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We screwed up the ozone layer but are already well along the way to fix it. reference

We can create conditions favorable for earthquakes (fracking) and we can redirect lava flows. reference

The reason why people think climate can not be engineered is ignorance.

But if you're going to talk about worthwhile spending then maybe not spending ~$700 million per day ($100 billion every 140 days) in Iraq on a war that increased global terrorism is a better place to start?

But if you're going to talk about worthwhile spending then maybe not spending ~$700 million per day ($100 billion every 140 days) in Iraq on a war that increased global terrorism is a better place to start?

Bush drafted the pullout plan...

Yes, the plan drafted by him years earlier — but it was Obama's execution, and his failure to make corrections when new developments made it obvious, the plan's original projections were too optimistic. Face it, Obama wanted to do it for political reasons — to look better...

You mean, like Reagan did with the USSR and Afghanistan invasion?

Hah! You lie, but that's a good example, thank you! USSR invaded Afghanistain in 1979, when Jimmy Carter was is office — another example of a weak "it is all America's fault" excuse for a President. But even he imposed sanctions against USSR. And the whole world boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics.

Reagan assumed Presidency in 1981, with the invasion over a year-old, and proceeded to arm Russia's opponents in Afghanistan. He did not lift Carter-era sanctions — he expanded them. Obama, on the other hand, would not send Ukraine anything lethal, and even to get him to agree to supply blankets and body-armor took some arm-twisting and was delayed by months.

1) Gitmo is still open. 2) Drone strikes were started by Bush.

Yes, which is an embarrassment for Obama. To reduce the embarrassment, he is doing two things both of which are far worse: 1) he is releasing the current detainees — including bona-fide enemies of the US; 2) he vastly expanded the drone strikes "started by Bush". Bush used air-strikes to kill enemies, who could not be detained. Obama is using against all — such is his reluctance to increase the number of inconvenient detainees, he prefers to lose the intelligence value of interrogating them. That the remotely-killed people have no chance of clearing up any confusion makes Obama's policy even more immoral.

So far you've listed exactly the things that Republicans do.

Nonsense. You have no leg to stand on in this argument — the extrajudicial killing of bin Laden (ordered by Obama) defeats your point by itself... That you chose to ignore the earlier-raised point of Obama taking the drone-strikes to the whole new level, and his order to kill rather the detain bin Laden, shows your dishonesty.

On top of that you got Reagan's reaction to USSR's invasion exactly backwards, which demonstrates the level of ignorance so deep, I'm unlikely to respond again...

Google "asset forfeiture" and weep.

Reading Stop and seize makes for a scary experience.

A Republican by his actions and policies.

Oh, no you don't... You keep him. A Republican would not have withdrawn all troops from Iraq — allowing ISIS to bloom and necessitating a painful return.

A Republican would not have encouraged Putin to invade Ukraine by lifting all sanctions imposed over a similar invasion into Georgia.

A Republican would've continued to detain terrorist suspects — in Guantanamo or elsewhere — rather then order extrajudicial killings — most infamously one of Osama bin Laden himself.

No, Obama is an Illiberal Democrat through and through. But such people — yourself included — are famous for inability to recognize each other — so far are their deeds from their proclaimed ideals.

Jobs, college debt, and personal liberty are extremely important issues to this generation.

Then why in the name of all that is noodly would they vote Republican? If young voters did swing from Democrat to Republican, I bet they did so for one of two reasons:
1) blindly believing candidate rhetoric (which both Republicans and Democrats are guilty of spewing), or
2) they were upset with "their guy" and mistakenly thought the "other guy" would do better.

Considering that the voter turnout was only 36.4% for the 2014 midterms (lowest since WWII), and low turnout favors Republicans (who are more likely to vote, it seems), I would guess the Republican victory isn't due to Millenials switching parties but far less Democrat Millenials turning out, if it's due to Millenials at all. Your own article supports this:

Though the GOP is closing the gap on Democrats in relation to young voters, a push away from the left may not guarantee a win for the right among the politically apathetic voting demographic.
[...]
Among those who said they “definitely will be voting” in next week’s midterm elections, 51 percent of young adults said they would prefer a GOP-controlled Congress. That's up from 43 percent during the 2010 midterms.

When the question is broadened to include all young adults, including those admitting they are less than certain they will vote on Tuesday, 50 percent said they would favor a Democratic Congress, compared to just 43 percent preferring the GOP.

“A lot of it, frankly, comes down to turnout. It seems that young Republicans are significantly more likely to turn out and participate next week,” said John Della Volpe, the institute's polling director. “It’s less about young people becoming more Republican, they’re just a little bit less Democratic than we’ve seen through the Obama years from 2008 to 2012.”
[...]
But bad news for Obama does not necessarily mean good news for the GOP, especially considering Obama maintains a significantly higher approval rating than Congress does among young adults. Only 23 percent of the demographic approves of the job Republicans are doing in Congress, compared to 35 percent approving of Democrats.

A reported 33 percent of young people surveyed identified as Democrats, compared to 22 percent siding with the GOP and about 42 percent of young adults identified themselves as independents.

Personal security everywhere has a few conflicting objectives.
- Protect the person from physical threats
- Do not appear intimidating to the general public
- React quickly to perceived threats
- Do not overreact to perceived threats
Sure you could put a concrete wall around the White House and shoot anyone who climbed over but that would be very bad.

This incident has been blown way out of proportion. Lets look at what really happened.
1. I guy jumps a fence.
2. He runs across the lawn. He was seen at this point and an alarm was triggered (the problem is that the alarm was muted for some reason)
3. He enters an unlocked door (Which would have been locked had the alarm sounded).
4. He runs past a startled security guard (The one who would have locked the door if the alarm had sounded).
5. He runs up the stairs and across a long room.
6. He is tackled by a counterassault agent.
The only people he encountered were security personnel and he did not damage anything and harmed no one.

Lets look at what contributed to the incident.
1. He was not shot as he had no visible weapons.
2. The door to remain unlocked because the alarm was muted. The article claims that is was muted on the orders of the Usher's office
3. The President was in the process of leaving the building. During movement security is concentrated around the president as that is when he is most vulnerable. That left the front lawn less protected as there was less there to protect.

How to fix the issue?
1. Never mute the alarms
2. Connect the front door lock to the alarm so it locks when the alarm goes off.
Those are simple solutions to a small problem.

Mr Gonzalez is a Iraq War veteran with mental health issue. Though he had a knife on him he never brandished it and no one knew of it's existence until he was arrested. What do you think the comments would have been if it turned out that an unarmed Iraq War veteran with PTSD was shot dead while trying to enter the White House? So the Secret Service has to choose between being damned for letting someone into an an empty area of the White House or damned for shooting an unarmed Iraq War veteran with PTSD. You choose.

When? Way before they figured out if they scare everyone with ISIS, they'll get even more resources.

No no no no.
See, you dont get to intentionally create a problem, and then use the problem as your proof that it doesnt work; It doesnt work because of your sabotage, not because of inherent qualities. Self fulfilling prophesies that you brought about are not proof of dysfunction.

Your proof is an oft repeated myth which has no actual connection to actual USPS finances.
Also, the USPS, and their employees, are not funded by taxpayer dollars.
So you're wrong about that too: we're not on the hook.
None of the taxes you pay during the year go to the USPS.
It is soley funded by the fees they take in, whether its from selling stamps or shipping packages.

Further, the USPS could be made even more profitable by bringing back Postal Banking. Most other nations have it.
And we used to too. It provided banking services for those the banks refused to provide service too. And still do. (Ah....the free market...)
When Postal Banking went it away it was replaced by the notoriously awful payday lenders, which is a lbight upon the earth.

Oh, but dont take my word for any of it.
Simple actual research from primary documents, such as the USPS financial report (I've read it, have you? Guessing not, or you wouldnt have linked to that about.com article) would find all this for you.

None of this would mean much if the prevailing myth about postal finances were true – that the Postal Service is losing billions of dollars a year delivering the mail because everyone’s on the Internet, taxpayers are on the hook for this, and so drastic cuts are needed.

Here are the facts: The Postal Service isn’t funded by taxpayers; it earns its revenue by selling stamps. And it’s operationally profitable. Last year it had a $623 million operating profit; the first quarter of fiscal year 2014 produced $1.1 billion in black ink.

[..]the overall loss was due to congressional mandates, particularly a requirement that the agency pre-fund retiree benefits to the tune of about $5.6 billion per year.

[..] the Postal Service would have recorded a net profit of $600 million without the annual payment

The USPS is the only quasi-government agency to be ordered to pay a part of its earnings into the U.S. Treasury in order to hold budget deficits down. Its leaders have been trying for the past seven years to get this unfair payment removed, but have so far been unsuccessful due to the Tea Party/Republican politics in Washington.

elsewhere: the 2006 congressional mandate that the USPS pre-fund future retiree health benefits for the next 75 years, and do so within a decade — an obligation no other public agency or private firm faces. The more than $5 billion annual payments since 2007 — $21 billion total — are the difference between a positive and negative ledger

The new USPS Financial Report issued Friday further validates the claim that the Postal Service is neither broken nor in crisis. Excluding the pre-funding expense the USPS has turned a $660 million profit delivering mail in fiscal year 2013. Showing again that Senator Carper, Senator Coburn and Congressman Issa are manufacturing a postal financial crisis as an excuse to dismantle it. Standing in their shadows are vultures named FedEx and UPS.

http://www.carper.senate.gov/p...
http://watchdog.org/135210/pos...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
http://www.wausaudailyherald.c...

The UK is also a residence based system, not citizen. So even UK citizens visiting far enough away from their resident hospital can get charged.

But how much does it cost?
Still dramatically less than the US.
And if you have your own insurance plan (and many UK citizens have a supplmental private insurance plan for this very reason) it will probably still pick up its share, even for US visitors.

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

Those lovely human beings who've published training manuals educating agents in the practice of systematically perjuring themselves to uphold false narratives? Or maybe those jovial policemen who budget for hypothetical asset forfeitures years from now?

They'd never go that far.

In my opinion, the most obvious and interesting theory [maxkeiser.com] is that Putin's plane was near the same air space close to the same time as MH17 ...

Your sense of what is "obvious" might be a bit off.

Web evidence points to pro-Russia rebels in downing of MH17 (+video)

Igor Girkin, a Ukrainian separatist leader also known as Strelkov, claimed responsibility on a popular Russian social-networking site for the downing of what he thought was a Ukrainian military transport plane shortly before reports that Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17 had crashed near the rebel held Ukrainian city of Donetsk.

MH17 disaster: Social media posts, phone recording used to blame Russian separatists

Social media posts by pro-Russian insurgents - most of them hastily removed - suggest the rebels thought they had shot down a Ukrainian army plane before realising in horror that it was in fact a packed Malaysian airliner.

Ukraine and MH17: Who are the separatists?

On Thursday evening a Russian social media page linked to the rebels announced they had knocked down a Ukrainian An-26, adding, “We warned them – don’t fly ‘in our sky’”. The post – which was accompanied by distant video-shots of smoke rising after an apparent crash – was later removed, but it has stoked suspicions that pro-Russian militiamen shot the Malaysian Airlines jet by mistake.

The evidence that may prove pro-Russian separatists shot down MH17

Deadly Ukraine Crash: German Intelligence Claims Pro-Russian Separatists Downed MH17

Putin's plane was an hour away.

This could have been a simple, yet tragic, case of mistaken identity.

It was, but not as you apparently intend. It wasn't the Ukrainians trying to shoot down Putin and being mistaken but rather the "separatists" shooting at what they mistakenly assumed was a Ukrainian aircraft.

If the money was used as originally intended - to fund building and maintenance of the Interstate highway system - it would be brimming with cash. Instead, it's also being used for lots of other projects, like mass transit, bicycle paths, and landscaping for roads. About a quarter of the income from the HTF goes to non-highway projects.

What's your source for this?

I'm not seeing the numbers adding up. According to the Washington Post " In 2013, the trust fund disbursed $50 billion to states â" $43 billion for roads and $7 billion for mass transit, reports the Congressional Budget Office (CBO)."

But what was the revenue? This claims $30 billion from the gas tax in 2013.

That's a $13 billion shortfall.

State and local spending on roads is even worse.

You may want to do more research in this area. The 4th power rule for vehicle weight/damage to roads seems to indicate that cyclists cause negligible wear to the roads. Induced demand will explain why building more roads won't necessarily make traffic better. And the externalities of vehicle pollution, if you look into that, should be considered yet another subsidy to motor vehicle travel.

The Washington Post has thoroughly reported on federal spying since Snowden. See for example here.

The New York Times has had plenty of spying stories. Furthermore, NYT has recently been key to bringing civil asset forfeiture theft to the public eye. See for example here.

The powers that be like to tout how background checks have prevented some untold number of bad guys from getting guns... often left out is the woefully small # of prosecutions of said people for their illegal attempts to acquire a firearm.

When the penalty on the books is rarely enforced, it quite easy to look for other ways to do what you want to do and know that you probably aren't going to get caught... a problem that has existed in the voting world for years: http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

To be fair, I should have been clearer. I have Cox Cable in the southeastern US, and the cost for cable Internet access is about $62/month; add TV (with DVR rental) and you're looking at another $150~$200. No thanks. Between free content on Youtube, Hulu, and "broadcast" networks (ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC), and only $8 for Netflix, I'm happy with what I get for the price point. If you like live sports that's really the only big down side.

Ultimately, it's a total of $70 for all the goodies I can consume on the Internet each month, no data limits, etc. Also, Cox has been surprisingly good as an ISP in general; our bandwidth (DL speeds) were just doubled for zero cost, and in this case it actually WAS noticeable. If the chart that was widely publicized about how ComCast dicked over its subscribers until Netflix ponied up is accurate, Cox's internet division is one of the rare almost-good guys in the USA's ISP world.

No, no one knows whats going on now legally speaking, that's why we're having this discussion. The Verizon vs FCC decision removed that certainty. They know what the regulatory regime might be, but they don't know what it is going to be. The FCC chair is looking at splitting the baby which doesn't really sound like a clear indicator of what he's going to do from a legal perspective. It appears that the FCC chair wants to allow ISPs to prioritize certain traffic for security and use (e.g. e-mail traffic doesn't need the kind of priority as streaming video) because not all traffic deserves the same level of attention from the ISP, but not do so for business reasons (e.g. Time Warner shouldn't be allowed to hobble Netflix streaming service). But at the same time, he appears to be distancing himself from Obama's plea for Title II. Writing this into law is more complex than simply saying what the FCC chair said he wanted: "What you want is what everyone wants: an open Internet that doesn’t affect your business."

Oh my. Title II classification worked quite well until 2002 when the FCC reclassified broadband providers as "Information Services" under Title I. Which was so obviously a great move, because we had so much less competition then. Not only that, the big broadband providers were so poor before that, they were going out of business. Thank goodness for that! Otherwise, the Internet would have failed completely and we'd all be using punched cards and telexes again by now. Not.

The last twelve years have seen increasing consolidation, local monopolies and duopolies, less competition, higher prices for basic consumer connectivity, more abusive Terms of Service for consumer connections, throttling of competitive content providers who threaten the media content distribution strangleholds that the big broadband providers have.

Title II reclassification isn't the whole of the answer, just a small part. But it's a start at least. Unfortunately, if you tell the same lies over and over again ("we're so poor that reclassification will stop us from upgrading our networks" and "Forcing us to be common carriers will destroy all innovation on the Internet") people start to believe it.

It's just a smokescreen for the big ISPs to keep protecting their abusive business model and maintain their huge profits in a non-competitive marketplace. These big ISPs are holding back innovation in last-mile technologies, despite being given USD$200 Billion in subsidies over the past 18 years to do otherwise.

No, no one knows whats going on now legally speaking, that's why we're having this discussion. The Verizon vs FCC decision removed that certainty. They know what the regulatory regime might be, but they don't know what it is going to be. The FCC chair is looking at splitting the baby which doesn't really sound like a clear indicator of what he's going to do from a legal perspective. It appears that the FCC chair wants to allow ISPs to prioritize certain traffic for security and use (e.g. e-mail traffic doesn't need the kind of priority as streaming video) because not all traffic deserves the same level of attention from the ISP, but not do so for business reasons (e.g. Time Warner shouldn't be allowed to hobble Netflix streaming service). But at the same time, he appears to be distancing himself from Obama's plea for Title II.

Writing this into law is more complex than simply saying what the FCC chair said he wanted: "What you want is what everyone wants: an open Internet that doesn’t affect your business."

Of course, the REAL issue isn't even guns, it is mental health. We have kids who are unstable, unbalanced, and unloved, and the system does nothing for them. There is no way to identify problem or challenged kids and get them some help before they go off the deep end.

Actually, it's easy to identify violent children. Teachers see them acting violent. The problem is that nobody knows what "help" would be. Interventions like DARE, where a cop comes around to a school and plays male authority figure, actually make kids more likely to get arrested. We know that sending kids to work camps and prisons makes them more violent.

Some preschool programs, which teach kids to interact with each other, make them less likely to have problems later on. Most violent kids come from families that are disrupted and low income. Since there's a strong correlation between violence and poverty, it seems plausible that eliminating poverty would also reduce violence.

I think studies found that giving people better housing, under certain circumstances, made their kids more likely to succeed in school.

Past behavior predicts future behavior. But a quick Google search of "predicting violence" will show that there's no scientific evidence of any screening method other than past behavior that can predict future violence. And there's no way to predict a school shooting.

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

"There is no instrument that is specifically useful or validated for identifying potential school shooters or mass murderers," said Stephen D. Hart, a psychologist at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver who is the co-author of a widely used evaluation tool. "There are many things in life where we have an inadequate evidence base, and this is one of them."

The only thing that can predict shooting is access to a gun. If kids can't get guns, they can't shoot up schools. They often get their parents' guns, or get older friends to buy them. A lot of doctors who deal with these shootings say that the best way to stop them would be to reduce access to guns.

Unfortunately, we don't have good research or evidence on gun violence because the NRA lobbied Congress to cut funds to any federal agency that paid for research on gun violence.

So the NRA has guaranteed your right to say, "There's no evidence for that."

This money.

Love the miner, hate the mine.

I would also argue that the left hasn't lost votes, I would suggest that instead, seeing as how this last election had fewer voters (by % of total eligible population) than any national election since WWII, that it is Democracy that is losing voters, not any specific party.

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

Comparatively, in 2010, when the GOP won big, they did so with a total margin of ~2.75 million voters. In 2012, when the Dems regained ground, they did so with a margin of ~10.8 million voters. The 2012 election also sported almost 30% more of the eligible population voting.

-Rick

A human would have approximately 5 to 10 seconds in which to respond to the tear in their suit, and if repressurized within 60 seconds, have a fairly good chance of survival.

From the source:

Has Anybody Ever Survived Vacuum Exposure in Real Life?

Human experience is discussed by Roth, in the NASA technical report Rapid (Explosive) Decompression Emergencies in Pressure-Suited Subjects. Its focus is on decompression, rather than vacuum exposure per se, but it still has a lot of good information, including the results of decompression events involving humans.

There are several cases of humans surviving exposure to vacuum worth noting. In 1966 a technician at NASA Houston was decompressed to vacuum in a space-suit test accident. This case is discussed by Roth in the reference above. He lost consciousness in 12-15 seconds. When pressure was restored after about 30 seconds of exposure, he regained consciousness, with no apparent injury sustained.

Source:
http://www.geoffreylandis.com/...

The use of a form-fitting pressure suit, like that used by a fighter pilot (or those being demoed by MIT for use on mars, which have form-fitting metal coils to supply mechanical compression) would buy the suit occupant even more time in the event of a tear in the suit by preventing ebullism, and resulting drop in blood pressure, and resulting loss of consciousness.

There are a number of potential mechanisms that could be implemented into a space suit of the MIT type, that would make abrasion type holes in the suit less lethal, such as the non-newtonian silicon shear thickening liquid that is used in ballistic vests. A thin layer of this inside the suit would harden under the pressure being exerted on it by the occupant of the suit against the reduced pressure outside, exerted through the tear. This would reduce the effects of the hard vacuum on the suit occupant, buying more time to apply an appropriate patch to the suit.

Thank you for giving us the Netflix perspective.

That's not just the Netflix perspective. It's the perspective that most sane individuals have.

Counter arguments:

1) Residential broadband networks were never engineered as video delivery systems. The advent of mainstream streaming video completely changed the engineering calculus for last mile networks. Over subscription ratios need to change to accommodate the higher peak hour bitrates; this takes time and costs money. Where should this money come from?

Erm, even in the 1990s it was clear that point to point video was going to be an integral part of the internet. And I don't mean 'clear to me in hindsight', I mean clear to the guys selling fibre and switching gear to telcos and ISPs. I consulted with one of the largest and most advanced network equipment companies in the world, at one of their development labs. They were already talking about video on demand as a certainty in 1998, and rushing to get products to market.

If Comcast's management, in their infinite wisdom, were unable to see the writing on the wall 15 years ago, then they have only themselves to blame. The problem is that they have little incentive to invest aggressively, because they don't face substantive, effective competition in the majority of their marketplaces. So now, their complacency is such that they feel they have a right to bitch about the expense of providing a level of service that is well behind the state of the art in Europe, even lagging behind powerhouses like Estonia?

To answer your question, therefore: The money should come from reinvestment of profits. Just like it every other ISP and telco that has managed to leave them in the technological dust. If you plan to make the case that Comcast is somehow struggling to get by on the pittance they charge because of vanishingly small margins, then I'd suggest that the answer there is for them to give way to a company that actually knows how to make money in a sure-fire profitable business that features some of the more profitable corporations in the world. The fact is, they're making more and investing less than ever before.

Why should I pay the same for my connection as the household that's running three or four simultaneous HD streams during peak hours? My 95th percentile is less than 0.5mbit/s, yet I pay the same as my neighbor who regularly runs three HD streams at the same time. Hardly seems fair, does it?

You should pay the same because the baseline level of service should be minimum 10-20 Mbps these days. The fact that you use a vanishingly small percentage of that capacity should be your problem, not everyone else's. Pulling one or two video streams is baseline operability these days. For fuck's sake, I can do it and I live in the developing world in a place with some of the most obscenely high prices in the world!

I know that misery loves company, but just because your usage is unusually low is not justification for limiting the capacity of Comcast's entire customer base.

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

Apparently, as of 2008, 38% of jobs require government licensing.

Democrats have fucked Kansas every time they accidentally get elected. No miracles here. This is a red state and going to stay that way, because of that.

You think that's why Brownback got re-elected as governor? If your analysis were even remotely correct, he would have had absolutely no chance at winning on Tuesday: he's led your state to huge upcoming budget deficits, an increased poverty rate, much lower economic growth than all four neighboring states, and a downgraded state credit rating.

Yet, despite all of the above, Brownback still kept his job, because, you know... "liberals and taxes are bad." Never mind if the alternative is flushing your state down the toilet.

With the ability to grow a new bladder for patients born with small and poorly compressing bladders: source We may not have the ability to get these bladders fully functioning using this new technology. The biggest hurdle has been getting nerves to connect to the bladders so they can be used voluntarily and without the use of a catheter.

Funny how the government signed the Farm Bill into law again giving Sam Donaldson and Scottie Pippen welfare for not planting crops this year!

The $956 billion farm bill, in one graph

Please, continue to tell me how there's no corporate welfare from the Democrats, just Republicans.

... As a result, the country mobilized against the threat. Strong government action by the Bush administration outlawed the worst of these gases, and brilliant entrepreneurs were able to discover and manufacture new cleaner energy sources. As a result of these brave decisions, our emissions stabilized and are currently declining.

The chart you link to of CO2 emissions from 1990 to 2013 shows that they have risen 10% over that time. The only years in which they fell were during the economic recession. Since that was caused by Reagan/Bush deregulation policies is that what you are suggesting to combat climate change?

In the 1950s, brave American scientists shunned by the climate establishment of the day discovered that the Earth was warming as a result of greenhouse gas emissions, leading to potentially devastating natural disasters that could destroy American agriculture and flood American cities. As a result, the country mobilized against the threat. Strong government action by the Bush administration outlawed the worst of these gases, and brilliant entrepreneurs were able to discover and manufacture new cleaner energy sources. As a result of these brave decisions, our emissions stabilized and are currently declining.

Unfortunately, even as we do our part, the authoritarian governments of Russia and China continue to industralize and militarize rapidly as part of their bid to challenge American supremacy. As a result, Communist China is now by far the world’s largest greenhouse gas producer, with the Russians close behind. Many analysts believe Putin secretly welcomes global warming as a way to gain access to frozen Siberian resources and weaken the more temperate United States at the same time. These countries blow off huge disgusting globs of toxic gas, which effortlessly cross American borders and disrupt the climate of the United States. Although we have asked them to stop several times, they refuse, perhaps egged on by major oil producers like Iran and Venezuela who have the most to gain by keeping the world dependent on the fossil fuels they produce and sell to prop up their dictatorships.

We need to take immediate action. While we cannot rule out the threat of military force, we should start by using our diplomatic muscle to push for firm action at top-level summits like the Kyoto Protocol. Second, we should fight back against the liberals who are trying to hold up this important work, from big government bureaucrats trying to regulate clean energy to celebrities accusing people who believe in global warming of being ‘racist’. Third, we need to continue working with American industries to set an example for the world by decreasing our own emissions in order to protect ourselves and our allies. Finally, we need to punish people and institutions who, instead of cleaning up their own carbon, try to parasitize off the rest of us and expect the federal government to do it for them.

Please join our brave men and women in uniform in pushing for an end to climate change now.

-- Five Case Studies on Politicization

In the 1950s, brave American scientists shunned by the climate establishment of the day discovered that the Earth was warming as a result of greenhouse gas emissions, leading to potentially devastating natural disasters that could destroy American agriculture and flood American cities. As a result, the country mobilized against the threat. Strong government action by the Bush administration outlawed the worst of these gases, and brilliant entrepreneurs were able to discover and manufacture new cleaner energy sources. As a result of these brave decisions, our emissions stabilized and are currently declining.

Unfortunately, even as we do our part, the authoritarian governments of Russia and China continue to industralize and militarize rapidly as part of their bid to challenge American supremacy. As a result, Communist China is now by far the world’s largest greenhouse gas producer, with the Russians close behind. Many analysts believe Putin secretly welcomes global warming as a way to gain access to frozen Siberian resources and weaken the more temperate United States at the same time. These countries blow off huge disgusting globs of toxic gas, which effortlessly cross American borders and disrupt the climate of the United States. Although we have asked them to stop several times, they refuse, perhaps egged on by major oil producers like Iran and Venezuela who have the most to gain by keeping the world dependent on the fossil fuels they produce and sell to prop up their dictatorships.

We need to take immediate action. While we cannot rule out the threat of military force, we should start by using our diplomatic muscle to push for firm action at top-level summits like the Kyoto Protocol. Second, we should fight back against the liberals who are trying to hold up this important work, from big government bureaucrats trying to regulate clean energy to celebrities accusing people who believe in global warming of being ‘racist’. Third, we need to continue working with American industries to set an example for the world by decreasing our own emissions in order to protect ourselves and our allies. Finally, we need to punish people and institutions who, instead of cleaning up their own carbon, try to parasitize off the rest of us and expect the federal government to do it for them.

Please join our brave men and women in uniform in pushing for an end to climate change now.

-- Five Case Studies on Politicization

Thank you. "UPU" was the key to finding the explanation: An article about the "trickery" that is going on.

Well, that funding is doomed.

After all, science flies in the face of the elected party's platform, or at least one plank, albeit a critical one.

Drug prosecution and arrest happen most often in poor communities. Joe Biden's son is an outlier, not proof of lack of class bias.

I believe that even though it passed in DC...that congress can put the kibosh on this pretty quick?

Yes, Congress can put the kibosh on this, and at least one Congressman from Maryland has already vowed to put a stop to this.

Easy come, easy go.

This whole thing is a Tom Coburn-style piece of propaganda. It is an NSF GRANT to researchers at a UNIVERSITY. This has nothing to do with the federal government or NSA studying anything.

If you don't know how the NSF funding process works, grant proposals are peer reviewed in a competitive process by scientific experts for their merit and potential contributions. Obama had nothing to do with this. Presidents have better things to do than review grant proposals.

This only has to do with the government in that NSF provides money, and these researchers happen to be a public (state, not federal) university. You know when we all complain about lack of government support for basic research? That is a lot of what the NSF does.

Very disappointing that an FCC commissioner is trying to create a fake scandal based on what are essentially outright lies. Now THAT deserves your attention.

Read more here.

As a INSERT_PROFESSIONAL_TITLE prospect, do you respect yourself enough to refuse this kind of slavery?

This is the Western suite-and-tie culture. You bring work home. You miss your kids games and your friends' birthdays. You work holidays. Want a vacation? Go get a blue collar job in an industry with a union, be born with money or be a high-level manager. Everyone else has to work. Even after retirement.

You can thank the Calvinists, the farmer laboer ethic or 1920s propiganda all you want. It is a fact of corporate life since the industrial revolution and craft life before then.

For what it's worth, Japanese culture is much much worse. The only way to describe Japanese work culture is abusive serf punishment. Wealth out of misery is considered a noble thing in the Land of the Rising Sun.

First, the cop had a job in a quiet town...

False. That "quiet town" had more arrests than people! (I agree with your implication that Wilson was a bottom-of-the-barrel police officer, however.)

Second, why would he be scared when he pulled next to him. All he knew at that time was they were obstructing traffic with their jay walking. As i already pointed out, once the jaywalking turned into someone trying to kill him with his own service weapon- that is when he got scared. You would be too had someone surprised you and tried to kill you. And whether or not Brown did try to kill the cop is irrelevant because we are going off the cop's point of view or interpretation of events.

He created the situation. He escalated the situation. I don't believe for a moment that Brown actually tried to kill him or that Wilson was justified in thinking he might (unless he believes that every black man is a murderous animal, which is of course invalid). Moreover, even if Wilson were legitimately scared for his life when he shot Brown from inside the car, he sure as Hell wasn't when he got out of the car and hunted him down!

And you have absolutely no clue if the cop was racist.

How fucking ignorant can you possibly be? Darren Wilson was fired from the Jennings, MO Police Department for being racist! And even if he weren't racist before joining the Jennings PD, he was certainly so by the time he left it -- you cannot exist in such an environment without the racism rubbing off on you.

I'm not even sure you understand the meaning of that word either.

I'm a white man, with a mixed-race wife, living in a majority-black neighborhood in the South. If you think I don't understand racism, you've got another think coming.

It certainly does not default to racism simply because of the color of skin involed.

Indeed, it does not default to racism whenever people of different races interact. However, when a white police officer (who spends all day, every day, looking for criminals in a town where just about every criminal is black (because only black people live there)) starts out his interaction with some petty jaywalkers by yelling obscenities at them, and somehow manages to escalate the situation from jaywalking to fucking homicide? Yeah, that's some fucking racism there. I do not believe for one femtosecond that he would ever have treated white jaywalkers with such utter contempt, and if he had exhibited even the barest shred of professional decorum or common human decency (let alone respect for the fact that he was talking to a person, not an insect) the entire incident would never have happened.

So yeah, to recap, the cop most likely wasn't the best cop out there. He more than likely made a lot of mistakes including killing brown.

Indeed he did, but he would not have made all the same mistakes if he were working in a white town, dealing with white jaywalkers.

So I guess that establishes the pecking order, doesn't it? Just when all eyes are on the military-industrial complex, Wall Street takes over. And then as they are in the spotlight, in sneaks the new corporate Stasi.

Stop making shit up.

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

Stop believing everything you read in the corporate/establishment/mainstream media without testing it - against your own experience and other sources.

Learn "critical thinking".

With reports of Google being able to sway undecided voters by tweaking the search results in favor/against electoral candidates, and now Facebook having the ability to selectively influence people to vote, how long really before we're living in a world run only for profit. That's if we aren't already doing so.

According to WaPo, she claims that this iPhone video was taken in September 2013, and not related to the alleged December 2012 incident. It looks like crooksandliars jumped the gun here.

The rather blatent Dancing with the Stars episode playing in the background may have even been intentional to provide additional credence to the video (the timing is dead on with her claim).

That's not to say she's not otherwise mistaken (or outright dishonest), but this isn't the smoking gun you're looking for.

Stop making shit up.

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

There are two sides to every coin. Stating that "McConnell is "leading the effort to take away our right to vote."" to only black voters is pretty over-the-line, wouldn't you agree?

Apparently voter fraud is not that low and can affect the outcomes of elections. I believe the problem is very hard to prove/prosecute because we have zero barrier to prevention at the start - no ID required.

Overweight people can (with a few exceptions due to medical conditions) change the fact that they're overweight. Gay people by and large cannot make themselves not gay.

Citation needed. For both.

Your "exceptions" are the rule.

Gay people can be celibate.

Frankly I'm more interested in the first point. While gay people can "not be gay," I wouldn't wish it upon them, they've worked hard not to be looked down upon for being gay, and all the more power to them.

Now on to your implied point that it's ok to shame overweight people because they supposedly can change the fact that they're overweight -- just like gay people can change the fact that they have same-sex relationships -- by overcoming fundamental physiological urges that you're oh-so-sure can be overcome by pure willpower.

sorry, wrong link. Here you go.

we can not and must not allow things in or out of the infected area! ... but so reluctant to help other people with the same objective, containment.

Because according to the CDC and the World Health Organization that does NOT help the effected areas, but makes it worse for them, which (even according to TFA!) merely causes a slight delay in importing cases to other countries. It is harmful in the end, which is why all major expert organizations are advising against that policy.

You are aware that experts at both the CDC and the World Health Organization are saying that is likely to make the outbreak worse, and they both recommend against travel restrictions?

So here we have every top medical organization, vs one random slashdot poster. Hmm. Dunning-Kruger much?

This should be no surprise. Remember this story from 2009?

If the Obama campaign represented a sleek, new iPhone kind of future, the first day of the Obama administration looked more like the rotary-dial past.

Two years after launching the most technologically savvy presidential campaign in history, Obama officials ran smack into the constraints of the federal bureaucracy yesterday, encountering a jumble of disconnected phone lines, old computer software, and security regulations forbidding outside e-mail accounts.

What does that mean in 21st-century terms? No Facebook to communicate with supporters. No outside e-mail log-ins. No instant messaging. Hard adjustments for a staff that helped sweep Obama to power through, among other things, relentless online social networking.

"It is kind of like going from an Xbox to an Atari," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said of his new digs.

Of course, the problem here is letting users influence IT policy decisions. People always want the new shinies of the latest iPhone, the bells and whistles of Microsquish 201x, and the convenience of unrestricted internet browsing and outside email accounts. They don't want functional and secure software.

The odd thing here is the blase attitude that, since the network was not approved for classified material, it is no big deal for hackers allegedly in the employ of foreign governments to break in. Can you imagine the shitstorm if the Koch brothers were caught hacking into the White House network, reading staffers' email, and potentially using it as a vector for further attacks? Why is it somehow better when the Chinese or Russians do this?