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The Republicans aren't demanding that he kick his grandest achievement to the curb, but that he delay the individual mandate portion of it for the same length of time (one year) as the 50+ employee corporate mandate was delayed. Try remembering only a few months back: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/07/02/obama-delay-health-care-law/2484623/ Republicans are only asking for the same thing for regular Americans that Obama already granted to corporations: namely that they get an extra year to prepare for the change.

The senate and president don't *need* to talk to the crazies because IT IS ALREADY A LAW.

Do you even understand how Congress works?

Laws can be made and repealed at any time. Just because it's a law today doesn't mean it will be a law tomorrow.

Maybe you're one of those people that enjoyed paying the long-distance telephone tax to fund the Spanish-American war, though? That law was passed in 1898, repealed in 2006.

Feds cut off phone tax after 108 years

Screaming that it's "already a law" is fundamentally stupid. There are a lot of laws on the books that should be repealed. There is clearly some fraction of the population of the US that is significantly opposed to ACA. The debate will (and should) go on until a suitable compromise is reached. This is how democracy works in the US.

The biggest problems in recent years have come about as a result of either political party holding a supermajority in the executive and legislative branches of government. Republicans rammed legislation down the throats of Democrats, who became intransigent. The Democrats proceeded to return the favor, and now the Republicans are now also intransigent. The best thing that can ever happen in our current governmental system is for neither party to hold a supermajority, ever, because it forces the correct compromises to be made when the laws are being debated, rather than happening ex post facto and resulting in a paralyzed government.

If this is true, then how come our schools are so awful?

We the people have been throwing more and more money at schoolteachers, and requiring ever-increasing levels of training and education to maintain their license to teach, yet the educational achievments of our students have been flatlined for 40 years, and have even fallen dramatically in some districts.

Have we really been throwing money at teachers? Teacher salaries have remained fairly constant in inflation-adjusted terms over the past few decades. W have definitely been throwing money at schools. With NCLB testing and gee-whiz-bang "let's give everyone a tablet" initiatives, and insanely overpaid administrators, we're spending way more, but we aren't seeing any results... hm...

Meanwhile home schooled children, taught by parents with no formal training as teachers, outperform government-schooled students so often that the high achieving home schooler has become a cultural meme, if not a cliche.

Charter schools have also been able to deliver superior results at lower cost.

Um, citation needed? Yes, some charter schools are great, but even more are worse.

No, I don't think we need professionally trained well paid teachers. What we need are voucher programs, more home schooling, teachers and schools that have to compete, the utter end to tenure of any kind, and pay/bonuses based on classroom performance instead of seniority.

Because tying pay raises to test performance doesn't give anyone an incentive to cheat. It would never happen.

Opening up the teaching profession to anyone with a bachelor's degree and a demonstrated knowledge of a subject (english, math, science) would be even better. There is no evidence that having a master's degree in early childhood education helps someone teach 3rd graders how to multiply. Let those who want to teach and who are good at it take the field, and get rid of parasitic space takers for whom a teaching job is a state-paid sinecure.

Most of all, outlaw public sector unions so that groups like the NEA aren't able to block real education reform.

I'm all for at-will employment, but let's be honest, if school systems could get away with paying teachers minimum wage, they would. After all, if all you need is demonstrated knowledge of a subject, why don't the 1st graders teach kindergarten? Too far? OK, well, certainly a high school dropout should be OK. After all, they know their colors and how to read "See Spot Run." I'm sure you wouldn't mind handing over your kids to a burnout stoner, right?

When asked by KDSK-TV if he would take back his much-derided comments, the former congressman said, "Oh, of course I would. I've relived them too many times. But that is not reality."...

Major players in the GOP distanced themselves from Akin, who was in a winnable race against Democratic incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill, and cut off funding for his campaign. He apologized, but McCaskill capitalized on the comment and she won a second term by more than 15 percentage points. -- USA TODAY April 26, 2013

In 2000 I used an Amazon service known as Greenlight.com that was supposed to provide you with a no haggle car buying experience. I had just graduated from college, got married and wanted my first "real" car (at the time that real car was to be a VW Passat). I had never bought a car from a dealership before and the idea of no haggle had a lot of appeal. My experience was a total disaster. I picked our my car, color, options and they connected me with a local dealer that had the vehicle in stock. The model and trim I wanted was popular at the time so inventory was low and the local dealer wanted an additional $500 over the pre-negotiated price. I told them to get bent. $500 over the life of a car loan isn't much but it was the principal of the matter. I got real noisy with Amazon regarding their no-haggle "guarantee." I was blown off but vindicated a few months later when the service was killed. Here's to a better go at it this time. I'm saving my pennies for a Tesla. Amazon also had a state in Kozmo at the time, I hear that is coming back as well.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/consumer/autos/mauto779.htm
http://news.cnet.com/Amazon-invests-in-car-retailer-Greenlight/2100-1017_3-235946.html

7 in 10 Japanese cars sold in U.S. made in N. America

And on the flip side...

Most 'made in U.S.A.' cars are Japanese

So, "Japanese cars" and "American cars" are basically synonyms.

Yes, sometimes worthwhile things are difficult and you just have to slog through, but why do it unnecessarily?

No need to do it unnecessarily. And yet, the modern emphasis on making things fun disturbs me — because when "fun" comes into conflict with results, "fun" tends to win nowadays... Witness the prevalence of Asian children, whose "dragon mothers" are not (yet?) quite as enamored with the "fun", being so successful entering the best colleges, for example, that the admission boards adjusted the rules to favor Whites over Asians (although Blacks are still the most favored) to comply with the racist "affirmative action" laws and personal beliefs...

What's next? Slashdot reviews of "Metallurgy for Dummies" or "Making Radiology Fun"?.. Oh, wait...

Traffic related fatalities are on par with the amount of gun deaths in the U.S. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/01/09/guns-traffic-deaths-rates/1784595/. Plus traffic related fatalities is the leading cause of death among children 2 to 14 years old http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/810803.PDF.

One can make the argument that it's not clear the current method of enforcing traffic laws is actually helping those statistics, but that's another point (although the following article says speeding is the leading cause of traffic deaths in NYC: http://www.streetsblog.org/2013/03/18/dot-speeding-the-leading-cause-of-nyc-traffic-deaths-in-2012/). I personally think it's barbaric how many of our deaths and injuries come from vehicles. If you ask me more autonomous ways of driving couldn't come soon enough, in whatever form that takes.

Except for Joseph Nacchio of Qwest, who openly defied the NSA in 2002, and demanded a court order. He was then prosecuted for "insider trading" for selling some stock just before the US government pulled all Qwest's contracts as revenge for helping to expose the program of illegal surveillance. Nacchio was a hero, and no one even noticed. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm

There is no pause. Please inform yourself - it's embarrassing.

Some information for you: Scientific American: Is the Pacific Ocean Responsible for a Pause in Global Warming?

NPR: A Cooler Pacific May Be Behind Recent Pause In Global Warming

USA Today: Pacific Ocean cools, flattening global warming

But maybe the UK Met Office admitting it's been flat for 16 years, or just looking at the HADCRUT4 data would be a better source?

what the evaluation on the CO flood will say - damage, cost, cause.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2013/09/15/colorado-floods-weather/2816051/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/14/colorado-flooding-climate-change_n_3926284.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX3w90YecnA

How much denials there will be and if it's all blamed on the FSM (or equiv.).
Enjoy the coming show!

No, this is the USA. Fake guns get you put in jail... but real guns are protected by the constitution and anyone can have as many as they want.

The article pointed to a recent USA Today article that says:

We're unimpressed with the weekly tallies posted on the TSA blog of weapons confiscated by screeners; we just want to know when they've stopped a terrorist from blowing up a plane

Is that what the TSA exists for? The 9/11 terrorists did not blow-up a plane. Instead, they crashed a plane into a building. So is the TSA there to stop another 9/11, or to stop terrorists from blowing-up a plane? In reality, they aren't necessary to stop either of these goals.

As for the 9/11 goal: That happened because the cockpit doors were unlocked, and because nobody really thought about the possibility of crashing the plane into a national icon. So simple procedures + public awareness makes a repeat of that scenario impossible.

As for the blow-up goal: Did we have a lot of planes getting blown-up by terrorists before the TSA? Nope! Has the TSA detected lots of bombs on planes? Nope! If the TSA was nothing other than an officer walking around the airport, he would have foiled as many plots as this $7 billion organization.

Because terrorists are so rare that they are not even worth worrying about, and never were.

Never? Ever? Hope isn't a strategy, and denial is a poor shield.

I also think you picked a rather ironic day to make that statement, the anniversary of an attack that killed 3,000 people and did $100,000,000,000 damage to the US economy.

You only think that terrorism is rare because so few large scale plots succeed in Western countries where the problem is largely under control. There are plenty of arrests and convictions that help keep it under control and make it appear that terrorists are rare. If you want to see what a country looks like where it isn't under control, think back a few years to Iraq. People on Slashdot and other places complained bitterly about the deaths of 100,000+ Iraqis. Well guess what? A major portion of them were killed by terrorists. Proportionately that would be something like 120,000 people a year killed in the US.

Most people pay no attention to it and try to pretend it isn't there. But it is there, a slow, steady stream of events that could mean successful attacks and mass casualties if not watched and interdicted by law enforcement.

Cellphone led FBI to Times Square car bomb suspect arrest
FBI arrests four California men in alleged terror plot
You must certainly know that I could post a much longer list of successful attacks killing many people if I chose to.

Contrary to the myopic view of some people, the point isn't to spread fear, or to get people to live in fear, but rather to take reasonable precautions. Keeping hand grenades off planes is a reasonable precaution. There is no good reason to have facsimile hand grenades on a plane. Keeping facsimile grenades off planes helps cut down on both confusion and the possibility of using one as a threat, as if it was a real grenade, a proposition few will want to test. After all, a grenade is a bomb, isn't it?

Now if you want to go down the "but other things kill way more many people than terrorists do" route, there are a few questions I'm going to ask you to answer since few of those other things have to do with willful human action resulting in mass murder. Few societies tolerate that.

So in summary, your view will be popular, but at best misguided or a demonstration of the power of denial. In fact I think the evidence indicates your answer is simply wrong.

Now if you excuse me, I have a few thousand people to remember, and I hope there won't be more.

CNN 09 11 2001 Live Unedited CNN News Coverage Of WTC Attacks

Because terrorists are so rare that they are not even worth worrying about, and never were.

Never? Ever? Hope isn't a strategy, and denial is a poor shield.

I also think you picked a rather ironic day to make that statement, the anniversary of an attack that killed 3,000 people and did $100,000,000,000 damage to the US economy.

You only think that terrorism is rare because so few large scale plots succeed in Western countries where the problem is largely under control. There are plenty of arrests and convictions that help keep it under control and make it appear that terrorists are rare. If you want to see what a country looks like where it isn't under control, think back a few years to Iraq. People on Slashdot and other places complained bitterly about the deaths of 100,000+ Iraqis. Well guess what? A major portion of them were killed by terrorists. Proportionately that would be something like 120,000 people a year killed in the US.

Most people pay no attention to it and try to pretend it isn't there. But it is there, a slow, steady stream of events that could mean successful attacks and mass casualties if not watched and interdicted by law enforcement.

Cellphone led FBI to Times Square car bomb suspect arrest
FBI arrests four California men in alleged terror plot
You must certainly know that I could post a much longer list of successful attacks killing many people if I chose to.

Contrary to the myopic view of some people, the point isn't to spread fear, or to get people to live in fear, but rather to take reasonable precautions. Keeping hand grenades off planes is a reasonable precaution. There is no good reason to have facsimile hand grenades on a plane. Keeping facsimile grenades off planes helps cut down on both confusion and the possibility of using one as a threat, as if it was a real grenade, a proposition few will want to test. After all, a grenade is a bomb, isn't it?

Now if you want to go down the "but other things kill way more many people than terrorists do" route, there are a few questions I'm going to ask you to answer since few of those other things have to do with willful human action resulting in mass murder. Few societies tolerate that.

So in summary, your view will be popular, but at best misguided or a demonstration of the power of denial. In fact I think the evidence indicates your answer is simply wrong.

Now if you excuse me, I have a few thousand people to remember, and I hope there won't be more.

CNN 09 11 2001 Live Unedited CNN News Coverage Of WTC Attacks

In Q2 2010, (around when the dumping was occurring), Exxon reported its worst quarterly profits in years. Some might say that explains this, while not excusing this. Corporate pressure to cut budgets was driving lower managers, etc. However, in that -low- quarter, guess how much net profit (not gross revenue) they reported?

6.86 billion dollars

(source: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/08/01/exxon-2q-profit-lowest-since-2010/2608403/ )

Yep. In one fucking poor quarter they earned nearly 7 billion in profit. But could not bother to dump waste properly. And this was in the USA, with relatively strict, if often bought, environmental laws and protections. Can you imagine what companies like this do in places that do not care or cannot afford enforcement? Where the African dictator of the month just wants a few million to arm his army of children that go village raping?

This is the type of activity we should be pursuing and punishing. Not Syria, let them kill each other off if they want, lets not make enemies of both sides by dropping bombs and killing innocents (which does happen). Not pot smokers and growers. Not lil Suzy mp3 torrenter. Not Aaron Swartz. Not Snowden.

Anyway, I am done ranting, if you stayed through it you can go back to Football/Idol/TMZ now. Cheers

Sorry, but no. There was a question about the 2000 election, but Bush still won when the media conducted their own recounts*. What "controversy" are you referring to in 2004? Or are you just disagreeing with the outcome, again?

      Newspapers' recount shows Bush prevailed

* It's worth pointing out that the hotspot for that controversy about the "chads" took place in a county controlled by Democrats.

There were a lot more problems than 'hanging chads'

Also noted was a purge of over 54,000 citizens from the Florida voting rolls identified as felons, of whom 54% were African-Americans. The majority of these were not felons and should have been eligible to vote under Florida law.

[...]

The number of ballots marked for Buchanan in Palm Beach County was oddly large. Early reports had Buchanan receiving about 0.8% of the vote in Palm Beach County (a total of 3,407 votes), significantly outperforming his state-wide vote share of 0.29%.

[...]

Representatives of Buchanan's campaign and the Reform Party estimated Buchanan's true vote total at between 400 and 1,000 votes

[...]

A later review of discarded ballots in Palm Beach County by the Palm Beach Post showed that 5,330 ballots were spoiled with votes cast for both Gore and Buchanan, and 1,631 for Bush and Buchanan.

You can't know precisely how the numbers would balance out, but I think the evidence is pretty convincing that of the people in Florida who were both legally allowed, and willing, to vote more would have voted for Gore than Bush. The 'hanging chads' took the focus because they were the only mechanism that you could fix afterwards, but when you look at everything that went on it's pretty clear it was very messy, and messy in a way that likely favoured Bush by more than the margin.

Sorry, but no. There was a question about the 2000 election, but Bush still won when the media conducted their own recounts*. What "controversy" are you referring to in 2004? Or are you just disagreeing with the outcome, again?

      Newspapers' recount shows Bush prevailed

* It's worth pointing out that the hotspot for that controversy about the "chads" took place in a county controlled by Democrats.

Have you never heard of Wayne LaPierre and Ted Nugent?

Yes. Point? Both are American citizens with the right to express their opinions, just like you, regardless of what other people think. Maybe you're just jealous that the Nuge is successful enough to be able to say whatever he wants without major repercussion.

Have you never heard of the NRA's position on guns in schools ( http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/04/02/nra-school-security-hutchinson/2045565/ [usatoday.com] )

Yes, and personally I find the concept a much better idea than the government's "run and hide" strategy that turns kids and teachers into easy prey. Taking into account the fact that this statement from the NRA is a direct response to anti-gun nutters like you who screamed bloody murder when it was suggested to station armed police officers in schools, what's so nutty about training school faculty and staff to defend themselves and their charges? What alternative strategy would you recommend?

their recommendations on building indoor gun ranges for children? ( http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/05/08/1978921/nra-youth-magazine-home-shooting-ranges/

Well, for starters, I don't think a thinkprogress.org article that references other thinkprogress.org articles as supporting material is going to be all that accurate and unbiased when reporting a story about an organization they've deemed "the enemy."

Then there's the fact that, if you actually read it, the article is referring to indoor shooting ranges for bb guns, not combustion rifles. That you did not mention this very important aspect makes me wonder - did you not read the article you cited, or are you still being a biased asshole?

I'll leave the determination up to the reader.

Have you never heard of Wayne LaPierre and Ted Nugent? Have you never heard of the NRA's position on guns in schools ( http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/04/02/nra-school-security-hutchinson/2045565/ ), or their recommendations on building indoor gun ranges for children? ( http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/05/08/1978921/nra-youth-magazine-home-shooting-ranges/ )

Perhaps, sir, you should consider coming out from under that rock before calling people names.

that's why anything expensive you always carry on yourself and never check it in.

Sometimes you will not be allowed to take the expensive stuff as carry on. e.g. camera equipment. That goes easily in the thousands of dollars very fast.

What I heard a person do is take a flare gun (unloaded) and put it in the case and then fill out the forms that there is a firearm in the case and you can bet your sweet ass, they are doing almost everything to not loose your case with the firearm.
http://traveltips.usatoday.com/flying-valuables-103754.html

Don't blame me if they shoot you or do even worse when the above happens not to be true.

The Disney Concert Hall actually had to be "brushed". It was originally too shiny, and focused the sunlight in places. They had to give it a brushed finish after the fact to avoid this.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-02-24-concert-hall_x.htm

While i don't believe in the 'if you are innocent you have nothing to hide' concept, most people really don't care of the government knows that the wife told them to grab some milk on the way home.

But I do care about the NYPD cannibal cop that abused a restricted law-enforcement database so that he could find women to consume. Do you really think he's the only one abusing the system?

Conventiently not mentioning his other, more fundamental, oath to protect the US constitution?

I don't believe that contractors swear an oath to protect the Constitution, and even if they did, who did Snowden vet his personal interpretation of the Constitution with? Nobody, I expect. Assuming his intentions were actually "good," he just decided he didn't like it and broke the law. As to the constitutionality of the programs, Professor Geoffrey Stone of the University of Chicago Law School has some views on that.

Also, "arguably affecting the privacy"... We can omit the "arguably" here, it seems to me; that has been Snowden's main point (which has not been creditably disputed, as far as I know).

That's something of a philosophical question. If they collect and large amounts of data, which the phone company already has, but only look when they have a warrant, is it an invasion of privacy? Is it collection and storage that is a violation, or is it where there is a person looking at the data? I would say the looking. I can certainly understand how the storing would be an uncomfortable point.

But as to Snowden, it is clear at this point that he went way beyond questions of privacy in what he grabbed. He disclosed information on anti-terrorism operations, such as against Bin Laden and others. That has nothing to do with the privacy of American citizens.

Cleverly mentioning "Snowden sympathizers" and "anti-American activists" in close conjunction. The implication being, without actually demonstrating, that they are one and the same. Echoes of Al-Qaeda and Iraq, a decade ago. Bolton's statement that these have "controlled the story line" is arguably true, but not for lack of trying.

No, it is pretty straight forward that Snowden sympathizers and anti-American activists are overlapping groups, but not the same despite your claim. I don't believe that the US government ever claimed that Iraq was involved in 9/11 as part of the plot. Iraq was a state sponsor of terrorism, that is beyond dispute. There were contacts between the members of the Iraqi government and al Qaida members. Al Qaida members were present in Iraq.

Hm, that contradicts the point you were making about how thousands of operatives were already in grave danger. Although I suppose you will say that you were talking about UK operatives. Ok, I'll give you that, sort of.

Actually I'm completely correct. Bolton was referring to US agents, I referred to British agents. I don't believe the actual number of agents was revealed.

Do you really not see the hypocrisy here? For years the West has accused China and Russia of doing exactly what they were themselves doing all along. So the "damage" here is that the falsely claimed moral highground is now exposed as dishonest fiction.

Was the West, the US, doing it all along? I don't think that has been established. I think it is also highly doubtful that the US or any country in the West has strong human intelligence in either China or Russia, certainly not to the degree they have on the US or Europe. The history seems to indicate that Eastern Block nations and China were pursuing computer espionage much more seriously long before the US or Europe. If you haven't, you should read The Cuckoo's Egg about an early documented case in the 80s. The author had a difficult time getting the gov

thanks for your friendly tone, but you are factually wrong...it's understandable you missed this in my orignal post, b/c I didn't tag it properly

this is from 2006

"NSA has massive database on American's phone calls"

http://yahoo.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm

It states specifically that **ALL CALLS ARE PROCESSED** not just calls to certain groups or overseas as you stated.

It was reproted nationally in 2006 and before...we knew before...

Ron Wyden, Senator from Oregon was making noise about it in the Senate before Snowden's revealations.

The contention that 'we knew but we didn't **know** until Snowden' is factually wrong.

WE KNEW ALL WE NEEDED SINCE THE PATRIOT ACT...and several disclosures since then...getting headlines is nothing more than a decision by a news editor

I'm not saying the NSA or CIA is good or doing right...far from it! I'm saying none of this story is as it seems, yet so many see it in black and white.

Snowden is either being manipulated or a full-on spy.

America is an advanced system of government. It demands an educated, informed public. We need to be able to see past a flurry of headlines to the facts.

Snowden is a chess piece. Whoever is working him is doing well...no one is talking about it and why...we instead argue over and over about things that we have all known and been pissed about **since the Patriot Act**

If Snowden just wanted Americans to know the operational details, this would have gone down much differently.

They are from Syria? Seems like they may be guilty, lets crowdsource justice and post their names and passwords. It will be just like when Reddit found the person in Boston.

Thomas Drake, William Binney and J. Kirk Wiebe

The NSA has created an irresistable treat for the least moral people in government. Oversight and controls will periodically fail for reasons slashdotters and sysadmins understand well.

Recently
        *Spied on reporters
        *Prosecutors pretend evidence was gathered with a warrant.
        *NSA lied to congress about what was collected.
Previously
        *Threatened U,S reporters with death,
        *Influence the U.S. elections Watergate.
        *Electronic surveillance Martin Luther King, John Lennon, Elvis, It is alleged MLK was blackmailed and the letter demanded he commit suicide before christmas.

Funny
(Unless your former spouse/boyfriend is violent)

            *Appalachee "Love-Intelligence"

This answers (for me) why Snowden left the country.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/09/15/nixon-white-house-plot-to-kill-journalist-jack-anderson.html
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/nsa-analyst-under-bush-we-spied-repor
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/06/16/snowden-whistleblower-nsa-officials-roundtable/2428809/
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/06/16/snowden-whistleblower-nsa-officials-roundtable/2428809/

Thomas Drake, William Binney and J. Kirk Wiebe

The NSA has created an irresistable treat for the least moral people in government. Oversight and controls will periodically fail for reasons slashdotters and sysadmins understand well.

Recently
        *Spied on reporters
        *Prosecutors pretend evidence was gathered with a warrant.
        *NSA lied to congress about what was collected.
Previously
        *Threatened U,S reporters with death,
        *Influence the U.S. elections Watergate.
        *Electronic surveillance Martin Luther King, John Lennon, Elvis, It is alleged MLK was blackmailed and the letter demanded he commit suicide before christmas.

Funny
(Unless your former spouse/boyfriend is violent)

            *Appalachee "Love-Intelligence"

This answers (for me) why Snowden left the country.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2010/09/15/nixon-white-house-plot-to-kill-journalist-jack-anderson.html
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/nsa-analyst-under-bush-we-spied-repor
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/06/16/snowden-whistleblower-nsa-officials-roundtable/2428809/
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/06/16/snowden-whistleblower-nsa-officials-roundtable/2428809/

http://yahoo.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm

that's it

sorry again...gah I need to go back to typing school

But that would involve admitting some facts, instead of citing natural temperature changes only to cover things contrary to your view, and dismiss when they actively contradict your views. It's also better instead to assume that anyone who believes different has been taken by a scam artist.

Meanwhile, no one has a problem with the National Football League being considered "non-profit" by IRS standards ( http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/2013/05/29/nfl-sports-leagues-irs-tax-exemption/2370945/ ). I am not saying that X.org did not screw things up, but we certainly have some strange qualifications to benefit from non-profit status. X.org sounds like they had some trouble filing, but I am sympathetic to non-profits in general having difficulty filing. Oftentimes, they really are run by people who are passionate about their cause, but not necessarily familiar with the accounting standards needed to remain in good standing with the IRS. Compliance with reporting requirements can cost you a lot in accounting fees and time.

it was probably intentional not to go out of their way to protect him

I agree...and I think you are being overly fair to the Guardian and Greenwald. They could have done this completely differently and Snowden would still have his job and hot 'girlfriend'...

Anonymous source.

IMHO, Greenwald and the Guardian led Snowden around like a sheep, taking advantage of his internal motivations for releasing the info.

The truth is, Snowden's info isn't actually revealing of any *new* info, only operational details of already-reported on programs...and seriously it's common knowledge that the Feds could spy on us via the Patriot Act.

Read it for yourself, from USA Today in 2006:

The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.

He broke the law technically, revealing info that was Top Secret, but it's not exactly "news"....unless you muckrake and take advantage of the fact that most journalists never understood what the Patriot Act allows.

It's all hype...we definitely could have had a "national conversation about privacy and surveillance" without all this flap!

At least we'll always have this video of Steve Ballmer doing the monkey dance.

if you dig in, you can find lots of small places where costs could easily be cut, and together they add up to big inefficiencies.

How about this tiny litte place where costs can be cut: Coach Salaries Or, how about professor salaries.

The real reason it costs so much is because of fiddling by the government and professor unions. Loans, subsidies, mandated maximum working hours by professors, and a host of other, "minor" things as you call them. Not only that, but the colleges themselves are more than willing to raise the barrier for entry into the college market through supposed "accreditation" rules, stiffling competition from leaner/more efficient colleges that might spring up.

And some more info on the subject, from Thomas Sowell here.

Unlike their neighbors, corn is the primary grain of North Korean. Odd I know considering how most other Asians (including South Korea) primarily consume rice, but corn is cheaper and easier to grow.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/04/13/north-korea-factoids/2078831/ (Look at number 9)

Any particular reason you chose to report that in equivalent units? If it really is 10.3 per 100,000 then that works out to about 30,000 per year. Which is approximately the traffic rate. That's probably right, at least according to some sources (e.g., http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/01/09/guns-traffic-deaths-rates/1784595/)

So with all the gun regulation legislation going on and it continuing to be a topic you think there should be, but is not, a "WAR ON GUNS!!!"?

Supposedly 2/3 of gun deaths are suicides (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_violence_in_the_United_States) which is not how traffic deaths play out. Even if it were relatively self inflicted (refusal to wear a seat belt) it isn't the same thing.

Basically I'm just curious what your point was.

Probably hundreds of thousands of people have worked for the NSA and only a small hand full of them have betrayed their country, stole secrets, and defected. You seem to expect that System Administrators are a big risk for stealing secrets and defecting. That would seem to both confirm the wisdom of the NSA in reducing their numbers while also denigrating the character of System Administrators as a class, that they would betray their country over a job. Do you really know that many people that shallow?

On a related note: Bradley Manning: 25 years in prison? Or 60?

This kind of thing already happens. There was a controversy a while back when it was discovered that travel sites show more expensive travel options to Mac users first. Since macs cost more than PC's it was presumed their users had more disposable income.

Dude, let it go

The real money is going to the collegiate sport coaches. I knew it was bad, but not this bad: link

During the House hearings on this, the Democrats were given an opportunity to present any progressive groups that had suffered similar harm to the Tea Party groups. No such group was presented.

http://dailycaller.com/2013/06/25/gop-congressman-hits-back-against-dem-claim-that-irs-targeted-progressives-too/

So, the Tea Party groups have been complaining for years to their Congressmen and Senators, and it was easy for the Republicans to find affected groups; but the Democrats couldn't find even one.

Before the BOLO targeting started, a Tea Party group had its application processed in 90 days; after the targeting started, not one single Tea Party or Conservative group had an application approved for over 27 months. At the same time, multiple liberal groups were smoothly approved.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/05/14/irs-tea-party-progressive-groups/2158831/

This amounts to interference with an election. Political groups that were liberal were able to collect anonymous donations because they had the special tax-exempt status, but political groups that were conservative were still in IRS hell and could not collect anonymous donations. Most people won't donate if it's not anonymous, so the liberal groups had a much easier time fund-raising. It's diabolical.

You could wipe out the whole special tax-exempt status and it would be fine with me, but this one-sided unfair application of the rules is an outrage.

And if you are still okay with this after reading the above, then I hope some President named Bush gets elected to power and does this to progressive groups for a while. Then maybe you will think it is not the IRS "doing their jobs". You'll probably just say "well it's different now."

For anyone to state with a straight face that there are enforceable anti-monopoly laws in 2013 America needs to blah, blah, blah...

Yeah, you're right
http://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/news/2013/08/13/justice-american-us-airways/2647545/
http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/06/21/apple-ebook-antitrust-summations-2/
http://www.vedderprice.com/US-Supreme-Court-Decides-Pay-for-Delay-Patent-Antitrust-Case-Briefed-by-Vedder-Price-2013-06-18/

Wall Street Journal:Nearly 100 dead.
USA Today: Nearly 100 dead
CNN: 95-200 dead
NBC: At least 95 dead
Fox News: Nearly 100 dead

But don't let reality get in the way of your bizarre conspiracy theory.

The USA health care system has some of the worst possible perverse economic disincentives. At literally no point is there a clear economic incentive for you to be healthy and taken care of.

1) Consumers have no interest in keeping costs down. They pay the same deductible no matter what happens. Unfortunately, this is only up to a point (see #4 below) but that's not going to enter casual consideration.

2) Hospitals have no interest in keeping costs down. They blatantly inflate their costs knowing that the insurance companies will only pay a fraction anyway. They also have no incentive to keep supplies costs down since they are paid "cost +" by insurance companies. They'll tend to buy whatever sponge or soap dispenser is in "the catalog".

3) Providers of supplies to hospitals have no interest in keeping their costs down. Hospitals get paid on a "cost +" basis by the insurance companies so charging $35 for that "medical grade" sponge that cost them $0.35 wholesale has 99% profit margins as its incentive.

4) Insurance companies have some incentive to keep costs down, which they generally do by axing their most expensive customers with any of the myriad of technicalities written into their eye-gouging 10 page contracts full of inverted double negatives and exceptions. A good example is somebody with a job who gets cancer. Sure, he/she may have excellent health insurance, but what about when he/she loses his/her job because they didn't show for four months while undergoing chemo therapy? Even so, the myriad of regulations in place (and a legal department that ensures that one plan can't be compared to another) provides an opaque enough service offering that customers are unable to distinguish which plan is actually "cheaper".

5) Doctors had to just about kill their mother to get through medical school, and are saddled with enough debt to make anybody contract stress-related symptoms. Since they get paid for the work they actually perform, they have every incentive to declare a medical emergency and take you under the knife, regardless of whether or not it's necessary or even beneficial. I'm not saying every doctor will give you heart surgery when you come in with a rash, but I'm not alleging something that doesn't happen. Citation 2.

The majority of bankruptcies in the United States are for medical reasons, and the majority of *those* are by people who had health insurance at the time they got sick. Anybody who says this ridiculous would-be-laughable-if-it-wasn't-true system is lying or misinformed.

That would be great, but again that is the future. Solar will need to progress, and biofuels would need to NOT progress for solar to overtake them.

That's incredibly idiotic... You're proving you haven't the slightest conception of the subject you're acting like an expert on.

NOTHING happens in less than a decade. These solar plants are being built RIGHT NOW. Even if fusion was perfected TOMORROW, these solar plants would all still be built.

And I must also point out your claim of biofuel overtaking solar is similarly brain-damaged to an incredible degree. It's a bit like speculating about a snail overtaking a sports car. You clearly know absolutely nothing on the subject, and your obsession with biofuel is some kind of magical fantasy land you conjured up, and have no conception of the costs or limitations.

If hybrid pay back period were measured in less than 100,000+ miles or a dozen years

It is. You're just foolishly spouting more baseless nonsense.

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/driveon/post/2012/05/cheaper-hybrid-payback-time-goverment-website-/1

As QWest found out the hard way, if you don't cooperate with NSA, you don't get government contracts.

Here is the background to the story.

Among the big telecommunications companies, only Qwest has refused to help the NSA, the sources said. According to multiple sources, Qwest declined to participate because it was uneasy about the legal implications of handing over customer information to the government without warrants.

Qwest's refusal to participate has left the NSA with a hole in its database.

The NSA, which needed Qwest's participation to completely cover the country, pushed back hard.

Trying to put pressure on Qwest, NSA representatives pointedly told Qwest that it was the lone holdout among the big telecommunications companies. It also tried appealing to Qwest's patriotic side: In one meeting, an NSA representative suggested that Qwest's refusal to contribute to the database could compromise national security, one person recalled.

In addition, the agency suggested that Qwest's foot-dragging might affect its ability to get future classified work with the government. Like other big telecommunications companies, Qwest already had classified contracts and hoped to get more.

So, MS gets lucrative government contracts. What does that say?

Actually the corporation that pays the highest US taxes (both effective tax rate and total taxes paid) also happens to be the ones that Democrats hate the most: Wal-Mart.

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2010/news/1004/gallery.top_5_tax_bills/

Apple pays more total tax dollars, but that goes to other countries during transfer pricing, not the US. And no, it isn't other corporations combined - Exxon for example pays more than twice as much in total taxes than Apple does with Chevron coming in second place, and Apple third.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2013/03/17/companies-paying-highest-income-taxes/1991313/

Wal-Mart doesn't have the luxury of transfer pricing, so as long as they're as large as they are, they'll always be paying very high taxes. And as you said, the US tax rates are unreasonable as hell, which is why everybody goes out of their way to avoid them.

ATF uses fake drugs, big bucks to snare suspects

It's the drugs â" though non-existent â" that make that possible because federal law usually imposes tougher mandatory sentences for drugs than for guns. The more drugs the agents say are likely to be in the stash house, the longer the targets' sentence is likely to be. Conspiring to distribute 5 kilograms of cocaine usually carries a mandatory 10-year sentence â" or 20 years if the target has already been convicted of a drug crime.

That fact has not escaped judges' notice. The ATF's stings give agents "virtually unfettered ability to inflate the amount of drugs supposedly in the house and thereby obtain a greater sentence," a federal appeals court in California said in 2010. "The ease with which the government can manipulate these factors makes us wary." Still, most courts have said tough federal sentencing laws leave them powerless to grant shorter prison terms.

To the ATF, long sentences are the point. Fifteen years "is the mark," Smith said.

"You get the guy, you get him with a gun, and you can lock him up for 18 months for the gun. All you did was give this guy street creds," Smith said. "When you go in there and you stamp him out with a 15-to-life sentence, you make an impact in that community." ...
[A defendant's] lawyer, Michael Falconer, said he wouldn't be opposed to the drug-house stings if he thought the ATF could make sure they were aimed only at people who were already ripping off drug dealers. "But on some level," he said, "it's Orwellian that they have to create crime to prevent crime."

You know what the US government won't do for that same individual? Ensure they have a decent education, a basic level of care for their mental and physical health, a safe neighborhood, and a real shot at becoming a contributing member of society even though that would cost less than convicting them of thoughtcrime and throwing them in prison for fifteen years. Instead we pay for some kitted out machine gun-toting pigs to play cowboy rather than policing the streets like officers. Not incidentally, they're too chickenshit to get out of their cars in a lot of those neighborhoods. Yet they still collect their paycheck and their pension, live way out in the suburbs to avoid the desperation they help create with their cowardice, and pat themselves on the back for being heroes.

Now imagine you're an immigrant, or an Iraqi, Yemeni, Afghani, or Syrian. You're worth even less than a citizen. You're trash. You're not even a speedbump on the way to some policy goal rooted in geopolitical theories that have been dead to the rest of the world since the 80s. The kind of policy that sends a million troops and five trillion dollars to a sanctioned, isolated nation, and ends up destabilizing the entire region, massively aiding Iran, and stoking tensions between Shia and Sunni, all while avoiding a single hint of punishment for Saudi Arabia or Pakistan where all of the funding and most of the terrorists for 9/11 came from. Oh, and as a plus: where al Qaeda was unheard of before, they now have another weak state to operate from. Brilliant.

That's why the rest of the world despises the American government. It's not our freedom. It's our complete lack of principle, abject hypocrisy, and massive state violence that they hate. And with our apathetic political landscape, they're beginning to tire of Americans individually for being lazy, ignorant, wasteful, and greedy. We just sit here and take it; a nation of lolling toddlers waiting on the next innovation in fast food and reruns of Pawn Stars while our wealth is squandered in military adventurism that has killed millions of innocent people in only five decades.

PRISM is just icing on the rotting carcass that once wa

Obama has no idea why ordinary people would be worried about their data being stored and ignored forever. I'm not sure I understand it myself.

So you're fine with the NYPD cannibal cop that abused a restricted law-enforcement database?

Do you really think he'll be the only one that ever abuses this information?

I can't even fathom your faith in the goodness of people.

If it becomes effective I can't imagine that Bob the liquor store thief will invest in a 3d printer, learn how to run one

Its like you didn't even read what I wrote. If 3D printers become as ubiquitous as laser printers have then it isn't a case of investing in one just to print guns.

Compare it to counterfeit money. Now that everybody and his brother has a printer, the rates of home-counterfeiting have skyrocketed because it is just so easy to click "print" and get a passable $5 bill.