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That's a much better example. Though I am having troubles finding examples of and Army C130. Perhaps you mean Airforce or Navy/Marines? Not that its a reliable resource, but an old Yahoo Answers page suggests there are no Army C130s.

I should point out that Austerity (putting the Budget Deficit above all) doesn't just mean cutting services, it also means increasing taxes and creating new taxes. In Cyprus they recently proposed a tax where they would just go into your bank account and take a percentage. This was done to pay for a deficit.

So, in the short run, there will be a combination of cutting and taxing to pay down the deficit (whether it will work or not depends on whether you think the shrinkage to the economy will increase the deficit more than the revenue generation can pay it down), but after all cutting has been done and only politically hardened targets remain for cutting, deficit reduction will eventually be imposed purely by new taxes and tax increases.

I do not have large batteries that will need to be recycled or tossed into a landfill next year.

This idea that hybrid batteries need to be replaced every year is a thoroughly debunked urban legend. I drove to the office this morning in a Ford Escape Hybrid that has 70,000 miles and is 5 years overdue for a battery replacement, by your count.

And out of curiosity, what's wrong with recycling a battery?

We're not saying that Bush acted to line his own pockets. I'm sure he didn't. Cheney might've been different, because he was ex-chair at Halliburton which of course became a big player in Iraqi "reconstruction". But that's beside the point. The point is that these were two oil industry CEOs who brought the point of view of the oil industry into the White House. Get rid of Saddam, who of course was a tyrant, and the oil will pay for the reconstruction of the country many times over, was their POV.

Those two never mentioned taking out Saddam before the election. Back then they ran as moderates.

It's an exaggeration to say Bush used 9/11 as a pretext, but let's put it this way... Bush used the moment - the aftermath of the Afganistan campaign, which appeared at the time to have been successful - in the same way that Obama has tried (mostly unsuccessfully so far) to make Sandy Hook a turning point for gun control. It's not that they wanted the tragedy to happen, or would not have done everything possible to prevent it had they seen it coming. But once it did, they saw that there was momentum in public opinion that would dissipate as the years went by.

Bush in 2003 had two big advantages over Obama in 2013:

1) in 2003 Republicans controlled both houses of Congress, as well as the White House.

2) Fox News. Fox News has much bigger market share than MSNBC, and in 2003 their talking heads were on night after night after night drumming up support for the war, like college freshman boys planning a night out chasing coeds at bars. Yes, I realize that the right likes to lump in all other networks as "liberal mouthpieces", but that is only in contrast with Fox News and talk radio.

When Tony Snow died of some illness I have to admit that's what I remembered about him... he was one of the big Iraqi war cheerleaders on Fox.

This man remembers what happened, and paid the price.

It will take people's minds off of the black hole in America's treasury and the market which surprise, seems to have topped out and will probably work its way back again like it has been doing for the past almost 20 years or so, trading in more or less the same range. Funny, everyone on the street seems to be getting excited about the stock market again. I have a look at the calendar and think oh look, already 5 years since 2008... I give it a year or so. War would change this, send the price of oil up even more for a while, and make the 0.1% even richer. Soon we'll be seeing our first trillionaires. How much of all those freshly printed US dollars have made their way to your pocket though?

Philippine is unsafe and the economy is slightly better than India. I have been warned not to carry and show a DSLR in the streets and make sure to return home before the dark (unless I have a car or use a safe taxi). Even Indonesia is safer and it has a better economy than Philippine.

Singapore is a small island with a very competitive and stressful society which is very racist at the same time (against non-Singaporean Chinese, other Chinese won't count).

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/comment--xenophobia-and-the-jollibee-backlash-153822168.html

Malaysia is relatively safe , very cheap with friendly people (at least with non-Chinese). You may also give thought to Thailand.

Once you have a permanent position or a fixed term position, the employer can't simply say "you don't have a job anymore, I'm not paying you past Monday".

I can tell you've never worked for a company before, because there's this little thing called "at will" employment.

Let me direct you to something more at your particular mental level.

I'll let you have the last word because I really don't care what a gradeschooler thinks about employment.

Yes. What a disappointment indeed. I'll just leave this here. http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=AAPL

I find it interesting he was initially trained as a chemist. "Bergoglio taught literature, psychology, philosophy and theology before taking over as Buenos Aires archbishop in 1998."

http://news.yahoo.com/francis-first-pope-americas-193844474.html

"Bergoglio often rode the bus to work, cooked his own meals and regularly visited the slums that ring Argentina's capital. He considers social outreach, rather than doctrinal battles, to be the essential business of the church.

He accused fellow church leaders of hypocrisy and forgetting that Jesus Christ bathed lepers and ate with prostitutes."

http://news.yahoo.com/francis-first-pope-americas-193844474.html

Why do some people call Wal-Mart "Wally World"? http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081023123342AAjStgd

[O]f the three search engines only Google will actually use SSL, even if you go to http://google.com/ the form is submitted over https. The other two not only won't do that, they will *downgrade* you to http even if you explicitly navigate to https://yahoo.com/ or https://bing.com/. Iranians can easily use DPI to spy on Yahoo and Bing users, only Google presents a problem. So I'm not surprised Bing didn't get blocked, it's not clear to me why Yahoo did.

https://duckduckgo.com/ and https://ixquick.com/ both support SSL/TLS. The latter allows viewing searched content through their embedded HTTPS proxy service.

This seems inconsistent.

So, of the three search engines only Google will actually use SSL, even if you go to http://google.com/ the form is submitted over https. The other two not only won't do that, they will *downgrade* you to http even if you explicitly navigate to https://yahoo.com/ or https://bing.com/. Iranians can easily use DPI to spy on Yahoo and Bing users, only Google presents a problem. So I'm not surprised Bing didn't get blocked, it's not clear to me why Yahoo did.

The only explanation i see is that Iranian gov't is stupid - DPI is too hard, let's hijack the domains or blackhole a couple AS and go shopping (or shooting, or praying to almighty allah, or whatever). As to why Bing was left out, it's either
a) Iranian gov't is stupid, they were just unaware of Bing's existence. Unlikely.
b) Bing just doesn't work well enough in Arabic for the gov't to care. Also unlikely, given that Yahoo is powered by Bing and it got banned.
c) they contacted Microsoft and reached some kind of a deal where Microsoft bends over backwards but doesn't get banned. getting caught dealing with Iranian gov't is a big risk for Microsoft, but the potential reward of being the only game in a not-so-small country of 75 million people (mostly young and active adults) is just too high.

hmm...

Not exactly "States Secrets" labeling, rather an "obsessive information control" about environmental issues.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/blogs/canada-politics/canadian-scientists-continue-muzzled-harper-government-234902614.html

What SC validation? According to Wikipedia, it's the opposite: "the Supreme Court has clearly and repeatedly confirmed that the border search exception applies only at international borders and their functional equivalent" and there's a link to such a ruling from 1973.

http://voices.yahoo.com/supreme-court-checkpoint-rulings-diminish-fourth-8598639.html

In Martinez-Fuerte the court went on to add that while the stop does infringe upon a motorist' right to free passage without interruption, it is a minimal infringement. They also went on to state that a warrant for such a minor infringement was not necessary, despite the Fourth Amendments declaration that no search or seizure of a person or thing occur without a warrant issued by a detached neutral magistrate.

Oh really now? So I missed a number and Obamacare is going to cost the US over $700 million per day.

Don't like it? Fork it. It's like the typical copycat bullshit China usually does, only better. Others have already taken the initiative:

http://news.yahoo.com/three-android-forks-exist-today-135000744.html

you probably won't look for it, so here's something to get you started...

http://voices.yahoo.com/the-purpose-us-government-per-constitution-283413.html

in a nutshell: defense, freedom, welfare, order

http://www.newser.com/story/125261/mexican-helicopter-mistakes-airports-lands-in-texas.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2023633/Mexican-military-helicopter-soldiers-lands-airport-Texas--MISTAKE.html
http://www.chron.com/news/nation-world/article/Mexican-military-helicopter-lands-in-Laredo-by-2082188.php
https://doctorbulldog.wordpress.com/2010/03/12/mexican-military-helicopter-spotted-flying-over-texas/
http://texasliberal.wordpress.com/2010/04/03/mexican-helicopters-flying-over-texas-would-obama-respond-to-mexican-invasion-with-use-of-force/
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread557760/pg1
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110905191138AAP32Xj
http://www.valleycentral.com/news/story.aspx?id=429229#.US-m5WJ2n4Y

BTW, the idea of a Mexican helicopter "mistakenly" landing 16 miles away from its target is utterly ridiculous. No competent pilot would ever make such a mistake; that's why they have GPS in aircraft now, not to mention basic navigational skills and fuel-burn calculations (plus the Rio Grande river, which is obvious from the air) rule this excuse out.

Apple still maintains their own Java 6 until EOLed

FYI, Java 6 EOLed now, Feb. 2013, no longer supported by Apple

For your information: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5666 :"Multiple vulnerabilities existed in Java 1.6.0_37, the most serious of which may allow an untrusted Java applet to execute arbitrary code outside the Java sandbox. Visiting a web page containing a maliciously crafted untrusted Java applet may lead to arbitrary code execution with the privileges of the current user. These issues were addressed by updating to Java version 1.6.0_41. For Mac OS X v10.6 systems, these issues were addressed in Java for Mac OS X v10.6 Update 13"

Apple patched this vulnerability on feb 19th 2013. After systems had been compromised. Macs which had been upgraded from previous versions where Java was installed *still* has Java installed. Apple obviously felt obliged (as in "egg on their heads obliged") to patch this one. OS X systems all over the world have been compromised because of Apples approach to security, especially Java security.

This payload was Mac specific, and Mac computers were the only one affected.

Well, that's not what TFA says, nor any article I've read about it... but what possible reason would you have for making shit up?

Oh? Try read this one (or just the excerpt):

http://news.yahoo.com/microsofts-macs-hacked-java-attack-045502922.html : "Even more significantly, it wasn't Microsoft's Windows computers that were hacked so much as it was Microsoft's Macs."

Glad I could help.

Related: Death Penalty for Atheists in Iran!

--libman

That is a proverbial drop in a buck of water compared to those killed by Islamists in Iraq alone, per year, for years, and recently.

If you mean the various crusades over the years, there were 15,000 to 25,000 men on both sides, over decades, according to the link below. Again, a drop in the bucket.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20071221224301AAB7M3H

Well looks like you both got it wrong. The average weight of a NASCAR car is about 3400 lbs. Secondly there is no power steering on a NASCAR car. Power steering robs horsepower and adds weight. At 200 miles per hour, it does indeed take muscle to control the car, as well as quick reflexes. This isn't like a Sunday drive to church where you can be half asleep.

[citation needed] everyone knows there's power steering in NASCAR in fact I think it's required. But of course we have NASCAR fans trying to assert NASCAR awesomeness here so lies will abound.

That's really not true. Yahoo started out as the best directory of web content in its time. Then Google came along and people stopped using hierarchical directories in favor of free-form search. I don't even know where you can find directories now, out side of dmoz. Well http://www.dmoz.org/ says "powered by AOL Search" and "Copyright Netscape 2103." Hey look at this , Yahoo! still has the directory! Link! http://dir.yahoo.com/ Altavista seems not to.

Um, no.

Summary: the 27th amendment prevents Congress from altering its own salary during the same session, and the sequestration deal was originally struck to apply to the same session.

So, our crongresscritters will continue to get paid as they avoid doing the job they were hired to do.

dog bites an intruder in all 50 states

Wow, that dog and his owner must get around, not to mention having the most horrible luck.

Still, google for "state law dog bit intruder"

Washington - Dog owners in Washington are responsible for keeping their dogs in an enclosed area. If someone enters the enclosed area during a burglary or while committing some other crime, they could be responsible for any dog attack that takes place on the property. (I blame the wishy-washy wording on it being a lawyer advice website.).
Generic for many states - In most states, dog owners aren't liable to trespassers who are injured by a dog. But the rules are convoluted and vary significantly from state to state.
Same basic rules, different site - Common law holds a person who owns what he knows to be a 'dangerous dog' liable regardless of a person's status, but most common law states are 'reluctant' to find liability on behalf of a trespasser/criminal.

You must not have been searching very effectively if you spent "2 hours" searching, I found these sights in less time than it took to compose this post.

Not exactly.

Canada: http://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100310200119AASqYaB

U.S.: http://www.legalzoom.com/us-law/privacy/when-can-police-search (with legal citations)

For the record, nowhere in my comment did I advocate taxing the wealthy at 100% of their income. That would be incredibly stupid, for exactly the reasons you stated. No one in their right mind would advocate a 100% income tax -- it's just that people tend to oversimplify their reasoning, like this:

"A 100% income tax is clearly worse than a 0% income tax, therefore a 0% income tax is optimal in all cases."

Just because no tax may be better than a 100% tax, it doesn't follow that the benefit of income tax decreases linearly as the income tax goes from 0 to 100 percent. There's a point somewhere between 0 and 100 percent that's optimal for the economy, and economic performance data over the last half century or so would seem to indicate that we're below that point at the moment.

Here:

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/signal/does-28-top-marginal-tax-rate-mean-175706337.html#3INcoOV

The article claims that there's absolutely no connection between a higher marginal tax rate and GDP growth. A closer look at that graph reveals that the article in question doesn't even go far enough -- If you draw a regression line in the GDP growth data (so as to smooth out the bumps of a typical economic cycle) you'll notice that overall GDP growth has actually *decreased* slightly as marginal tax rates have decreased.

If the data is any indication (and it probably is), raising taxes on the wealthy would have little or no effect on our economic growth, *and* it would be a big step toward eliminating the deficit.

Next up: lawsuits over low grades. We can only hope this is thrown out.

Hi Mrs AC shill? How is the pay from MSFT these days? in case you want to know what gave it away its the fact that you said Win 8 "launched" only 2 days ago. We all know that is a crock of shit but MSFT in its memos have been calling the release of Surface pro a "relaunch" of Win 8 so only those that are following the "reboot" theory, which is pretty much confined to Redmond, are buying that bullshit.

I mean do I REALLY have to wallpaper this page with all the figures showing win 8 has been bombing since it flopped onto the market in Oct, how the MSFT team is trying to blame OEMs for not building a pile of $1000 WinTabs that the OEMs rightly pointed out would sell about as well as the few $1000 Tablets they had which is to say none at all, so they would have ended up in the same warehouse the failed ultrabooks is now rotting in. I can also of course paste link after link of OEMs saying the same thing, win 8 is a flop that makes the Vista launch look like Win95, and of course the press have dubbed it "Windows Frankenstein" and written articles that say "Windows 8 yes its THAT bad". and even the tech writers are uninstalling it. Of course some of us and some tech sites pointed out this would happen awhile ago because it ignores even basic user conventions. while giving ZERO context or even hints as to WTF the user is supposed to do. in my own experience this is what I saw in my shop only with more frustration and cursing involved.

So if you need more links Mrs AC shill please feel free to ask, not like anything I've been saying is exactly new or radical. Nice thing about speaking the truth, you can provide plenty of citations. and just for the record i have been a Windows user and seller since 3.1 and there have only been TWO, count 'em two, times I've not stayed with and sold a version of Windows. First was WinME which was inferior in every way to Win98, the second is Windows 8. Yes I ran Vista and sold Vista units until I saw it was gonna take MSFT ages to fix the bugs I kept running into but with both winME and Win 8 the experience was just too nasty for me to dump on users, I'm sorry but they sucked the big wet titty.

Citations provided:

Ron Paul's Hypocrisy on Earmarks, Pork-Barrel Spending

Ron Paul, Big-Government Libertarian

Two of the four fans standing in line for Florida Marlins tickets were sent away after the team announced the game was sold out.

Your numbers don't add up. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/number-ipads-sold-apple-quarter-201153619.html

I see your cherry picked chart and raise you a much more relevant one...

Maybe he meant how it's down almost 90% from 5 years ago.

While you are learning about Amazon, you might want to check BB's stock price...

BBRY up 100% in 6 months. I think I missed your point?

That's because religion programs people to be ignorant of science. According to the xtian bible the Earth is flat and sun revolves around the Earth. The Koran also teaches that.Science has proved both to be false Speaking of the sun pagans are also taught to be ignorant of science and the quote "The light of a hundred stars cannot equal the light of the moon." proves just that. What is the fucking sun then if if it is not a star? Without the light from the sun "a star" there would be no light from the moon at all. Just more reasons why the human race disparately needs to outgrow the global mental illness called religion in order to grow.

Again, for each company, no matter how big or how small, the top five executive compensation is public. All the remaining compensation are confidential.

Again, for each company, no matter how big or how small, the top five executive compensation is public. All the remaining compensation are confidential.

Again, for each company, no matter how big or how small, the top five executive compensation is public. All the remaining compensation are confidential.

The fact that MSFT had to cut their Surface order in half [bgr.com] should be a surprise to nobody

I've seen you post this at least a dozen times. Every time you start a rant about Surface, you invariably bring up this unsubstantiated claim from unnamed Eastern component suppliers. After this "rumor" hit the web, Microsoft actually increased retail distribution, said they're increasing production, are increasing availability to more countries, and said they're expanding the product lineup. Together, these point to a completely different direction than your stale, 3 month old rumor.

You're starting to sound like a broken record.

Hell even with this, is it 23GB in base 2 like the OS, or is it base 10 like the manufacturers?

It's base 2.

all those people getting home and finding none of the Windows software they've accumalated for years will run on the damned thing, THAT is what is gonna make this into a megaflop.

All the software they've accumulated over the years WILL run on the Surface Pro. That's the entire point of this device. It runs full Windows 8 on an Intel Core i5. You don't seem to know much about this product you constantly are blasting. Even 23GB is enough for any application I've come across, but this can be expanded to 30+ GB by removing the recovery partition. This is the same you'd get with a Macbook Air at 64GB. You can even expand storage easily with an SD card.

Wow plus starcraft, 36gb. your point?

If people stop running red lights, you then make no money.

It then follows that you have to figure out ways to get people to run red lights again.

This is the major moral problem with trying to tie the law into money. The idea of fines is sound, but the idea of counting on the money from fines is not.

In my area, we have for profit prisons. What ever could go wrong? A company must make more money each accounting cycle, so the pressure is tremendous. There are limits to efficiency, so eventually you need more prisoners. the results can be nightmarish.

And in the states in Pennsylvania, that is exactly what happened. There were two judges who were prosecuted for sending teenagers to for profit prisons, and getting kickbacks. These teenagers had transgressions that were pretty mild. One young woman was sentenced to a wilderness camp for mocking her assistant principle - not even a crime!

http://voices.yahoo.com/former-judge-faces-corruption-trial-scranton-federal-7853240.html

http://articles.cnn.com/2009-02-23/justice/pennsylvania.corrupt.judges_1_detention-judges-number-of-juvenile-offenders?_s=PM:CRIME

Currently, between about US$600 per capita average is spent in the USA on a combination of social security, welfare, unemployment, and public schooling. So, that is quite a bit of the way towards US$2000/month per person (which times about 313 million people times twelve months a year would about half of the current US GDP of about US$15 trillion per year). A basic income could replace all those other things. So, one just has to find the rest through taxes, royalties on public assets like the spectrum or minerals on public lands, social credit related to the creation of new money through the banking system as needed (the issue of who gets the money first), and so on. Or, we could start with a lower amount like US$1000 per person per month, which would be easy to get pretty close to by, say, cutting a bunch of defense spending or farm subsidies. Why typical farm subsidies hurt most US Americans:
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html

You're throwing around conclusions about investments without giving any specific numbers, so I really can't evaluate the rest of what you are suggesting. The numbers for such a basic income add up as far as I look at them. As above, your numbers don't add up given I've outlined how this proposal is just for one half the US GDP. That leaves a GDP of around the US 1995 GDP for people to compete about, and that was enough to motivate many people back then. Also, people have still invested in the past even when there was a 90%+ top-tier tax on income and capital gains.

Also, please be clear when talking about wealth whether you are talking about paper money (of which there can be an arbitrary amount) or real physical wealth (which is related to how you use the productive capacity of a nation for either consumer goods like cosmetics or producer goods like robots or military items like weapons).

Here is the bottom line. In a couple decades, unless you are in a very small number of occupations, your job will be replaced by a robot or an AI. Even most investors will find it impossible to compete with huge automated trading systems. So, if you oppose fixing the inequality now, think about how much harder it will be to fix in a couple decades when you and your family and everyone you know is destitute because you can't "compete" with a robot or AI that never takes sick time, never makes a careless mistake, never goes on strike, and so on.

Even the mainstream is starting to wake up to this:
http://news.yahoo.com/ap-impact-recession-tech-kill-middle-class-jobs-051306434--finance.html
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/practically-human-smart-machines-job-052642993--finance.html
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/smart-machines-create-world-without-051025381--finance.html

Here is a list of possibilities I put together for dealing with this (of which a basic income is only one of many options, not all of which are as pleasant):
http://pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html

Currently, between about US$600 per capita average is spent in the USA on a combination of social security, welfare, unemployment, and public schooling. So, that is quite a bit of the way towards US$2000/month per person (which times about 313 million people times twelve months a year would about half of the current US GDP of about US$15 trillion per year). A basic income could replace all those other things. So, one just has to find the rest through taxes, royalties on public assets like the spectrum or minerals on public lands, social credit related to the creation of new money through the banking system as needed (the issue of who gets the money first), and so on. Or, we could start with a lower amount like US$1000 per person per month, which would be easy to get pretty close to by, say, cutting a bunch of defense spending or farm subsidies. Why typical farm subsidies hurt most US Americans:
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html

You're throwing around conclusions about investments without giving any specific numbers, so I really can't evaluate the rest of what you are suggesting. The numbers for such a basic income add up as far as I look at them. As above, your numbers don't add up given I've outlined how this proposal is just for one half the US GDP. That leaves a GDP of around the US 1995 GDP for people to compete about, and that was enough to motivate many people back then. Also, people have still invested in the past even when there was a 90%+ top-tier tax on income and capital gains.

Also, please be clear when talking about wealth whether you are talking about paper money (of which there can be an arbitrary amount) or real physical wealth (which is related to how you use the productive capacity of a nation for either consumer goods like cosmetics or producer goods like robots or military items like weapons).

Here is the bottom line. In a couple decades, unless you are in a very small number of occupations, your job will be replaced by a robot or an AI. Even most investors will find it impossible to compete with huge automated trading systems. So, if you oppose fixing the inequality now, think about how much harder it will be to fix in a couple decades when you and your family and everyone you know is destitute because you can't "compete" with a robot or AI that never takes sick time, never makes a careless mistake, never goes on strike, and so on.

Even the mainstream is starting to wake up to this:
http://news.yahoo.com/ap-impact-recession-tech-kill-middle-class-jobs-051306434--finance.html
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/practically-human-smart-machines-job-052642993--finance.html
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/smart-machines-create-world-without-051025381--finance.html

Here is a list of possibilities I put together for dealing with this (of which a basic income is only one of many options, not all of which are as pleasant):
http://pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html

Currently, between about US$600 per capita average is spent in the USA on a combination of social security, welfare, unemployment, and public schooling. So, that is quite a bit of the way towards US$2000/month per person (which times about 313 million people times twelve months a year would about half of the current US GDP of about US$15 trillion per year). A basic income could replace all those other things. So, one just has to find the rest through taxes, royalties on public assets like the spectrum or minerals on public lands, social credit related to the creation of new money through the banking system as needed (the issue of who gets the money first), and so on. Or, we could start with a lower amount like US$1000 per person per month, which would be easy to get pretty close to by, say, cutting a bunch of defense spending or farm subsidies. Why typical farm subsidies hurt most US Americans:
http://www.seriouseats.com/2007/11/the-subsidized-food-pyramid.html

You're throwing around conclusions about investments without giving any specific numbers, so I really can't evaluate the rest of what you are suggesting. The numbers for such a basic income add up as far as I look at them. As above, your numbers don't add up given I've outlined how this proposal is just for one half the US GDP. That leaves a GDP of around the US 1995 GDP for people to compete about, and that was enough to motivate many people back then. Also, people have still invested in the past even when there was a 90%+ top-tier tax on income and capital gains.

Also, please be clear when talking about wealth whether you are talking about paper money (of which there can be an arbitrary amount) or real physical wealth (which is related to how you use the productive capacity of a nation for either consumer goods like cosmetics or producer goods like robots or military items like weapons).

Here is the bottom line. In a couple decades, unless you are in a very small number of occupations, your job will be replaced by a robot or an AI. Even most investors will find it impossible to compete with huge automated trading systems. So, if you oppose fixing the inequality now, think about how much harder it will be to fix in a couple decades when you and your family and everyone you know is destitute because you can't "compete" with a robot or AI that never takes sick time, never makes a careless mistake, never goes on strike, and so on.

Even the mainstream is starting to wake up to this:
http://news.yahoo.com/ap-impact-recession-tech-kill-middle-class-jobs-051306434--finance.html
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/practically-human-smart-machines-job-052642993--finance.html
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/smart-machines-create-world-without-051025381--finance.html

Here is a list of possibilities I put together for dealing with this (of which a basic income is only one of many options, not all of which are as pleasant):
http://pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.html

I just wanted to point out some really obvious things

There is an wide chasm between "Non compos mentis" and "mental health issues". Note that the 2nd term isn't "mental health disorder" it's "mental health issues".

How will "mental health issue" be defined for this purpose? Is a prescription for antidepressants sufficient for gun confiscation, or does it require a diagnosis of an actual disorder. Will a judge be involved in the ruling, or will the police make the determination? Will it be "confiscate first, check later"?

Will a doctor's word - patient "X" is on antidepressants - be sufficient for the police to come and confiscate arms? Will the confiscation last forever, or can a person be deemed "cured" and get their guns back? Will this cause people to hide real mental health issues for fear of having their property confiscated?

Many people with "mental health issues" have broken no law. This means the government will be taking away the rights of a group of people based on a warm-fuzzy "it seems like the right thing to do" attitude. We could just as easily restrict blacks from having firearms because blacks commit more crimes than whites in this country.

People make a lot of hay over the "social contract". It turns out that our ancestors made a social contract which was explicitly put down on paper and said that you could have your centralized government so long as the people can keep guns.

You cannot break that contract directly, you have to change the constitution to do it - that's the rules, and everyone has to abide by them. If you don't believe in the constitution, then the social contract is null and void, and we might as well do away with the federal government.

And where is state governance in all this? What if some states (Texas comes to mind) simply don't want to restrict gun control in this manner? The constitution explicitly states that the federal government can't take this right away.

And finally, you know that this will be abused by law enforcement to extreme levels. Cops will be grabbing guns off of everyone they see claiming "well, he looked like he had mental health issues". Prosecutors will dig up any thin hint of a mental health issue to justify keeping the guns, and no one will be able to get their property back - ever.

This whole issue is a train wreck waiting to happen. Especially since, given the statistics, it will cause more children to be hurt (on average) than relaxing restrictions.

You want more links? Be careful what you wish for as i can wallpaper with all the fail that is Windows 8. First we have Acer saying its a fail, we have the press writing articles saying yes its THAT bad, we have usability experts calling it a broken mess and yet another OEM calling it a flop.

So I'm sorry but stick a fork, the fat lady is down the street having a sammich, its done. Win 8 will go next to WinME and MS Bob on the "WTF were they thinking?" lists next year and no matter how many warehouses full MSFT buys they won't be able to give that megabomb away, its over.

You want more links? Be careful what you wish for as i can wallpaper with all the fail that is Windows 8. First we have Acer saying its a fail, we have the press writing articles saying yes its THAT bad, we have usability experts calling it a broken mess and yet another OEM calling it a flop.

So I'm sorry but stick a fork, the fat lady is down the street having a sammich, its done. Win 8 will go next to WinME and MS Bob on the "WTF were they thinking?" lists next year and no matter how many warehouses full MSFT buys they won't be able to give that megabomb away, its over.

This is a story from last month (Dec 12 2012), and it's for all TWC customers. http://news.yahoo.com/time-warner-cable-boosts-internet-speeds-50-standard-022153999.html

Here's why:

Last year, a fake Apple store in Kunming, China featuring the white Apple logo and wooden tables drew widespread attention after a blogger wrote about visiting it. The store looked so authentic, even the upbeat salespeople thought they were working for Apple. Chinese authorities quickly ordered the store to close, as well as more than 20 others that were selling Apple products.

http://news.yahoo.com/apple-trademarks-design-retail-stores-220110338--finance.html