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On the other hand the Baby Boomer generation will probably love it

Methinks you got that backwards.

It's pretty firmly established that older folks value their privacy much more than younger ones. It wasn't the Boomer generation that created Facebook and Instanarcissist: the entire "social media" movement of trading your privacy for a wee bit of convenience was created by the millennial generation. You can always find individual exceptions, but it's not the older generations I see walking around constantly snapping selfies and uploading everything they do to social media. It's not the Boomer generation saying "Privacy no longer a social norm".

There's a generation gap indeed: Online privacy? For young people, that's old-school

For four years, nearly 200 high school students in Dallas voluntarily allowed every text, email, and IM to be monitored. That these youth would sign off on such an invasion of privacy, especially in light of the content that was discovered within their communication, shows how much the next generation has changed their views on privacy.

This is an inspiration! Meanwhile, in other news: "A news report says Japan's tsunami-ravaged nuclear plant was so unprepared for the disaster that workers had to bring protective gear and instruction manuals from elsewhere and borrow equipment from a contractor. The report, released by operator Tokyo Electric Company, is based on interviews of workers and plant data. It portrays chaos in a desperate and ultimately unsuccessful battle to protect the Fukushima plant from meltdown, and shows that workers struggled with unfamiliar equipment." "Scientists have found traces of radioactivity in fish off the California coast that migrated from the waters off of Japan, site of the Fukushima nuclear reactor disaster of 2011, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The researchers say the evidence is unequivocal. The young tuna were found to be contaminated with two radioactive forms of the element cesium from Fukushima." http://content.usatoday.com/co... "Japanese whalers caught 2 animals along the northern coast that had traces of radiation from leaks at a damaged nuclear power plant, officials said. 2 of 17 minke whales caught off the Pacific coast of Hokkaido showed traces of radioactive cesium, both about 1/20th of the legal limit, fisheries officials said. They are the first whales thought to have been affected by radiation leaked from the Fukushima nuclear plant since it was hit by a 3/11/11 earthquake and tsunami."

This is my shocked face that Samsung would be named in a lawsuit alleging intellectual property theft...

Oh right, Microsoft and Apple never would be, oh no deary me, perish the thought.

https://www.usatoday.com/story...

California has been working very hard to drive out all businesses AND taxpayers with the highest overall taxes in the entire country.

Bull shit!

For those unable to read: CA is ranked #10 in one of those surveys and doesn't appear in the other list of the top 10 states for overall taxes.

In the real human world you should prepare yourself to defend against attackers who don't respect other's body and safety.

The best defense is a good offense. A good offense disarms your opponent before they can hurt you.

Wouldn't you rather there not be any need to worry about being attacked in the first place?

Strangely enough, those that whine about "hate speech" are usually against having the means to defend against attackers, they'd rather everyone just be a victim.

Strangely enough, however, those that whine about the need to defend themselves tend to be hysterical, to the point where they spent 8 years desperately buying firearms for...no real reason. Panicky, idiotic people, who are so easily lead astray are the ones who make me the victim of their insanity.

That's the real humans in this world.

A lot of people are woefully short on imagination. They never learned to daydream for themselves, which is why they are so prone to repeating talking points verbatim. They have to have someone else's dream, because they don't have their own.

Hmm, I guessThe 'House of Cards' Season 5 trailer is right after all:
"The American people don't know what's best for them. I do. I know exactly what they need," President Underwood (Kevin Spacey) intones as the trailer flashes between scenes of campaigning and violence. "They're like little children, Claire. We have to hold their sticky fingers and wipe their filthy mouths. Teach them right from wrong. Tell what to think and how to feel and what to want. They even need help writing their wildest dreams. Crafting their worst fears. Lucky for them, they have me. They have you."

CAPTCHA: psychic

If you're referring to the presidency, there was no gerrymandering as state lines haven't been redrawn in quite some time. And if you're talking about in congress, can I recommend you not cite an opinion piece.

Somebody who read the links would notice they include references to court cases (decisions of which are often termed "options" I might add) and were not limited to just the presidency. Not that the Electoral College isn't an example of the ability to distort an election through an arcane system of manipulation, influenced by the malapportionment of the House.

It might be what people call "fake news".

Yes, your assertion that it was simply citing an "opinion piece" would constitute "fake news" in my book, as you're simply not being honest or forthright.

It is after all a piece that ignores that dems held both house and senate in 2008 and managed to lose them to the republicans in 2010, or do they mean that the GOP gerrymandered when they didn't hold power?

What, you mean you're relying on some focus on the 2010 election, to ignore the impact of the gerrymandering in subsequent elections? But a look at the state-by-state results can still show gerrymandering. Not to mention how it was an election driven mostly by the GOP's lie-driven hysteria over the Affordable Care Act which they desperately tried to repeal for 6 years, failing continually, and when they were forced to admit they couldn't just repeal it by waving their magic wand, they ended up failing with Trumpcare?

Yeah, that's about as good as Donald Trump's analysis of Andrew Jackson. Except I might just be able to give Trump credit for simply being too dumb to realize how wrong what he was saying was.

Or should I give you the benefit of the doubt, and believe that instead of trying to slyly avoid the problem with a lot of bloviation, you just couldn't bother to read what's been easily shown?

Just tell me, are you dumb, or are you a bullshitter?

Oh, you want to talk about who is taking over ? Not to mention what they take out.

For decades.

I know you don't want to face it, but the right-wing is the bastion of the thought police.

You should probably just abandon your false conception of the left-right political spectrum, and make your arguments without it. Even if you had a historical point (which you don't), you'd be fighting uphill against reality. Of course, denying reality and living in fantasies is a hallmark of the right, so...you'll keep on keeping on. We will always have been at war with Eastasia, and the chocolate ration will be increased to 30 grams a week.

Offshore drilling is dying.
It is not because of regulation or marine sanctuaries.
It is because of fracking.
Offshore drilling is hecka expensive, with huge liabilities if something goes wrong.
Deepwater Horizon ended up costing $62 Billion.
It is way cheaper to park a fracking rig in a North Dakota wheatfield.

What makes you think Trump isn't going to make short work with the huge liabilities? That way, the companies earn more when things go well and everybody pays when things go bad, the net effect being a diffusion from the pockets of the poor into the pockets of the rich. Which is what Trump stands for.

Offshore drilling is dying.
It is not because of regulation or marine sanctuaries.
It is because of fracking.
Offshore drilling is hecka expensive, with huge liabilities if something goes wrong.
Deepwater Horizon ended up costing $62 Billion.
It is way cheaper to park a fracking rig in a North Dakota wheatfield.

So once again, Trump is pushing policies that make no difference in the real world.
He isn't going to revive coal mining.
He isn't going to revive offshore drilling.

Nice pigeon-holing.

*Some* Republicans are conservatives. Some are Progressives. Some are Republican in name only (RINO) and vote with the Democrats often.

Some Democrats are conservatives. Some are Progressives. Some are Communists, some Socialists. Some are Fascists and wear masks, carry weapons, and dress in black while rioting and violently attacking others that do not share their opinions.

What, only black? Not red? Camo? You know, like Cliven Bundy.

Up until just a few short years ago, the Democrats kept a former KKK leader in office, Robert Byrd, as a long-time Senator until he died in 2010. That's right, the Democrats had a Senator who served for decades who was a former KKK leader. Not 'member'. Leader.

You know, it's funny how people who rail about Byrd never mention two things. First, they never mention that Byrd expressly and explicitly repudiated the racist KKK (some go so far as to claim he never did), and Second, they never mention how the beloved Strom Thurmond was belovingly embraced into the GOP, and served pretty much the same time as Byrd.

Can you explain it?

Coincidently, speaking of civil rights and minorities, Democrats (and the KKK) fully support Planned Parenthood is and always has been, to slow the birthrates of 'undesirables' like blacks, the poor, the mentally challenged, and other minorities.

Oh no, because Margaret Sanger didn't want women to be burdened with no choice except to give birth time after time, she's not only anti-black, she's anti-Semitic. A self-hating Jew. You tell others to google her? You should look beyond the nonsense you've found on the pages of right-wing propagandists. She was actually brought into Harlem by the NAACP and the leaders of that community, after they saw the effects of her work in Jewish areas. In reality, it's the KKK that opposed Planned Parenthood, and their adherents in the White Power Quiverfull movement that want to breed themselves into dominance like some sort of infectious virus.

But sure buddy, it's conservatives and Republicans who are racist, etc etc, blah blah blah. Yep. Uh-huh. o_0

Yup. Let's see, there's the wonderful Steve King. There's that state Senator in Florida. There's Reagan's history of Dogwhistling, and there's Trump's rampant birtherism. Not to mention his Mexican Wall, Muslim ban, and inability to remember who David Duke is.

Sorry dude, but it's a telling sign when it's a Republican opposing the removal of monuments to white supremacy.

So if the company says "we'll leave it"

Maybe as a negotiation tactic.

If the government price is profitable, they'll end up making it.

And if they claim it can't be made profitably, maybe the government should auction off the patent. The auction winner can then supply the government at the listed price, or else return the patent.

I also fail to see how a single-payer somewhere in Europe or elsewhere could nationalize a company based in the U.S. like Mylan.

It's almost like you're completely unaware of history. When the facilities and tools are in those countries, they declare their intent and back it up with armed forces. If the foreign company doesn't like it, they have to convince their government to do something about it.

Hell, Venezuela just did it again last week.

It will be a sad world if people ever have to rely on Uber and Lyft to get from place to place.

I suspect that you are older than a Millenial and do not live in a dense urban area. (Personally, I'm older than a Millenial, I don't live in a dense area, and I very much treasure owning my own car.)

When I was a teen I was just counting the days until I got a permit to be able to drive a car; now Millenials are increasingly not bothering to get driver's license and insurance, and taking bus/Uber/Lyft when they want to go somewhere.

And there are people who live in dense urban areas who would find it a hassle to park a car, and prefer not to own a car there. More, there are cities that are actively trying to reduce the number of cars on their roads.

Tesla has not demonstrated that the sensors they are shipping will be able to handle all cases.

Okay, we get it, you're skeptical of the full self-driving features.

Will they be aimed low enough to stop to allow a rabbit to cross the road safely or are we just running over animals now? Will they scan the contour of the road so they can drive properly through ice ruts or around deep potholes? I didn't think they had that kind of tech yet.

Frankly I don't know the answers to these questions, but if Tesla thinks their current sensor tech is sufficient for full self-driving, my guess is they have at least thought of each of these things.

My guess, and it is just a guess, is that the ultrasonic sensors would be used to watch for ice ruts and potholes; that the testing program has already included people driving the test cars on roads with ice ruts and potholes; and the forward radar would likely do a better job of spotting a rabbit than a tired human at night. I don't think anyone is claiming that the self-driving features would completely eliminate all road kills, but equally I doubt self-driving cars will be worse than humans.

https://www.tesla.com/blog/upgrading-autopilot-seeing-world-radar

https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-tesla-cars-being-produced-now-have-full-self-driving-hardware

It gets worse. We were running Window$ on iMacs. If I could at least try WINE on Linux with it, I would have, but they just bought the equipment and WinEEG needs a USB key to communicate live with the MITSAR. It would of been interesting to find out. I did look into other programs for Linux, but none are as easy to use and the compatible equipment is cheap and archaic in comparison. You can find a lot of biofeedback projects for Linux, but most of those are 2-5 channel and not 21. They do make Bluetooth EEG headsets for phones (iOS/Android) now, but they're junk and the saline solution destroys them over time. They market most of them as devices to improve your mental wellbeing by monitoring your brainwaves. You can be half asleep and get the same results as any "zen master." Fun fact why I'm thinking about it, they made a biofeedback Star Wars force toy way back during episode one or two I think. I don't know about 100 words a minute, but if you need to float a ball in a brain controlled air tube: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com.... Also, if you want to hack that toy with an Arduino: http://www.instructables.com/i...

Don't blame Trump. Boeing has had some problems with quality recently.

In 2005, FIA (run by Boeing) was partly canceled. The New York Times called it "perhaps the most spectacular and expensive failure in the 50-year history of American spy satellite projects." From space.com, "But Boeing quickly ran into troubles on the highly ambitious and complex FIA program, which fell years behind schedule and overran its budget by billions of dollars."

In 2011, the SBI Net program was canceled. "It was originally envisioned to stretch the 1,969-mile border between the U.S. and Mexico but initial phases of the $1 billion project took longer than anticipated to complete and covered just a small portion, 53 miles, since the project began."

According to Wikipedia, the Joint Tactical Radio System (JRTS) project has had major problems. "The JTRS program was beset by delays and cost overruns, particularly Ground Mobile Radios (GMR), run by Boeing."

The Dreamliner had major problems, including fires. From Wikipedia, "The FAA issued a directive in January 2013 that grounded all 787s in the US and other civil aviation authorities followed suit. After Boeing completed tests on a revised battery design, the FAA approved the revised design and lifted the grounding in April 2013; the 787 returned to passenger service later that month."

This usatoday article, titled "Some of Boeing's programs have problems", lists other problems with Boeing. For example, "V-22 Osprey. The tilt-rotor aircraft, made in partnership with Bell Helicopter, is under congressional scrutiny because of concerns about its high cost of operation, reliability and safety." and "Joint Tactical Radio System Cluster 1. Boeing's management of the project for the military was so bad it received a stop-work order from the Defense Department. Eventually, the program was restructured rather than canceled but with Boeing in a diminished role."

I wonder if some managers are looking at these problems, and deciding that Boeing isn't the best company from which to order planes and services. That would hurt Boeing's sales.

He has a 50% approval rating. Sorry to let you know that.

Nope.

Of course, we're looking for people who can recognize that he's a boor, a buffoon, and an embarrassment to the country, which doesn't preclude approval, so that's not exactly meaningful.

It is telling that he is lying, the same as he lied about a landslide.

Let me give you a clue - it got so bad that the President of the Philippines - long considered a vassal state to the US - openly mocked Obama last year.

Oh my, you mean that reprobate thug? Exactly why would we want his approval? That's baffling. Then again, you seem to want the Phillipines to be a subject of the US for some reason.

I'm not a Trump fan but I recognize why he won (clue: Hillary) and I have no delusions that we would have been better off in *any* way with Hillary in the White House.

Trump won because running, as a Republican, he could have been a brain-eating space alien, and have a chance to win. Sheer chance let him through, and we'd have been better off without the learning experience of Trump in office.

Chief Judge Merrick Garland - Obama's nominee for Supreme Court Justice - even agrees:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/08/30/white-house-visitors-foia-appeals-court/2742823/

"In both the 1974 FOIA Amendments and the 1978 Presidential Records Act, Congress made clear that it did not want documents like the appointment calendars of the president and his close advisors to be subject to disclosure under FOIA," Chief Judge Merrick Garland wrote for the three-judge panel. "Granting Judicial Watch's request for certain visitor records, however, would effectively disclose the contents of those calendars."

Seriously. Who the fuck was calling for lowered standards in forensic science?

Private prisons. They lobby for anything that results in higher and longer incarceration rates.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

https://www.usatoday.com/story...

I'm sick and fucking tired of hearing about business models that can only "grow" only by crossing the ethical line. Fuck private prisons and their reasons to destroy the advances we've made in forensic science. You want profits? Then create business that benefits members of society instead of finding more creative ways to imprison them. If this kind of bullshit lobbying continues, you'll be behind bars for jaywalking, because it helps feed someone's bottom line.

Seriously. Who the fuck was calling for lowered standards in forensic science?

Private prisons. They lobby for anything that results in higher and longer incarceration rates.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

https://www.usatoday.com/story...

From TFA:

A common overbooking problem on a United Airlines flight on Sunday ended with a man being bloodied and dragged from his seat and an already troubled airline earning more bad press. How did it all go so wrong?

USA Today reports that the flight was not overbooked. United Airlines staff wanted to fly and apparently United Airlines chose staff over their customers:

United spokesman Jonathan Guerin said Tuesday that all 70 seats on United Express Flight 3411 were filled, but the plane was not overbooked as the airline previously reported. Instead, United and regional affiliate Republic Airlines, which operated the flight, selected four passengers to be removed to accommodate crew members needed in Louisville the next day. The passengers were selected based on a combination of criteria spelled out in Unitedâ(TM)s contract of carriage, including frequent-flier status, fare type, check-in time and connecting flight implications, among others, according to United.

Also, contrary to the entry currently pinned to the top of United Airlines' twitter.com feed from United CEO Oscar Munoz which looks sympathetic, "The truly horrific event that occurred on this flight has elicited many responses from all of us: outrage, anger, disappointment. I share all of those sentiments", he told staff a completely different story:

Munoz issued his first public apology Monday but hours later sent a letter to the airline's employees lauding the behavior of the flight crew in dealing with a "disruptive and belligerent" passenger. Munoz credited employees with following established procedures on the Louisville-bound flight.

"This situation was unfortunately compounded when one of the passengers we politely asked to deplane refused, and it became necessary to contact Chicago Aviation Security Officers to help," the letter says. "While I deeply regret this situation arose, I also emphatically stand behind all of you, and I want to commend you for continuing to go above and beyond to ensure we fly right."

This would seem to answer the question the BBC pairs with their apparently hastily-drawn conclusion: "How did it all go so wrong?": It went wrong because United Airlines flight crew favored United Airlines staff over paying customers. None of the 4 customers asked to give up their seats should have been asked to give up their seat. Stop letting staff have privilege to fly at the expense of paying customers, apparently going so far as to assault customers. Stop taking the company's side of events seriously: Dr. David Dao, the customer dragged off of United flight 3411, wasn't "disruptive" or "belligerent". Even while being dragged, the video (easily found online) shows the worst he did was to say no (along with other passengers who saw him being dragged past them), which is completely understandable. Staff can coordinate their flight schedule, reserve a ticket, and board the plane just like everybody else apparently boarded flight 3411.

Contrary to Munoz's words in the letter, I sense United Airlines is now looking for new flight crew and a new CEO, assuming they're able to survive as a company (which I'm not sure they should be allowed to because I think we can all do with one less business that physically assaults their customers; we should make room for a professionally run airline that won't instill fear when company representatives ask customers to do something like an preflight offer for deplaning). This also connects very clearly to why employees need more power in the businesses they work for—apparently you can't trust some of your colleagues or high-ranking management to make the right call. This certainly gives anyone, worldwide, pause to consider what power one is giving others when one agrees to fly on their plane (this got violent even without the plane taking off!).

I made choices? To try to stop a murder when I was 16 rather then be killed as well? How is that a bad thing, even if it did give me PTSD? Hint - it's not - because I survived.

And no, you're the one who claims it would be $10,000/year/person.

The difference, however, between the No. 1 spender, the United States, and the No. 10 spender, Canada, is quite large. Canada spent 10.2% of its GDP on health care in 2013, which amounted to $4,351 per person, while the United States spent 16.4% of its GDP that year, amounting to $8,713 per person.

So if you just did the same things we do, which result in longer lifespans, it would be less than half what you're using as a comparison. However, because being an American is pretty much commensurate with being overweight or obese, the costs will obviously be higher. But that's your choice. You can put a tax on soft drinks, public education, etc., but you won't. Here there are government ads on TV every day encouraging people to get active. That's a lot better than ads for coke that try to intimate that if you walk for x number of minutes, you'll burn off the calories in a can of coke, which just encourages consumption (but that's what coke wants - not fit people, but people who will over-consume guilt-free).

So my experience is typical. It comes with the territory, and the problem isn't transition, the problem is men who think with their dicks. Nice victim-blaming you've got going there, jerk.

Oh, please, spare me the obvious histrionics. Medically, sexual assault is simply a risk factor after MTF gender transition. That is objectively relevant when judging the risk/benefit and cost/benefit ratios of your procedure. The choice of undergoing a major surgery followed by life-long hormonal treatment for what is essentially a mental or neurological issue does not even come close to surviving a risk/benefit analysis, let alone a cost/benefit analysis; there are many body identity disorders, and yours is the only one that is "treated" with surgery.

In a large enough population, you're going to get some people who, just at random, have a much higher number of "bad things" happening to them than others

No, I'm sorry, things that happened to you were not "just random". You made choices and they had consequences; you can argue that you were entitled to making those choices, but that doesn't prevent the consequences or make them "just random". The way other people stay healthy, safe, and financially sound is by avoiding choices that they are technically entitled to make but that entail risk.

And no, medicare/medicaid don't account for about half of US health spending. Total health spending in 2015 was 3. trillion, of which Medicare combined accounted for $1.191 trillion [cms.gov], out of 3.2 trillion total health care spending. That's 37%, a far cry from half.

Well, so you looked it up and admit the basic fact then, namely that Medicare/Medicaid spend significantly more money per patient than private insurance. Great! You're now just quibbling about percentages.

Where is your proof for the claim that the public health care system (medicaid/medicare) in the US isn't working? Are you saying that people with no health care do better than people with health care? Absurd, but that's what your statement leads to.

That's not my main point, but that seems to be the case

These are people who would have NO care without it.

Obviously, there are people who have NO care without it. There are also people who have no care BECAUSE OF it. You're cherry-picking your criteria to suit your argument. The question to ask is whether Medicare/Medicaid are more effective at delivering health care in the US than the private system, and they are not.

Also, since you cited Israel and Greece as doing better, you proved my point. They both have universal public health care plans.

And I'd be overjoyed if the US federal government extended Medicare/Medicaid to all Americans while spending $2000person/year and allowing private insurance on the side. You know, like Canada, Greece, or Israel. And the nice thing about that is that it can be financed out of the existing Medicare/Medicaid budgets while even lowering taxes.

The trouble is that "universal health care" proposals in the US try to force everybody into public health plans that spend $10000/year/person and limit the ability of Americans to buy private health plans. That is, the proposals are actually nothing like what Canada, Greece, or Israel have. And ignorant Canadians like you keep advocating for that b.s.

Anyway, on to the meat: Discrimination isn't a thought crime. It's an actual crime.

False dichotomy. It is a thought-crime because the very same actions may or may not be criminal depending on the thoughts in one's head. It is also an "actual" crime — for the last 50 years or so — and I argue, that it should not be. For reasons identical to those put forth in favor of Freedom of Speech:

"It is so difficult to draw a clear line of separation between the abuse and the wholesome use of the press, that as yet we have found it better to trust the public judgment, rather than the magistrate, with the discrimination between truth and falsehood. And hitherto the public judgment has performed that office with wonderful correctness." --Thomas Jefferson to M. Pictet, 1803. ME 10:356

Because discerning the exact motivations of the suspect employer — racism, sexism, or sincere conviction, that the ill-affected employee is underperforming — with any certainty is so difficult, it is best left unprosecuted. But the current situation is worse — "discrimination" is prosecuted selectively! Colleges, for example, loath being seen discriminating against Blacks, but having higher entry-requirements for Asians is considered acceptable.

It's a crime because of the principle that all humans are human.

This meaningless truism explains nothing.

You've thrown yourself into Alister Crowley's "Do what thou wilt" form of government.

Your argument conflates government and private discrimination and is therefore invalid. I said nothing about government — which must not discriminate indeed. But is Google a part of government? No, it is not — it should therefore be legal for them to discriminate based on whatever characteristics they wish.

Should you wish to reply, be sure to answer the following question:

• Name an argument, which would justify prosecuting a business owner for turning down 4 Blacks and hiring a White, that could not be used to call for prosecuting a girl for turning down 4 Black suitors and going out with an Asian.

Everything you listed so far can be used to call for prosecution of both...

If you don't like American society then just say so.

Is this a new way of asking, why I hate America?

@natsecwonk say what? Seriously this shit isn't hard to search the internet for. It doesn't take much of a memory to remember some of these things just pay a little attention.

To show that this is not new, look back at the first reporting of the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case by NBC. Who was caught editing audio to make George appear to be racist instead of answering a dispatcher's question, they lightened his photos to make him appear to be white instead of Hispanic, and instead of displaying current pictures of Trayvon Martin pulled pictures of him as an elementary school kid instead of a 17 year old 6'1" young man who enjoyed MMA.

Oh my, you can go back further than that. Like with OJ Simpson, and at least you'll have an older example. Or even further.

Besides, Zimmerman? He is a racist. There's a reason he lost his suit. Seriously, that idiot could have avoided being a killer of another human being if all he'd done was gone to the pharmacy instead.

Cherry picking and editing are common tactics for media propagandists in the US. If you were fooled, shame on you.

You forgot law enforcement. And other forms of Planting evidence and corruption.

I'm sure you meant nothing by the oversight.

Plenty of lawsuits have been won against these media outlets for various civil reasons. Off the top of my head, ABC and CNN have both had to issue public apologies and retractions in the last month and a half for doing this, or would have faced even more civil suits.

Oh, you should learn about Fox.. So bad, the White House had to apologize to a foreign country for believing Fox News. Editing video since 1984.

You know, a company that hired a PR firm to slut shame people critical of one of their hosts. Looks like that is getting out.

So are you happy yet?

You start by calling me a racist and think that my reply was meant to engage you in a political argument?

No, actually, I don't see Bruce Perens calling you a racist, in fact, you interjected yourself, but actually, to start yourself off, you are one who stated:

"In fact, the entire "argument" for the left is that you are a racist if you don't agree with them."

A very defensive reaction, and a false premise, but I guess you wanted to get enraged over an imagined attack, and direct your abuse at the left" as Bruce Perens already described you. You began with trying to play the victim card, that comes across as hysterical posturing, nothing more.

That you then jumped to "They have no logic, no reason, nothing but insults." is even more discrediting when we consider the tendency of the current President to make up accusations, throw-out insults, and otherwise present fact-deficient claims, a problem that also applies to many in the Republican party, and yes, even to yourself. As demonstrated by your own conduct here.

Which actually makes me wonder if you're not trying to make them look bad as you're paid to be a discredit to the conservative party.

Sheesh, and you think that I'm the kid here.

Here's what ESR (you've heard of him, no?) had to say about the election:

Eric Scott Raymond isn't immune to foolish statements either, though I will say that if nothing else, he managed to endeavor to a higher level than yourself. Still, he got numerous facts wrong, and his premises are broken.

And what lesson did you learn from this election?

That Donald Trump only barely managed to outperform Bush, after 12 years of population growth, and that more effort needs to be focused on controlling gerrymandering and voter initiatives. But even with that, it was still a substantial lead in the popular vote, and no amount of lying about a landslide will change Trump's win from anything except a popular victory. As noted, you were also engaged in that lie, when you claimed the "people" favored him. A deceit of your own, and you should know better. But you don't want to do that.

Personally, I think Tim Kaine was the weakness. He delivered Virginia, but what else? Not much. Somebody with more dramatic left-wing appeal should have been chosen. Or more right-wing appeal. A Republican "disgusted" at Trump would have brought voters into the fold by the millions.

"The party that formed specifically to abolish slavery, that gave their very lives by the hundreds of thousands to free the slaves from their Democrat masters, and that passed something like a dozen civil rights acts over the objections of Democrats, has always been racist."

Yup, believe it or not, it HAS been a long-standing accusation against the Republican Party and its leaders. Namely, Douglas was saying that about Lincoln during their famed debates.

Take the Civil War and emancipation. It didn't take more than a decade before the Republicans walked away from protecting black civil rights in favor of winning the Presidency.

Sorry, but even Lincoln can't be sainted on the issue, let alone the thousands of other elected Republicans, or even the ones today.

Yeah, those poors should just take their oxy and die in the gutter now that we don't have a use for them.

We wouldn't want our Corporations to not create imagined jobs because we tax at a rate comparable to that of any civilized nation.

Many people think Trump is an idiot. He is not. He knows exactly what to say in order to make enough people vote for him.

A non-idiot would also know when it is time to stop campaigning for votes and start governing. (or, if his plan was to retain support by remaining permanently in campaign mode, it isn't working)

Trumps flavor ability right now is higher than the DNC

Classic tea party response. Most people are going to find Trump very sour-tasting in the near future. Trump's favorability is still sinking and lower than the DNC.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2017/03/20/trump-approval-rating-low/99409570/
http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/democratic-party-favorable-rating

The Dems are caving left and right on Trump's appointees, and there is no reason to believe this will stop any time soon.

Last I read that Trump was still trying to find 500+ people out of 320M people who haven't said a negative thing about him to fill all those vacant government positions.

http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-filling-staff-positions-2017-2

To be fair it only receives federal grant money in some States and even in those States it's not actually that much of their income.

Every meals on wheels affiliate receives a mix of local, state, and federal funding along with donations. It's not just 'some States.'

"The majority of Meals on Wheels programs get most of their federal funding through the Administration for Community Living, an agency of the Department of Health and Human Services that serves the elderly and disabled. That agency has a $227 million line-item for "home-delivered nutrition services.""

HUD also provides some federal dollars to States that end up being provided to Meals on Wheels affiliates, but not nearly as much as HHS.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

In a few cases they use a pittance of that transfer to help fund good programs like Meals but the vast majority of it goes to simple local pork projects.

I would have to ask for some sort of proof to back up your claim, as it seems that the federal dollars from HHS goes specifically to health programs for the elderly.

Possibly the federal dollars that HUD passes out to States gets blown off on local pork, but that's a small fraction compared to what HHS doles out, as previously mentioned.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

"The impact is likely to vary from place to place. Every Meals on Wheels affiliate gets money from a different mix of state, local and federal government funds, along with individual donations and philanthropic organizations."

Sure, they may not be earmarked, but HHS funnels federal dollars for the programs through various agencies. HHS has a proposed budget cut of 16%, which will surely affect the federal funding provided for such programs.

Trump is against real pollution, just not CO2 so much. But the only downstream from that is improved crop yields and milder winters, so yet more prosperity is coming (unless the climate decides to flip back to Ice Age again as it is about due to).

The biggest improvement you could do as the government is to abolish the EPA, since it actually was the source of far more pollution than all of the regulations they passed ever prevented.

Nor are ranks from California.

It used to be that in the US there were no such things as police sergeants, lieutenants, captains, etc. The quasi-military rank structure came into being IIRC in Los Angeles California(?).

http://www.ci.richmond.va.us/P...

1807: The Richmond Police Department officially was established as one of the first formally organized law enforcement agencies in the United States.
...
1861: Virginia seceded from the Union. The president of the newly formed Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis, established Richmond as the capital of the CSA Officers began wearing badges and were considered members of the militia.
1863: With the city's population swollen to almost 100,000 by the Civil War, the Richmond Police Department was overwhelmed. As a result, the Department was reorganized with 13 day officers, one of whom was designated the Chief of Police. The night watch was given one captain, three lieutenants and 40 privates.

https://web.archive.org/web/20...

As the oldest police department in the country, the Boston Police Department (BPD) has a rich history and a well-established presence in the Boston community. The initiation of a formal department began in 1838, when the General Court passed a bill allowing the city of Boston to appoint police officers. The department was structured after the model developed by Sir Robert Peele for the London Police force.
...
The first police force consisted of 260 officers and a chief. Each division had a captain and two lieutenants; sergeants were not appointed until 1857. In these early days, an officer on duty carried a six-foot pole, painted blue and white to protect himself, and a "police rattle" to call for assistance.

Ranks were there back in the day when police officers were armed with RATTLES.

Ranks are NOT militarization. Police all around the world have ranks. Fire brigades have ranks.

Militarization is when regular police starts employing military weapons, tactics and equipment on daily basis.
I.e. When police thinks that it actually needs those "5,638 bayonets ($307,769) and 36 swords and scabbards", or when campus police thinks it really needs those M16s there is something terribly wrong both with their internal philosophy AND their purchasing program.

Could it possibly be that the USA has been staging these huge military operations around the globe since... oh... the Desert Storm?
And could it be that such huge military operations overseas create an increase in surplus of military equipment - while at the same time draining the budget of money that could be spent on local law enforcement, among other things?
Could it also be that unloading all those hundreds of millions of dollars of military equipment onto law enforcement agencies is hiding actual holes in the law enforcement budgets?
And is there a chance that, besides all that surplus military gear, police has also been getting

And sometimes kids just happen... It'd be nice if you could return them to the store and get your money back but...

From TFA:

Sam, 40, lives with his wife and three kids in San Jose, earning around $120,000 a year at a multinational software company. "I get paid a very good wage, but I have three kids, childcare is ridiculously expensive so my wife mostly takes care of them," he said.

He feels pressure being the sole breadwinner. "I've got no safety net,: he said. "I have credit cards, but this is not sustainable. If something bad happened I'd be out of the house in a month."

Article covers several cases.
Couples who "make over $1m between us, but we can't afford a house", people with health issues, people living a 20-something coder's life paying 2k for a room in a house they are renting with roommates, people cramming in ""studio-like closets" in a basement", people who can't move out of San Francisco for fear that a Lunatic in Chief might send national guard to round them up and deport them when they set a foot outside a "sanctuary city"...

It helps to read the articles... and linked articles too...
Like "'Tech tax': San Francisco mulls plan for taxing the rich to house the poor"
San Francisco is suffering from its own form of "resource curse".
It brought in tech companies by giving them tax breaks, which brought in money, which skyrocketed the cost of living, which created a whole set of problems for whole sets of people - homelessness being one of them.

As for the United States, the life expectancy is "predicted to be among the lowest of these countries by 2030; 80 for men (similar to the Czech Republic) and 83 for women (similar to Mexico)."

I'm quite horrified that all the commentary on the article is almost entirely sarcasm and jokes. In fact, this is relatively horrifying. Not only is the life expectancy in the U.S. currently less than that in any of the developed countries in Europe, it's decreasing.

This is bad. It's easy enough to make fun of Europe's universal health care, but apparently they're doing something right.

"The culprits for our declining years, the report says, were increases in mortality from heart disease, chronic lower respiratory diseases, unintentional injuries, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, diabetes, kidney disease and suicide. Not surprisingly, that group plus cancer and the flu make up the top 10 causes of death in the U.S....
He (the report author) did highlight a 3% increase in "unintentional injuries." The heading includes, among other things, traffic accidents and drug overdoses — both of which often involve relatively young victims whose deaths can have a strong impact on the numbers."
source: http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

See also:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/08/...
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/12/08/504667607/life-expectancy-in-u-s-drops-for-first-time-in-decades-report-finds

Oh and to add to that: The postwar era was also the pre-civil rights era, and now we're less equal?

Furthermore, the rise of big businesses has more or less enforced civil equality, and overall good citizen conduct way more than any laws have. While the government was still debating gay marriage, big corporations were already pushing their health insurance (and other benefit providers) to recognize domestic partnerships as an enticement for them to work there. HR departments in all big companies often over-react to off-color jokes in ways that governments never do (see donglegate for example.) But it doesn't even have to get to civil rights issues, they'll even fire high up people just for being assholes completely outside of work.

Do mishaps happen? You bet your ass they do, but to imply that it was better during the postwar era is total bullshit. Likewise, without this form of check and balance (i.e. if everybody is poor and there's no job security regardless of whether or not you're an asshole) there's really not much to keep bad actors from discriminating against and harassing people that they see as less than themselves.

There was Proof that Hillary did most of the things people are accusing Trump of. Hillary and Bill's dealings with Russia led to Russia having control over 20+% of the US Uranium. Hillary had dozens of phones, many unsecured, accessing her illegal private email server. Hillary and Bill are "paid" hundreds of thousands of Dollars while Hillary was acting as Secretary of State, all of which remained "classified" and hidden from public view (except the bit that was hacked and released proving she lied about fixing US Borders). Hillary praised KKK member Byrd and Eugenicist Margaret Sanger openly. In fact go look at the ranks of the KKK and count how many Democrats there are versus Republicans. There was one allegation based on third hand information, Warren Harding, who fought against the KKK and their methods.

Want more? How about _Candidate_ Obama visiting more than thirty foreign Governments to boost support for his campaign holding closed door meetings with those foreign Governments (some hostile). Left Wing Sources, Right Wing source. Just so you can't claim my sources are biased, and there is plenty more to find.

Typical Alinsky tactics. Claim the enemy does what you do, lie and keep lying about what you do. Idiots fall for it. Too bad for the Alinskyites more and more people have caught on and no longer believe the lies. There is a reason that NYP, WP, CNN, et. al have a trust rating of about 6 today.

Kind of odd considering all Trump is doing is reviving an Obama travel ban - all of the countries Trump had on the ban list were defined under Obama.

I poop on that argument.

What he has said, what the house has said, all we know for sure is the corporate tax rates are coming down. That affects small and medium sized businesses the MOST because we cannot afford a giant team of lawyers to find us tax breaks.

I shit on that argument as well.

FTFY since your wording had no basis in reality for most Americans.

You failed, me laddo.

I'll let you have the last word since I can't spend all day teaching you the simplest basis of American taxes for business.

You'd have to know what you're talking about, first.

There's a point where cars become too powerful. When Paul Walker died , it was discussed that the Porsche Carrera GT he was in (as a passenger) has three times the horsepower of the average car [and is] notoriously difficult to handle, even for professional drivers. Porsche was exonerated from blame in the crash, but when you put a car on the road that can blast to 80 at the slip of a shoe, then there's an accident waiting to happen.

My car will lose traction if I put my foot to the floor. So I don't do that, I do other things that are less dangerous, like pushing the accelerator pedal a little bit. It's called driving.

There's a point where cars become too powerful. When Paul Walker died , it was discussed that the Porsche Carrera GT he was in (as a passenger) has three times the horsepower of the average car [and is] notoriously difficult to handle, even for professional drivers. Porsche was exonerated from blame in the crash, but when you put a car on the road that can blast to 80 at the slip of a shoe, then there's an accident waiting to happen.

In the instant case, if the driver had been in a base Ford Escort or Chevy Cruz, they'd probably be alive today.

I'm all for high-performance cars, and I love the pickup in my street-legal ride, but on the street there's a limit to what's practical and safe. Think real hard how you got your license... not that hard, right? All sorts of people you wonder whether they can tie their own shoes walking out with brand new licenses, thinking "great! now I can legally get alcohol!"

Now consider how tech is going to continue to advance until Tesla and those electric motors puts the power of a Veyron into the hands of anyone who can sign for a car loan but doesn't know that that kind of speed belongs only on the track. A 1979 Toyota Tercel has no business with a modern 5.2 L Flat Plane Crank V8 bolted onto it, particularly because the suspension and steering can't handle the power and the driver of such an abomination is probably a goddam fool, likely to pound down a few six-packs before heading out for Zombie night at Applebees. The only razor-thin silver-lining in the article reported by the OP is they didn't mow down a sidewalk-full of bystanders before the smeared themselves.

If tech advances until torque and horsepower become trivial, we will have to have governors built-in to cars because the road has to be shared and driving like an idiot will become not a matter of a broken leg but something a lot more permanent. On the track or the salt flats, do what you want. On the streets there's a point where basic transportation becomes a suicide machine, and I don't want to share those streets with overpowered idiots.

Millenials have fewer job prospects in general and are less wealthy than their parents were at the same age. This is true by a variety of different metrics. See e.g. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/01/13/millennials-falling-behind-boomer-parents/96530338/. In the last few years, something, it isn't clear what, has been drastically reducing the resources available to young people. This is combining with cost disease http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-disease/ in a way that is leaving many people in the young age bracket with far less effective purchasing power than their parents would have had for many things. It isn't completely the case; some goods such as computers and cell phones are far cheaper (and often weren't even available to their parents) but that's a relatively small fraction of their total goods. Some other trends are clear positive, such as the reduction in poverty in the US, and the overall trends throughout the world are mainly positive. See e.g. https://singularityhub.com/2016/06/27/why-the-world-is-better-than-you-think-in-10-powerful-charts/. But the US specific young people are clearly going through a bad time in general.

Still feeding the fake news and alternative facts I see. Sorry, you can't rewrite history. If you voted for President Pedophile, you voted for someone who lies and has no problem breaking the law, and if you did it because he made up a claim that his opponent broke the law all the worse. Kelly-Anne Conway just broke the law on Fox News last night by advertising for Ivanka Trump, but I don't see Republicans punishing her either. Most federal employees in the past get suspended or fired for what she did last night, but President Pedophile and Republican controlled congress are the only ones with the ability to punish her, and I don't see either doing anything. President Pedophile actually defended her after she broke the law.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ma...

https://www.bloomberg.com/poli...

The Clinton e-mails are one of the biggest lies Republicans, Breitbart, and Fox News told. Nothing was really deleted. Hillary first sent one copy of the hard drives to a law office and had them sort between all the personal stuff and professional stuff. They "deleted" the personal stuff off that copy of the data before handing it to the FBI. The FBI said that wasn't sufficient and issued a subpoena for all the data including the personal data. Then she handed a copy of all the data including the personal stuff. Once requested, the FBI got everything. The quote from the FBI was about "deleted" e-mails was that there were about a dozen business e-mails that hadn't been included with the first set of business e-mails handed over. There wasn't any crime, because nothing was actually deleted. The FBI also decided that the missing ("deleted") e-mails was not criminal because there was no evidence that it was done intentionally and there was nothing incriminating in them (incorrectly sorting 0.1% of the e-mails was probably accidental). It's not like we are talking about paper copies where there is only one copy of the papers and she shredded them. There were multiple copies of the data on different hard drives and backups.

Rice had her aides use personal e-mail accounts to send e-mails for her. Powell used a private e-mail account (believed to be AOL) for his secretary of state e-mails. Republicans only had a problem with Clinton doing the same thing Republicans had done. They also leave out that she requested a secure e-mail option from the NSA twice and was rejected; the NSA told her to send e-mails from her office computer when she spent most of her job traveling. She was just trying to do her job.

http://www.nytimes.com/interac...

http://www.politifact.com/trut...

http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

http://www.businessinsider.com...

http://thehill.com/policy/nati...

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02...

http://www.factcheck.org/2016/...

why we tolerate these people? I just realized I can't afford a house because of how the mathematics of mortgages work. I never bothered to do the math since I never thought I could buy one. After 10 years of paying down debt and saving I thought I was ready. Not so much. The way mortgage math works out you're paying almost all interest for the first 15 years of a 30 year loan ( stretched to 30 years since these bastards took 20% from me). blah blah blah.
 

Such it up you clueless millennial whiner. You understand nothing, nothing at all.
Want to pay more principal early on in your loan? Just prepay principal every month or just take a shorter term, like a 15 year, you complete moron.
We would all prefer you just rent though, because you are much too stupid to understand the loan terms. In no time at all you will be going bankrupt and start whining about how the bank made you borrow more than you could afford to repay.

Don't like HOA fees? Well, maybe you might consider buying a home that is not in a community with an HOA? Oh no, that's much too hard. The HOA takes care of your leaves and grass and snow and crap, and you are much too entitled and stupid to either do it yourself or hire someone directly. Call your dad, maybe he will come over and take care of it for you.

This is what colleges graduate. Seriously, you're a moron.

why we tolerate these people? I just realized I can't afford a house because of how the mathematics of mortgages work. I never bothered to do the math since I never thought I could buy one. After 10 years of paying down debt and saving I thought I was ready. Not so much. The way mortgage math works out you're paying almost all interest for the first 15 years of a 30 year loan ( stretched to 30 years since these bastards took 20% from me). Then I need extra insurance since the 2008 crash & a couple family illnesses (thanks private medical system) wiped out my savings. And I need home owners. And I have to pay HOA fees because we cut so much funding outside of rich neighborhoods there's no money to cut weeds and fix roads. It all kept adding up until I realized it'd be more than I could afford what with a kid in college and the real reason it costs $100k to go to college.

Not just all the cost, but all the _risk_ is on the home owner. The banks make sure they get their interest up front. And they take my tax dollars to guarantee the loans and hold the entire f'n country hostage if we don't pay.

Every last one of us except 1% is getting screwed by this. Why the hell do we tolerate it? Why don't we force the banks profits _down_ and our standard of living _up_? Why is the free market so much more God Damned important that we'd throw our lives away chasing Any Rand's ghost? Fuck.

There is endless documentation about this. Even the article Slashdot linked says nothing about climate change. For a mainstream media example: http://www.usatoday.com/story/...
"There is no direct evidence to link this event to climate change, he added. Although the general ice shelf decay along the Antarctic Peninsula has been linked to a warming world, this rift appears to have been developing for many decades, and the result is likely natural, according to Project MIDAS."

Changes in the antarctic are a complicated subject, I suggest reading up before making assumptions.

The opposite of on-the-fly...

Pre-recorded:
http://ftw.usatoday.com/2017/0...

Superbowl halftime show is now on par with the chinese Olympic Opening Ceremony fireworks, that many people called "cheating"

http://www.reuters.com/article...
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/w...

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/01/...

http://www.usatoday.com/story/...

I don't see rioting from conservatives at all. I am not sure what news you are seeing, but these riots are from people "protesting" Trump and his policies (without even having a basic understanding of the policies). The day before the inauguration, the protesters torched a limo. Ironically, the limo was owned by a muslim man who didn't like Trump either. Protests at U C Berkeley turned violent over Milo Yiannopoulos, and the recent executive orders that were implimenting policy passed by the previous administration. Portland Oregon protests turn violent over Trumps (illegal!) immigrant stances.

There were some non-violent protests, such as the women's protests the Saturday after the inauguration, but that is hardly the norm right now.

FYI, I live 30 minutes outside DC, I hear about all the crap going on down there, and it isn't pretty with all the violence coming from these people.

True satire can't exist in an environment where no one can take a joke.

Even Jerry Seinfeld realized two years ago that comedy and the perpetually offended crowd can't mix. Now think how much worse it's gotten in those two years.

Between the crazed liberal snowflakes and the persecution complex on the right, I'm surprised comedy clubs aren't looked at the same as Klan meetings by now.

People just need to relax and realize that life really isn't this serious.

This executive order