The best evidence you have for your claims (as I see it) is anecdotal at best.
3rd world countries 1) are not at all vegetarian and 2) don't get most cancers Westerners do largely because they don't eat processed foods or expose themselves to carcinogenic chemicals constantly....we do.
Again, NEVER get your science from the internet.

"Pro-life" is by definition "anti-choice".

If you're really pro-planet, a MUCH better way to go about it is try to get people to have fewer children. That will make exponentially more difference than some people eating fewer animals. In fact, if past human behavior is a guide, if we all stop eating animals, animals will cease to exist for the most part, so that's not helpful to them at all.

Again, fewer people is the proper answer, not forcefully change biologically engrained behavior. I made that choice, so I can eat all the animals I ever possibly can and I've done more for the planet and it's animals with that single action than 1000 vegans with vegan children...or more positive difference than one vegan with children, depending on how you want to look at it.

As a living being, I'm standing up for all living beings who certainly object to your choice to breed, both the voiceless and those with voice, and saying stop making choices that negatively impact us all, like having more children and grandchildren. If enough people would do that, eating meat won't be an ecological issue. ;-)

I didn't watch the videos, I don't get my science from the internet. I read scientific publications that contain peer reviewed science papers, and I've never seen one that said ALL the nutrients found in meat could be replaced with vegetable nutrients easily, simply, viably, or without excessive expense.
Also, it ignores that fact that most produce available in the first world comes with a huge carbon footprint and massive ecological damage because of the production methods, so it's not the 'clean' trade off you seem to assume.

Small family farms were plenty to meet demand for all of human history until about the last 50 years. Quit having kids, and it will be enough again and we can stop abusing animals and the eco system just to make enough food for humans.

A short, good life is preferable to no life at all.

Nope. I should have scheduled the one in that picture that's mine to end his life at least a year earlier, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. NOT doing it was immoral. If someone had been willing to eat him, I would be all for it. If someone wants to eat me, go for it...I suggest slow smoking and a molasses based BBQ sauce. Eating my dog would be ecologically sound, as opposed to the cremation we ended up with, or burial, being the only other option available.
If I raised dogs for food, I would not think twice about ending their life in their prime. That would be the reason they existed in the first place, and without that reason they would never get that chance.

Again, milk cows only exist because someone wanted to partner with them to benefit both. Without that symbiosis, they would not get the opportunity to exist at all. IMO, existence is preferable to no existence. Yes, they need to get pregnant at least once, but as I understand it, that's it so long as you keep up with milking them. Veal, now there I'll totally agree with you that IT'S abuse.

Animals are not people. They do not usually have the same need for freedom, and those that do have that need were never domesticated. It is not immoral to form a symbiosis with another species as long as you both benefit in some way, otherwise you're just a parasite.

? Taste, as in how animals taste? BS, that's not all. That's a component, sure, but there's incredibly more to it than that.

I prefer to give animals a reason to exist, knowing that without that human centric reason, they simply won't get the chance, but I do my best to purchase animal products that are created with the least distress and best conditions for the animals in question...granted that's not always possible to know.

Trust me, I've tried vegetarian 'meats', I know the difference, and absolutely don't prefer vegan fare, or vegetarian fare that attempts to emulate meat. If I want meat, I'll eat meat. You'll get my butter only by prying it from my cold, dead hands. ;-)

I don't think taste is quite as simple as you imply. Yes, there is a component of 'addiction' to certain foods, especially sugar rich foods.
There's no such thing as vegan cheese or chocolate, you mean tofu and carob...and I agree, they both suck.

Sorry, that's simply wrong. A poor eating vegan can certainly negatively impact the planet with their food choices. It's easy. Oreos for instance, are most certainly made with ecologically damaging factory farm methods creating the ingredients...well, those methods and chemists. I don't know off hand the carbon footprint and ecological impact of an oreo, but it's not "none".

The song was popularized by Old Crow Medicine Show who has long been affiliated with Alt Country/hippy jam fests. To be fair to OP though, there has been a bit of a fusion of the "scenes." Live electronic bands like the Disco Biscuits, Sound Tribe Sector 9, and the New Deal spawned this sort of new breed of "hippy-raver hybrids." As @visionep pointed out, there is somewhat of a natural symbiosis there. Anyway, this unholy alliance has come so far along as to push classic hippy bands like String Cheese Incident, Galactic, and Medeski Martin and Wood towards more electronic influenced sounds. These days you see kids on phish tour rockin' skrillex tattoos (oh the humanity). Whatever. I for one welcome our next generation of inebriated overlords. We all like to get down. Let's get down together.

>> ^Lann:

@visionep I known a lot of [insert creative subculture] that love bluegrass/Americana/old timey/folk music. So this isn't really all that strange to see. Also, this isn't exactly your normal country music you hear at some truck stop in Kansas.
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http://videosift.com/video/Bacterial-Communication-Bacteria-and-Squid-Symbiosis

I found two cool nature vids today to share....

I agree with dystosdopoigva'sdfvtoday. Some people talk like that, but those people aren't a representation of postmodernist culture. They're just like, you know, idiots? No different from the idiots that have existed since the beginning of humanity. Art, civility, perspectives on our role in society, pretensions, our relationships. Those where the things I was hoping for when I watched the video.

Upvote because I openly loathe people who talk like that. I went so far as explaining to a Botany assistant that the way she talked ensured that she would automatically receive less credibility than her peers. Regardless of how intelligent her ideas had been. She since went to grad school and studyed the coastal redwood symbiosis with fungi. When she gave her thesis presentation, I was pleased to hear her talk confidently and with conviction. I was the first one out of my seat to give her an ovation, she nailed the research.

But in the current system of insurance, people already pay for other people's healthcare. That's what insurance is, lots of people pay, some people claim from the pot of money collected.

Well, consider this. Take a look at the auto insurance market. It does not pay for oil changes, brake pads, or other routine maintainance. So car insurance is relatively cheap. Imagine if Congress made a law that said car insurance must now cover headlights, brake pads, spark plugs, tires, and all other basic maintainance.

Consumers would immediately start charging all these services to auto maintainace providers as OFTEN as they possibly could. Maintainance would move from a market driven method of "I pay for it when I need it" to a scheduled system determined by government panels. The new 'consumer demand' would thus be artificially determined - not naturally derived by real costs or market needs.

The inevitable result would be that the cost of the services to the insurer would increase dramatically. An oil change that cost a consumer 20 dollars would now 'cost' $200+ in the insurance tables. The cost of insurance itself would have to increase to reflect this new reality. Auto insurance that used to cost $70 a month would now cost $400+.

That is what government involvement in the insurance industry does to the market. It screws up the laws of supply & demand, inserts artificial (more expensive) standards, and increases costs to ALL participants. That is what the current bill in Congress will do to health insurance. What used to be 'affordable' insurance for middle-income earners will become unaffordable.

I believe that is the actual target end-game for the political class. When this crappy plan fails (as it inevitably will) they will step in (OH-SO concerned) and offer to nationalize the system completely. The inattentive, civically ignorant American public - desperate for a solution to a problem the GOVERNMENT CREATED will agree. Bingo. Welcome to the United Union of the Socialist States of America where Pelosi/Obama/Ried are in charge of your health care and you have no recourse for grieveneces with your rationed care.

What the rich often forget though is that the only reason they are rich is because there are poor people.

No - rich people exist because a large, free marketplace of all income levels rewarded them with money in exchange for beneficial goods & services. You describe parasitism. Capitalism is symbiosis.

Is it really so hard to give something back to them?

Of course not. It is called PRIVATE CHARITY. Rich, middle-class, & poor alike give to charity every year and we don't need a government to tell us to do it. The public is not rejecting 'helping' people. What they reject is the liberal left-wing's DEFINITION of help (because it sucks).

Its a measure of a democracy how well it looks after all of its citizens, not just a few of them.

No - the measure of a democracy is how limited government is at restricting freedom and protecting its citizens from external threats. The measure of the CITIZENS lies in how well it looks after their own poor. But that is not a government issue. It is the morality of the citizens in how they use their enlightened self-interest.

The current system has more than enough money within it to provide more than adequate healthcare to everybody, so long as the (deliberate?) waste is removed and the fat cats diet a little.

And government solutions are so good at removing waste & thinning out the fat cats... Regardless, when you make something 'free' then there is NEVER 'more than enough' of that good for a population. The well of human want is bottomless. As with all government solutions, nationalized care would devolve quickly into a labryinth of regulations and delayed/denied coverage.

The worst roommate I ever had was the "we're brothers because we're roommates" type... he thought sharing an apartment was supposed to be some kind of symbiosis where we interoperate our lives like a married couple. I'm a very private person who needs lots of alone time, and nothign drives me crazier than someone who constantly has plans for how I'm going to spend my day. This guy would ask me for favours requiring hours of effort on a daily basis. Eventually I trained him to leave me the fuck alone, but it took all year and I think it partially drove me into a depression, fighting the urge to tell him to fuck off all year.

>> ^jwray:
The United States federal government is not paying for its deficit spending by printing excessive amounts of money. It is borrowing instead. Inflation is at 3.66% and falling. It peaked at 5.6% in July, before the economic upheaval.


Oh really, is that why it takes 3x as many dollars to buy an ounce of gold today than it did ten years ago? Of course the government is printing obscene amounts of money. Stop picking and choosing little short term windows of time where the trend is not apparent, nothing goes in a straight line. Do you even know what monetization of debt means? If foreigners are no longer interested in buying our government debt (bonds) that the treasury issues every year, the Fed has to raise interest rates to lure them in, because that's the yield on their loan to us. But they're LOWERING THEM. Yields are NEGATIVE. You loan money to us, you will be paid back in depreciated dollars that buy less than what you had before you loaned. So now that foreigners aren't doing that, guess who has to step in and buy those bonds? The Federal Reserve. Except that money isn't someone's savings, it isn't backed by a product in the world. It's pure inflation, pure funny money. That's what's coming, their balance sheet is going into the TRILLIONS.

This is the symbiosis that enabled government excess. A tax is an honest appropriation, people see it and are far more likely to resist it. Inflation is arbitrary money creation in a back room that siphons value from existing dollars. You can pull a curtain over that, lie about how much you're doing it, and watch as people see prices go up 10% in health care, food, per annum with absolutely no idea what hit them. After all, the government weatherman says that prices only went up 3%.

http://www.financialsense.com/stormwatch/2005/0624.html

The calculations are a joke, after we left the gold standard in the 70s, they kept changing them to understate real inflation and welfare obligations so they could spend more and more without it being easily noticed. They no longer include homes, energy, or food. Also, they introduced a subjective concept called hedonics adjustment, which negates price increases as inflation by discounting an assumed increase in quality.

The most galling result of this Keynesian nonsense is it blinds people to where inflation is going. Keynesian economics is the equivalent of teaching astrology instead of astronomy. First, they change the definition of inflation to mean prices instead of money supply. The correct definition of inflation is an increase of the money supply with the common RESULT being higher prices. After doing this, they then categorize inflation (to them: prices) into "asset-based" and "goods-based," and tell us that they don't fight asset-based. But asset-based inflation is what causes bubbles in assets like homes and stocks. We want things we own to go up and things we consume to go down, of course, but we don't want our assets to go up from artificial demand created by inflation. That's an illusion. So when inflation goes into tech stocks or homes, nobody sees it as inflation. Not the Keynesian Fed Chairmen, not the Keynesian financial managers, almost anyone with a degree in economics was less reliable than A COIN FLIP. That's when you know when your "science" has a problem. And then boom, when it starts going into commodities futures after the implosion, it exposes the inflation at all once that people were previously blind to.

And then here's a guy like Schiff, Ron Paul's economic advisor and Austrian economist, who was warning the whole god damned time since 2000, telling people to get into gold when it was $275 and getting laughed at by every confused Keynesian educated retard on television.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucDkoqwflF4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2I0QN-FYkpw

>> ^dtmike07:
Austrian economics has about as much credibility as scientology. They don't even believe in empirical evidence, for crissakes. Mainstream economics does't have a much better theory - essentially its an extended and mathematized version of Austrian economics. But at least mainstream economists know what the data says and use statistical techniques to analyze it. You know, like real scientists. And regarding the Austrian "theory" of the Great Depression - they pretty much pulled it out of their asses. Its just an attempt to blame the whole thing on the government, and exempt the free market. Austrian economics is a religion - the free market is God and government is the Devil.

You are 100% dead wrong on this. Keynesian "empirical data" is bogus, I've only scratched the surface on how they try to complicate simple concepts into a symbiotic swindle by redefining inflation, making up new terms, and it keeps blowing up in their face no matter who's in charge because that's the whole point. For you or Stukafox to even compare this problem to the firecrackers of banking panics (from fractional reserve lending, a legalized form of fraud that persists to this day with government backstops, an entirely different debate) is unbelievable, there's no proportion to a decade long depression and a bunch of shitty banks going under to remind people not to carelessly deposit all their money in banks.

Second of all, economics is a study of human behavior. Keynes was an idiot whose theories arose from a complete misunderstanding of what caused the great depression. He basically threw classical knowledge out the window and decided that economies needed central direction and stimulation by government. See, like the dumbfucks in this video, most people thought letting the banks fail was what caused the depression. It wasn't. It was what came before and after it. The inflation of the 20s was what caused the crash in the first place, you don't have a crash without a Fed-created bubble. You don't have withdrawal without being high on drugs.

But while withdrawal symptoms suck, they're actually the solution to the disease of the high. Hoover and Roosevelt saw the hangover as the disease, and began administering shock therapy. Over the course of many years, they raised tariffs, raised taxrates, and nationalized industry. The economy would have recovered, capital and jobs would have reallocated on its own. Instead, anyone who had any money after that crash had no incentive to invest or employ anyone, because now government was promising to take 90% of your profits if you made any. So unemployment got worse. The tax revenue the government did manage to appropriate, it used to pay for new government jobs that were extremely inefficient (being immune to bankruptcy, financed by theft, and having no competition tends to be an unproductive business model, ask the soviets). FDR also ordered livestock slaughtered and fields plowed under because he believed falling food prices were bad for farmers. No, I'm not making this up. Deflation being bad is another Keynesian myth, they think more efficient production lowering prices makes people sit on their money rather than invest it. Which is totally untrue if you look at the computer sector where prices fall IN SPITE of inflation and have never had problems raising capital or selling well despite falling prices and obsolescence. FDR is the same asshole who allowed Pearl Harbor to be a massacre and issued unconstitutional orders to confiscate gold from the poor, hungry citizens who had just seen the banks absolved for destroying their savings. The man was a fucking monster, it took four terms to get rid of him.

What got us out of the depression was a just war and FDR's death. WWII had the entire country up in arms because we were attacked by another country. People were willing to sacrifice their wants and contribute to the war effort, this was no pushover on a third world country, it took everything we had. People were buying warbonds based on patriotic fervor alone. Massive amounts of infrastructure was built to produce wartime materials. That manufacturing base remained after the war for private industry, taxes came down, trade resumed, and we emerged as a leading producer of wealth in the world. By default. Because the rest of world was in shambles, only the Soviets were left to compete and their socialist economy eventually crumbled. We didn't plan it that way, it just happened. We were also still on a semi-gold standard, we still had a savings rate, and we became the largest creditor nation. We've lost ALL OF THAT. It's all gone, we're the direct opposite now. No gold standard, negative savings rate, largest debtor nation in the WORLD.

Keynes main problem is, politicians have no precise idea what all needs to be produced and created to please everyone in a PEACETIME economy, it's impossible. The free market is millions of individuals with diverse wants and needs, there's no way in hell you can centrally manage that. But they think they can and want to spend, that's why they picked Keynes as a replacement for old models, because his theories completely justified what socialist academics had been wanting to do all along. They honestly believed they could spend money more efficiently than its earner. That's impossible, the earner has a stake in the money. If he throws it away, he loses the labor he spent to obtain it, so he has a natural incentive to be thrifty. A politician spending it loses nothing, they have no incentive to be thrifty. They're people motivated by self-interest, just like you and me, their only legitimate job in the economy was to make sure force and deception is not used when we are out here transacting with one another. That's what graphs and "empirical data" doesn't explain, and it's why history will show Keynes to be a failure.

Far from our free market roots, we centrally fix interest rates, we declare lending standards discriminatory with goofy programs like the community reinvestment act, we redistribute capital from good businesses to failed ones, savers to speculators, and pass all kinds of anti-competitive laws. That's what Ron Paul understood and was going to put a stop to. He was going to end the monopoly on currency that forced us all into accepting the bill for government excess. He was going to end the useless military expenditures overseas. He was going to eliminate the income tax and cripple the ability of politicians to engage in collusive campaign dealings, or "engineer" society by issuing special credits to certain types of marriages, incomes, families, or investments. He knew the enablements, he understood how seemingly innocuous program could change human behavior. Politicians are just lawyers spending and accepting millions of dollars to get a low-paying position of controlling other people's money. That's it. And if you think they should be controlling 50% of our money in life, you deserve everything that's coming to you. Your employers are all going to close up shop to avoid the tax, your education is going to suck, your welfare dollars' value is going to be pissed away on foreign entanglements and overpaid execs, your gold is going to get confiscated (again). It's all coming, comrades.

Well, hard to call it "impossible" seeing that they just pulled off the feat, but I'm blown away by the coordination it takes for two acrobats to work in such symbiosis to do those tricks without getting hurt.

It's become part of Bush's surge propaganda to equate sectarian insurgent groups in Iraq with Al-Qaeda, especially given OBL's comments in his new video.

"A numerically small but politically significant component of the insurgency is non-Iraqi, mostly in a faction called Al Qaeda-Iraq (AQ-I). Increasingly in 2007, U.S. commanders have seemed to equate AQ-I with the insurgency, even though most of the daily attacks are carried out by Iraqi Sunni insurgents. AQ-I was founded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was killed in a June 7, 2006, U.S. airstrike.

AQ-I has been a U.S. focus from very early on in the war because, according to U.S. commanders in April 2007, it is responsible for about 90% of the suicide bombings against both combatant and civilian targets. AQ-I is discussed in detail in CRS Report RL32217, Iraq and Al Qaeda, by Kenneth Katzman.

In large parts of Anbar Province and now increasingly in parts of other Sunni
provinces, Sunni tribes are trying to limit Al Qaeda’s influence, which they believe is detrimental to their own interests, by cooperating with U.S. counter-insurgency efforts. In other cases, there have been clashes between AQ-I and Iraqi insurgent groups, such as in June 2007 in the Amiriyah neighborhood of Baghdad, apparently representing differences over targets and AQ-I’s reported abuses of Iraqis who do not fully cooperate with AQ-I.

U.S. commanders say they are trying to enlarge this wedge between Sunni insurgents and AQ-I by selectively cooperating with Sunni insurgents - a strategy that is controversial because of the potential of the Sunni Iraqis to later resume fighting U.S. forces and Iraqi Shiites. The strategy is reported to have led to increased tensions between Maliki and the lead U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus."

- CRS Report for Congress : Iraq Post-Saddam Security and Governance.

This of course is perfect for both Bush and OBL.

After years of talking about sectarian violence, Bush can now fear monger that leaving Iraq would create a terrorist state formed of the AlQ's Caliphate, giving him more blank checks to continue the surge and the war. Think January 2009.

While OBL can garner more support from radicals since America's president is giving him such constant praises about military operations in Iraq. Sending political bombshells via videotape in safety somewhere in the area between Pakistan and Afghanistan slowly rebuilding his organization, preparing for more attacks avoiding the attention of the US military and special forces because they are all in Iraq. He even had time to color his beard.

So both are playing into each others objectives at the expense of American and Iraqi lives.

Robert Parry covers this eloquently in Bush-Bin Laden Symbiosis Reborn.

For those of you who like soundtracks, here is the track list this film:

1. "No Obstacles, Only Challenges"
2. Girls Like Us - B-15 Project Featuring Crissy D & Lady G
3. Champagne Beat Boogie - Boozy & Swan
4. You're The Lucky Ones - Baby D Love
5. Duke's Up (Joshua's Dubwise Mix) - W
6. 20 Minutes of Disco Glory (Simon's Come-Unity Mix) - DJ Garth & E.T.I.
7. Perpetual - Christian Smith & E.B.E. Present Timeline
8. Halycon - Orbital
9. Anomaly (Calling Your Name) – Taylor
10. Heaven Scent - John Digweed
11. Beachcoma - Hybrid
12. Protocol - Symbiosis
13. "Wanna Go To The Endup?"
14. Infinitely Gentle Blows (Scott Hardkiss' Aural Hallucination Mix) - Alter)Ring