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I like how it's unpopular to point out that some traits of conservatism are undesirable. For example, looking at the map of the laws against interracial marriage and also gay marriage looks pretty similar to the standard red/blue map that seems to dominate politics.

But hey, it's not a "Republican Core Value" or something. Yeah. /s

Here's a list of what can put you in that "small subset":
http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/medicine/pre-existing-conditions.htm

It includes just about any diagnosed mental illness, high blood pressure, diabetes, excess weight, asthma, etc.

Oh, and don't forget that horrible malady of having a functioning female reproductive system. You can either pay through the nose for a horrible childbirth rider, or you can risk being driven to bankruptcy if you get pregnant.

Actually, I have been listening to what Romney is saying, and he isn't saying much. He will cut the rates across the board 20%, and he will make it revenue neutral by closing some mythical loopholes.

The problem with what he is saying is that cutting the base rate = $5T over 10 years. Even eliminating the mortgage deduction, the employer's tax credit for providing health care, it barely begins to scratch that loss of revenue. Hell, cutting all foreign aid, including to Israel is barely noticeable. (Foreign aid is ~ $23B a year, over 1/3 goes to Egypt and Israel) http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/politics/us-foreign-aid.htm

The fact is taxes have to go up for the middle class if he is going to be revenue neutral. So, either he is lying about being revenue neutral, or lying about not raising taxes on the middle class. Can't have it both ways.

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Everything out of Romneys lips are dreams, not based on facts or on reality. Read the past weeks Doonsbury comics to show you what you are dealing with.

Actually, I have been listening to what Romney is saying, and he isn't saying much. He will cut the rates across the board 20%, and he will make it revenue neutral by closing some mythical loopholes.

The problem with what he is saying is that cutting the base rate = $5T over 10 years. Even eliminating the mortgage deduction, the employer's tax credit for providing health care, it barely begins to scratch that loss of revenue. Hell, cutting all foreign aid, including to Israel is barely noticeable. (Foreign aid is ~ $23B a year, over 1/3 goes to Egypt and Israel) http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/politics/us-foreign-aid.htm

The fact is taxes have to go up for the middle class if he is going to be revenue neutral. So, either he is lying about being revenue neutral, or lying about not raising taxes on the middle class. Can't have it both ways.

http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/politics/us-foreign-aid.htm

How's Egypt work for you?

Guess why Egypt received US money - yup, because they left Israel alone. Gee, I wonder what will happen now.

http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/politics/us-foreign-aid.htm

How's Egypt work for you?

There. Is no such thing as a progressive muslim state. They are all horrendous in one form or another. Human rights, crime, despotism, corruption, justice, the works.

I cannot believe that to be true, the U.S. would never arm and assist despots to remain in power! Never I tell you!!

It is like when you get one of those automated phone calls with a recorded message. You can't just talk back to the message and legally say that you have informed the phone spammer of your conditions.

Ahhhh! US lawyer culture...
A local sCammer used a fake name under *my* phone# and we've been in the sights of a few collection agencies.* A recent agency has the guts to leave repeated voicemails with robo-messages stating that "This message is for $fake_name. By listening to this message you certify that you are $fake_name... If you are not $fake_name, hang up now. There will now be a 3-second pause." Only after that, do they give callback info for $fake_name to make ammends. But this bold pretense is offensive.

"Certifications" and "certificates" aren't ad-hoc things like they think --ask the CompTIA, CISCO, Microsoft, Red Hat, US blah-grade seal of approval people why I can't just declare myself certified. Further, lawyer certification processes require witnesses, actual proof, lawyers, rubber stamps and a bunch of cash. Wasting my digital "cassette tape" and acting like I'm bound to "obey" some robotic order to certify because it's legalese is wishful thinking, and just as deceiving as the scammer that got them into finding my number.

Some searching while I was doing comment "Preview" shows that the robomessage exists in a few variation. I think ours is meant to sound threatening; what they apparently are trying to say is "for your privacy we're allowing time to turn down the volume of your speakerphone if someone's around"

Collection agencies' new robocallers are interactive and when I answers sometimes offer automated "opt-out" buttons (HA!). Same as with illegal spammers, those seem to never work, plus their live customer service fails to truly de-list you after we clarify we're not the scammer. The same agencies reappear after a few months. You'd think their lawyers would warn'em against this bold disregard for people erroneously AND illegally bothered with their mistargetted soliciting. These companies are more legal than spammers, but very dirty regardless. They love playing with the useless CallID technology and trying to trick their targets into implicating themselves as a false negative in hiding.

* They're looking for a ghost with unpaid bills. But this is not the point.

I quit paying attention to the arguments that invoke the settling of Greenland when I noted that although they used that short-cycle migration as proof that global warming would be a piece of cake to survive, they never scale it up into terms that accommodate global population growth.

Without the appropriate scaling, using the Greenland migration as an analogy for the impact of global warming is the equivalent of saying that since it is easy to evacuate a ranch house that has no elevators in the event of an earthquake, it will be easy to evacuate a 1000-story office building that has no elevators in the event of an earthquake, too.

To sum up the data: Per Capita Income in "Blue" states is 20% higher then in Red States and Graduation rates are 5.4% higher. Violent and Property crime are 11.1% and 10.1% higher respectively in states controlled by Republican Legislatures. In terms of taxation, "Blue" States overwhelmingly pay far more in taxes then they receive in federal outlays, with the money going to "Red" states. Interestingly, under pretty much every measure of administrative efficiency, Democratic governments do better then Republican ones, by a sizeable margin.

Brush it off as the price of hedonist sin? 9 out of 10 of the states with the lowest divorce rates are blue states, while all 10 out of 10 of the top 10 states are red states. All of the top 16 states with the highest abortion rates voted for Bush, while 9 out of 10 of the states with the lowest rates voted for Kerry.

Unlike you, I'm not going to be a dick and assume Correlation-->Causation, but for what it's worth, the evidence is on my side, not yours.

Other nitpicks:

1) When my home state, Florida, got hit by Hurricanes in 2004, crop yields fell by 40%. But unlike Nicaragua, we were part of a large country, most of which was not hit by a Hurricane, that was able to carry us through for our eating needs. Nicaragua meanwhile, is roughly the size of Miami-Dade county. When it gets hit by a hurricane, the entire country gets hit. And so without importing food from elsewhere, famine is inevitable. It's a little inexplicable that this didn't occur to you in your analysis.

2) "There was no famine in New Orleans. There was a major break down in law and order and other failures of the local government."

Don't rewrite history. I remember when it took days and days for the government to get *anybody* to the Superdrome as 20,000 people were in dire need of food and water. We spend more on our military then literally every other country combined, but we couldn't air drop food and water onto a large stationary target on our territory? (And don't mention security. Our National Guard manages to run humanitarian efforts in Fallujah under heavy weapon fire). It was a terrible display of incompetence, and voters saw it too, with the disaster triggering a huge structural decrease in Bush's approval ratings.

3) Unless the pre-Katrina government of New Orleans engaged in policies that nationalized the means of production, then calling them "Socialist" makes you look like a dumbass.

1280x1024 ...... is pretty much low end whereas it was top of the line 5 years ago

Sure about that? I bought a nice CRT in the mid 90s with that res, maybe 1996 when the 1600x1200s came out and the price for the "old" 1280s started dropping. It was by no means top of the line at that time. I haven't owned a monitor below 1600x1200 since the turn of the millennium. And I've always bought new, and never spent more than $500 (always thought the $2000 monitor guys went a little overboard).

According to

http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/computer/video-resolution.htm

1280x1024 was first released in 1994 but I'm sure it's older than that. Wikipedia speculates it was available in the mid 80s, although I don't know if "available" means 5 figure technology demonstrators vs off the shelf at our dear, departed comp usa.

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

Let there be light!

http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/politics/military-ranks.htm

Full of shit, perhaps.

Gasoline taxes pay for road maintenance genius.

That type of tax is known as an Excise Tax also known as luxury tax. You don't have to pay that tax if you don't buy gasoline.

I will be driving anywhere I want on any chunk of road I choose, because I pay for gas and as a result I pay the excise tax used for roads. Thank you very much for illustrating your lack of knowledge of this subject.

These projects will be paid for with money collected from Direct Tax

Now, lets tackle your statement regarding why I should pay taxes.

Of course, I should pay taxes to pay for two wars that I'm opposed to. I should also pay taxes to fund bail-outs and bonuses for bankers and auto-makers. You would argue that I should pay taxes that are sent to foreign countries.

Do you realize that we (The USA) fought against British taxation and won independence as a result? Perhaps you should move to the jungle where you can build the socialist utopia of your dreams. I'll stay in the USA, the last known address of freedom.

It's pretty common knowledge that the USA is both the largest source of foreign aid in terms of raw dollars and one of the smallest sources of foreign aid in terms of GDP.

What's less well known is that close to two-thirds of that aid go to Israel and Egypt for the the purpose of buying weapons.

• Income Tax Inflation Chart
  
  An excellent by the numbers view of how inflation has affected the dollar since the birth of the United States of America.
  
  
• The Inflation Tax
  
  In this article Dr. Ron Paul talks about how inflation hurts the middle class and the poor.

Hilarious, check it out: http://www.vaughns-1-pagers.com/internet/ebay-ads. htm

Perhaps Google should consider removing all ebay auctions from their search results?

Given the kind of ebay ads you (used to?) get on Google, maybe that'd be a good thing.

Hey, has anyone who can't get to www.google.com or re having problems with search tried any of Google's other data centers?

http://www2.google.com
http://www3.google.com


Or select from an even bigger list of "Google mirrors".

Hope this helps!