How is an author going to be paid for their time writing the books if we allow one person to purchase the book, and then lend it to an infinite number of people at once?
Why would someone who buys a copy be motivated to set up the expensive web infrastructure needed lend it to an infinite number of people at once?
The only motive I can see is that they have some way to make money off of it -- they either charge for the lending, or are making money off of ads. In which case, the author ought to get a cut -- I've been suggesting for years that a royalty right, modeled after songwriter's royalties, should replace copyright.
Absent that, remember that time is money. Let's say that I can either spend $2 to download a DRM-free e-book from the author, or I can spend fifteen minutes searching for and downloading a copy. For anyone whose time is worth more than $8/hour, it's cheaper to buy a copy. Adjust those numbers as you like -- $1 versus five minutes and the cutoff becomes $12/hour, and so on; the point is that at some point, it's cheaper for the reader to buy a copy than to hunt down a "free" copy.
They're hiring people to guard society's most violent people (murders, rapists, child molesters, etc). You don't want 'nice friendly chaps' doing that kind of work.
They're hiring people to guard people who have either fucked up, either big time, like murder, or small time, like shoplifting. Either way, most of those people are going to get out eventually, and whether or not they fuck up again depends partly on how they are treated during their time in prison. Do they learn job skills that expand their economic opportunities? Do they learn the social and behavior skills to get along?
Prison guards are part of the process of rehabilitation. In a sane society, the job would pay six figures and require an advanced degree in criminology (plus extensive martial arts training).
Quick-n-dirty how-to distinguish fantasy from science-fiction: It's not about elves vs spaceships. It's about conservatism vs progressivism.
No. The axes are orthogonal. One can have progressive fantasy (Le Guin's later Earthsea novels) or conservative science fiction (most of Heinlein). The best explanation is Moorcocks's famous essay Starship Stormtroopers -- read it, if you haven't:
There is Lovecraft, the misogynic racist; there is Heinlein, the authoritarian militarist; there is Ayn Rand, the rabid opponent of trade unionism and the left, who, like many a reactionary before her, sees the problems of the world as a failure by capitalists to assume the responsibilities of 'good leadership'; there is Tolkein and that group of middle-class Christian fantasists who constantly sing the praises of bourgeois virtues and whose villains are thinly disguised working class agitators -- fear of the Mob permeates their rural romances. To all these and more the working class is a mindless beast which must be controlled or it will savage the world (i.e. bourgeois security) -- the answer is always leadership, 'decency', paternalism (Heinlein in particularly strong on this), Christian values...
What can this stuff have in common with radicals of any persuasion? The simple answer is, perhaps, Romance. The dividing line between rightist Romance (Nazi insignia and myth etc.) and leftist Romance (insurgent cavalry etc.) is not always easy to determine. A stirring image is a stirring image and can be,employed to raise all sorts of atavistic or infantile emotions in us. Escapist or 'genre' fiction appeals to these emotions. It does us no harm to escape from time to time but it can be dangerous to confuse simplified fiction with reality and that, of course, is what propaganda does.
You could say that about anyone who inherits his dad's hardware store.
Yes, you can. Inherited wealth is as bad as any other form of inherited power. That hypothetical hardware store should go to the employees whose labor built it.
In all likelihood nobody would have ever seen The Silmarillion were it not for him.
Then let him share in the copyright, or have some right to royalties, for the The Silmarillion, if he worked to make it happen. That has nothing to do with copyrights for LOTR or with publicity rights.
But more to the point, inheritance tax is a higher tax on money already taxed.
There is no such thing as "money already taxed". Taxes are on events, not on dollars or on pounds. The event of my employer paying me is taxed; the event of me taking my pay and buying a six-pack of beer is taxed.
Similarly, the event of wealthy Mr. Smith getting his dividends from Corporation X is taxed; and the event of the state transferring Mr. Smith's wealth to Smith, Jr. after Smith's death is taxed.
"Money already taxed" is another counter-factual right-wing shibboleth.
Because people who take risk should be rewarded for their risk.
So the state should subsidize people who play roulette? Or who walk a high wire without a net?
I'm all for a social safety net so that people who take *socially* *useful* risks aren't destroyed if their ambition fails. But what does that have to do with subsidizing parasitic investment?
An economy that depends on a investment class that reaps reward without doing productive work will eventually collapse.
It's a fantasy novel, people. It's something you read when you're not reading real books.
"A dragon is no idle fancy. Whatever may be his origins, in fact or invention, the dragon in legend is a potent creation of men's imagination, richer in significance than his barrow is in gold." -- J.R.R. Tolkein
If you think that a fantasy novel is necessarily "something you read when you're not reading real books", you don't understand mythology or human psychology. People fight and love and kill and die on the inspiration of mythology, and -- at its best, admittedly rare as it is -- fantasy touches the mythic.
It's ambiguous whether it was really Tolkein's goal to produce "mythology for England", but it's pretty clear that his Shire is an idealization of a pastoral English village, and that Sauron and Saruman represent heedless industrialization.
If you haven't, you ought to read the Moorcock essay in question, Starship Stormtroopers. Not to say I fully agree with it, but it has some points.
Of course, the whole thing ignores the fact that Sauron was evil, and he committed many evil acts in his thousands of years of existence prior to the events of LotR.
Of course, your comment misses the whole point of this exercise, that the only source your have for that claim that he was "evil" is a history written by Sauron's opponents. If we lived in a world where the British had crushed the American Revolution, what do you think the history books would say about Washington and Jefferson?
The original owner of a work may be dead, but the franchise lives on. Shouldn't the franchise holders be protected from losing their investment to copy-cats?
No. Why should parasitic investors be empowered? The Constitution grants Congress the power to secure rights to authors and inventors -- not to investors, heirs, assignees, or anyone else.
"More"? You've yet to provide any. Here is what is required to demonstrate that MM is taking Beck our of context: a pair of links, one to a MM story quoting Beck, and another to a reliable source giving a more extensive version of the quote showing that MM is quoting out of context.
Glenn called the housing bubble and the current gold prices
The housing bubble was evident to anything with a functioning central nervous system. And Beck helped create the current gold bubble.
So because someone reverses their position, very openly, they are no longer correct?
I can't parse the tangled grammar of this question.
Assume that proposition X is true. If someone claims that X is true, and reverses their position, they are no longer correct, and their credibility decreases. If someone claims that X is false, and then reverses their position, they become correct, but their credibility may increase only marginally, or not at all, depending on how long they argued that X was false and how blatant the truth of X was.
yet Media Matters can't seem to cite their own sources correctly, misattributing Neil Cavuto's hour long program to Glenn Beck:
The segment is correctly attributed to Cavuto; they apparently misstated which show he appeared on. That is an error, but is not quoting out of context, and does not in any way affect the substance of the reportage.
Perhaps you want to explain away the "Olbermann killed people" quote: Media Matters Gives Glenn Beckâ(TM)s Co-Hosts The Shirley Sherrod Edited Audio Treatment
That's the headline, not the quote. MM's site has the clip in its entirety, including the "hey, we've being sarcastic!" bit. And as is noted in your own link, MM posted a correction to clarify the headline. (From the comment thread on the MM page, they seem to have posted that by the next day at the latest.) If they had not done so, you'd have an example of a poor headline, still not one of MM quoting out of context; with the correction, you don't even have that.
An absence is only considered "excused" if there is a doctor's note, and only for the time of the appointment, or otherwise specified by the doctor's note.
That's ridiculous. Around here a kid just needs a note from their parent/guardian, unless they're continually out sick.
Given the lack of access to health care, that's just what we need, parents without health insurance taking their kids to the ER for sick-but-not-serious illness just to get a doctors note. "Yes, doctor, he's vomiting but not life threatening or anything, and has a mild fever but not enough to require medication or anything. I was just going to give him some fluids and have him rest, but I need you to sign this note..."
What would true AI be? Most games have true AI these days.
It's been said that AI is whatever we don't know how to do yet. I see a lot of that in this discussion -- "we can do this now, so making computers do this is just a trick, not AI."
Media Matters uses ad hominem arguments like I've never seen, attacks on character.
Your link does not support this claim. Analyzing Beck's movie references is not an ad hominem argument. Furthermore, an attack on character is not an ad hominem argument. An attack on character is "Beck is a jerk"; an ad hominem argument is "Beck is a jerk, therefore his claim that X is true is incorrect."
And both these are different from attacks on credibility, a perfectly legitimate form of rhetoric where one argues "Beck was wrong about X and Y and Z and P and D and Q, and therefore we ought not to accept that A is true based on his testimony." MM is attacking Beck's credibility, and this is valid.
They routinely take him out of context without providing any explanation,
Still no examples provided. How are any of the quotes at the page you link taken out of context?
Several times they have directly contradicted themselves in selectively interpreting what he has said to further their own goals:
Your links do not support this claim. They show that Diane Sawyer did not accurately identify Beck's point of view, that Beck has said a lot of batshit crazy things about Islam, that he toned in down a bit -- perhaps to the point of self-contradiction -- when he was actually sitting across from Imam Rauf.
If MM taking Beck out of context is common, someone ought to be able to show me some examples of MM quoting Beck out of context along with a link to the full quote showing how the meaning has been distorted.
Unless you're actually watching Glenn Beck every day you aren't in a position to be saying what he's doing wrong.
That's such gibberish I must wonder if you're trolling. Propositions and arguments put forth by any rational speaker or writer each stand individually on their own; arguments that can only be judged when one accepts an elaborate framework are a sign of disconnection from consensual reality.
Sorry, but Media Matters consistently and purposefully takes Glenn out of context.
Please provide examples where Media Matters quoted Beck out of context in a way that distorted his meaning. No, a link to LMGTFY is not an argument.
Those who have been caught saying stupid shit by MM (or by others) have usually claimed to have been quoted out of context, but in every case I've looked into MM was accurate. If you've got evidence otherwise, please present it. Thank you.
Why is the Republican party imploding into insanity?
Mainstream conservatives are caught in a double bind. It's becoming more and more clear that reality conflicts with their deeply-held belief system. The mental effort to change deeply-held beliefs is greater than the effort to belief irrational things.
The fact is that megacorporations are destroying the planet in their pursuit of profit. But conservatives know that laissez-faire capitalism is God's own favorite economic system. Therefore, climate change is a hoax, trees cause more pollution than cars, and "drill baby drill!"
The fact is that our current economic meltdown is the legacy of Reganomincs -- tax cutting,deficit spending, and policies favoring the rich. The fact is that the economy has done better under Democrats than under Republicans. But conservatives know that the Gipper stands just behind Jesus in greatness. Therefore, there must be shadowy forces at work that are responsible for the current mess.
The fact is that U.S. foreign policy is brutal and stupid and usually aids repression rather than freedom. But conservatives know that the U.S. is God's own favorite nation, His Chosen People. Therefore anyone who opposes our wars of aggression and our propping up of dictators is a terrorist sympathizer. (Prior versions had "Stalinist" rather than "terrorist".)
The fact is that America's health care system is pretty lousy compared to other developed nations. But conservatives know that You Ess Ay! You Ess Ay! You Ess Ay! is Number One! in everything. Therefore any attempt to change things must be a government takeover of health care that's going to give us death panels.
On just about every issue since the 1960s, the bulk of the conservative movement has been on the wrong side -- civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, the environment, the economy, war. There's only two things to do in that situation: abandon the conservative movement, or go nuts.
No, he's selling books and getting ratings and a lot of money. Folks who think Beck is crazy are just as bamboozled as any of his fans. It's really hilarious.
Anyone who sacrifices their honor and dignity, and encourages others to not just abandon rational thinking but to engage in acts of violence, all in order to pad their bank account, is crazy.
In other words, Beck has to be one sort of crazy (some sort of personality disorder) in order to pretend to be the sort of crazy (sort of paranoid schizophrenia) that he does.
I challenge you to name one 'muslim' nation (that has a specific definition) that is only decades behind.
If "Muslim nation" means more than "a nation comprised of people, most of whom are Muslims", please present your definition. Otherwise you're just engaging in the "no true Scotsman" fallacy.
but guess what? A HECK OF A LOT LESS TRAGEDIES than the usa
Japan, Germany, and many other developed nations have lower murder rates than the U.S. even if you disregard all of the shootings in the U.S. and look at just our non-firearms homicide rate versus other nation's total rate. We stab, bludgeon, and strangle each other at three times the rate that the people of Japan do.
Our problem isn't so much legal access to guns as it is social, economic, and cultural factors.
The objective is to reduce the availability of guns to the vast majority of people who lack either the knowledge or the motivation to fabricate the components from scratch.
If we can't keep heroin away from junkies, how do you think we can keep firearms away from crooks? It's no harder to make automatic firearms than to make meth -- WWII resistance groups were able to make submachine guns in underground workshops. If we somehow made all firearms disappear from the U.S. tomorrow and sealed the borders, the black market would be supplying firearms to crooks in a matter of months if not weeks.
The reason Japan has few guns is that, due to cultural and economic factors, there's little demand for them, not because they're hard to get if someone is determined.
Sure, people under parole, probation, or other types of supervised release, and perhaps those out on bail or under protective orders (though here we have due process concerns), ought not to be permitted guns. Other than that, the idea that we can keep firearms away from people who are not under close supervision, is a sad joke.
Texas needs to cut some sort of compromise deal with Amazon or they will lose out in the long run
No, if every state stood up to parasites like Amazon, they'd go out of business, leaving the field clear for thousands of small businesses to spring up. That's the long-term win, not kowtowing to corporate bastards.
You actually think they're trying to track you with your zip code? It's for the same damn purpose of the pumps.
No, it's not, because they ask me for my zip code when I pay cash.
They used to just want your zip code so they know where to send junk mail. But with data mining, the product of your zip code with one or two other non-unique identifiers may put the finger right on you.
Every time someone asks me for this kind of information at the register it just makes me mad.
So don't give it to them. "Zip code?" "I'd rather not." "Phone number?" "I'm sorry, I don't give that out." Haven't had a problem in over ten years of doing this. (Except the new thing with pay-at-the-pump at gas pumps, where there's no choice.)
Wars are almost never fought in the interest of the common man, they are a game of kings and cronies. Only the wealthy, politically connected elite profit from war.
and assuming that the Catholic Church is a good organization to give money to (considering it's God's very own church for Christ's sake, literally)
LOL. And on what authority is the Catholic Church claimed to be "God's very own church"? Why, that of the Catholic Church! And how do you know that the Catholic Church is authoritative? Well, it's "God's very own church", what more do you want?
Giving to charities is a good thing. But doing a good thing for the wrong reason -- like because you believe that it will stop an omnipotent and loving deity from punishing somebody's ghost -- is not a good thing.
Here was their coverage from the night of the election, "Newly-elected Senator Rand Paul will refuse to raise the Debt ceiling, and he will be personally responsible for creating another depression in 2011."
Interesting. Got a link to that report? It's sort of traditional, here on the web, that when you say "X said Y", you provide a link to either X's website where they say Y, or to a reasonably reliable source quoting X saying Y. That's how you avoid being a poor source of information.
Slashdot Mirror
Why would someone who buys a copy be motivated to set up the expensive web infrastructure needed lend it to an infinite number of people at once?
The only motive I can see is that they have some way to make money off of it -- they either charge for the lending, or are making money off of ads. In which case, the author ought to get a cut -- I've been suggesting for years that a royalty right, modeled after songwriter's royalties, should replace copyright.
Absent that, remember that time is money. Let's say that I can either spend $2 to download a DRM-free e-book from the author, or I can spend fifteen minutes searching for and downloading a copy. For anyone whose time is worth more than $8/hour, it's cheaper to buy a copy. Adjust those numbers as you like -- $1 versus five minutes and the cutoff becomes $12/hour, and so on; the point is that at some point, it's cheaper for the reader to buy a copy than to hunt down a "free" copy.
Plus, of course, a significant fraction of people will pay for something even if it's available for free. Public radio, PBS. Radiohead made $10 million from an album available for free downloads.
This is already what we tell most writers and musicians. Very few make a living at it.
They're hiring people to guard people who have either fucked up, either big time, like murder, or small time, like shoplifting. Either way, most of those people are going to get out eventually, and whether or not they fuck up again depends partly on how they are treated during their time in prison. Do they learn job skills that expand their economic opportunities? Do they learn the social and behavior skills to get along?
Prison guards are part of the process of rehabilitation. In a sane society, the job would pay six figures and require an advanced degree in criminology (plus extensive martial arts training).
No. The axes are orthogonal. One can have progressive fantasy (Le Guin's later Earthsea novels) or conservative science fiction (most of Heinlein). The best explanation is Moorcocks's famous essay Starship Stormtroopers -- read it, if you haven't:
Yes, you can. Inherited wealth is as bad as any other form of inherited power. That hypothetical hardware store should go to the employees whose labor built it.
Then let him share in the copyright, or have some right to royalties, for the The Silmarillion, if he worked to make it happen. That has nothing to do with copyrights for LOTR or with publicity rights.
There is no such thing as "money already taxed". Taxes are on events, not on dollars or on pounds. The event of my employer paying me is taxed; the event of me taking my pay and buying a six-pack of beer is taxed.
Similarly, the event of wealthy Mr. Smith getting his dividends from Corporation X is taxed; and the event of the state transferring Mr. Smith's wealth to Smith, Jr. after Smith's death is taxed.
"Money already taxed" is another counter-factual right-wing shibboleth.
So the state should subsidize people who play roulette? Or who walk a high wire without a net?
I'm all for a social safety net so that people who take *socially* *useful* risks aren't destroyed if their ambition fails. But what does that have to do with subsidizing parasitic investment?
An economy that depends on a investment class that reaps reward without doing productive work will eventually collapse.
"A dragon is no idle fancy. Whatever may be his origins, in fact or invention, the dragon in legend is a potent creation of men's imagination, richer in significance than his barrow is in gold." -- J.R.R. Tolkein
If you think that a fantasy novel is necessarily "something you read when you're not reading real books", you don't understand mythology or human psychology. People fight and love and kill and die on the inspiration of mythology, and -- at its best, admittedly rare as it is -- fantasy touches the mythic.
It's ambiguous whether it was really Tolkein's goal to produce "mythology for England", but it's pretty clear that his Shire is an idealization of a pastoral English village, and that Sauron and Saruman represent heedless industrialization.
If you haven't, you ought to read the Moorcock essay in question, Starship Stormtroopers. Not to say I fully agree with it, but it has some points.
Of course, your comment misses the whole point of this exercise, that the only source your have for that claim that he was "evil" is a history written by Sauron's opponents. If we lived in a world where the British had crushed the American Revolution, what do you think the history books would say about Washington and Jefferson?
No. Why should parasitic investors be empowered? The Constitution grants Congress the power to secure rights to authors and inventors -- not to investors, heirs, assignees, or anyone else.
"More"? You've yet to provide any. Here is what is required to demonstrate that MM is taking Beck our of context: a pair of links, one to a MM story quoting Beck, and another to a reliable source giving a more extensive version of the quote showing that MM is quoting out of context.
I'm assuming that you understand what "quoting out of context" means. If you don't, the wik's artcile on the subject is a good place to start.
The housing bubble was evident to anything with a functioning central nervous system. And Beck helped create the current gold bubble.
I can't parse the tangled grammar of this question.
Assume that proposition X is true. If someone claims that X is true, and reverses their position, they are no longer correct, and their credibility decreases. If someone claims that X is false, and then reverses their position, they become correct, but their credibility may increase only marginally, or not at all, depending on how long they argued that X was false and how blatant the truth of X was.
The segment is correctly attributed to Cavuto; they apparently misstated which show he appeared on. That is an error, but is not quoting out of context, and does not in any way affect the substance of the reportage.
That's the headline, not the quote. MM's site has the clip in its entirety, including the "hey, we've being sarcastic!" bit. And as is noted in your own link, MM posted a correction to clarify the headline. (From the comment thread on the MM page, they seem to have posted that by the next day at the latest.) If they had not done so, you'd have an example of a poor headline, still not one of MM quoting out of context; with the correction, you don't even have that.
That's ridiculous. Around here a kid just needs a note from their parent/guardian, unless they're continually out sick.
Given the lack of access to health care, that's just what we need, parents without health insurance taking their kids to the ER for sick-but-not-serious illness just to get a doctors note. "Yes, doctor, he's vomiting but not life threatening or anything, and has a mild fever but not enough to require medication or anything. I was just going to give him some fluids and have him rest, but I need you to sign this note..."
It's been said that AI is whatever we don't know how to do yet. I see a lot of that in this discussion -- "we can do this now, so making computers do this is just a trick, not AI."
Your link does not support this claim. Analyzing Beck's movie references is not an ad hominem argument. Furthermore, an attack on character is not an ad hominem argument. An attack on character is "Beck is a jerk"; an ad hominem argument is "Beck is a jerk, therefore his claim that X is true is incorrect."
And both these are different from attacks on credibility, a perfectly legitimate form of rhetoric where one argues "Beck was wrong about X and Y and Z and P and D and Q, and therefore we ought not to accept that A is true based on his testimony." MM is attacking Beck's credibility, and this is valid.
Still no examples provided. How are any of the quotes at the page you link taken out of context?
Your links do not support this claim. They show that Diane Sawyer did not accurately identify Beck's point of view, that Beck has said a lot of batshit crazy things about Islam, that he toned in down a bit -- perhaps to the point of self-contradiction -- when he was actually sitting across from Imam Rauf.
If MM taking Beck out of context is common, someone ought to be able to show me some examples of MM quoting Beck out of context along with a link to the full quote showing how the meaning has been distorted.
That's such gibberish I must wonder if you're trolling. Propositions and arguments put forth by any rational speaker or writer each stand individually on their own; arguments that can only be judged when one accepts an elaborate framework are a sign of disconnection from consensual reality.
Please provide examples where Media Matters quoted Beck out of context in a way that distorted his meaning. No, a link to LMGTFY is not an argument.
Those who have been caught saying stupid shit by MM (or by others) have usually claimed to have been quoted out of context, but in every case I've looked into MM was accurate. If you've got evidence otherwise, please present it. Thank you.
Mainstream conservatives are caught in a double bind. It's becoming more and more clear that reality conflicts with their deeply-held belief system. The mental effort to change deeply-held beliefs is greater than the effort to belief irrational things.
The fact is that megacorporations are destroying the planet in their pursuit of profit. But conservatives know that laissez-faire capitalism is God's own favorite economic system. Therefore, climate change is a hoax, trees cause more pollution than cars, and "drill baby drill!"
The fact is that our current economic meltdown is the legacy of Reganomincs -- tax cutting,deficit spending, and policies favoring the rich. The fact is that the economy has done better under Democrats than under Republicans. But conservatives know that the Gipper stands just behind Jesus in greatness. Therefore, there must be shadowy forces at work that are responsible for the current mess.
The fact is that U.S. foreign policy is brutal and stupid and usually aids repression rather than freedom. But conservatives know that the U.S. is God's own favorite nation, His Chosen People. Therefore anyone who opposes our wars of aggression and our propping up of dictators is a terrorist sympathizer. (Prior versions had "Stalinist" rather than "terrorist".)
The fact is that America's health care system is pretty lousy compared to other developed nations. But conservatives know that You Ess Ay! You Ess Ay! You Ess Ay! is Number One! in everything. Therefore any attempt to change things must be a government takeover of health care that's going to give us death panels.
On just about every issue since the 1960s, the bulk of the conservative movement has been on the wrong side -- civil rights, women's rights, gay rights, the environment, the economy, war. There's only two things to do in that situation: abandon the conservative movement, or go nuts.
Anyone who sacrifices their honor and dignity, and encourages others to not just abandon rational thinking but to engage in acts of violence, all in order to pad their bank account, is crazy.
In other words, Beck has to be one sort of crazy (some sort of personality disorder) in order to pretend to be the sort of crazy (sort of paranoid schizophrenia) that he does.
If "Muslim nation" means more than "a nation comprised of people, most of whom are Muslims", please present your definition. Otherwise you're just engaging in the "no true Scotsman" fallacy.
Japan, Germany, and many other developed nations have lower murder rates than the U.S. even if you disregard all of the shootings in the U.S. and look at just our non-firearms homicide rate versus other nation's total rate. We stab, bludgeon, and strangle each other at three times the rate that the people of Japan do.
Our problem isn't so much legal access to guns as it is social, economic, and cultural factors.
If we can't keep heroin away from junkies, how do you think we can keep firearms away from crooks? It's no harder to make automatic firearms than to make meth -- WWII resistance groups were able to make submachine guns in underground workshops. If we somehow made all firearms disappear from the U.S. tomorrow and sealed the borders, the black market would be supplying firearms to crooks in a matter of months if not weeks.
The reason Japan has few guns is that, due to cultural and economic factors, there's little demand for them, not because they're hard to get if someone is determined.
Sure, people under parole, probation, or other types of supervised release, and perhaps those out on bail or under protective orders (though here we have due process concerns), ought not to be permitted guns. Other than that, the idea that we can keep firearms away from people who are not under close supervision, is a sad joke.
No, if every state stood up to parasites like Amazon, they'd go out of business, leaving the field clear for thousands of small businesses to spring up. That's the long-term win, not kowtowing to corporate bastards.
No, it's not, because they ask me for my zip code when I pay cash.
They used to just want your zip code so they know where to send junk mail. But with data mining, the product of your zip code with one or two other non-unique identifiers may put the finger right on you.
So don't give it to them. "Zip code?" "I'd rather not." "Phone number?" "I'm sorry, I don't give that out." Haven't had a problem in over ten years of doing this. (Except the new thing with pay-at-the-pump at gas pumps, where there's no choice.)
In other words, war is a racket.
Ok...
LOL. And on what authority is the Catholic Church claimed to be "God's very own church"? Why, that of the Catholic Church! And how do you know that the Catholic Church is authoritative? Well, it's "God's very own church", what more do you want?
Giving to charities is a good thing. But doing a good thing for the wrong reason -- like because you believe that it will stop an omnipotent and loving deity from punishing somebody's ghost -- is not a good thing.
Pardon? The Tea Party has been wrong at every turn. They talk about federal taxes being high, when in fact they are at a 60 year low. They got fired up over "death panels" and "a government takeover of healthcare", both of which are lies.
The Tea Party shows nothing but that Americans are easily led by astroturf campaigns set up by billionaires.
Interesting. Got a link to that report? It's sort of traditional, here on the web, that when you say "X said Y", you provide a link to either X's website where they say Y, or to a reasonably reliable source quoting X saying Y. That's how you avoid being a poor source of information.