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For a fair comparison, ask a non-American what the American capital is. America has fifty states, with fifty capitals. I don't expect an American to know what the capital of a random province in my country is. The reason we think you are stupid is because we are outside of the happy fun curtain. We get to see the effects that American imperialism has on the world, our news agencies actually report on the wars and insurgencies that America funds and / or fights by proxy. We see statistics coming out of America like 92% of Americans believe in a God. This speaks volumes. Do you even know what piracy is? Ask the victims of the boats attacked and hijacked off the coast of Somalia. Copyright infringement isn't stealing, it isn't piracy and it isn't theft. When our (mostly Americas, because the rest of the world is forced into following suit by the WHO and WIPO and UN) antiquated notions of property finally catch up to the reality of digital storage and the internet, we might have a chance at getting it right.

One of the largest stashes of medical data Johnson discovered during two weeks of research he conducted in January was a database containing two spreadsheets from a hospital he declined to identify. The files contained records on 20,000 patients, which included names, Social Security numbers, insurance carriers and codes for diagnoses. The codes identified by name four patients infected with AIDS, the mental illnesses that 201 others were diagnosed as having and cancer findings for 326 patients. Data also included links to four major hospitals and 355 insurance carriers that provided health coverage to 4,029 employers and 266 doctors. File-sharing networks used to uncover thousands of medical records

The law gave the job of enforcement to HHS, including the authority to impose fines of $100 for each civil violation, up to a maximum of $25,000. HHS can also refer possible criminal violations to the Justice Department, which could seek penalties of up to $250,000 in fines and 10 years in jail. Medical Privacy Law Nets No Fines

20,000 violations * $25,000 per violation fine = $500,000,000.00 in totals fines; I don't see the problem! Seriously tell someone they owe a half a billion dollars in fines it's going to get the attention of the whole community.

Pretty sure, yes. With the exception of Helen of Troy in history, and maybe Angelina Jolie today, very few noteworthy figures are so simply because of their beauty, or lack thereof.

Who said anything about buying? Google/Yahoo was a cooperative deal, no purchasing involved. Also non exclusive.

Funny thing about that... Spain doesn't think you can.

Thats why they needed money back from their laid-off employees, they needed to pay for their programs to find everyone else employment! The leaders at Microsoft are truly saints of our time!

"...because the Obama Administration hasn't appointed a Secretary of Commerce yet..."

That reads like the administration has been lax in getting the position filled. Hopefully the third time's a charm:
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/2009/02/locke_to_commerce.html?hpid=topnews

Read that and weep. 500 hundred times better than men.

No, I wont actually. You know those "honor killings" that we periodically hear about, when some woman is suspected of being promiscuous/having sex before marriage, etc? Yes, men are the ones who do the important task of stoning some poor girl to death, but guess who turns the girl into the religious police in the first place - women.

Just because women don't commit the violence themselves doesn't mean they don't have any responsibility for it.

Oh, and how bout that female genital mutilation, which is performed by women:

Sheelan Anwar Omer, a shy 7-year-old Kurdish girl, bounded into her neighbor's house with an ear-to-ear smile, looking for the party her mother had promised.

There was no celebration. Instead, a local woman quickly locked a rusty red door behind Sheelan, who looked bewildered when her mother ordered the girl to remove her underpants. Sheelan began to whimper, then tremble, while the women pushed apart her legs and a midwife raised a stainless-steel razor blade in the air. "I do this in the name of Allah!" she intoned.

As the midwife sliced off part of Sheelan's genitals, the girl let out a high-pitched wail heard throughout the neighborhood. As she carried the sobbing child back home, Sheelan's mother smiled with pride.

This greed and revenge continued, with a unsupported war that is little other than a means to funnel government funds to the people who already have enough money. This wouldn't be so bad, but it has necessitated the killing of countless women and children.

Now the democrats have said enough is enough. Pelosi all but said everyone who is objective knows Bush and Cheney are criminals, and those who don't will never be convinced. So why waste tax payer money and other limited resources dredging up the past. The children that bush and cheney killed in their greed will not be returned, so lets move on.

This email thing is the same. Bush criminal activity, shown best to lying to the country about the WMD in the state of union address, is well documented. The fact that he would hide emails is obvious, just like clinton hid documents. It is over. Bush got away with it. We need to move on and fix the problems caused by his greed and megalomania, and fell sorry for those that worship him and cannot accept the fact that he is a criminal. This is the way of the cult.

So, Obama needs to fix problems, not waste time hashing over old problems for no other reason than to satisfy the needs of the cult. That is what republicans do. Obama needs to get of Iraq and solve the problem in Afganistan, just like should have done on September 12, 2001. He needs to solve the problems in Saudi Arabia, which is where so much of the money for September 11 came from. He needs to refocus the country on community and spiritual happiness, and away from using material goods to hide a otherwise miserable soul. We need to accept that there are always greedy people or all kinds, from the layabout who will abuse social security for a few hundred dollars month to the executive who will rob our treasury of 10 million dollars. These people will have to answer in the end, but we should not damage ourselves by letting ourselves becoming as bad as they are.

Does anyone seriously believe the excuses as to how the emails went 'missing'?. Even if they deleted the emails there would be numerous copies on the backup tapes.

You're assuming they were competent enough to actually be doing backups.

Does anyone seriously believe the excuses as to how the emails went 'missing'?. Even if they deleted the emails there would be numerous copies on the backup tapes.

But why not? Accountability is really the issue. Few like to admit they've made a mistake, and in something as high-stakes as a bust of any flavor... well, it's easier for the police to continue, or even preemptively sue, than to admit wrongdoing. Any excuse is often good enough when a person is caught with his pants down, so imagine that same person has the ability to abuse authority to avoid taking blame.

Not even the mayor is safe in the presence of ubiquitous self-justification.

It's a human-nature problem that really has no solution, not a conspiracy. "Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence." That's the real problem with blindly accepting authority—they're people just like us, and have the same foibles. It really is interesting just how quickly people appeal to authority and meekly accept whatever outcome is handed down. Anthropologists love this stuff.

From wikipedia:
In August 2004, O'Keefe requested the Goddard Space Flight Center to prepare a detailed proposal for a robotic service mission. These plans were later canceled, the robotic mission being described as "not feasible".

Shame, cos the robot sure did sound cool...

Unless he's suggesting we return to manual labour. In which case he's solved all our employment problems at the same time and he should be heralded as a genius.

When have we moved away from manual labor? Sure, wheat, oats, rye, barley, corn (maize), soybeans, and flax (linseed) can be harvested with a combine, but much of our food is still harvested manually. At the moment there is no automated method to harvest many fruits, nuts, and vegetables. This is the reason why many farms rely on illegal migrant workers and the United States has become reliant on imports from foreign countries.

As a side note, an inventor of a device that can harvest these fruits and vegetables could stand to make a substantial sum of money.

I don't know if I can accept the total balance of commercial debt outstanding as a suitable proxy for amount lending. I'm also not very likely to take my econ information from a website that photoshops people's faces onto cereal boxes; this would tend to indicate they're in need of a distraction.

Your argument, essentially, is that there is no credit crisis, and that it's a conspiracy of government, bank, and media types. Yet for some bizarre reason, we had four bank failures yesterday, putting us at 13 for the year and 26 since late 2007. Home Equity lines of credit have been frozen by most banks since February '08. Mortgage insurance guidelines are getting stricter and Fannie/Freddie are larding on fees and points for anyone with credit score not in the 90th percentile. Credit card companies are reducing credit lines, which must go down as one of the biggest barn door closing after the cows leaving in history. Of course, now things have swung in the completely opposite direction from where we were in '06 and everyone in the banking industry is all conservative, just when we need growth the most! Have you tried to get a home loan recently? I have. You can get a good rate but you have to have over 800 FICO and the fees are ridiculous. Meanwhile the houses are usually a least 30-50% off their last sale prices, particularly if those were in the last 5 years, and short sales/REOs are something like half of all the places I'm seeing. These lenders are slowly drowning.

Let's say you're right and the credit markets are returning to normal. Are you actually suggesting the banks are not insolvent? What evidence do you have that their MBS and loan assets have any value whatsoever, and they've simply become zombified and are only able to fulfill depositors withdrawals by getting TARP money? They have no positive NAV at this time in history aside from what TARP is handing them, and any lending they're doing right now is off those drafts, and grudgingly at that.

I think what you're also seeing on that chart you cited is interbank lending, not lending to any productive activity. The banks are all still pretending to each other they're holding good paper, just don't make them print any more of it by loaning out to deadbeat consumers or businesses!

You're going to need more than the Mises Institute (I'm sure they have no interest in proving some hobby-horse dogma!) to convince me there isn't a credit crisis :P

Your high school "probability class" didn't teach you enough.

According to this, there are about 228 million adults in the US.

According to this, 40% of US adults play videogames, or about 91.2 million.

According to this, a confidence level of 95% and a confidence interval of 10% can be achieved on a population of 91.2 million with a sample size of only 97.

So, yes, you can draw something useful from that.

I was shocked to find out just how varied the laws are from state to state regarding whether felons can vote.

In some states, your rights are restored automatically once you're out of prison and off of parole or probation. In other states, you have to get the governor to restore your rights. Where I live (Arizona), it's somewhere between those two extremes, but you definitely have to go through a process to get your civil rights restored.

In predominantly red states, there's a lot of incentive to make it as difficult as possible for felons to resume voting, mainly because felons who vote tend to vote Democrat, not Republican. (That's not universally accepted wisdom, but it is echoed in one of the articles I'll link to in a second.) On the other side of the debate, statistics show that felons who vote are 50% less likely to be re-arrested.

So, here are some articles that deal with the topic of felony voting:

From Time, Why Can't Felons Vote?

From the Washington Post, Why Can't Ex-Felons Vote?

And finally, Some Felons' Voting Rights Left Behind Bars

There are some pretty choice quotes in each of those articles, and I recommend reading all three.

As for Iowa, it seems that Governor Tom Vilsack issued an executive order in 2005 which restores voting rights to felons who have completed their sentences; prior to that, Iowa was one of the states that required ex-felons to apply to the governor's office to restore their voting rights. Digging deeper, though, it appears that this was a one-time clemency deal, and people who hadn't completed their sentences prior to July 4, 2005, are required to go through the old system or a new, streamlined (mostly automatic) system to apply to have their rights restored.

In light of this, your mocking tone is honestly mysterious to me.

Almost as mysterious as the idea that the military industrial complex is something that the media "almost never talks about". And that was after spending 30 seconds on Google News.

Using a powerful search engine, you are able to actively seek and find information about something that is rarely mentioned in the media. That sort of research, of separating the tiny fraction of information you are after from the vast ocean of information available, is in fact what a search engine is for. That is not at all the same thing as the mainstream media routinely discussing the downsides and dangers of systems that could bring about a fascist state. You have proven that search engines work; you have not demonstrated that the media appreciates the importance of this issue. To do that, you would need to perform statistical analysis of the mainstream media to determine what fraction of headlines and stories discuss this specific issue. If you did that, I maintain you would find that it's a small fraction indeed and that Britney Spears and Paris Hilton get far more coverage. This should be obvious.

So you first mock the fact that I mention the term "military-industrial complex" at all. When I explain the term's origin to show that there was no reason to do that (something you have not either admitted or refuted, by the way), now you respond by arguing about the number of occurrences of the term. Look at your paragraph above. It's like you're saying that my claim that the media seldom talks about the military-industrial complex has any bearing on the way you conduct yourself ("almost as mysterious as the idea that..."). If that's true then you have little self-control; if that's false then you're effectively saying "I know you are but what am I?" which is, shall we say, rather unenlightening. Rather than do all of that, I'd like to see the superior viewpoint with which you would replace mine if mine is indeed so flawed. I'm willing to abandom my current viewpoint and embrace a superior one at any time, in fact I would be grateful for such an opportunity; the only "catch" is that the one you advocate really does have to be superior and not merely because you say so.

Your methods and your tactics are nothing new to me. It's apparent that you want to argue for the sake of arguing and are not really interested in the strength of your position and whether it could be improved or replaced. You just want to feel like you are right and I am wrong. I doubt very much that you are deliberately planning to do this or to be this way. In fact, I strongly doubt that you seriously question your own motives or examine your own actions and their implications enough for you to be able to make a conscious choice in the matter. You are probably too worried about the other guy and how you can take him down a peg or two for it to occur to you that you should be doing this. That's alright. I'm not upset or resentful when I see this, nor is it my place to condemn it (I will, however, call it what it is). In fact, I used to do something like this and it most certainly did not make me happy. I understand that so there is no need for me to lash out at you. I will say that I would like something better than this for you and that when you give up your need to feel right in the eyes of others, you will truly understand the saying "the thing about banging your head against the wall is that it feels so good when you stop." I don't expect you to understand this right now so if you must get more belligerent now that I am speaking to the heart of the matter, I understand that too. People always feel justified because they always do what they think is right or necessary, even when they're utterly wrong.

In light of this, your mocking tone is honestly mysterious to me.

Almost as mysterious as the idea that the military industrial complex is something that the media "almost never talks about". And that was after spending 30 seconds on Google News.

"We are currently considering to build a data centre at this site," said Google spokesman Kay Oberbeck.

And on top of that, from the Washington Post:

An earlier (brutally honest) press release from Stora Enso reveals that the mill site was closed down because of "persistent losses in recent years and poor long-term profitability prospects" It continues: "Despite tremendous efforts by its employees, the mill cannot compete in today's and tomorrow's markets using expensive virgin wood fibre, much of which is imported".

So you're arguing that because they need revenue, they bought a failing paper mill in an nonstrategic location (shipping all that paper to the states?! come on!) ... pretty weak argumant AKAImBatman.

If you RTFS, you'll see that that article you link to was the pilot project with one person, and that this is a slightly larger project with several (TFA doesn't say how many) people.

Yes, but no new breakthroughs have been made. The only thing that's been proven is that the original subject, Jesse Sullivan, was not an isolated case and the procedure is repeatable. Even taking that into consideration, Claudia Mitchell had this procedure done in almost three years ago.

The only real news here is that the work is being submitted to the FDA.

Here:

'CERN* management today confirmed the restart schedule [translation: announced another delay] for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) resulting from the recommendations from last week's Chamonix workshop. The new schedule foresees [not that you'd want to bet your life on it] first beams in the LHC at the end of September this year, with collisions following in late October. A short technical stop has also been foreseen over the Christmas period. The LHC will then run through to autumn next year, ensuring that the experiments have adequate data to carry out their first new physics analyses and have results to announce in 2010. The new schedule also permits the possible collisions of lead ions in 2010.

'This new schedule represents a delay of six weeks with respect to the previous schedule, which foresaw the LHC "cold [sic?????] at the beginning of July". The cause of this delay is due to several factors such as implementation of a new enhanced protection system for the busbar and magnet splices; installation of new pressure-relief valves to reduce the collateral damage in case of a repeat [explosion] incident; application of more stringent safety constraints [no more drinking contests in the tunnel]; and scheduling constraints associated with helium transfer [because the scientists can't resist making their voices sound funny] and storage.'

The overpopulation scare turned out to be stupid scaremongering.

The planet is over its sustainable carrying capacity. The fact that we've been able to use unsustainable technologies to support too damn many people for a few years, doesn't mean we're not overpopulated - any more that the fact that you can still use your credit cards doesn't mean you're not broke.

The Global Cooling crisis also turned out to be more stupid scaremongering.

There never was a "Global Cooling" crisis. Never. There were a few extra-cold winters on the East Coast of the U.S. in the mid 1970s which got the popular press all chattering about a returning ice age, but there was never any scientific consensus, or even suspicion, of near-term global cooling. It's a talking point with no basis in reality, and you show your ignorance when you attempt to invoke it.

I think they tried something about a "silent spring" a little before that, but all that did was cause first-world nations to stop selling effective pesticides to the third-world nations who still needed them

You need to stop getting your science news from idiots like Michael Crichton, ok? DDT is still available for mosquito control, but indiscriminate use of insecticides fails for the same reason as indiscriminate use of antibiotics: species adapt.

A fascinating read sir.. sadly I am confused as to the relation this has to windows 7.

BTw I am going to put your entry on my blog.
Who should a credit?

Charles Krauthammer, in The Washington Post, Feb 6 2009

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/05/AR2009020502766_pf.html

Don't forget the other 8 trillion or so already spent on this bailout. If they had just sent a 24 grand check to everyone I don't see how everyone would be hurting so bad. Of course we average taxpayers just elect the schmucks into office, we don't lobby or give cushy jobs after the fact like all the big companies getting handouts.

Of course the Congressional Budget Office has been saying The bailout could make things worse but why should congress listen to their own experts.

More than 1,000,000 people have been killed in Iraq at a final cost of at least $3,000,000,000,000.

Really? Cause last I heard, they pretty much just made that shit up.

One kind of corruption is killing people and destroying their property for profit.

More than 1,000,000 people have been killed in Iraq at a final cost of at least $3,000,000,000,000.

That means the U.S. taxpayer is paying $3 million to kill each Iraqi. Iraqis are mostly poor and defenseless. Obviously, the money is going into the pockets of weapons and oil investors.

The U.S. government has done far more damage to Iraq and killed far more people than Saddam Hussein. What is worse is that the U.S. government did it for money; Saddam Hussein wanted political control.

I think someone tried the latter approach already and it didn't end up helping her much

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/05/AR2009020502766_pf.html

Amen. I'm not saying that McCain would have had much more success fixing the economy which Democrats like Barney Frank deliberately ruined so that they could pin it on Republicans and win sweeping victories in 2008, but there sure were a bunch of naive idiots who thought that they were voting for some kind of black messiah. Now look at your messiah, jackasses. Using the same fear tactics as his predecessor to ram through ruinous legislation. How does that crow taste, motherfuckers?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/22/AR2007112201444_pf.html

... and they voted for the candidate who was demonstrating leadership skills by building up resentment between different parts of the country

First off, ATSC channels are the same 6MHz as NTSC channels.

Secondly, if you take a peek at a spectrum analyzer, you'll see a big, fat, non-peaky pedestal of signal for digital TV. It's about as immune to low-level interference as I am to ebola.

Thirdly, radio astromony is given a "big" empty space (channel 37).

Fourthly, the day that we call 100mW "low-level interference" is the day that we all, women included, have seven testicles.

Fifthly, these devices are so overpowered that they knock out cable TV.

Sixthly, there are ways (other frequencies, spread spectrum, burst transmission) to control high-bandwidth wireless devices wirelessly.

Seventhly, I had to go up to "sixthly." If you're really in the broadcast and communication "world" (do you mean industry?), you should consider boning up or getting out.

I completely agree, have we already forgotten about tongue based soldier senses?

Actually I voted for myself and I'm not even 100% lockstep with the guy I voted for.

Sincerely,
Barack Obama

This was going to be an angry post at the Crichtonite crap that you're spewing, instead I'll respond with:

"What people aren't remembering about the history of DDT is that, in many places, it failed to eradicate malaria not because of environmentalist restrictions on its use but because it simply stopped working. Insects have a phenomenal capacity to adapt to new poisons; anything that kills a large proportion of a population ends up changing the insects' genetic composition so as to favor those few individuals that manage to survive due to random mutation. In the continued presence of the insecticide, susceptible populations can be rapidly replaced by resistant ones. Though widespread use of DDT didn't begin until WWII, there were resistant houseflies in Europe by 1947, and by 1949, DDT-resistant mosquitoes were documented on two continents."

Source

Do I need to get you more sources?

I don't aim to disagree with you. My point is simply that a reader can take the "State" to mean the US government, which gives the misleading impression that this is a serious effort to impose this on the entire US.

Of course, it's already in practice for federal crimes anyway.

In a previous Slashdot posting, some DC residents commented that he was the real deal. He knows his stuff, and gets things done.

http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1097003&cid=26519833

There's also a Washington Post article about Kundra linked to in the comments:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/04/AR2009010401235.html

Ok, at what part of the process did someone come up with the plan to pass people for just showing up? I'm a little biased against public schools, but come on, this makes me think that there is no way Gates could have done worse.

Why Easy Grading Is Good for Your Career

washingtonpost.com â" New Jersey high school teacher
Peter Hibbard flunked 55 percent of the students in his regular biology class
the year before he retired. There were no failures in his honors classes, he
said, but many of his regular students refused to do the work. They did not show
up for tests and did not take...

Obama is doing almost nothing about this bill, although I don't think he would veto it.

President-elect Barack Obama's transition team sent a second letter to Capitol Hill today to re-enforce the push to postpone the Feb. 17 date of the nation's digital transition.
-Washington Post

Michael Copps, a Democrat appointed acting chairman last week by U.S. President Barack Obama, ripped into digital-television transition efforts under his predecessor, Republican Kevin Martin.
-PCWorld

Or just google it yourself.

More of my taxpayer dollars wasted on useless legislation when there are far more important things to worry about.

You're right. And I don't get that reaction on the part of the media. It's weird that in all this time I've never seen a flag-draped coffin arriving in the U.S. in the news. That policy isn't as respectful as it might seem, because the preferences of the families are probably quite mixed.

Here in Canada there was a huge outrage when it was decided by the government that the media would not be permitted to attend and record the arrival of our deceased soldiers from Afghanistan. The issue came to a head when some of the families wanted the media there -- ostensibly so that others across the country could share in the grieving. Eventually the government realized it was a mistake to force the issue one way or the other against the wishes of the relevant family, and now it is entirely their choice whether the media is there or not. That's a much better and more respectful arrangement than having the government forcing the issue. Thanks to the debate it's far better than what we had before.

This kind of debate is the way democracy is supposed to work, and the media is part of the equation. Shutting them out discourages proper democratic debate over the issues. Apparently the Thai government doesn't get this, and wants to roll things back to the 19th century. It's idiotic lese-majeste law is a symptom of a more serious problem than respecting the monarchy. If the Thai king wished to put Thailand on the road to a modern democracy he could push to abolish the law.

You have to ask why a monarch who is such a great guy needs the law to protect him from insults anyway. If I want to call Queen Liz an old hag, I can. That's freedom. The Thai monarch can't take it like Liz can?

Okay, there's the thing. What do the Iraqi people have to do with our war, and why are they in peril? By creating a war on "Terrorism", and then bombing innocent civilians and their children until the remaining populous turns to arms in order to fight back, you most certainly ARE giving aid to the enemy (it is a nebulous entity we declared war on).

It doesn't matter, it is a war in and of itself. What you are describing is one of the hells of war. Using the same logic, we can say that anyone who supports Israel is committing treason too because Israel shells the terrorists in Lebanon and the Palestine territories. Bin laden himself claimed 9/11 was because of our support for Israel so should Bill Clinton have been hung for treason? If you answered yes, then you need to do some serious thinking about this.

I have been questioning your fiat declaration of Iraq as a "theater of war" since the beginning of this conversation, and you've not responded to it properly yet. You seem to make the assumption that since we're dropping bombs in Iraq, it's a legitimate theater of war, and that since war is Hell the consequences are both unavoidable and blameless. This is what I've been saying bullshit about the whole time. Being that Iraq had NOTHING to do with the attacks on 20010911, every single terrorist that comes or has come out of Iraq since the invasion was created without cause or provocation by Bush's policies. The very moment that one of these men joins Al Qaeda, the terrorist Bush (and friends) created wholecloth has become material support for Al Qaeda.

That's because my point wasn't about the justification for Iraq being at war. War is a function of government and in our case defined by the constitution and as long as our government takes on that act, then any consequences because of it can't be used to apply treason against a sitting president. And it doesn't matter is Iraq took part in 9/11 or not, that has nothing to do with the situation.

I get what you're saying, I am saying that since Iraq is NOT a legitimate theater of war, that the whole "war is Hell" idea doesn't apply. Creating those terrorists was a choice made by Americans, not Arabs. If we were talking about Afghanistan, we wouldn't be having this conversation, but we're not.

But Iraq is a legitimate theater of war. Congress passed the appropriate levels of authority in order to go to war in Iraq, Bush didn't act alone or in defiance of government procedures or permission. He acted within the guidelines availible for reasons he thought just regardless of any final knowledge of their accuracy.

BTW, the treason part would have to be treason towards Americans, it doesn't matter what the Arabs think. The president of the United States as well and every citizen is not obligated to foreign powers or their ideas of treason. Treason is an act against your own country, not a foreign country. The fact that we went to war with another country and that caused support for another faction doesn't come into play. You can't be acting legally and be convicted of treason. Especially when it is a legal concept specifically defined within the constitution.

If a bunch of Canadians attacked China, and then China attacks my home state here in the U.S., bombing a school and killing my sons, then yes China itself (certainly not Canada) created whatever Hell I can (and would) unleash upon them, and the person who ordered the attack on my homeland would be solely responsible (aside from me myself, of course, the blame would be shared and I would be happy to revel in my part in it in such a case, but no third party could possibly be held accountable).

First of all, if the bunch of Canadians weren't backed by the Canadian government, then it wouldn't be war eve

The CEO of Qwest Communications made the same claim and he ended up in jail. They were the only telco that refused to turn over caller records without a proper subpoena. He also claims that the wiretapping program began before 9-11. And he isn't the only one.

Marijuana has been proven not to cause lung cancer. Period. The largest study of its kind, funded by the US government, conducted at UCLA by a researcher who seriously expected to find a cancer link, found the reverse. See Study Finds no Cancer-marijuana link What you have to realize is that just because something contains carcinogens doesn't mean that it causes cancer. It ain't that simple. There are carcinogens in drinking water. But the government knows that marijuana doesn't cause cancer. So they just keep talking about how it has "carcinogens" and imply the cancer connection that isn't there.

Actually, marijuana does not cause lung cancer. The largest study of its kind, funded by the US government, found no link between marijuana and lung cancer, and even a tiny effect the other way.

Yes, it's illegal when it shouldn't be. And it's not cheap because it's not legal.

Make it freely available, usage will soar and the damage WILL be greater than tobacco.

Alcohol and tobacco are freely available but where's all the damage from them? Fact is is alcohol is more dangerous than marijuana. And while smoking tobacco causes cancer, smoking marijuana "Does Not Raise Lung Cancer Risk". "Study Finds No Cancer-Marijuana Connection. However "The effectiveness of cannabis for treating symptoms related to HIV/AIDS is widely recognized."

Cannabis/Marijuana is carcinogenic, and about four times as carcinogenic as tobacco.

No it is not: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/25/AR2006052501729.html

What you are repeating is a clever bit of propaganda: They measured the difference between unfiltered joints and filtered cigarettes, and instead of concluding "filtering reduces carcinogens by a factor if 4", they declared "cannabis causes cancer".
There are several things wrong with this conclusion, the first of which being that the sought-after active ingredients of cannabis, THC, are cancer-suppressants, while nicotine is carcinogenic.
Another is that they measured different smoking technologies, and declared a difference between different materials smoked, rather than different methods.

When hearing about a scientific study, you need to make an effort to go look at what they actually measured, rather than simply believing their conclusions. They pull this sort of dishonest stunts all the time.

cancer, whose connection to marijuana use has been strongly suggested but not conclusively proven.

said Donald Tashkin of the University of California at Los Angeles, a pulmonologist who has studied marijuana for 30 years.

"We hypothesized that there would be a positive association between marijuana use and lung cancer, and that the association would be more positive with heavier use," he said. "What we found instead was no association at all, and even a suggestion of some protective effect."
Earlier work established that marijuana does contain cancer-causing chemicals as potentially harmful as those in tobacco, he said. However, marijuana also contains the chemical THC, which he said may kill aging cells and keep them from becoming cancerous.

But... Comcast's traffic shaping policies do not apply unless you've used over 75% of the upstream or downstream for 15 minutes straight, and even then only when the whole cable node is congested....

You can not be serious...or perhaps you are not reading all the posts and complaints from customers who have and are experiencing problems with throttling, the crafting of RST packets to cut off communication between your PC and another. Like almost everyone, I have seen my upstream and downstream traffic throttled within the first 30 secs to (consistently) less than 1 minute of beginning to connect and read, connect and download, connect and view, attempt to upload...etc.... to very low Kbps rates of usually around 20 or 30 Kbps, consistently less than 200 Kbps on cable and that does suck. (And this happens without using any P2P or BitTorrent software...just browsing the web...reading articles, viewing still images, it is a wonder videos will even play at all when you think about it.) Of course they do choke out and stop occasionally as well.

I wish that I got 25% of the bandwidth that I am paying for. You made me laugh with your 75% figure. I wish... Also after 15 minutes...that too I wish I would get, but do not. My speed drops in less than 20 seconds. I am so sick and tired of sites (not blaming the sites in most cases) with images loading slow and slowing me down when I am looking for information on the net. I too would take a non-throttled slower service over the currently throttled fake promises of Telcos, Cable and DSL providers. Granted my experience is strictly with cable and it does suck, big time, for everyone at this time, with no good future in sight any time soon.

Heck I wish I got a consistent 2 MB down and 600 Kbps up (instead of 30 Kbps, much less than 200 Kbps, thus they are not providing me high speed internet even with the older FCC definition of 200 Kbps which only recently got updated to 768K, which is still a joke). I know it can NOT happen without government intervention as happened in Japan back before 2000. I seriously doubt that it will ever happen until some competitor enters the market offering fiber from their location to my home, period, end of discussion. (Note: FIOS and other current American ISP / Telco Fiber initiatives will not give Americans what other countries have had since 2000, read on... that joke is on all US consumers, sad really.)

government intervention is credited for 100MB/100MB in Japan

1GB / 1GB (for less than $55 per month)

Until we have a new competitor enter (very profitable, yet unlikely) the market or government intervention and regulation (much more likely to happen sooner thanks to the current administration), the current group of ISP and bandwidth providers will continue to ignore consumers, stick their collective noses up at our elected officials, showing their arses I might add. Obviously they would not be able to take billions (more than $200 billion) of our money via set asides, increased taxes and incentives if they did not pay off more than a few politicians.

While I challenge the Obama Administration to fix this, sadly too many current politicians (both Democrats and Republicans) are in the telco's pockets today. Heck they canno

Actually, your full of shit. There are a lot of us republicans and conservative who were pissed at the spending under bush. Don't sit there and pretend it never happened, The guy wasn't in office then and isn't now so what he or I wanted or disliked didn't make much of a difference now did it.

As for the war, your just showing your ignorance. The war was needed back when Clinton was president. The fact that it waited until after he left office means nothing. You are operating under a lie if you think otherwise.

The alternative will be Britannica.

I always tell people to check out conservapedia.com. It was started because Wikipedia is edited by YOU and YOU are too biased to provide neutral information.

Here's a section from their page on Barack Hussein Obama
(redirected from Barack Obama)

Doctors from the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons have stated that Obama uses techniques of mind control in his speeches and campaign symbols. For example, one speech declared, "a light will shine down from somewhere, it will light upon you, you will experience an epiphany, and you will say to yourself, 'I have to vote for Barack.'"[26]

Oh my God, this is terrible! Our president is using techniques of mind control on us! What does Wikipedia have on this subject? Not a thing. Because a light shone down on YOU, YOU experienced an epiphany, and YOU said to yourself, 'I have to censor Barack's Wikipedia page.'

Obama may be the first Muslim President
The argument that Obama is a Muslim is largely based on his Islamic background. It also includes:

• Obama's background, education, and outlook are Muslim, and fewer than 1% of Muslims convert to Christianity.[28] [29]
• (more bullet points)
• Contrary to Christianity, the Islamic doctrine of taqiyya encourages adherents to deny they are Muslim if it advances the cause of Islam.
• Obama uses the Muslim Pakistani pronunciation for "Pakistan" rather than the common American one.
• (still more bullet points)
• Obama has chosen the Secret Service code name "Renegade". "Renegade" conventionally describes someone who goes against normal conventions of behavior, but its first usage was to describe someone who has turned from their religion. It is a word derived from the Spanish renegado, meaning "Christian turned Muslim."[42]
• Obama enjoyed a bigger increase in voter support in 2008 (compared to 2004) by Muslims than by any other voting group, including blacks;[43] "Muslim turnout in the U.S. elections reached 95 percent, the highest Muslim turnout in U.S. history."[44]>
• "President-elect Barack Obama has yet to attend [Sunday or Christmas] church services since winning the White House ..., a departure from the example of his two immediate predecessors."[45]
• Many atheists claim that Obama is one of them, yet he displays none of the characteristics common to atheism: Obama has not expressed offense at prayer by others, he has not promoted the theory of evolution, and he has never expressed a disdain for religious belief.

Bet you didn't know he was a Muslim. But it isn't all about religion. They also get into flag pins.

Obama wore an American flag lapel pin after 9/11, but later stopped wearing it without adequate explanation.[58] Presumably it would have hurt him with anti-military campaign donors.In 2007, at critical moments in his campaign for the nomination, Obama had difficulties securing the support of anti-war activists.