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From the AP Story

a weakness in the exchange's systems was behind a massive loss of the virtual currency involving 750,000 bitcoins from users and 100,000 of the company's own bitcoins. That would amount to about $425 million at recent prices.

The reactions of the various Japanese government officials are interesting. Essentially, there was no "theft" because Bitcoin is not a "real" currency. Which is an interesting attack. Anyone can steal your bitcoins and you have no recourse to the law because it isn't actually theft.

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

'nuff said.

The reason why USAian broadband is so "slow" is because vendors (all vendors, everywhere) only supply a product that is "good enough", and no more, for people to pay the price they're paying. In the USA broadband is very cheap for what is being supplied.

In other countries around the world people can only dream of having that amount of bandwidth for that price. Suppliers outside of North America simply don't offer packages that cheaply.

While I agree with you that they (providers) usually only give us a little bit of bandwidth when they could easily provide more, I can not agree with your second paragraph. It might be true in a small percentage of countries, but the great majority have been putting in Fiber To The Home and giving their customers fantastic bandwidths (100Mb/100Mb or 1Gb/1GB) for less than what most cable internet providers charge their customers in America.

This was not true in 2007 and is not true today. Americans do NOT have it better with respects to Internet bandwidth. As of 2010, broadband penetration dropped to 25th place worldwide. We are not even on the chart any more, we have dropped that far, however we still pay more for less, no its not better in the US.

We, USA, dropped to 17th from 15th in 2008, but at least the US is on the chart

Wish it were not true, but it is.

"Broadband service here (Japan) is eight to 30 times as fast as (faster) in the United State..." and cheaper as well.

In the year 2000, most Japanese had 100Mb/100Mb, symmetrical FTTH, for less than $52 per month. Most American Cable providers charge well over $50 per month for a promise of 20Mb/2Mb that is throttled (except during the speedtest) to less than 300Kbps/40Kpbs. So in reality Americans pay a heck of allot more for a heck of allot less.

1GB/1GB; And this from 2008, thanks to the Fiber To The Home investment started in the year 2000 with the de-regulation of NTT in Japan, "The Hikari One Home Gigabit service will cost 5,460 (US$51.40) per month and provide an upstream and downstream connection at 1G bps"

Since most cable providers push customers to the $100 to $150 per month range, well it only is worse for Americans, not better. If you think its better, well their marketing works doesn't it.

If you can not get FTTH, only purchase DSL, do NOT purchase cable internet as they have always and will continue to always rip off consumers with higher prices for less service...its their business model, no matter what promises they have made over the years to provide Fiber. They will not unless forced to.

One day we may have it cheaper, but that day is not today...nor has it been for the last two decades. Here is a map that shows you were you can move to in order to get Fiber To The Home (FTTH). Well worth it if the bank took your home as those communities are creating better paying jobs faster than other communities in the US.

The reason why USAian broadband is so "slow" is because vendors (all vendors, everywhere) only supply a product that is "good enough", and no more, for people to pay the price they're paying. In the USA broadband is very cheap for what is being supplied.

In other countries around the world people can only dream of having that amount of bandwidth for that price. Suppliers outside of North America simply don't offer packages that cheaply.

While I agree with you that they (providers) usually only give us a little bit of bandwidth when they could easily provide more, I can not agree with your second paragraph. It might be true in a small percentage of countries, but the great majority have been putting in Fiber To The Home and giving their customers fantastic bandwidths (100Mb/100Mb or 1Gb/1GB) for less than what most cable internet providers charge their customers in America.

This was not true in 2007 and is not true today. Americans do NOT have it better with respects to Internet bandwidth. As of 2010, broadband penetration dropped to 25th place worldwide. We are not even on the chart any more, we have dropped that far, however we still pay more for less, no its not better in the US.

We, USA, dropped to 17th from 15th in 2008, but at least the US is on the chart

Wish it were not true, but it is.

"Broadband service here (Japan) is eight to 30 times as fast as (faster) in the United State..." and cheaper as well.

In the year 2000, most Japanese had 100Mb/100Mb, symmetrical FTTH, for less than $52 per month. Most American Cable providers charge well over $50 per month for a promise of 20Mb/2Mb that is throttled (except during the speedtest) to less than 300Kbps/40Kpbs. So in reality Americans pay a heck of allot more for a heck of allot less.

1GB/1GB; And this from 2008, thanks to the Fiber To The Home investment started in the year 2000 with the de-regulation of NTT in Japan, "The Hikari One Home Gigabit service will cost 5,460 (US$51.40) per month and provide an upstream and downstream connection at 1G bps"

Since most cable providers push customers to the $100 to $150 per month range, well it only is worse for Americans, not better. If you think its better, well their marketing works doesn't it.

If you can not get FTTH, only purchase DSL, do NOT purchase cable internet as they have always and will continue to always rip off consumers with higher prices for less service...its their business model, no matter what promises they have made over the years to provide Fiber. They will not unless forced to.

One day we may have it cheaper, but that day is not today...nor has it been for the last two decades. Here is a map that shows you were you can move to in order to get Fiber To The Home (FTTH). Well worth it if the bank took your home as those communities are creating better paying jobs faster than other communities in the US.

If you meet anybody from India ask him "What Is Your Caste?" If he answers it, then you're doomed. Because he has already injected Cancer into your society. Caste is like Cancer. It cannot be Cured. It has to be Cut-Off. http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Unfortunately that doesn't change the court rulings that have found the NSA and FBI actions that many find so disagreeable as being legal. As far as I have read they are complying with the law.

Since there is at least one ruling that finds the NSA's surveillance of US citizens as "probably unconstitutional", it remains to be seen if the NSA is actually complying with the law.

Yep, at least on the state level it was codified:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

AFAIK, Comcast is only throttling down Netflix, not fully blocking it.

And there was me thinking that Comcast agreed not to do this very thing when it bought NBC:

When it acquired NBC Universal in 2011, Comcast agreed to "net neutrality" conditions that prevent it from prioritizing its online content over a competitor such as Netflix. Comcast is expected to offer similar restrictions in its proposed merger with Time Warner Cable.

China is one of the biggest contributors to California's pollution problems.

Well... we're really not supposed to look. Nothing to see here, move along.

All is fine. After all... almost no one dies in those accidents even when they do happen.

September 18, 1980 â" At about 6:30 p.m., an airman conducting maintenance on a USAF Titan-II missile at Little Rock Air Force Base's Launch Complex 374-7 in Southside (Van Buren County), just north of Damascus, Arkansas, dropped a socket from a socket wrench, which fell about 80 feet (24 m) before hitting and piercing the skin on the rocket's first-stage fuel tank, causing it to leak. The area was evacuated. At about 3:00 a.m., on September 19, 1980, the hypergolic fuel exploded. The W53 warhead landed about 100 feet (30 m) from the launch complex's entry gate; its safety features operated correctly and prevented any loss of radioactive material. An Air Force airman was killed and the launch complex was destroyed.

And then... there are things like this, which is not on the list above because it was not a nuclear accident.
Only a regular accident and a malfunction that still required the military to try to stop a nuclear launch by parking an armored car on top of the silo.

And these were just misplaced.

tracking a person's car without a warrant is illegal, per the SCOTUS.

This case established that police can not electronically track a vehicle by a secretly installed GPS device without a warrant. To date, an officer is still allowed to monitor a vehicle operating on the public roadways.

So just what element is private about a plate openly displayed in public

What's private is the history of where that plate has been - tracking a person's car without a warrant is illegal, per the SCOTUS.

Shit, man, in these days of parallel construction it amazes me I have to respond to questions like this...

The false equivalence between tracking someone's location while they are in public and illegal search and seizure makes your comment hardly worth replying to.

It's not false equivalence, it's perfectly in line with the SCOTUS ruling that "tracking someone's location" constitutes a search.

Are you suggesting that when you are in a public park, being filmed by security cameras is a violation of your 4th amendment rights?

Now, you want to talk about false equivalence...

No wonder we plunged to 46th place on press freedoms...

Listen to this On The Media story or this article for details, but basically Reporters Without Borders changes its methodology every year, and the rankings are largely based on the perceptions of reporters within the respective countries, which is far from an objective measure. So as WP article states,

Most of the coverage is based on the premise that 2013 saw a sudden, alarming and perhaps unprecedented decline in media press freedom because the ranking dropped from the previous year. This is just bad data journalism for big two reasons. First, it confuses relative rankings with absolute scores – more on this later. Second, it ignores the fact that Reporters Without Borders has been raising and dropping the U.S. ranking for years.

I actually largely agree with your more abstract points, but it's worth pointing out that the entire press freedom ranking you cite is at best fairly misleading, and arguably entirely worthless. As the author of the article points out when interviewed on On The Media, Reporters Without Borders does some excellent work compiling statistics and incidents of press freedoms being impinged upon around the world. But their ranking system is best ignored.

The issue is that the methodology for the ranking is questionable, and the methodology changes from year to year. The exact same drop occurred in 2005, 2011, 2014. The issue about press freedom not being perfect still exists, but the story that things have changed is a false narrative.

Could be false narrative. Could be accurate. Nevertheless the ranking (or rather the significance) is worth thinking about.

When one bothers to actually look at the data, the rank for the United States is still higher than its ranking in 2006, 2007 and 2011. Since 2002, the United States press freedom has bounced back and forth between the 20s and 50s. This is not to say that there isn't merit to the deficits in press freedom that Reporters Without Borders points out; there are very legitimate concerns being raised about recent efforts by the current administration to crack down on leakers and whistleblowers. Yet because Reporters Without Borders is regularly changing their methodology, you can't really use the data to make a true comparison of any nation's change in rank beyond very broad generalizations. Here's a good story in the Washington Post that makes this point.

The issue is that the methodology for the ranking is questionable, and the methodology changes from year to year. The exact same drop occurred in 2005, 2011, 2014. The issue about press freedom not being perfect still exists, but the story that things have changed is a false narrative.

there's probably been a warrant issued too,

No probably about it.
This was the first hit on google
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-charges-snowden-with-espionage/2013/06/21/507497d8-dab1-11e2-a016-92547bf094cc_story.html
2013/06/21

Federal prosecutors have filed a criminal complaint against Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked a trove of documents about top-secret surveillance programs, and the United States has asked Hong Kong to detain him on a provisional arrest warrant, according to U.S. officials.

Snowden was charged with theft, âoeunauthorized communication of national defense informationâ and âoewillful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person,â according to the complaint. The last two charges were brought under the 1917 Espionage Act.

The headline should have been "US 'Plunges' to Where It Was Two Years Ago", since that's all that's happened here. The author of that article even calls himself out for falling prey to the temptation of link-baiting, since he wrote about the loss of freedoms back in 2012 when the numbers were the exact same as they are now. This time around, he questioned how the numbers could be the same as two years ago, so he looked at where the numbers were coming from and poked all sorts of holes in them instead.

According to this article, there are plenty of reasons to doubt these rankings, even if press freedom in the U.S. is worrying. And ranking changes like these are not new. Here are the U.S.' rankings over the last 10 years (there's a typo in their own press release, the U.S. actually fell 14 slots):

2004: 22
2005: 44
2006: 53
2007: 48
2008: 36
2009: 20
2010: 20
2011: 47
2012: 27
2013: 32
2014: 46

That seems...a bit inconsistent. Again, that's not to say there isn't plenty to worry about in the U.S., but I'd still take these rankings with a grain of salt.

The tea-party libertarians don't exactly refute the narcissistic, psychopathic, sadistic stereotype.

Just this week, Republican tea-party libertarian precious snowflake Senator Ted Cruz single-handedly almost caused the US to default on its debt:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

An action like that would have caused great harm to many Americans, whom he has no empathy for.

That's exactly narcissistic, psychopathic, and sadistic.

Really libertarians, if you don't want to be considered narcissistic, psychopathic, and sadistic, you'll have to behave in socialized ways that would show empathy towards your fellow citizens. That means it will cost you. You will have to pay a personal price to maintain socialization, since socialization is a personal expense.

In political structured form, we call this "taxes".

This is why we statists call you libertarians "precious snowflakes", because your narcissism, psychopathy, and sadism causes you to desocialize and make the mistaken assumption that society values you. The rest of society, the people with power over you, hardly cares about people that do not show empathy towards others, since people are territorial, and we have no interest in allowing you to live in our territory for free.

You have to pay those in power to live. Life isn't free, and it isn't about you.

Decide how you will pay us statist to allow you to live in our state.

Let’s see – you sister graduated at the top of her class and was a teacher? What is she doing now? And why are extrapolating from a single data point? That could be dangerous. But since you wanted evidence.

She's no longer on this plane of existence, but I get your point about small data sets.

The countries where pupils do best, such as Singapore, Finland and South Korea, draw all their teachers from the top third of the academic pool. In America three-quarters of teacher-training colleges accept students who graduate in the bottom half of their class.

http://www.economist.com/news/...

By the way, I have a pretty good idea what Special Ed teachers do, and I greatly appreciate what they do, but of the 40 or so that I have meet none of them graduated from the top of their class or from top schools. That’s my antidotal evidence.

Here's the problem: I looked up the group who did the "research" cited on that page, the National Council on Teacher Quality, and their credentials are shady at best. Some resources:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/ind...

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

An excerpt from the second link:

Several months ago, U.S. News & World Report announced that it planned to rank the nation’s schools of education and that it would do so with the assistance of the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ).

Since then, many institutions announced that they would not collaborate. Some felt that they had already been evaluated by other accrediting institutions like NCATE or TEAC; others objected to NCTQ’s methodology. As the debate rated, NCTQ told the dissenters that they would be rated whether they agreed or not, and if they didn’t cooperate, they would get a zero. The latest information that I have seen is that the ratings will appear this fall.

Rating schools as a zero because they refused to co-operate? Way to screw up your own results, NCTQ.

When a Republican does something that looks sane, it turns out to be either a crazy thing with sufficient spin on it (see the Climate Science bill) or plagiarized.

"Face it, the evidence is that the USA has no real interest in Assange." - that's bullshit. Even while denying that he's under indictment, the official who said it was only half-hearted in his denial: "Nothing has occurred so far," ( -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/... )

"So far" being the operative word. And that sounds like a lot more interest than none at all.

Washington Post's article confirms that:

"Comcast and Time Warner Cable don’t have overlapping markets, so antitrust regulators won’t view the merger with the same concerns they did with AT&T’s proposed bid with T-Mobile, experts say. That deal, which regulators rejected, would have eliminated a major national carrier and given consumers across the country fewer options."

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

anything the ex(yay!)atty general of virginia (of transvaginal ultrasound fame) is automatically suspect...

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

1. They (and their families/friends) are not on the list.They are not directly responsible for being "weak" on anything.

*ahem*

In support of stupidity I offer this in evidence.

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

If a man that powerful in the government takes 3 weeks to get his name off the no fly list you know it's fucked up.

And now folks you see why Lamar Smith wants to hobble the EPA.

Meanwhile in North Carolina you have 30 year Duke Energy vetran Governor Pat McCrory who has been using the power of the govt in NC to sheild Duke Energy from lawsuits as a result of massive pollution. Spilling things like arsenic, lead, mercury and other things into NC waterways. In every single lawsuit the McCrory administration intervened and shut the lawsuits down. Now you have the lastest massive spill

Was covered on Rachel Maddow's show last night (Tuesday, 2/11/14, A disastrous toxic spill broke NC interference for governor’s former firm) and was shocking.

officials at the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) invoked a provision in the federal Clean Water Act allowing them to step in as plaintiffs against Duke Energy when Duke was being sued by environmental activists over the toxic coal ash ponds at its facilities.

In N.C. for state residents (citizens) to sue, they have to give a 60 days written notice.

• ~ On day 58 of the 60 day notice, for the first spill, the DENR, Department of Environment and Natural Resources, stepped in and said we will handle it.
• ~ The group discovered a second Duke Energy plant was polluting and gave their 60 day notice that they intended to sue, on day 60 the DENR stepped in and said we will handle it.
• ~ The same NC Citizens group discovered a 3rd Duke site polluting and put in their 60 day notice to sue, you guessed it, on day 60 the DENR stepped in and said we will handle it (basically voiding the lawsuit).
• ~ All three sites continue to pollute the ground water (NC. citizen's drinking water) today with no attempts to clean anything up.
• ~ They Duke Energy were fined less than $100,000.00. I wonder how much the clean up will be and as with the oil companies if they will be paid twice. Usually these companies have another shell company to do the clean up and hide the extent of the damage. For the oil companies in the gulf research 'corexit', 'oil' and 'dispersants', you will see the similarity.

The state reached settlements worth a collective $99,000 for those incidents. (Duke Energy)

You see the new head of the DENR use to work for Duke Energy, when he took over the organization, he changed their charter to one of protecting corporate industry and changing regulations so that the industries would not run afoul of the legislation. And yes he is a Republican. And N.C. Governor is a Republican.

Amy Adams, resigned in November 2013, saying she was dissuaded from levying sanctions against companies like Duke since McCrory took office in 2010. Amy was interviewed by Rachel and it was extremely informative.

I would be very concerned for my health, the health of my children due to the state of my drinking water if I lived in North Carolina. Another fail of

If i don't like my black/muslim/spanish/different-in-some-way neighbors, or the boyfriend of the girl i want, i can just report them as pointing a laser to a passing aircraft. In the worst case i could say that I mistook a keychain for a laser pointer. In the best case, i will get $10.000, and could get rid of that neighbor because he will be victim of authorities/nsa confirmation bias.

And it could work in both ways, if you don't want that nasty redneck falsely accuse you, you can accuse him first. In any case, whats the worst that could happen if you call the police?

Okay, I'll bite on that one. Show me the government operated spyware/malware and that it's been used to illegally obtain data without a warrant on its own citizens? I'm no fool not to believe that it's not used as a weapon, i.e., Stuxnet. Shit, put up a web server out there and you'll have thousands of hacks daily from China, Eastern Europe and Russia all trying to hack into your system. The Internet isn't Mr. Rogers neighborhood, it's more like a dark back alley in Newark.

Any service you use on the Internet is trusting information to a third party. Even your posts here represent that you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy. Google has said that for any of their services you use as well. Do you use their javascript libraries? If so I'll bet there's little tidbits in there tracking you as well, the only thing is at least their honest about it, scumbags but honest scumbags.

Without any clear evidence of putting malware on citizens computers, I'd state that it's hearsay. One thing we have to remember is that Snowden and his friends in the press must keep themselves relevant and while I do believe a lot of material was obtained from the NSA et al some of it is absolutely ridiculous and looks made up. Look at this diagram. Does it look like it was made by a professional working in the NSA or by some guy who has an understanding of SSL edge termination? It has no depth of knowledge and could easily come out of a test for your CCXX certification. So while I believe most of the story, I think a lot of it is played the fuck out and either the citizens in the US, UK and around the world tell their government to stop this and protest it, nothing will change. Do I believe that the government is installing malware deliberately? It's possible but not probable on a large scale and if they were caught doing it without a warrant, then I'd believe a little more but don't keep falling for everything you read! I'll give you an example of the news can get out of hand and things can get made up because of hysteria.

And now folks you see why Lamar Smith wants to hobble the EPA.

Meanwhile in North Carolina you have 30 year Duke Energy vetran Governor Pat McCrory who has been using the power of the govt in NC to sheild Duke Energy from lawsuits as a result of massive pollution. Spilling things like arsenic, lead, mercury and other things into NC waterways. In every single lawsuit the McCrory administration intervened and shut the lawsuits down. Now you have the lastest massive spill

From what I recall reading, the US and Pakistan had long had an understanding that if the US found Bin Laden it would come after him.

If the raid to kill Bin Laden had gone badly it would have been an international incident, but that's about it... more than likely. Jimmy Carter survived his debacle at Desert One.

1. Awareness has been achieved:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/02/07/slashdot-creator-on-redesign-backlash-every-slashdot-change-met-with-objections/

But the interpretation is "...the vocal population of a community driven site like Slashdot might be the most important group, but they are typically also the smallest class of users."

So there you go, a dismissal & marginalization of core contributing members and a fatalistic welcoming of a watered down marginalization of the community. This is an attractive position for Staff Contributors to be in now see? They get to promote stories while 'audience' submissions can get back row. See how it's working?

ps: Anon because rushed & just passed by your comment, typing fast for you.

The Washington Post interviewed Taco about the Beta. Apparently he's not very sympathetic.

I posted some more thoughts on this on reddit(I feel funny), but basically I'm getting the impression that neither Taco, the Slashdot editors, or especially Dice every care very much for the Slashdot commenters. It would explain quite a few things over the years I guess. I honestly feel like the (original) Internet is being put back in a box these days. Get off my lawn, etc, etc.

P.S.
Is Slashdot deleting posts about the Beta? Didn't this site used to not delete posts?

From 1940-1950 approximately 100% of programmers were women

You mean the time when "programming" meant "transcribing equations into wiring and/or short binary sequences", and was considered a menial task, its perceived importance and prestige paling in comparison with the "actually difficult job" of designing the computer hardware? That sort of reminded me of this. Also, Washington Post claims: "In 1967, when Cosmo’s “The Computer Girls” article ran, 11 percent of computer science majors were women. In the late 1970s, the percentage of women in the field approached and exceeded the same figure we are applauding today: 25 percent. The portion of women earning computer science degrees continued to rise steadily, reaching its peak — 37 percent — in 1984." So no, apparently, never a majority, but still reasonable figures unless you're a proponent of worker quota.

As interesting as that was, this is the story GP referred to.

Here be the sad story.

If you meet anybody from India ask him "What Is Your Caste?" If he answers it, then you're doomed. Because he has already injected Cancer into your society. Caste is like Cancer. It cannot be Cured. It has to be Cut-Off.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Man, maximum trolling by Slashdot's own userbase, the likes of which even teh GNAA couldn't accomplish in their wildest dreams! Shit, I would have never predicted this! Good job, fellas, good job - though its sad to see Slashdot die by its own hand.

On a related note, Rob Malda is saying that you're all a loud but vocal minority of bitches and moaners, and he too is dismissing you as a lunatic fringe.

I am waiting for the day when I may breathe again, posting under my own username.

-- Ethanol-fueled

If you meet anybody from India ask him "What Is Your Caste?" If he answers it, then you're doomed. Because he has already injected Cancer into your society. Caste is like Cancer. It cannot be Cured. It has to be Cut-Off.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

I'm wondering if you actually read the NY Times article you linked to, and have you read anything since? stunning-new-report-undermines-central-gop-obamacare-claim

Wat? Last time I checked, Nebraska didn't have a rain forest. Aside from the climate alarmists worried about emissions, the real environmental concern that people in the Midwest have about the pipeline is that it will be laid directly over the Ogalalla aquifer which provides fresh drinking water and irrigation for a large portion of the country. As well, there is little to no direct or indirect economic benefit to the states through which the pipeline will flow - and as many others have mentioned here, will likely result in the increased price of domestic oil.

While it's debatable how far reaching the effects of multiple nearly guaranteed leaks and spills will have on the aquifer over the years, local communities will have to deal with wells and irrigation contaminated by such leaks and spills, and as we've seen with BP, getting the companies involved to provide recompense is no easy matter.

We hold the purse strings AND the votes. Either one alone is enough to eliminate the TSA. But we have said, en-mass, that the TSA is acceptable in our society. So it will continue.

wrong, WRONG, WRONG!. there are good reasons that there is a 91% incumbency rate. one reason is unfettered gerrymandering which completely subverts democracy.

There are many reasons why TSA will not be reformed. High incumbancy rate is one of them. But your citation of gerrymandering as a major problem for TSA reform is ridiculous here.

Yes, gerrymandering might be relevant to TSA issues, if one of the major parties were actually against the TSA. That's simply not true. So, even if we swapped parties to put all Democrats or all Republicans in federal office, there's no proof that they would end the TSA at all. Gerrymandering may protect party interests, but your point is moot in the case of the TSA.

Also, I don't know what your gerrymandering point has to do with the Senate or Presidency. Both of those have to approve of changes in government too, and they approved of the TSA without gerrymandering....

democracy is dead

Yes, spend some time reading your own link:

Gallup found that 46 percent of respondents said they approved of "the way the representative from your congressional district is handling his or her job" while 41 percent disapproved. That's in spite of the fact that overall Congressional approval was at just 16 percent in the same survey and hasn't been higher than 24 percent since the start of 2011.

In other words, "Congress sucks, but my guy's an okay dude!"

That's why there's a high incumbency rate. Gerrymandering is much lower on the list of causes, and less relevant to TSA. You want reform? You need to get people to realize that their own representatives are PART of Congress, and they need to vote them out when Congress isn't working well.

How is this modded 4+ Insightful?! It's ignorant, hypocritical bollocks!

"Women, gays, Muslims & atheists" are no more special interest groups than bible-bashing white males. And how the fuck do you make "accommodations" for atheists? Not force them to sing words of praise to your special interest deity?
On an organisational level, religion should have no place in military procedures. If you're having to make "accommodations" for people absent of any religion, then there's something horribly wrong with the procedures of your military.
And how the hell can you complain that atheists DON'T have to follow your religious doctrine, AND at the same time complain that other religious groups get to follow theirs?

A recent article shows that the Pentagon is reconsidering uniform requirements to permit beards and turbans for Muslims.

Suddenly - we are courting Muslims...

Under pressure from Sikhs, the Pentagon has publicly clarified its existing procedures to permit certain practices "as long as the practices do not interfere with military discipline, order or readiness."
And not just that, they have to go the through the procedures to request permission for every individual deployment.

A number of highly decorated professionals have been drummed out of service for the crime of failing to wholeheartedly support the gay agenda.

So it's OK for people to break with agreed military procedures & speak out against a minority, but it's not for a minority to request to do the same? Go fuck yourself.

...often enough, accusations of sexual harassment and/or assault are political tools used against good soldiers. It is impossible to even guess at the numbers of such instances, but I know for a fact that it happens. Other times, a female soldier who is busted for drugs or other infractions tries to turn the tables by accusing supervisors and investigators of sexual harassment. Again - it's impossible to even guess at the numbers, but it happens.

Given the accuracy of your comments so far, I'll choose to take these self-professed baseless assumptions with a pinch of salt. You don't have enough information to even make a guess, but you "know" it happens? Do you have *anything* to back this up?

...the fact is, our military is being improperly used to advance a number of political agendas.

Something the whole world would probably agree with you on.

[/RANT]

The TSA exists because Americans tolerate it.

It's that simple.

We hold the purse strings AND the votes. Either one alone is enough to eliminate the TSA. But we have said, en-mass, that the TSA is acceptable in our society. So it will continue.

wrong, WRONG, WRONG!. there are good reasons that there is a 91% incumbency rate. one reason is unfettered gerrymandering which completely subverts democracy.

democracy is dead

Senator Tom Coburn described the situation well when he said, "In several election cycles in recent history, more incumbents died in office than lost reelection bids."

Your concluding statement isn't accurate at all.

The "mandatory" spending on entitlement programs dwarfs military spending: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U...

We have a spending problem, but it's not limited just to the military budget, and it is simply not true to say that the military spending "dwarfs" the rest of the debt components. In fact, the truth is quite the opposite.

This has a nice visual breakdown of federal income and outlay: http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Also, refer to the GAO's citizen's report for FY 2012: http://www.fms.treas.gov/fr/12... chart 3 is a nice pie chart representation of spending, please note that for FY 2012 HHS and SSA together ("entitlement spending") were 45% of the total federal budget, military spending was 21%, 30% if you include the VA.

Yes, we need to cut military spending and reduce our involvement in foreign conflicts, but that's just one part of the work that needs to be done. We need to reduce spending in all of these areas.

Customer and Border Patrol should stick to enforcing customs laws AT THE BORDER. Once it's entered the country they should have no authority. We've also seen them trying to enforce copyright, as in the recent Google Glass case. They're already out of control at the borders with their warrantless searches, their authority should be rolled back, not expanded.

I don't want to detract from your otherwise very insightful post - you're spot on in describing what is probably the biggest threat to American democracy. I'd just like to point out:

I'm mad a Obama for being a gigantic NSA allowing, drone killing, not holding anyone accountable as the head of the executive branch, why didn't he just push to extend medicare all the way down as an option that people could have bought into as a cheap alternative to private insurance that would have had to improve past that basic level Jebus he didn't even try!

He did try, most definitely. The first "Obamacare" proposal was very close to what you and I would have dreamed of (remember the "public option"?). It immediately got vilified and shot down in congress by an overwhelming opposition of health industry shills including a good number of democrats, and was never spoken of again. Months later, the monster that is now referred to as "Obamacare" was born, in an attempt to get at least something through the health insurance lobby that would make life better for "the little guy", as you put it. Whether this attempt was a total failure or a marginal success is for history to decide, but either way, it falls far short of really fixing the ailing American health care system. Obama basically suffered a few spectacular defeats against the all-powerful special interests on capitol hill early on, and "hope" and "change" gradually died off. That's not to justify the drone or NSA stuff, but just to say that despite his flaws, he's not all bad and probably would have effected significant change for good, if he would have been allowed to. Nuance.

As it is, he lost all his political capital by wanting to do things his own way, and has been a lame duck, hands and feet bound by corporate interests, for quite a while. At the same time, the democratic party quietly dropped the pretense of defending the "the little guy" more than the all-out corporate whores on the other side of the isle. This is not pretty and very frustrating to watch, so people start blaming Obama even for the problems that are not his fault.

I'm sure you personally know quite a lot of people who are living from paycheck to paycheck and/or are living on welfare (which by the way is also only possible because of cheap oil). Those people just didn't exist back then because they could not survive the winters.

You... pretty much don't know anything about the labor conditions surrounding the industrial revolution, do you? Living paycheck to paycheck is an improvement on what people in the 19th century had to deal with. Try being unable to feed your children, even with them working 60+ hrs a week. Consider that they had debtor's prisons back then. You think these people had better finances than people today? We at least have a minimum wage.

Also, you might want to read up on the effects of poverty and deprivation on decision making. In many cases, it's poverty that causes lower intelligence, not purely vice versa.