Slashdot Mirror

Clearly you're not very well versed in the topic.

If you were, you would know about cases all over the country dealing with infiltration of school boards by the religiously right.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District
• http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/11/03/ariz-schools-ordered-to-remove-page-in-biology-book-with-morning-after-pill-section/

This is not a problem isolated to one area of the country. This is an ongoing movement to indoctrinate kids to disbelieve science and rational thinking. If you believe your community is not prey to this movement, you really should start going to local board meetings and hear the kinds of things that get suggested. If you have a leftward leaning or centrist board the suggestions may not make any headway, but the religious right is pushing hard to get more of their folks into the school boards to affect these kinds of changes.

SpaceX founder files with government to provide Internet service from space

"The plan calls for launching a constellation of 4,000 small and cheap satellites that would beam high-speed Internet signals to all parts of the globe, including its most remote regions. Musk has said the effort “would be like rebuilding the Internet in space.”"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Could be. Just make sure you buy a gun to take care of the business.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

In all seriousness, I wonder if it may some day be possible to piece together the few remaining codons (usually remaining in sequences of a hundred or less) using some kind of avian as a broader template without using it to fill in any gaps. Definitely don't use frog DNA to fill in the gaps, because as a 90's documentary has shown us, the "dinosaurs" end up looking more like reptiles than dinosaurs, that and the 100% female population may breed out of control and take over the island you're experimenting on.

Would be an ungodly massive undertaking if so, and I doubt our existing best possible microscopy is up for the task (I think using PCR would fudge some of the sequences.)

What he found, by studying his own students, is that the plug-and-chuggers can ace their rote memorization exams, and yet still completely fail conceptual questions in the same exact domain/topic.

Many people cram their way thru intro-level courses, if not whole degrees. It's very undesirable, but it's not a "scandal" per se. It's simply an ongoing reality that educators, such as the ones you reference, struggle and experiment with.

A much bigger problem, IMO, is the bureaucratization of education. In higher-ed, you've seen it in the form of increasing administration-to-faculty ratios ("chief diversity officer", anyone?). In lower-ed, you see the obsession with trying to formalize, test, measure, and customize every aspect of a student's experience, at the expense of actual, you know, teaching. Perverse economic incentives then tempt teachers to forge scores and and teach-to-test, thus encouraging rote memorization and avoiding deep conceptual development. Sure, your suggested battery of tests may sound like a fine idea in isolation, but when you pile it on top of everyone else's fine ideas and impose it from afar, you end up distorting and smothering the education process.

Unfortunately, that lower-ed scientific management philosophy is creeping into higher-ed, and it'll be a major part of what kills off quality, affordable education in America.

...instead of guaranteeing loans, the government would have to guarantee a college education.

that is what we do. Works fine, here in Europe.

In fact a number of Americans are now coming to Europe to study for free

Oh come on. The USA ranks very low or bottom amongst developed nations for health, education, child poverty, and homelessness. The figures speak for themselves. But don't let the facts get in the way of your blind patriotism.

I'd say losing 10-20 feet (in depth) of land is a significant cost.

Keep in mind that the current rate of loss is less than a foot a century! Where's the evidence that this will change?

Some Evidence:

West Antartic ice sheet

You don't have to look to far for other evidence either. Yes, I know the timeline there - 100 years minimum, there was another article that predicts a 5 year timeframe for the collapse of a different shelf, which was not predicted to melt for many decades. Basically they're all guessing at the rate, and sometimes apparently even the most pessimistic are far too optimistic.

Not just organs - we're even starting to grow limbs in a lab.

Why is the polar ice coverage greater now than at any previous time in the satellite-observation era?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

This "Yellow Tea" has been done in China since about the 4th century. It's used by people who aren't stars and have tried powerful antibiotics...

It largely isn't melting. For example, Antarctic sea ice is at historical highs, at least according to several sources (though they could all be in on or fooled by some conspiracy). But yes, glaciers advance and retreat. This is natural. I would posit it is more of an effect of humidity than cold, as I live in a semi-arid climate, and the ice in my ice cube trays keeps sublimating.

See, your problem is that you are working off of faulty (at least, according to me--check your own work) assumptions, namely that people who are directly supervised by and receive funding from politicians can be trusted not to have bias.

It may sound crazy, but loads of communists moved into the environmental movement after they realized that Communism was a non-starter among Americans, and have been working to undermine capitalism using an environmental justification ever since. This is why they chose CO2, which is an unavoidable product of the combustion of fossil fuels, and not easy to remedy (like the other one, water, would be). You can tell a true environmentalist from a communist plant by whether or not they support nuclear technology/power production. Note also that McCarthy was recently proven to be largely correct in his assertion that communists were infiltrating America.

The initial Verizon warrants were on an air-gapped server. Even with root everywhere on the network, these documents should have been inaccessible.

This situation makes more sense if we posit that the NSA had already been deeply penetrated by Russian intelligence, who learned of Snowden's sentiments and elected to assist him for reasons and costs of their own.

Snowden initially claimed that he was trying to reach Cuba. There are somewhat more direct routes than Hong Kong.

We likely do not know 1/100th of the backstory of the release of these documents.

McCain isn't running. And if you rule out all Republicans running for President, you're not left with very many prominent Republicans at all...

He really seems to live in his own bubble of self-delusion. The majority of Americans: (1) do not know about NSA surveillance, (2) do not care and (3) have no fucking idea who Edward Snowden is. Just this week, the USA Freedom Act reauthorized these programs, and the only politician who seems to care? Rand Paul, the most hated man in the Senate. I'm sorry, but the consequences of Snowden's leaks have been minimal, and, if the world is saying anything about surveillance, it's not no, it's "Yeah, okay. Whatever."

@barlevg, i don't think you watched the entire episode from john oliver's show in the link you provided. Yes, at the beginning, average people really didn't understand the topic (as it's normally talked about) at all or how it affects them, or even who snowden is. but, later on he asks each person, if they would like the government to be able to view their "dick pics". Every single one didn't want the government to see that type of information and really regarded it as an invasion of their privacy, including the one guy who recently sent a "dick pic". So, you're wrong, mostly people a) understand surveillance, b) don't like it, and c) think it's wrong, if asked in a real world example context.

He really seems to live in his own bubble of self-delusion. The majority of Americans: (1) do not know about NSA surveillance, (2) do not care and (3) have no fucking idea who Edward Snowden is. Just this week, the USA Freedom Act reauthorized these programs, and the only politician who seems to care? Rand Paul, the most hated man in the Senate. I'm sorry, but the consequences of Snowden's leaks have been minimal, and, if the world is saying anything about surveillance, it's not no, it's "Yeah, okay. Whatever."

If you're interested in actually helping poor children, the example to look at is Louisiana.

A lot of people are interested in maintaining the current system because it works for them, regardless of how much it harms poor children.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Fome the greencar site:

"While Tesla has a showroom in the fancy Tysons Corners Mall, employees are forbidden to discuss sales of the electric car. Virginia forbids any carmaker to sell cars directly to paying customers."

1) The FBI found just cause to suspect a crime; what the subject was doing appeared to be money laundering, which - as it should - triggers an investigation.

Absolutely not. He is not accused of money laundering, there is no evidence at all that he is laundering money .

He is accused of structuring, which is making many small transactions instead of one big transaction to avoid filling out the paperwork that goes along with one big transaction.

Structuring is one of the bogus laws often used to prosecute innocent people. For example, a store might have a clause in their insurance policy that says they won't store more than $10k in cash on the premises (or if they do, it's not covered for theft). So to avoid that the store owner makes regular bank deposits when the cash on hand grows to $5k.

Are they structuring? Well, there have been cases exactly like that. The govt seizes the funds and you are SOL: http://articles.baltimoresun.c...

A longer explanation:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

3) They found no crime, and thus did not prosecute for it. However, in the process, the subject deliberately interfered with the investigation and made false statements to the police, which is a crime.

Which is why you should never talk to the police. Ever.

Martha Stewart did the same thing - she was investigated for insider trading, and there was no evidence to support that. Stewart was convicted of lying to investigators while being investigated for insider trading.

Hundreds of ordinary hard working Americans are having their businesses destroyed and lives torn apart by the overzealous application of these ill-advised "structuring" laws.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/03/24/the-federal-structuring-laws-are-smurfin-ridiculous/

However that doesn't make the laws bullshit. If you have a better way to catch criminals engaged in money laundering

The primary objection to these laws — and the reason they are considered "bullshit" — is that they allow confiscation of funds without having to prove anything. The government does not even need to file a suit!

None of the victims are "criminals" — because nobody is a criminal until found guilty in a court of law — and your above-quoted excuse for the law is thus automatically invalid.

Worse, the practice — and the bullshit laws "authorizing" it — are in direct violation of the Fifth Amendment, which purports to protect us against this exact practice (emphasis mine): "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated".

It is a lot broader than that. The Houston Chronicle has a decent article summarizing Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs).

Then there is that question about taking more than $10,000 in cash out of the country when traveling.

And, of course, seizures of suspicious amounts of cash when stopped by a law enforcement officer anywhere for anything.

(Suspicious being anything the local LEO decides it is. How fucked up is that?)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

They included extending the transition away from bulk collection to one year in order, in McConnell's words, to "ensure that there is adequate time .â.â. to build and test a system that doesn't yet exist." Another required telecom companies to notify the government if they change their data-retention policies.

On the Senate floor, his allies continued to rail against the House bill, arguing that it would hamstring the national security apparatus at a time of significant and emerging global threats.

Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, called Snowden a "traitor to the United States" who has "put the lives of Americans and foreigners at risk," while Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) doubted whether the new system established by the bill would do any more to protect Americans' privacy by keeping the records out of government hands.

"The telecom companies sell our personal data, including our names, our phone numbers, our addresses, to the highest bidder for telemarketing and other purposes, and some of that data ends up in the hands of con artists," she said, adding, "The fact is that the House bill substantially weakens a vital tool in our counterterrorism efforts at a time when the terrorist threat has never been higher."

Just before the final vote around 4 p.m. Tuesday, McConnell took the floor to defend his moves to preserve the existing surveillance programs. He also lambasted Obama's foreign policy, calling the end of the phone-data program the latest in a series of missteps that includes his decisions to withdraw troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and to seek the closure of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

"The pattern is clear," McConnell said. "The president has been a reluctant commander in chief."

The pattern is QUITE clear indeed.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

The opposition to the bill, led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), prompted an intraparty standoff that exposed sharp splits along philosophical and generational lines, and between the two chambers on Capitol Hill.

The bill passed by a wide margin in the House last month but languished as those who sought to maintain the status quo, led by McConnell, tried to stare down Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and the other senators who supported either ending or reforming the most controversial provisions of the surveillance programs.

"It does not enhance the privacy protections of American citizens, and it surely compromises American security by taking one more tool from our war fighters, in my view, at exactly the wrong time," McConnell said Tuesday, minutes before colleagues rejected a series of amendments he favored.

"This is the Senate, and members are entitled to different views, and members have tools to assert those views. Itâ(TM)s the nature of the body where we work," McConnell said Tuesday morning. "But what's happened has happened, and we are where we are. Now is the time to put all that in the past and work together to diligently make some discrete and sensible improvements to the House bill."

They included extending the transition away from bulk collection to one year

As with terrorism, this recent rise of "you disagree with me thus you must be a secret government paid sockpuppet" is by far more damaging than anything paid trolls could actually do by themselves.

I'm just pointing things out and asking the question. Your response seems to be "In my opinion, it's not so".

I posted specific examples so that people could discuss the issues and point out problems with the conclusion. Several, in fact.

You took the most vulnerable example and framed it in a "conspiracy theorist" context, and used it to frame the entire position.

That's fine, it's a good use of rhetoric, but it adds nothing new to the conversation other than "in my opinion...".

Would you care to formulate a response with examples and/or references that explain *why* raising the question is more damaging than anything the sock puppets could do?

Because looking at the chemical plant explosion hoax and Acorn hoax would indicate ro me that sock puppets can have an enormous negative effect on public opinion and government policy.

Acorn was brought down specifically to stop its voter registration drives, which is on its face an attack against the freedom of democracy.

It's really, *really* hard for me to see how "be careful of sock puppets" can rise to that level of damage.

Care to explain?

Orwellian commercial and governmental surveillance, censorship by various nations, ad-infestment of everything, etc, would simply not have been tolerated on the 1982 internet.

Yeah, right.

Meet Executive Order 12333: The Reagan rule that lets the NSA spy on Americans

...the executive order [EO 12333] authorizes collection of the content of communications, not just metadata, even for U.S. persons. Such persons cannot be individually targeted under 12333 without a court order. However, if the contents of a U.S. person’s communications are “incidentally” collected (an NSA term of art) in the course of a lawful overseas foreign intelligence investigation, then Section 2.3(c) of the executive order explicitly authorizes their retention. It does not require that the affected U.S. persons be suspected of wrongdoing and places no limits on the volume of communications by U.S. persons that may be collected and retained.

Now you say that that only pertains to data that is scooped up in foreign communications, but you have to realize that in modern telecommunication networks, data often transverses borders as packets are routed to phone switches that may be physically located in, say, Canada. So call from you in Nevada to your mom in Michigan may be recorded if your call is routed through a phone switch in Toronto, Canada.

:-) Which PEOPLE are you talking about?

"If you're not doing anything wrong, what are you worried about?" said Tom Charlton, 64, a retired sales training manager for a tire company, who was first in line at a book-signing with Paul in Davenport. "If this can stop one attack, it's worth infringing on legal citizens' rights."...

"I don't want the mall to get bombed because they didn't get the information they needed," said [Vivian] Martin...

Sally Cram, 62, said after leaving a town hall meeting with Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) that she supports the NSA program because "I'm a person who believes our government tells us the truth."...

These are the American citizens who keep this stuff alive, because they believe... It doesn't matter if Rand Paul is occasionally right. Being "right" has very little to do with anything.

Don't be scared my little Yankee "barbarian" friend, let a Greek hug you... everything will be o.k.! BUT: remember that EVIL BARBARIANS (not like those who voted for the Patriot Act) exist... please DON'T FORGET!

Thanks kindly. And hey --- on behalf of my country, I'm truly sorry we unleashed credit default swaps upon the world. That shit must have escaped from a lab somewhere.

Thanks kindly. And hey --- on behalf of my country, I'm truly sorry we made you believe that our problems is your (" barbarians' ") fault (although those "credit default swaps" was!)

Don't be scared my little Yankee "barbarian" friend, let a Greek hug you... everything will be o.k.! BUT: remember that EVIL BARBARIANS (not like those who voted for the Patriot Act) exist... please DON'T FORGET!

Thanks kindly. And hey --- on behalf of my country, I'm truly sorry we unleashed credit default swaps upon the world. That shit must have escaped from a lab somewhere.

Good Read: http://www.washingtonpost.com/... a view from someone capable of leading the charge to differentiate Extremists from the Faithful.

I'm not talking about the world, just America.

You know "the world" includes America, yes? Where there are 60 million poor whites in generational poverty? Which wouldn't be the case if we spent "more than enough money" addressing it.

When we speak of helping poor students, we generally mean helping them achieve academic success. Not helping them get rich. So "all the poor straight-A students" are actually the success story here, not an object of pity.

Nope.

It's like you're having the wrong conversation

It's like you're annoyed that you said something completely nonsensical, and someone noticed.

I would love to see your evidence of this as the GAO would be out of a job if they left that much waste.

Have you heard of this thing called a search engine? You should try it.

Here is just one article that came up as the first result on Google: Federal government continues to lose billions to waste, fraud and abuse

If you have any more questions you can ask Darrell Issa who chairs the House Oversight Committee whose committee was investigating said fraud and reported the numbers given.

I have serious doubts that Darrell "Benghazi!!!!" Issa would know corruption if it bit him in the nether regions. And before you go all partisan on me, you should note that the list of dishonorable mentions on the same page is balanced between the parties.

In any case, how would you see him compared to Hillary?

With Bernie Sanders, there's no mistaking what you'll get. He tells you exactly what he thinks. I probably disagree with him on over half of his positions, but I admire the fact that he honestly says what he believes. If Hillary did that, there's no way she'd get elected. Or Barack Obama for that matter.

I would love to see your evidence of this as the GAO would be out of a job if they left that much waste.

Have you heard of this thing called a search engine? You should try it.

Here is just one article that came up as the first result on Google: Federal government continues to lose billions to waste, fraud and abuse

If you have any more questions you can ask Darrell Issa who chairs the House Oversight Committee whose committee was investigating said fraud and reported the numbers given.

Seriously? Let me know when they start rounding up dozens of people for no reason other than they believe in a different God and then they cut off their heads and post the video online. You fucking idiot, stupidity on the part of a few cops doesn't mean we're living under ISIS. Maybe you'd like to try living in the caliphate. Let me know and I'll buy the ticket if you promise to keep your ignorant fucking ass there.

http://www.theatlantic.com/pol... http://www.washingtonpost.com/... http://www.bbc.com/news/world-... https://books.google.com/books...

If 10% of people are gay, then this impacts 10% of nerds.

Less than 3 percent of the U.S. population identify themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual, based on Center for Disease Control and Prevention first large-scale government survey measuring Americans’ sexual orientation - source. There are more "nerds" effected by their baseball team losing a game, should Slashdot report baseball results?

I don't run Apache, but I don't bitch when they put an Apache story on the front page.

Is this a good analogy for "nerd" stories and this story? And what about my baseball team's results?

Get over it.

What i can not "get over" is that i made a comment in this "NON-nerd" pseydo-"discussion" (in which only certain opinions are allowed...) that has been modded down because... you know why! So, it is not only a NON-nerd story, but you have to be a "team's supporter" to participate...

The Duggar Family is adamantly opposed to gay marriage because it's a sin against God and an abomination. Just for the record.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

...or they really wanted to make an arrest followed by a very public show of Doing Something, and Wint's name happened to be at the top of the list?

Nah... I'm sure it was just fool-proof DNA testing done by the finest labs in DC.

Some people within the United States may disagree with you. [blacklivesmatter.com]

Seriously? BlackLivesMatter? If you have to refer to a "movement" born out of a lie — that the robber Michael Brown, supposedly, had his arms up when he was shot — your whole position gets seriously compromised.

Pot, meet Kettle. Kettle, meet Pot. [mxgm.org]

An inflammatory collection of lies and innuendo based, once again, on the sorry fate of another thug, whose reaction to being followed in the street was to "whoop the shit out of the cracker".

If, while alleging "historical" and "nationwide" victimhood, you don't have decent poster-boys, something must be wrong with your premise.

The anonymous GP is right: we aren't actively killing nor seriously repressing a large number of our own people. Not usually. And if/when it happens, it is a cause of outrage here in the US, whereas in China, North Korea, Cuba or under ISIS it is accepted, grudgingly or otherwise...

But then, I suppose that proverbial kettle of Joseph McCarthy and the pot of Lavrenty Beria are equally "black" to you too...

Rand Paul, whether you agree with his politics or not, is the only one with the guts to stand up against the Patriot Act. I remember lots of Democrat outrage when it first came to be. But now that the Dems are running the show they kind of like having it. Makes life easier for the government if they can just collect data on everyone rather than having to go through the courts for warrants and other such inconveniences.

The fallacy, of course, is that the Patriot Act somehow makes us safer than we would be otherwise. It might be true if it were being administered by someone competent rather than these bureaucratic morons that can't get out of their own way. Every failure is met by cries for more money.

Obama, when he was a senator, was against the Patriot Act:

  http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

  He warned of possible abuses of power. But now that he is president he has changed his tune. Abuse of powers indeed.

From the article I linked to. Did you bother reading it?

Yeah, their only source for this particular claim is the guy's own words: "He told the Times: “Mrs. Clinton never intervened with me on any C.F.I.U.S. matter.”

That's both flimsy evidence (hearsay and not under oath) and evasive. For example, if he is ever confronted with evidence of having been told by Clinton, how to vote, he'll be able to claim, that it was not "interference", but direct instructions from his official boss at the time.

And yet, you took his flimsy statement about lack of "interference" and turned it into a far wider-reaching "had no contact with her about it". Am I being picky? The other Clinton once claimed, "oral sex is not sex", for crying out loud — you can not be too picky with these weasels...

Yes. That's exactly what they did. *eyeroll*

Eye-rolling does not prove anything. I'll take it as another concession.

Yeah, no. This is about the vote to give a Russian country control of 20% of US uranium production and Sec. Clinton's (non)involvement in it.

You defended the Secretary here with two arguments:

1. That a FactCheck-article concludes, there is no evidence of her wrong-doing — only "speculations"
2. That any money (bribe) were given not to any of the Clintons, but to the Clinton Foundation

The first claim makes my "rant" — about the need to use a reverse of the usual burden-of-proof principle for Executive government officials — on-topic and otherwise appropriate. The second (false) claim likewise legitimizes my counter-argument about the Foundation being a slush-fund and a power-brokerage vehicle, even if it does not enrich the Clintons directly.

Legitimacy of my counter-arguments now established, absence of any other rebuttals from you evident, the only conclusion is that your original arguments in defense of Madame Secretary are null and void. Have a nice day.

They should have done this five years ago - the old nimble Google of 2001 would have quickly indexed Twitter and Facebook, and every other silo of information. It's only Big Corporate Google that can't acknowledge another source of information for some sort of ego-bruising related reason. "Index all the world's information ... except if it's hosted by a company run by that guy down the street who drives that ridiculous 918 Spyder".

Twitter messages used to appear in Google's real-time search, but after Twitter chose not to renew their agreement in 2011, Google started to follow Twitter's rel=nofollow instructions.
So it's more like the guy down the street who drives that Spyder told Google to go take a hike and they complied.

source 1, source 2

I really hope you are being sarcastic or something, and you don't really think that...

The German airforce has over 200 front line offensive aircraft in its inventory, 109 of them being the Eurofighter.

The German army has over 230 Leopard 2 main battle tanks, a tank commonly held as one of the best in the world, and over 150 PzH 2000 self propelled guns, again commonly held as one of the best in the world.

The German navy has 81 commissioned ships in service, 43 of them front line offensive in nature.

Germany isn't exactly a nation I would want to currently face in battle, not even with a top tier military such as the US, France, UK et al - those military's would almost certainly win any competition, but they wouldn't come out unscathed....

Dude, you might want to check this: Germany’s army is so under-equipped that it used broomsticks instead of machine guns (Feb, 19, 2015)

Or this older article from 2014: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/the-german-military-faces-a-major-challenge-from-disrepair/2014/09/30/e0b7997c-ea40-42be-a68b-e1d45a87b926_story.html

Hell, just google "Germany military equipment problems". When German soldiers have to use broomsticks to hide the facts they did not have heavy machine guns during a NATO exercise, I have to say your post is full of uninformed baloney. This particular incident, that is the kind of crap I would expect from an underdeveloped nation, not from the fourth largest economy.

I really hope you are being sarcastic or something, and you don't really think that...

The German airforce has over 200 front line offensive aircraft in its inventory, 109 of them being the Eurofighter.

The German army has over 230 Leopard 2 main battle tanks, a tank commonly held as one of the best in the world, and over 150 PzH 2000 self propelled guns, again commonly held as one of the best in the world.

The German navy has 81 commissioned ships in service, 43 of them front line offensive in nature.

Germany isn't exactly a nation I would want to currently face in battle, not even with a top tier military such as the US, France, UK et al - those military's would almost certainly win any competition, but they wouldn't come out unscathed....

Dude, you might want to check this: Germany’s army is so under-equipped that it used broomsticks instead of machine guns (Feb, 19, 2015)

Or this older article from 2014: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/the-german-military-faces-a-major-challenge-from-disrepair/2014/09/30/e0b7997c-ea40-42be-a68b-e1d45a87b926_story.html

Hell, just google "Germany military equipment problems". When German soldiers have to use broomsticks to hide the facts they did not have heavy machine guns during a NATO exercise, I have to say your post is full of uninformed baloney. This particular incident, that is the kind of crap I would expect from an underdeveloped nation, not from the fourth largest economy.

The sole reason there is a Republican majority in the House of Representatives is the massive gerrymandering that took place in the last decades.

Only if you define gerrymandering as "Democrats tend to clump together in cities while Republicans spread out over suburbs and rural areas." Republicans have only had two censuses worth of gerrymandering (about fifteen years, which is on the short side to be called decades). Prior to that, Democrats overwhelmingly controlled gerrymandering. Republicans took over the House despite Democrat gerrymandering in 1994. Republicans actually lost a seat in redistricting after 2010 (net): http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

And it's not like there is no unfairness that goes the other direction. Republicans are a substantial minority in Massachusetts, around 33%. Yet they have zero of the nine Representatives, not three. This would be difficult to fix in redistricting, as Republicans tend to be spread out across most of the state. We'd need to switch to a fairer allocation system, like proportional representation (personally I favor Single Transferable Vote). That would allow voters to choose their own coalitions rather than leaving it to the politicians.

Democrats could have switched to such a system in 1990 when they still controlled most of the state legislatures. Their failure to do so led directly to the Republican gerrymander of 2000. Perhaps Republicans will be smarter about it, although there are no signs of that now.

The big change that led to Republicans taking over the House of Representatives is the large number of rural whites who used to vote Democrat locally who now vote Republican. Note that these people voted for Republican presidents and local Democrats for years before they started voting Republican locally.

In 1880, blacks overwhelmingly supported Republicans. In particular, it was inconceivable that blacks would vote for Democrats, the party of slavery. As late as the Voting Rights Act of 1964, a higher percentage of Republican politicians voted for it than Democrats. Yet blacks are now considered to be reliable votes for Democrats. Demographics are not destiny. In 1980, most pro-life politicians were Democrats (e.g. Al Gore and Bill Clinton). Reagan formed a coalition that included Reagan Democrats. Now they are overwhelmingly Republican. Perhaps Rand Paul will forge a new coalition of Rand Paul Democrats. Unlikely in 2016, but there's always 2028 and 2032 (or even 2020 if Clinton wins in 2016). Or someone who's not on the radar yet might forge a new coalition.

I have no idea what MightyMartian thinks the Tea Party is all about, but TEA means "Taxed Enough Already". It's about focusing on the economic issues over the social/cultural issues. IMHO, the "core conservative base" isn't as hung on cultural crap as the Republican party tries to be.

Riiiight...

Tea Party candidate advocates for stoning homosexuals to death.

Tea Party candidate against abortion and against exceptions for incest or rape.

Tea Party candidate takes Medicaid for 8 of his kids, but, thinks Medicaid and all welfare programs should be abolished.

Look no further than California, Maryland, and Illinois. The 3rd District of MD is an absolute abomination. Hell, the term "gerrymandering" itself is named after Governor Gerry of Massachusetts who was lampooned for signing odd-shaped state senate districts into law. But yeah, fuck all of the Republicans in those deep blue states -- as long as your team wins, right?

I don't care how many people per day or per anything else ride the rails - why should I subsidize their ticket prices?

Here's just one article that talks about the subsidies and where they lie. The northeast regional routes of Amtrak was making over $200 million in profit each year. Once Amtrak became a foster-child of the federal government the federal government started interfering. Most of the money-losing routes that Amtrak operates are there because of demands from local members of Congress in order to gain their support for more subsidies.

Here's another article highlighting that Amtrak's operating law required them to become profitable by 2002. That didn't happen.

Why should you subsidize truckers and airports? It costs $3M to build 1 mile of interstate. Sure it looks nice on the back of all those semis that they pay $6,000 in fuel taxes. Too, bad, they don't tell you the damage they do to the pavement is far greater than that. But, of course, if we didn't subsidize the trucking industry and made them pay the real cost of transporting goods, then prices would go up and you, the taxpayer would still be paying for it, plus a profit percentage on top of it.

Why focus on passenger rail as the problem. Most airports are heavily subsidize in the US. Yes, carriers pay gate fees, but those fees do not cover the true cost of building and maintaining the infrastructure.

Face it, Amtrak, highways, airports, etc. are subsidized by the taxpayer because they ultimately benefit the taxpayer.

I don't care how many people per day or per anything else ride the rails - why should I subsidize their ticket prices?

Here's just one article that talks about the subsidies and where they lie. The northeast regional routes of Amtrak was making over $200 million in profit each year. Once Amtrak became a foster-child of the federal government the federal government started interfering. Most of the money-losing routes that Amtrak operates are there because of demands from local members of Congress in order to gain their support for more subsidies.

Here's another article highlighting that Amtrak's operating law required them to become profitable by 2002. That didn't happen.

There were articles of impeachment of President Nixon moving in the House, the first was voted out of committee. The only reason Nixon wasn't impeached was because he resigned.

Judiciary Committee Approves Article to Impeach President Nixon, 27 to 11

In Japan, in Korea, in China they do not have AA --- and their economies are growing leaps and bounds and everybody can attest to their technological achievements

To be fair, China is growing in part due to "a massive transfer of wealth in the form of intellectual property that is unprecedented in history"

The problems Affirmative Action is meant to address are complex, so beware of easy answers. On one hand, I've known high-achieving black people who don't like AA because they feel it cheapens their accomplishments. On the other hand, it's trying to set things right following a long, seriously fucked up history of institutionalized racism in the USA. Not that things are ever going to get set right. There's no goal line - maybe that's part of the problem.