What is wrong with you people? They were told to take him alive if they could. They fired instead of surrendering. This is what happens. This isn't the death of Freedom--this is a dumbass having a firefight with SEALs.

As for people complaining about other people glorying in his death:

Here is a video of a kid kicking a wall. It collapses on his leg. It's hard to see exactly what happens, but it's entirely feasible that it completely crushed it. In some cases the same people that are here crying about bin Laden's death were posting comments on that video whooping it up--yeah, that's what you *get* for committing petty vandalism! Permanent disfigurement and disability!

I wasn't out celebrating, but I can see how some people would be. The largest demonstrations sounded like they were in NYC and DC. Are any of you NYC residents? Were you in 2001? It'd be easy for me to sit here in the Midwest and go, "Meh, whatever, all he did was kill a few thousand people," but these people lived there. These were the people they knew. And this was the guy that killed them. And then hid for ten years. Threatening to kill more.

This site is practically based on schadenfreude. You relish others' embarrassment, pain, etc. etc. There are tons of videos where people are probably permanently injured or killed from falls, crashes, etc, and you all love it.

There was a long article in The New Yorker a few months back. I can't remember the topic of the article, but at one point the author discussed Medicare. There was one hospital in the Midwest that had the lowest Medicare costs for terminal folks than any other in the nation. By a long shot.

You know why? Because that hospital REQUIRED all patients to have health care directives and end of life consultations BEFORE the crisis occurred.

Tens of thousands of dollars less spent. Better quality of life for the patients. Better peace of mind for the surviving family members. Less depression for family members after the patient died.

Republicans talk about fiscal responsibility but they would rather score political points than actually do something to help the deficit.

And the "death panels" were a Republican idea. That was embraced by Democrats because it was smart.

I can't hardly stand this.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Lissie, Live, Music, awesome, cover, Pursuit of happiness' to 'Lissie, midwest, folk rock, Live, Music, awesome, cover, Pursuit of happiness' - edited by calvados

pssssshh... consistently get these in the spring here in the midwest.

>> ^Morganth:

Like a lot of people have already said, college football is way more popular than the NFL


I agree with everything else you said, but from the quantitative data that I can find this is probably not true. See the first two tables here:
http://www.harrisinteractive.com/vault/Harris-Interactive-Poll-Research-Sports-Popularity-2010-02.pdf

Although yes it is probably true in the American South and Midwest.

>> ^Stu:

Well he picked a ridiculous game to go to for that and I'm sure they made sure of it so they got the tape they wanted. Weird part is, if you go to an NFL game, it's half the excitement. College football games are a perfect storm of stupidity and grace. There's nothing quite like it.

As they should be. And yes, college games are FAR more exciting. The stadiums are sometimes twice the size of NFL stadiums. Universities have competitions as to who can have the biggest stadium (capacity). Since building new stadiums are expensive, they add on to what's existing. You won't find much of this in places with stuff to do, only in the midwest where there isn't anything better to do than to go to the local college football game. These college games will empty out a town.

That has got to be weird to figure out. From the perspective of the kid, the parents, and the (judgmental) community.

I grew up in rural Kansas, and was exposed to a strong cultural bias against homosexuality or transgendered people. When I was young and stupid (or younger and stupider than I am now), say in early High School, I thought that I hated homosexuals, in spite of the fact that I didn't actually know any -- probably because in the atmosphere that culture creates it would be extremely hard for anyone to be openly gay or transgendered and have to put up with attitudes like I had or worse. Fortunately I grew out of that, probably earlier than I otherwise would have due to my own struggle with "coming out" as an atheist in a similarly hostile environment and making an empathic connection of feeling held back from my nature.

After moving to Thailand, I got married to a Thai woman. She has some female friends, but probably about 2/3rds of her friends are either gay men or "kathoey" / transgendered men -- she was on her community college's cheerleading squad and many of her male friends are connections from that. Although I thought that I abandoned any remaining cultural homophobia during college, I must admit that Thailand pushed those boundaries at first -- it is just so different from the conservative midwest region of the conservative USA. But I have since seen that they are good people, nice, and good friends for my wife (and me) to have.

Some things here are bass-ackwards, but the cultural tolerance or at least apathy towards different sexual orientations seems like a real improvement over my own American / Bible Belt cultural upbringing. I hope this kid can get everything figured out in an environment that is more like Thailand than what I grew up in...

>> ^KnivesOut:

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:

Like "mass murder spree" killed.

Links please.


No links to the Left-Wing Murder Spree Rampage? The Leftist Plot to Assassinate Key Figures in the Republican Party (Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, Palin)?

Oh right, because those things don't exist. There are no liberal pundits calling for democrats to put down the right-wing resistance. No leftist militias filming recruiting and training videos in the woods of the midwest.

>> ^silvercord:

You don't need to go overseas to find flying insects this big with a stinger -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_cicada_killer
We've got these all over the Midwest, and they are intimidating as hell.
You beat me by 7 hours. This was the first thing I thought of after seeing this video. I remember seeing cicada killers on my grandparents' ranch and being thoroughly creeped out and fascinated by them.

You don't need to go overseas to find flying insects this big with a stinger -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_cicada_killer

We've got these all over the Midwest, and they are intimidating as hell.

>> ^jwray:

I don't know why I bother to split hairs with you over scum like this caller, but you're lacking some appreciation for subtle details:
1. He didn't say that the blackness of the callers on the republican line was the only reason he suspected them of not being real republicans. However, if black people are 12.4% of the population, and 7% of them self-describe as republicans, and republicans are 45% of the population, then the republican party is less than 2% black (do the math). A huge proportion of black republican callers would not prove anything, but it would certainly play a reasonable part in arousing suspicions that people were not calling the right line, in combination with whatever those callers may have said.
2. It is indeed very easy to tell the geographic and socioeconomic origin of someone by their voice, unless they have practiced another accent. Most actors, TV news anchors, and other people whose voice is crucial to their livelihood have worked hard on their voice and may not resemble the accent in their place of origin. But for nearly everybody else, I can reliably distinguish between dozens of accents, including Scottish, Irish, several varieties of British, Australian, French, German, Russian, South African, Chinese, Indian, Southern American, Ghetto, Boston, New York, Midwest, etc. Black people from the south speak differently than black people in new york, but both accents are distinguishable from the accents of white people in the same respective areas. There are of course exceptions, but by and large people speak according to where they're from and who they are.
3. The third alternative, disconnecting him after the "black-span" jibe without shouting profanities at him, probably would have been the best use of C-Span's time, but I was merely expressing my view that the C-Span moderator's response was better than just telling him to go fuck himself. Further estrangement, alienation, and fracturing of society will not make extremists less extreme. On the contrary, mingling promotes peace and mutual understanding. Simply telling the caller to go fuck himself would not accomplish anything.


Just quoting it now in case it gets changed again.

I don't know why I bother to split hairs with you over scum like this caller, but you're lacking some appreciation for subtle details:
1. He didn't say that the blackness of the callers on the republican line was the only reason he suspected them of not being real republicans. However, if black people are 12.4% of the population, and 7% of them self-describe as republicans, and republicans are 45% of the population, then the republican party is less than 2% black (do the math). A huge proportion of black republican callers would not prove anything, but it would certainly play a reasonable part in arousing suspicions that people were not calling the right line, in combination with whatever those callers may have said.

2. It is indeed very easy to tell the geographic and socioeconomic origin of someone by their voice, unless they have practiced another accent. Most actors, TV news anchors, and other people whose voice is crucial to their livelihood have worked hard on their voice and may not resemble the accent in their place of origin. But for nearly everybody else, I can reliably distinguish between dozens of accents, including Scottish, Irish, several varieties of British, Australian, French, German, Russian, South African, Chinese, Indian, Southern American, Ghetto, Boston, New York, Midwest, etc. Black people from the south speak differently than black people in new york, but both accents are distinguishable from the accents of white people in the same respective areas. There are of course exceptions, but by and large people speak according to where they're from and who they are.

3. The third alternative, disconnecting him after the "black-span" jibe without shouting profanities at him, probably would have been the best use of C-Span's time, but I was merely expressing my view that the C-Span moderator's response was better than just telling him to go fuck himself. Further estrangement, alienation, and fracturing of society will not make extremists less extreme. On the contrary, mingling promotes peace and mutual understanding. Simply telling the caller to go fuck himself would not accomplish anything.

As much shit as Obama was given over his "cling to guns and religion" comment, when you read it in it's proper context, you realize he was absolutely 100% dead-on correct:

You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Dag -

Solar power has and will come a long way since it's conception. Remember this is an industry just coming out of its infancy.

The issue about batteries deals with the storage of the energy produced, not the actual production of energy. The currently most popular energy storage device is the battery (which the technology seems to be advancing every year), but there are alternatives to that including: hydrogen gas (a converter splits water and stores the hydrogen gas for later use - either heat or electricity production), compressed air (some energy production facilities use underground caverns pumped full of compressed air and then covert that into energy when needed), or simply a lack of storage by people that tie to an existing electrical grid.

Dannym is quite correct on the new production techniques have advanced. Currently there is a company that has been able to produce solar powered sheets of plastic. They have taken the advances of nanotechnology and applied them to this field. The conversion rate isn't great, but the cost of production are much less than traditional methods. The idea is that it can be made into siding for houses, roof tiling, etc.

I haven't read about the Thorium reactors. I can safely assume that there have been advances in that field in the last 30 years as well. I will look into that. Thanks for the link. I used to work in reactor plants, but had no desire to continue that work in the civilian world. All the nuclear plants in the US are east coast, california, or stuck in the midwest (and a small one in colorado.) I love the pacific northwest and had no desire to be anywhere else. It just something about the mountains and water... and looking across the water to see more mountains. Part of my soul is here and I'd rather not leave that. Oh yeah, a point - I haven't looked into newer designs. And I will look at that information and try to withhold my predisposition towards doubt as I personally think that solar is a much better way to go until we crack the fusion problem. I think that solar should always play a part, even if it is as simple as facing your house to true south with windows and building a trombe wall, eutectic salt chambers, etc. So much less energy would be spent if we focused on a little bit of good engineering in the housing market and conservation.

Cenk kinda falls apart with the "why global warming is bad" thing, but mostly it's concerns about negative effects on the amount of: farmland, access to drinkable water, biodiversity in ecologies everywhere, sea levels, and the overall stability of weather itself.

Incidentally, I'm sure Doocy wasn't joking about how lame the Republican claims of "global cooling" were when it was pretty much short-sleeve weather through November and well into December this year.

We'll be waaaay past the point of no return if it ever fails to get cold in winter, especially in the northern midwest.

*eco