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Not just in Soviet Russia, comrade.

But he's also the only Candidate besides Bernie Sanders who thinks healthcare (not just "affordable" healthcare) is a right.

Uh-huh.... The reality is that Trump does not even begin to understand policy, let alone be able to set it, doubly let alone hiring anybody who would explain it to him and equip him with one. But he's sure entertaining, ain't he?

Yes, he's said some racist things, but he's also said them out loud instead of dog whistling.

And you figure that's a good thing, on *either* clause of that sentence. Ooookay.

I'll take Trump over Rubio any day of the week. Rubio's the kind of guy who'd stab me in the gut, twist the knife and then smile; saying it's nothing personal, just business. If Trump's gonna stab me in the gut it's because he hates them. I can deal with Trumps Hate. Rubio's cold hearted unlimited greed? Not so much.

Now it makes sense. You actually believe that Trump is being straightforward, instead of saying whatever it takes to get elected. Just like Rubio. Just like Cruz. Just like Clinton. Just like Sanders. Just like any person who runs for office. And pardon my cynical smile if you think Trump does not possess, "cold hearted unlimited greed."

Why don't you work your way through this short piece .... for starters.

Democrats Were Wrong on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - The White House called for tighter regulation 17 times

It's going to see if this continues without the tax breaks

Aren't you also interested in seeing if the coal industry and the oil industry are able to continue without tax breaks?

http://www.taxpayer.net/librar...

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/...

http://www.investopedia.com/ar...

And that's a wrap! AC down below has forgotten - or refuses to account for the huge amount of subsidies received by Coal, Oil and Natgas.

Now of course, the crowning acievement of subsidized energy Nookyalar! http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-...

https://lucian.uchicago.edu/bl...

I'm not even anti-nuc, but dammit, I'll wager a cup of crap that they are "free market" advocates. Those billions for that, and the taxpayers bearing the reisks of nuc plants sounds like the invisible hand of the free market is giving a reach around hand job to the nuc industry.

It's going to see if this continues without the tax breaks

Aren't you also interested in seeing if the coal industry and the oil industry are able to continue without tax breaks?

http://www.taxpayer.net/librar...

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/...

http://www.investopedia.com/ar...

Excessive regulation can and does hurt the little guy. I expect that isn't something you've really looked into or thought much about.

Regulations can serve as a barrier to entry to both individuals and businesses. It isn't unknown for large companies to lobby or otherwise influence the nature of regulations to make it more difficult for small companies to form, or challenge them.

Some food for thought:

An Economy Buried by Regulations

Another unintended consequence is the stifling of entrepreneurship. Regulations can create barriers to people interested in selling goods or services or starting a small business. For example, 17 states require an individual to earn a license to do hair braiding. To obtain a license in Pennsylvania, you have to train for 300 hours, pass a practical and theoretical exam and then pay a fee. Barriers such as these give consumers fewer choices, and with fewer practitioners offering their services in a particular field, customers may face higher prices.

Over-regulated America

But red tape in America is no laughing matter. The problem is not the rules that are self-evidently absurd. It is the ones that sound reasonable on their own but impose a huge burden collectively. America is meant to be the home of laissez-faire. Unlike Europeans, whose lives have long been circumscribed by meddling governments and diktats from Brussels, Americans are supposed to be free to choose, for better or for worse. Yet for some time America has been straying from this ideal.

Consider the Dodd-Frank law of 2010. Its aim was noble: to prevent another financial crisis. Its strategy was sensible, too: improve transparency, stop banks from taking excessive risks, prevent abusive financial practices and end âoetoo big to failâ by authorising regulators to seize any big, tottering financial firm and wind it down. This newspaper supported these goals at the time, and we still do. But Dodd-Frank is far too complex, and becoming more so. At 848 pages, it is 23 times longer than Glass-Steagall, the reform that followed the Wall Street crash of 1929. Worse, every other page demands that regulators fill in further detail. Some of these clarifications are hundreds of pages long. Just one bit, the âoeVolcker ruleâ, which aims to curb risky proprietary trading by banks, includes 383 questions that break down into 1,420 subquestions. . . .

Dodd-Frank is part of a wider trend. Governments of both parties keep adding stacks of rules, few of which are ever rescinded. Republicans write rules to thwart terrorists, which make flying in America an ordeal and prompt legions of brainy migrants to move to Canada instead. Democrats write rules to expand the welfare state. Barack Obama's health-care reform of 2010 had many virtues, especially its attempt to make health insurance universal. But it does little to reduce the system's staggering and increasing complexity. Every hour spent treating a patient in America creates at least 30 minutes of paperwork, and often a whole hour. Next year the number of federally mandated categories of illness and injury for which hospitals may claim reimbursement will rise from 18,000 to 140,000. There are nine codes relating to injuries caused by parrots, and three relating to burns from flaming water-skis.

Two forces make American laws too complex. One is hubris. Many lawmakers seem to believe that they can lay down rules to govern every eventuality. Examples range from the merely annoying (eg, a proposed code for nurseries in Colorado that specifies how many crayons each box must contain) to the delusional (eg, the conceit of Dodd-Frank that you can anticipate and ban every nasty trick financiers will dream up in the future). Far from preventing abuses, complexity creates loopholes that the

While I can understand why you think these people are not a threat to Europe and the USA... let's bring some knowledge into the game;

China and Russian have tried and failed multiple times to cause the "dollar" to collapse http://www.usnews.com/news/art... is just one of the many examples

9/11 was caused by a small group of people.

The ability to create and hack electronic systems has never been easier, if you keep reading slashdot, you'll see that all infrastructures are weak, also, it seems that bio-hacking might be on the rise ( no validation on that aspect, just perspective )

the sad fact is, if these guys were not on the radar as a threat, they have become now. if I ran facebook or twitter, I would exercise my ability to track and annonomously give information to those that show a missle firing down the pipe...

To judge by the article, that would seem to be the case. Indeed, one might conclude that the only mission NASA has is to get to Mars as soon as possible.

The Republican chairman of the Science Committee, Lamar Smith of Texas, echoed those concerns in his comments, saying that under President Obama, NASA does not seem to be taking a serious approach to human exploration. The hearing comes at a critical time for NASA, now two months into the last year of President Obama’s second term and with a new administrator likely to replace Charles Bolden in 2017. Republicans in Congress have made it clear they do not favor the president’s plan to send astronauts to visit a fragment of an asteroid near the Moon and an eventual journey to Mars.

It is no surprise that Lamar Smith would like to make manned space exploration the priority rather than, say, global warming, since he is a notorious denier known for bullying scientiests who don't see things his way.

Correlation is not causation.

I did not imply that it is, I said that it disproves your assertion. If you make an assertion that $X causes $Y, and we find an inverse correlation, then we can be pretty sure that $X does not cause $Y. You asserted that $ISM causes $OBSERVATION. I contend that assertion by observing that $ISM is actually inversely correlated to your $OBSERVATION.

And I doubt the correlation. Do you have any evidence to support your conclusion, like a peer reviewed study?

You would doubt it; your ideology fails if the correlation of "more options for girls" = "Less girls in CS". Let's look at my observations, shall we?

Iran (few female rights): females account for 70% CS and STEM graduates (source)

Gulf region (so few female rights they can't even display their face in linked photo): females account for 60% CS and STEM graduates (source)

Qatar (few female rights): females account for 60% of CS and STEM students (source)

Malaysia (few rights for women): females account for 52% of CS undergraduates (Peer reviewed source)

Now let's see what the top ten feminist countries in the world look like:

Finland: 32% female CS students (source)

Sweden (possibly the largest number of female rights in the world?): 22% CS grads (source

Norway - newest figure I can find on line is from 1999, so ignoring it for now

New Zealand: less than 33% female CS graduates (source).

UK: 13% female CS graduates (source)

Canada: 27% female graduates (maths and CS) (source)

USA: 18% female graduates in CS (source

Netherlands: Can't find sources for this either.

The best countries for female rights have fewer female CS graduates than the worst countries for female rights. This is directly observable.

Now that I got some of the numbers, you just know that I'm going to repost this list (not a link, the actual list) every time you make the incorrect assertion that sexism *must* be responsible for the dearth of females in CS.

My position is backed by evidence. Women's experiences, detailed and comprehensive studies. I'm on my phone now so ask again tomorrow if you want a list, but Wikipedia has a good article about it with 59 references: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...

You've given a list of 59 references, of which only one academic article supports your position (somewhat tenously, but there you go). As it is clear that you did not read your own references, I'll leave it to you to figure out which one supports your $X causes $Y position. The other articles all repeat your mantra - that there are fewer females in CS - but none of them address the glaring issue of why this is not

Correlation is not causation.

I did not imply that it is, I said that it disproves your assertion. If you make an assertion that $X causes $Y, and we find an inverse correlation, then we can be pretty sure that $X does not cause $Y. You asserted that $ISM causes $OBSERVATION. I contend that assertion by observing that $ISM is actually inversely correlated to your $OBSERVATION.

And I doubt the correlation. Do you have any evidence to support your conclusion, like a peer reviewed study?

You would doubt it; your ideology fails if the correlation of "more options for girls" = "Less girls in CS". Let's look at my observations, shall we?

Iran (few female rights): females account for 70% CS and STEM graduates (source)

Gulf region (so few female rights they can't even display their face in linked photo): females account for 60% CS and STEM graduates (source)

Qatar (few female rights): females account for 60% of CS and STEM students (source)

Malaysia (few rights for women): females account for 52% of CS undergraduates (Peer reviewed source)

Now let's see what the top ten feminist countries in the world look like:

Finland: 32% female CS students (source)

Sweden (possibly the largest number of female rights in the world?): 22% CS grads (source

Norway - newest figure I can find on line is from 1999, so ignoring it for now

New Zealand: less than 33% female CS graduates (source).

UK: 13% female CS graduates (source)

Canada: 27% female graduates (maths and CS) (source)

USA: 18% female graduates in CS (source

Netherlands: Can't find sources for this either.

The best countries for female rights have fewer female CS graduates than the worst countries for female rights. This is directly observable.

Now that I got some of the numbers, you just know that I'm going to repost this list (not a link, the actual list) every time you make the incorrect assertion that sexism *must* be responsible for the dearth of females in CS.

My position is backed by evidence. Women's experiences, detailed and comprehensive studies. I'm on my phone now so ask again tomorrow if you want a list, but Wikipedia has a good article about it with 59 references: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...

You've given a list of 59 references, of which only one academic article supports your position (somewhat tenously, but there you go). As it is clear that you did not read your own references, I'll leave it to you to figure out which one supports your $X causes $Y position. The other articles all repeat your mantra - that there are fewer females in CS - but none of them address the glaring issue of why this is not

Republicans reject it before it even comes out and refuse to read it.

Because "Obama"

Oh, be fair now...

Remember that Obamacare website? How high quality was that?

How about Obamacare itself? Did cementing health insurance companies into federal law fix any problems?

How about closing Gitmo? How did that work out?

Hell, how about his stance on telecom immunity? How's that working out for us?

Or making up new immigration law by executive order?

Or ordering the assassination of a US citizen? (With no trial, and by authority of a secret law.)

Really. If you want to blame gridlock on the merits of the situation, then do so.

Otherwise, to the casual observer it would appear that "because Obama" is a perfectly valid reason to oppose something.

Because, you know, "good and evil".

you're really not supposed to use one in flight...

That myth has been thoroughly busted already. And not just once

And it really doesn't help much on the tracking aspect.

The coordinates, speeds, and even instrument read-outs can all be sent to the nearest tower(s) via the data-link. SSL-encrypted — with a handful of certificate authorities known to each plane.

Planes are are registered and have great big letters painted on the side of them

Right. And my face may be computer-recognizable already — or really soon. But that does not mean, I should be carrying an ID-chip in my pocket to make tracking me even easier.

But the biggest problem is that the system was designed from the ground up for safety not privacy the reason being so the fire trucks can beat you to the scene of the crash.

General-purpose fire trucks would be sent out by the air-dispatchers anyway, they don't listen to air-control AM "just in case". The specialized services at the airports, if they wish to have their own awareness independent of the control-tower, can be allowed to get the same SSL-encrypted data-links...

The origin of the issue is the bad old reliance on "obfuscation" — if I can not hear the plane broadcasting its unique ID and location, then no one else can hear it either and so there is not a problem. TFA will, hopefully, raise the awareness so the healing can begin.

I just looked into it a bit more. It appears that you can start drawing your social security before you reach full retirement age (62) which is where the deductions come from. After you reach 67 or whatever the age is (depending on when you were born), there is no limit or reduction. I just remembered my father being concerned about that and didn't realize it was only if you take benefits early.

http://money.usnews.com/money/...

I retired at 62 and continued working part-time at $52/Hr, so I hit the earnings limit.
They temporarily reduce your SS payments according to a formula.
There is a floor of ~$15,000 /year. Earnings below that are not counted. Over the ~15,000 then for every $2 you earn, then $1 is deducted from your Social Security check.

Example: I earned $32,000. Subtract 15,000 = 17,000. Half that is 8,500. Next year (at some random time) they stopped my checks until the $8,500 was taken back, which for me was be about 4 months and change.

When I turn 66 they'll re-calculate my payments, so if I retired at 62 and then lost 5 months payments due to working, then they'll re-calculate as if I had actually retired at 66 yr and 5 mo.

I just looked into it a bit more. It appears that you can start drawing your social security before you reach full retirement age (62) which is where the deductions come from. After you reach 67 or whatever the age is (depending on when you were born), there is no limit or reduction. I just remembered my father being concerned about that and didn't realize it was only if you take benefits early.

http://money.usnews.com/money/...

$26/gallon.

When oil is what? $40/barrel.

Typical Obama "success" story...

Thank you for your support of teachers. I've already reported and weighed in a few times about this subject, and I'd like to just expand on a few of your points.

Unfortunately, money speaks, and superintendents listen. When someone walks into a sup's office and says, "I'd like to donate $50,000 to the district to buy more technology," who would say no? And, on a national scale, if Zuck & Gates walk into the president's office to say, "We'd like to donate $1,000,000 to get more school districts to code," do you think Obama would be any different?

I do wish that we would just let labor markets let supply and demand naturally encourage or discourage people from entering and leaving the profession, as it happened a decade ago. While Microsoft claims that we aren't supplying enough computer programmers to meet demand, the BLS begs to differ. Salaries have grown at 1.5% annually between 2004-2012, barely keeping up with inflation. All the while, we continue to bring in more H1B visa applicants. If these companies -really- want more programmers, all they need to do is raise salaries. It sounds like they have plenty to spare. Not to mention repatriating all that money would go a long ways in increasing tax revenues to help states pay for their K-12 institutions.

Because it is easier to get money for a new highway or bridge than to get money to fix one that is still working.
But even that gets money
http://www.usnews.com/news/pol...
305 billion is not exactly small change

Myths about unsocialized home-schoolers are false, and most are well prepped for college, experts say.

Boeing collects $13B in subsidies from taxpayer https://www.washingtonpost.com... http://america.aljazeera.com/o... http://www.cheatsheet.com/busi... then spies on taxpayer. http://heavy.com/tech/2014/11/... http://www.wired.com/2014/11/f... http://www.usnews.com/news/art... Not cool, Boeing.

The government simply got used to being able to see everything at all times. Now that we can create blind spots, they are paranoid and lashing out.

Paranoid? " Lashing out "? I don't know how to break this to you, but it isn't really about you.

Paris massacre: At least 128 killed in gunfire and blasts, French officials say
ISIS claims responsibility for Paris massacre; attackers include Belgians, Frenchman, possible Syrian migrant

San Bernardino shooting: Farook tied to jihadist recruiter, officials say
The Evolving Extremist Threat - The Islamic State group’s plan to promote violence worldwide is bearing fruit.

Imam Says America, Europe Taking Muslim Refugees Will Only Help Spread Caliphate; Tells Muslim Refugees to Breed With Europeans
European Union predicts 3 million more migrants by end of next year

Sorry to self-reply, but I messed up one of the links. Here's a link to another story with graphs that have more recent (and long-term) data on college graduation rates.

If by "science" you mean creationism/intelligent design, Pi=3, genetics is wrong, evolution is a sin, and scientific theories are just "crazy ideas someguy once had that can't be proven"

You do realize that lots of religious schools, even in Texas, teach evolution even with respect to humans, teach the big bang theory, teach that the discoveries of science are not in conflict with religion, that science and religion search for answers in orthogonal fields.

FYI, genetic science and the big bang theory began with members of the clergy.

You could add 'revisionist history' to what is taught in Texas, even in public schools.
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/...

> Or any hybrid food for that matter. Or plant splicing, like done on tomatoes or fruit trees. Its a scary world.

Not even close. GMO is more "useful". That's why there are so many ninnies like you participating as willing dupes in the Monsanto propaganda campaign. If it were otherwise, then companies like Monsanto simply wouldn't bother. They would have no motive.

Ummm, spare me the "ninnies" comments. Truce? Or are you in the liberal version of the Fox News bubble?

Because trying to equate Monsanto's herbicide resistance malfeasance and my supposed usefulness to that program is perhaps less then insightful when you make it the equivalent of producing a fish that grows faster. herbicide resistance as part of the genetic makeup in plants is a lost cause in a crop because all it does is make the pest plants stronger. Which is already happening in roundup ready seeds. It's a dumbass lost cause.

http://www.usnews.com/news/art...

Fact is, we aren't supposed to be consuming herbicides like that.

We aren't supposed to be using utensils made of bisphenol A, or many other nasty-ass modern things.

Now you want to see interesting weed control?

http://loe.org/shows/segments.... The only resistance that can be gained against blasting is a thicker weed. What's more instead of the walnut shells they used as the original grit, they will be blasting with organic fertilizers. Two factors for th eprice of one

But on to your assessment that I am completely off, that hybrids are nothing like genetic manipulation.

You need to affirm that you are saying that hybrids or cross breeds are genetically identical to the plants they were bred with. Could you do that?

Because if they are not genetically identical across all the varieties that we hybridized or crossbred, then that is exactly genetic manipulation, and you are only facing a truth that is inconvenient for your worldview. Can we chat about crossbreeding as safe and GM as dangerous? The Lenape potato.

The Lenape Potato, a conventionally crossbred potato. A fine looking speciman that looked like it was going to take over the potato chip world for a while, had one slight problem. It was toxic.

http://boingboing.net/2013/03/...

Many scientists, based on this truth, are saying that the crossbred pant, which to you seems acceptable, should be held to the same standards as GM. Perhaps a new field for deniers?

howeever setting all that aside, I am willing to put my money where my mouth is, and eat only GM salmon for the rest of my life that have been produced this way.

Do you have the strength of your conviction to eat one meal of conventionally crossbred Lenape Potatoes in return? It's even vegan, so no problem there. Sounds like a fair test to me.

Really, please don't. I may be a useful ninnie, but I don't want anyone to come to harm. I'll still eat those salmon. I'll bet they are yummmmmy.

if there is such a broad danger that a crime won't be a crime if there are enough criminals to support removing it from law, then perhaps it shouldn't be a crime.

Lynching niggers was a rather popular concept in some locales — a town, or even an entire State could've voted to decriminalize such a thing. Tax-evasion would be a more modern concern...

The way I see it, is that universal franchise itself is a mistake — it just as much of an extreme to allow everyone to vote, as the other extreme of making a monarch decide everything was.

I'd like to see access to the polls limited to people, who can a) solve a quadratic equation (randomly-generated by computer); b) cite (type into computer) an article from the Bill of Rights — of the would-be voter's choosing.

I also want everybody, who received over $10 worth of public assistance within 3 months prior to the current poll, to be automatically disenfranchised as well. We may or may not agree on whether criminals represent a big enough group to affect the vote, but public dole-recipients surely are, and the danger of these people voting more of other people's monies to themselves is evident.

if criminals can form enough of a voting bloc to where they make for a significant impact on politics, then perhaps we have made crimes of too many behaviors

First of all, some elections really do come down to only a few people: Al Franken's win, for example, was due to only 312 votes. This example is important, because it cites voting by at least 341 felons...

But I can turn your words around and claim, that, if the felons' numbers are so insignificant anyway, then who cares, whether they vote or not? That said, in my opinion, if the prescribed punishment for a particular crime does not officially include disenfranchisement, it should not be applied...

It's all a librul conspiracy to make our thermometers inaccurate while at the same time subsidizing Big Lightbulb CCFL makers.
Just like when they took the lead out of our gasoline to make our classic V8 Cameros knock and ping.

We had pencils and punch cards once, when democracy was hanging by a chad.

That kind of voting was not based on marking a piece of paper with a writing implement. That kind of voting was based on pushing a mechanical button that had to make a physical change in the paper medium over which it was placed. That system was unsound because it required maintenance of equipment and was subject to the abuse that the average person could put on a mechanical device.

I do not have a problem with electronic-tabulated voting so long as the medium on which the voter casts the vote is human-readable and human-markable. That pretty much means optical scan, a technology that has been used for a couple of decades now. Optical scan means that the results can be tabulated as the voting occurs and be known as polls close, but in contests where there is a need to recount it's still possible for humans auditing the individual ballots to read the ballots with their eyes, without any special equipment at all.

Either way, human-tabulated from the outset or computer-tabulated and capable of being human-tabulated or human-audited, the process needs to allow for tabulation without any special equipment whatsoever.

We had pencils and punch cards once, when democracy was hanging by a chad.

The way you refute a peer-reviewed study is with better peer-reviewed studies. A spam list of unreviewed opinions all written by the same handful of dissenters refutes nothing. Provide better data, or take your unfounded opinions and baseless accusations elsewhere.

The way you confirm a peer-reviewed study is with more peer-reviewed studies, conducted independently and using different lines of evidence, to see if they arrive at similar results. Like this one, this one, this one, this one, and this one, to cite a few.

Obama; Poppa Bush; Carter; LBJ; Kennedy; Eisenhower; FDR; all understood and supported science.
Hell, under each of these leaders, most made spending cuts while increasing science spending.
And all of them were considered intelligent.

Interesting that support for the general sciences does appear to correlate to IQ of the presidents.

>McAfee: Healthcare costs would be cut by 75% if medical malpractice lawsuits were outlawed or at least massively curtailed.

Or around 2.5% - http://health.usnews.com/healt...

Maybe if we design our system so it's not so hard to apologize when a doctor makes a mistake that would help...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

But wait there's more

Radically restrict The FDA.

Because I'm sure health costs will go down when Pharma can do what it wants, I mean obviously its the FDA keeping all these drugs at insanely high prices by not catering to Pharma's every need. More direct to consumer advertising to muddy the waters will make things even better...I just can't wait to see!

>McAfee: Healthcare costs would be cut by 75% if medical malpractice lawsuits were outlawed or at least massively curtailed.

Or around 2.5% - http://health.usnews.com/healt...

Maybe if we design our system so it's not so hard to apologize when a doctor makes a mistake that would help... http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

McAfee is nuts.... There is no way 75% is even close.

He's also nuts on the solution to the problem....

The solution to this problem is "Looser pays legal fees". Right now, everybody pays their own legal fees, unless you sue for your legal costs and win. This should be "Looser pays" which means if you file a lawsuit and loose for any reason (judge dismisses it or you loose in court) you pay everybody's legal fees. This will make it much more dangerous for lawyers to gin up a possible case, sue Big Daddy War bucks with deep pockets and hope that something sticks and cut down on the border line frivolous suits.

>McAfee: Healthcare costs would be cut by 75% if medical malpractice lawsuits were outlawed or at least massively curtailed.

Or around 2.5% - http://health.usnews.com/healt...

Maybe if we design our system so it's not so hard to apologize when a doctor makes a mistake that would help...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

Although CA governor Jerry Brown just signed a bill requiring warrants to search electronic devices (and has signed simular such laws in the past), there's still that dumbass Proposition 69 bill that the CA public actually voted into law-- an unforced error-- in 2004. It basically says that if you are ARRESTED (not convicted, arrested), when they do the whole fingerprint thing, they can also grab your DNA and add it to their database. So you know, arrested for political protesting? All your DNA belongs to US.

See Faced with overwhelming evidence, VW admits thwarting pollution controls for years. (Page 2)

Quote: "For a company to engage in such blatant trickery, top executives must have been informed, said Guido Reinking, a German auto expert."

My opinions were formed partly from watching a PBS News video of a congressional inquiry. A congressman also strongly disagreed with the statements made by the Volkswagen regional subsidiary CEO. The problem is that CEO strongly denied that any managers could have been involved, not just him.

One problem is that none of the reports I've seen were written by technically-knowledgeable people.

Yes, there could be a mistake. Maybe no extra hardware was involved.

Is a Russian citizen now?

He lives in Russia now and remains very useful to Putin.

you want to bring in a discussion of personal property as it relates to liberties and suggest that is on topic

Because I estimate the correlation between people voting for "wealth-spreading" and those mongering the fear of the NSA as above 90%. All of them are either self-inconsistent fools or two-faced scumbags.

You seem to suggest the NSA's data will one day be used to confiscate wealth.

No, I'm saying, the IRS is already doing that. NSA's worst offence so far was providing other agencies (local and Federal) with information about real crimes — and freedom-loving Americans are outraged over those other police then lying to conceal the spies' involvement. Some day such lying may evolve and lead to innocent people being framed. But it is yet to happen — so far there aren't even any allegations of anybody being framed with NSA's involvement.

But the IRS is already open and brazen about confiscating your monies on mere suspicion and target opposition-supporters for audits and other prosecution.

So there is my point if you don't let the government see your stuff they don't know where there is to try and take from you. So thank you Snowden for bringing to light the domestic spying!

Had Snowden escaped from the IRS, you would've had a point.

Maybe the NSA's domestic spying isn't the 'greatest' threat to liberty but it clearly is a A threat. I for one think we should resist all threats to personal freedoms not just the biggest ones.

Well, if your house were on fire, would you concentrate on putting it out, or will you also continue thinking of the danger of an air-plane falling on it some day? The focus ought to be on the clear-and-present threats, not the hypothetical ones from the future. Moreover, significantly reducing the taxation will also reduce the threat of NSA — by lowering the amounts of money at the government's disposal, you make it less attractive for assholes, who would abuse NSA (or any other agency) to remain in power the way they already use the IRS.

In an attempt to cut through the bullshit of what *might* happen and work directly from evidence, I came across a report of a Cato institute study:

A Cato Institute study shows key differences between rideshare services and taxis, but passenger safety isn't one of them.

The other differences are not as important and will probably get solved by other means. For example, cleanliness of the ride, courtesy of the driver, and gypping the customer can be handled by the Uber feedback system.

The economists here are quick to point out the importance of liquidity, and Uber adds much needed liquidity to the taxi system.

Can anyone justify the expense and bureaucracy of taxi medallions when passenger safety isn't an issue?

It isn't even a compromise when you won't even fight for what you say you will fight for, but instead throw little temper tantrums and noise while rolling over and doing nothing at all. "We're gonna lose so we aren't even gonna bother trying"

LOL, the Republicans tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and tried to repeal Obamacare, but they just couldn't do it.

But I guess 56 unsuccessful attempts to repeal a law doesn't count as enough effort for you. How many times would you have tried?

A large and increasing portion of Americans realize that their financial health is threatened by immigrants and their very existence is threatened by Muslim terrorists.

Please elaborate on exactly how "Muslim terrorists" constitute an existential threat to America. More people die if bathtub falls and choking than die in terrorist attacks.

Many smaller, less stable countries deal with far larger rates of things like suicide bombings without their societies being destroyed. Is America that fragile?

Although, entitlements are reported to be two-thirds of the entire federal budget.

Although some would say more entitlements may not be the answer.

I don't know if you noticed, but there's been a war on law enforcement recently.

Seems I missed it, since the number of police officers being killed is 13% lower than last year. And if you figure that there are around 765,000 sworn police officers at the state and local level and, so far this year, there are about 26 police officers killed (or about 0.003%), it's not much of a war.

If he was refering to the fact that girls now have substantial advantage over boys (over 20% advantage throughout elementary, middle, and high school) and at college entrance, then he would be correct, and very serious. The only area of education not dominated by women in the past ten years is STEM, and men are also far behind women in biology & related sciences, and math, leaving really only computer science and the engineering fields, and physics to men. Every other degree has at least 65% women, far outpacing men. I for one would prefer a system that is gender neutral and doesn't discriminate, seeks to empower all students at all levels in all disciplines, and let students choose their own path, I'd rather the gender boxes disappear altogether and people become free to set their own path in life, whatever their gender.

Hear, hear!! I wish I had mod points for this.

Let's not also forget sports...the Title "9" rules haven't so much promoted women sports as it has helped kill many sports for men outside of football.

Does the comparison of programming with child care provision and nail salon ownership make a valid point? I sought some data by googling "average salary X" where X is one of {nail salon worker, salon manager, child care provider, programmer}*. The top hits yielded:
Workers at nail salons often don't even make a legal wage, let alone a living wage
Median pay in this female-dominated area goes for around $11.90 per hour. (Salon manager)
The average pay in this industry is approximately $9.43 per hour. (Child care)
Computer programmers made an average salary of $80,930 in 2013.
* It's not at all clear that the majority of nail salon *owners* are female, so I left that out, substituting managers.

Your chosen examples of female-dominated workforces have far lower pay than programming, as well as significantly less social prestige. I appreciate that the first paragraph of your comment was snarky rather than making a serious point, but the data doesn't support your comparison. As for your second paragraph, being "excluded" is different from being "uninterested". You use a classic strawman argument conflating the two. There is no suggestion that women need rescuing from alternative career choices, simply that the "craft" of programming would be more advanced with a more talented set of "players" (references to gp post).

I expect that the "hoarding money" is confined to the Ivy League Universities, and by the time you get to Texas A&M and the like they are desperately trying to get funds and have no spare money to hoard. It would be interesting to know the spread in funding.

It would be interesting to know the spread. Per U.S. News, here it is (2013 figures):

http://www.usnews.com/educatio...

Harvard is #1 at $32B
Texas A&M is #8 at $8B

Bush didn't cause the recession via the war. It came about because of years, including his, of allowing Wall Street and the housing bubble to suck the life out of the U.S. economy. Also, the American people bear some of the blame, they took out second and third mortgages, were too busy to read what they were promising in loan payments, more or less lived beyond their means because, what the hell, everyone they knew was doing the same thing. The American people are fucking saints...dumb saints, but saints.

Actually, Bush tried to rein in the housing bubble.

New Agency Proposed to Oversee Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae

The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.

Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry.

The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.

The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt -- is broken. A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates.

...

''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.''

Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed.

''I don't see much other than a shell game going on here, moving something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable housing,'' Mr. Watt said.

He was stopped by Democrats, like Barney Frank.

Barney Frank's Fannie and Freddie Muddle

Now that crisis management has taken root and Fannie and Freddie have been placed in conservatorship, a number of commentators have remarked that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's actions bear a striking resemblance to what his predecessor proposed five years ago. Whether the two mortgage giants deserve a future will be a pitched battle, but for now, Democratic Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the Financial Services Committee chairman, has issued a press release with a fanciful take on history.

Cheap labor remains an important consideration when moving manufacturing facilities.

But. Africa. Regional political unrest can undermine labor costs, raw material availability, and friendly tax packages.

On the other hand China has been investing in Africa (First link from google China Is Besting the U.S. in Africa). So China is already playing a long game there and while India may be a good choice right now, they may be looking at Africa after that.

Hotels, airlines, car dealers, colleges, banks, hospitals, all masters of the hidden fee. (Source)

66% turnout, sadly, isn't all that bad by the standards of most democracies.

By contrast, in the 2014 U.S. Congressional elections, an estimated 36.6% percent of eligible voters participated. (Source: http://www.usnews.com/news/blo... ). I'd have gladly taken the UK turnout rate.

You must a lawyer or a legislator.

I imagine you could pass a law that says the State owns all the airspace from ankle height and give the police jurisdiction over drones, beach-balls, and soap bubbles. But then I don't need to imagine that since Oregon was trying to do just that. (Notice the use of a military drone in the article, when the legislation is actually trying to get the citizens to cede their rights to their own airspace.

So unless you have a political incentive to create and pass new legislation (to look busy), or you're feeling pressure from Amazon's lobby so they can fly shipping lanes into private citizens airspace without their permission, I'd say there's no reason for another law in this case.

Why should the single people pay you to be married, faithfully or not?

They don't.

They might go to a shitty underfunded public school.

The very concept of "public school" is fairly recent. Not only did Aristotle grow up without one, neither Benjamin Franklin nor Thomas Jefferson attended one either. Thomas Edison was homeschooled.

They might get harassed by the police on a regular basis, charged with a felony in a situation where a white kid would get a slap on the wrist, and have their lives effectively ruined by a criminal record.

Even if true, how is this different from what Jews suffered in Europe for centuries?

Why are the supposedly "racist cops" (many of them Black, BTW) today only targeting African Americans? If they really were White Supremacists, wouldn't the statistics for Asian Americans be just as gloomy? Immigrant Blacks are doing much better than the native-born ones too.

A theory contradicting observable facts is wrong. Your explanation is thus without merit. Whether or not there really is "institutional racism" or whatever in America, it simply does not explain the woeful underperformance of African Americans.

It's definitely not as bad for black people as it was 50 years ago, or even 25 years ago

Actually, you are wrong again — it is worse than 50 years ago. Despite — or, more likely, because of — decades of various policies advocated by your kind, the Blacks' satisfaction is lower today, than it was in 1964. Although, yeah, it may be better than 20 years ago...

(Note, that I'm not putting forth my own theories here. I'm just obliterating yours.)