array of social services, which accounts for a very large chunk of spending. Finally, public schools also provide transportation for students -- you may have noticed some increase in gasoline prices since 1970.

In spite of these extra costs, public school expenditures are lower than secular private schools; they spend a bit more than Catholic schools, but get slightly better outcomes. (Note that "expenditure" and "tuition" are very different things, thanks to grants; for example, one school in McLean, Virginia, had a tuition of $25,890 and spending of $35,665.) There are cheaper private schools, but they're usually poor performers. You get what you pay for, and overall, public school price/performance is in line with private schools. The problem is systems like Baltimore; and it's not just the schools that are the problem there, there are enormous issues of economic and social justice at work.

I attended both private and public schools in the U.S., and I learned far more in private schools.

Private schools in the U.S. mostly fall into three categories: conservative, non-Catholic Christian schools, which generally have low per-student spending, poorly qualified teachers, and poor student achievement; Catholic schools, which have both per-student spending and student achivement that's a bit less than public schools; and expensive private schools, usually either Hebrew schools or not religiously affiliated, which spend more money and have better student achievement than public schools. (Note that this expense may not be borne directly by students in the form of tuition.)

You don't think that "The comparison between the swastika and the war on Afghanistan/Pakistan and Iraq" was supposed to be a comparison of the Germans in WW II to the US in Afghanistan/Pakistan and Iraq?

No. Since that's not what it says, why would you read it what way?

Let me rewrite the OP a bit for you to assist your comprehension: "They face an abstract geometric form that has negative connotations for many people (though positive ones for others[*]) with the horror of facing the son of Satan or whatever, but then they go happily supporting the actual on-going killing of human beings in Afghanistan/Pakistan and Iraq (although to a lesser extent)...Yeah, the abstract geometric form is the real evil here, that's what we should worry about..."

The symbol is not the thing, the pointer isn't the object, the map is not the territory.

([*]You will commonly see swastikas on shrines and temples in Japan. It's often used on maps to mark a temple. We live in an international culture; nearly 40% of the world's population is Chinese or Indian, cultures where this is a symbol with positive associations.)

Most of the folks complaining about the tax burden are unwilling to allow the spending which is focused on benefiting them to be cut.

Most of the folks complaining about the tax burden also somehow don't know that their taxes are very low compared to other nations, or compared to their own nation's history. It's long past time to grow up and raise taxes, especially on the investment classes who have been giving the rest of us the shaft for the past 30 years.

Voting for a third party is (unfortunately) a pretty ineffectual protest move.

Not at all. When a third part starts to get recognition, one of the major parties swoops in to steal its ideas.

Few members of the Progressive Party (the "Bull Moose" guys) were ever elected to office, but much of their platform ended up being implemented. The GOP has picked up some talking points from the Libertarians -- though of course, only those related to keeping the privileges of the capitalist class intact, not those about keeping the state out of your private life. And Kerry and Obama both ran more to the left after Gore lost votes to Nader in 2000.

(Note that Gore should have beaten Bush like a gong in 2000, by a margin that made the theft of the election impossible; and that Gore still got more votes than Bush in Florida. Nader is not responsible for Gore's poor campaign or for his failure to fight for the rights of Florida voters.)

(Indeed, had Obama run his administration more in line with the way he campaigned, he might have had much more of his base turn out on Tuesday. One of these days, Democrats might learn that tacking to the right does not get them support from either the left or the right. (Of course, the question of whether Obama's campaign was a genuine reflection of his desires and he's tacking right for what he thinks are practical purposes, or whether he's just another moderate conservative running as a Democrat as a cynical political ploy, in the mode of Clinton, remains to be seen.))

Which implies that you DID read a lot of Ayn Rand as a lonely insecure teenager.

No, actually, it doesn't. I came rapidly to the assessment that she was full of shit the first time I cracked one of her books. And that was several years after I'd gone from lonely insecure teenager to lonely insecure college student -- this is /., after all. (I'm feeling much better now, thanks -- young geeks out there, it does get better.)

Considering your Teabagger/Randroid comments...

I tell you that I loathe Rand, and you call me a Randroid. I not only criticize teabaggers on my blog but go out counter-protest them in person, but you call me a teabagger.

You classification system is broken. The world does not work the way you think it does. Please try actually listening to what people are saying before you start labeling them. Thank you.

"The Courts are stupid! I KNOW more about the LAW than they do!" Hate to tell you this, but, no, you DON'T know more than the Courts.

I didn't say I knew more about the law than the courts; but I will say that there are areas of the law where the courts are not part of the reality-based community. For example I know that denying people the right to have their vote counted, as the court decided in Bush v. Gore, is not an application of the principle of equal protection. I know that corporations are not citizens and that corporate personhood is a steaming crock of shit, despite the Citizens United decision. I'll go out on a limb and guess that there is at least one case decided by the Roberts court that you think they got completely wrong.

Teabagger/Randroid conflates the imprisonment of Japanese-Americans during WWII with a question about the number of toilets in a home.

As I said, I am neither a teabagger nor a Randroid; and further, you have just committed the fallacy of the extended analogy

You continue to dig yourself into a deeper hole. It's time to be quiet now before you make a greater fool of yourself.

You read a LOT of Ayn Rand as a lonely, insecure teenager, didn't you?

Ha! I loathe Rand's work, and since I'm rather anti-capitalist, I'm sure she'd loathe me.

As for the Constitutionality of the Census, Article 1, Section 2. I'll wait while you look it up in your copy of the Constitution.What? You don't have a copy?

I was hosting this on-line copy at an FTP site before the Web existed, thanks.

Article 1, Section 2 authorizes the Feds to conduct an enumeration. That's a count. I don't mind being counted. It does not authorize an investigation into lifestyle. That's why I decline to answer anything on the census form beyond how many people live in my house.

Diverse courts, up to SCOTUS, have affirmed that the Census can ask whatever questions it feels germane to its mission.

The illiteracy of the courts does not change the meaning of the document.

As for the 'toilet' question. Statistics. Watching trends over the decades are very useful.

Except that "statistics" is not an excuse for demanding, under penalty of fine or imprisonment, personally-identifiable answers to questions about my plumbing. Anonymous voluntary surveys can gather the info.

It's not that I think there might be some conspiracy to, ahem, flush out certain groups based on toilet info -- though I would be concerned about local governments, or worse yet private homeowner associations, trying to use the data for code enforcement; it's a matter of principle. If you stand up for the little infringements, you're in practice when a big one comes along; if you're in the habit of doing whatever those in Authority ask of you without analysis, you will do horrible things at the request of anyone who can put on the attitude of power.

So, the bottom line is, you just proved yourself to be one of those morons who got their Official Libertarian Panties in a wad over a legitimate question in the Census.

Considering that census data was, in the past, used to herd innocent Americans into concentration camps, anyone who doesn't have at least a tiny drop of concern about census data is woefully ignorant.

"But that data is protected by law!" you protest. It was protected before WWII also. Then the law changed. Anyone who doesn't think that it's at least possible that it could change again is woefully ignorant.

Exercise burns carbs and then fat. Trouble is, the carbs we take in our daily diet still outnumbers that which I burn from riding 10 miles each day.

Then you needed to eat fewer calories, and not just from carbs. Low carb diets work only when caloric intake decreases. (If you consume 3000 calories of fat and protein and burn 2000 calories, just what do you think happens to that other 1000 calories?)

In fact, people can lose weight on either low carb (preferable a vegetarian low carb, if one doesn't want to shorten one's lifespan, since a typical low carb/high protein diet has detrimental effects of coronary blood flow) or high carb diets. The problem is caloric intake, not the proportion of macronutrients in the diet. If carbs are to blame, why does Japan have one of the lowest obesity rates in the world and a diet still centered around rice? And why is that obesity rate increasing as the diet Westernizes and becomes less carb-centered? It's nothing to do with carbs versus protein or fats, it's serving size, sugar, and exercise patterns.

People seriously do not understand nutrition or how diet and exercise work.

Yes, and the belief in the effectiveness of low carb diets is just evidence of this.

Anyway, congratulations on decreasing your caloric intake and losing weight, even if it took belief in the effectiveness of pseudoscience to help you do it.

It's a medical device.

Which, as the mess regarding medical tubes shows, does not mean that it is subject to meaningful safety regulations.

I think the medical tubing issue is a red herring, in terms of safety. Plugging the wrong tube into the wrong device is user error, not a problem with the safety of the tubes. The nurse in question needs to be paying attention. If you look at the original article, the mix-up highlighted was truly moronic. Even a nurse on his/her first day of work should be alert enough not to connect a feeding tube to an IV.

In the case of the exoskeleton, all the legs need to do is support the patient's weight, and walk. Anything preventing the exoskeleton from doing that would also prevent it from leaving clinical trials. About the only failure points I can see would be mechanical, which you can't fix with a firmware update.

Besides that, there's not a lot of DIY going on in wheelchair repair.

Actually, a friend of mine who uses an electric chair has turned to friends for repair a few times, because wait times for "authorized" repair were too long. Now, this was simple stuff like loose connections, but the idea of DIY firmware updates isn't completely out-of-bounds.

I've done repairs on my manual wheelchair, as well. It's not too hard to replace a pneumatic tire, but once you start getting into the solid inserts, there's more expensive equipment involved. And if you're talking about frame adjustments, that's not something the user should be doing by his/herself.

Now, as far as firmware goes, I can't imagine why a manufacturer would even want people upgrading the firmware themselves. A medical device like this isn't something you code a mod for. It's something you leave alone unless you have reason to do otherwise. The most rational way to handle firmware upgrades would be the same way they handle bug fixes in cars: You send a letter issuing a recall, and upgrade the users in the shop where they bought the device.

It's a medical device.

Which, as the mess regarding medical tubes shows, does not mean that it is subject to meaningful safety regulations.

Besides that, there's not a lot of DIY going on in wheelchair repair.

Actually, a friend of mine who uses an electric chair has turned to friends for repair a few times, because wait times for "authorized" repair were too long. Now, this was simple stuff like loose connections, but the idea of DIY firmware updates isn't completely out-of-bounds.

Megan's laws (I like to call them "The Ultimate ThinkOfTheChildren Acts") pretty much make it illegal for a male of any age to get within 20 yards of a female below 18, or have to wear a virtual scarlet letter for the rest of his life.

Yes. If you don't like such socially-conservative laws, don't support the GOP.

When you have trillions of dollars being spent-- none for inarguably constitutional uses such as defense-- and a big tax hike across the board, that's redistribution of wealth by definition.

None for defense? WTF? Have you not been paying attention? Direct federal spending on "defense" makes up 20% of the budget, not counting veteran's benefits, interest on the debt rung up from war and the arms race. Add those in and the spending on "defense" roughly doubles.

Our taxes are low, both by international standards and by the standards of American history. It's well past time to restore the aristocracy tax (a.k.a. the estate tax), and raise the top marginal rates back to the 50% that was there for most of the Reagan era -- or even the 90% that curbed the extremely rich during the Eisenhower administration.

The federal government inarguablely has the Constitutional power to "to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States". Congress can buy us all ponies if it thinks it's in the general welfare. Our check on that is to elect a new Congress.

Capitalism is redistribution of wealth by definition: it takes the wealth created by labor and redirects a large part of it to bankers, landlords, and absentee investors.