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Guys, it's the vendors. They pay for that "free" loan and a lot of the benefits. And the credit card companies lobbied it in by making it illegal for a business to charge a different price for cash than plastic. That's recently (last 5 years or so) been overturned. If you've ever had the distinct pleasure of navigating the byzantine and maddening world of credit card clearance fees, you would know that not all cards take as big a bite out of your transaction with the consumer. And it just so happens that the juicier benefits cards cost the vendor even more. That's a minimum of 1.8%, usually 2.5% and as high as 4%. That means the bank floats you the $ for 30 days average at 2.5% = 30% APR. It's quite a racket. There's a reason you get 3 very expensive mailers with fake cards and whatnot a week.

The question isn't whether you can be good without God. Atheists and agnostics can do good works as much as anyone else can. They love, they have kindness and compassion, and so on.

Do you know that if, when I died, I arrived at Heavens gate and I met Jesus..and He asked me this question "Why should I let you into My Heaven?" and my answer was, "because of all of the good things I did", He wouldn't let me in?

Why is that? Atheists and most religious people actually have something in common; a fundamental misconception of what goodness is.

Most people have a list of certain crimes in their mind that, so long as they have not committed them, they consider themselves to be good people. They'll say to themselves "I'm a good person. I haven't killed anyone." "I may not be perfect but I am no Hitler or Stalin". Or, they think if their good deeds outweigh their bad deeds, they're good people. There are some religions like that.

It's a relative goodness. Most everyone will acknowledge that they've done some wrong, but most will tell you far more right than wrong.

The problem with a relative goodness is that is all it is; it is relatively good. It is only good some of time. That is how human beings are. Goodness in Gods eyes is not relatively good, it is perfectly good. That is why the bible says there is no one good except God. The reason why Jesus won't let me into Heaven based on my performance is because once I've sinned even once I have failed to meet Gods standard; moral perfection. That is the only thing God considers good. Once there is a fly in the ointment, it is ruined.

The inference here is, if that is true then no one can get into Heaven. That's the dilemma, and that is why God sent His Son to die for our sins on a cross. Jesus had met Gods moral standard, He had never sinned. He was Gods spotless lamb, qualified to be a sacrifice for our sins on our behalf, taking the punishment that we deserve. Because of sin we are disqualified but Jesus qualifies us, that is why we need Him, why He is the Messiah.

Because Jesus took the punishment for our sins, when we believe in Him as Lord and Savior, God can forgive our sins and impute the righteousness of Christ to us. God counts our faith in Jesus Christ as righteousness. Not because we ourselves are righteous, but because He is righteous and our faith is counted towards us as righteousness. It is a legal transaction, once we believe God can dismiss our case because justice has been done for our sins by the atoning death of Jesus Christ.

So, when Jesus asks me why I should be allowed in, the only possible answer is this: "I am not worthy to get in; it is your righteousness counted to me that will open these gates. You died for my sins and rose the third day; I believed your gospel and received you as my Lord and Savior."

Atheists can be good without God, so can hindus, buddhists and even Christians. The trouble isn't whether they can be good, the trouble is that it isn't good enough.

One of those "problems conventional computers can't solve" is factoring primes (OK, they can, but it's very slow).

Quantum computers could make this very quick.... Which actually kinda sucks. Because, in a very simplistic sense, all encryption and by extension all electronic transactions depend on factoring primes being hard to do.

Basically quantum computers are going to break the Internet the second they become widely available.

Needs *kill to complete the transaction

As an NZ resident, I am morally obliged to point out that Australia is a horrible place populated by criminals and terrible rugby teams, but I did live there for two years and in reality, it's not actually that bad.

Yes, their government are a shower of complete dickheads both in their own right and in the fact that they have their collective head shoved so far up Americas arse they can practically see the back of uncle sams tonsils. The immigration policy is pretty much barbaric and they seem hellbent on ruining the country as fast as humanly possible. And I haven't even gotten started on how unbelievably racist the country as a whole is (this is a country that only got rid of it's "White Australia Policy" in the 70s).

Border security, while they can be complete arseholes are not nearly as bad as they're portrayed on those TV shows. They do have a lot of idiots flouting the biosecurity laws (Johnny Depp is the least of their problems), but in general as long as you don't make the mistake of not being white, they're far more interested in any fruit you might have than any bills with coke on them. (side note: don't bring cash to Australia, almost every transaction is electronic there).

But the country itself has some great things going for it. Some of the scenery is amazing, the parts of the reef that aren't bleached are stunning, the food in the cities is amazing (as is the coffee, especially in Melbourne and Sydney).

Yes, we clearly disagree about independent voters' responsibilities. That's fine. Just know that when you assign blame, many won't accept it.

Yes, I also hope current poll numbers and trends reverse....unless Sanders IS the nominee, in which case I hope current poll numbers remain the same.

What? What argument? Instead of answering? I discussed your two suggestions, and offered two of my own, one being (I think) a more palatable alternative to your tax proposal for steadying markets, the other being campaign reform. To quote myself...
"Tax on investment transactions...you've GOT to be kidding, she'll never consider any such thing, it goes against her own, and her donors interests. A speed limit on trading info so everyone has an equal chance would work better.
The one you didn't mention is the MOST important in my eyes, and also a non starter from her or them....campaign reform...both finance AND how elections operate from districts to electronic voting machines and everything in between."
Is that an argument? It certainly wasn't meant as one.
It was meant as simple and fairly civil (if slightly snarky) answers to your question (answers that I guess you missed), with a note that IMO, my (and likely your) preferred planks are not going to be addressed acceptably by Clinton, and clear reasons why I think that. That was not meant to start an argument, I'm sorry you take it that way.

No, I don't think I said that. Again, it would be nice, but if she locks it up (not counting super delegates) then Bernie's run as a Democrat is over, as is all hope. I don't hold onto even a shred of hope that he'll sway her policy, no matter what he gets her to say during the election.
She's already been incredibly inconsistent on the minimum wage thing, actually taking 3 positions in one sentence in one debate. Can't trust her.
Tax on investment transactions...you've GOT to be kidding, she'll never consider any such thing, it goes against her own, and her donors interests.
A speed limit on trading info so everyone has an equal chance would work better.
The one you didn't mention is the MOST important in my eyes, and also a non starter from her or them....campaign reform...both finance AND how elections operate from districts to electronic voting machines and everything in between. Without that, we'll never get candidates that will work for us OR fix the system that supports them, or even be able to trust our elections. As I see it, Sanders is our one and only hope of fixing the system, so the only hope of saving the union.

@newtboy

What gave the impression that you think Hillary should drop out is because you are calling for a "debate" at the convention EVEN IF she has it locked up. Why would she do that?

IF IF IF IF she has it locked up, I really want Sanders to use the political muscle he has accumulated to help shape the Dem platform. That is what he says he wants to do, and that is what I hope he does.

Get federal minimum wage increase as a plank in the platform (and good grief, tie it to consumer price index so we can stop having to beg for it every 20 years or so.)

This won't happen, but I would LOVE a tiny tax on all investment transactions. I don't need to have it tied to education, but it wouldn't bother me if it was. If we had that tiny tax, it would stop some of the horrendous volatility in the market as this folks chase fractions of a point going up and down. It's stupid what they do with computers and has nothing to do with capitalism and everything to do with chasing a buck in a virtual market (nothing being created except hard-ons -- tax those hard-ons, baby. Tax 'em.)

What other planks would you like to see in the Dem platform? Those are two that come to mind.

"Push back? Do you mean intentionally suppress laughter for fear of being un-PC? Heckle (thats fine BTW)? Defame? Ban? Throw stones? Chase out of town? Burn books? Worse?"

Awfully hyperbolic. You seem to think someone saying "I don't like this" is brushing up with burning books?

Because I see that as an act of free speech. Protest, boycotts, etc aren't suddenly forcing anyone to do something or preventing anyone from saying anything. It's meeting speech with more speech. The pinion of free speech principles.

But free speech has never been freedom from consequences. You can say whatever edgu thing you like but you can't expect everyone to just shut up and be fine with it.

Either you accept being edgy is going to rile people up and get you reactions or you go back to doing boring ass material. Imagining that someone not enjoying your joke is akin to a mob trying to murder you only really shows how thin skinned comedians are to any criticism. Ignore it.

And the issue of disinvitations to colleges is, again, more free speech acts. Yet somehow, unless the speech is toothless and ineffective, its a melt down by thin skinned comedians.

Look, you need to know your audience when you do a gig. You don't walk into a bar mitzvah gig and tell all your edgy antisemetic jokes then get wounded at the "PC outrage" when people get mad. Yet somehow going to a college during a rise in college activism against racism/sexism and telling your "women are shit, right?" jokes is supposed to be no issue?

And the other issue in this: colleges are viewed more and more as a services paid transaction: I'm paying thousands to this place to provide me a product. So its no wonder students feel more empowered to complain, especially when their money from activity fees is being spent on something they don't like.

Saying "you owe us $500 and we're going to use it to pay the 'Muslims are all rapists' guy to come here and talk" isn't the best way to make people feel like their money is being used with their best interests in mind.

Honestly, if you feel like protests or any act of free speech you disagree with is akin to burning books or destroying lives... Maybe you should grow a thicker skin. Everyone doesn't have to like what you say and its not some afront to your rights when they don't.

The cop's job is to catch people speeding and give them tickets. Seems to be exactly what he did.

The corruptibility of those in public office would be substantially reduced if the general expectation were that they would openly enjoy any extra-organisational perquisites available to them while continuing to perform their office in an objective fashion.

What's more, from a utilitarian perspective the value of the service provided to that cop probably dramatically exceeds the cost to the public purse of a few minutes of his salaried time lost. As an overall result, society has made a profit on the transaction. If anything, therefore, it would have been irresponsible of him to decline the opportunity to, shall we say, mouth-holster his pink pork pistol.

I find it baffling how poorly thought out and executed this was.

Skyrim? Ok, I get that it's got the largest mod scene, but if they'd done their research they'd know that a lot of Skyrim mods have complicated inter-dependencies with script extenders, assets borrowed from other mods, other mod resources such as animation behaviors or skeleton rigs, patches for compatibility, load order management, SkyUI....the list goes on.

The cynical part of me thinks that they knew their micro-transaction model wasn't really a good fit, but they just wanted to see if they could get away with it. Donations or a Patreon type of system would seem to fit modding a lot better, but I don't think Valve or Bethesda can make themselves the middlemen in that arrangement nearly as easily.
The naive part of me thinks that perhaps they just badly misjudged this...I'm not sure that level of incompetency is really better.

I'd love to see some of the more prolific modders able to make it a fulltime profession, if not just so they could hire some decent voice talent...

They forgot these:

- Cabin service so frosty it makes a Moscow winter look like fucking Maui. (See: Icelandair)

- Fist-swinging free-for-all trying to grab aisle seats near the front of the plane (See: Southwest).

- The prepaid-for seat shuffle where the seat you reserved three months ago gets taken from you and you're reassigned somewhere near the head at the back of the plane. (See: Alaska Airlines)

- "Aww, Sweetie, did you want a sandwich on this 7-hour trans-Atlantic flight? THAT'LL BE 30 FUCKING EUROS PLEASE. Oh, you want to pay in dollars? Ok, that'll be 45 bucks at the current exchange rate plus conversion and transaction fees. Here, enjoy this three-day-old reindeer meat sammich that's dryer than the twats of the frigid cabin crew who served it to you." (See: Icelandair (again))

- Ladies and Gentlemen, we apologize for the 6g maneuver our former Air Force pilot is about to pull in order to avoid having to do a go-around because we were too busy discussing the new stewardess' tits to watch the glide path. Please keep the screaming in terror to a minimum as he startles easily . . ." (See: Delta)

- "Ladies and Gentlemen, we've now arrived in Scranton . . . oh, fuck, this isn't Pittsburgh!" (See: Delta (multiple times))

Yeah -- I just LOVE flying.

I love it when people claim that content providers just refuse to find new ways to get paid...out of sheer laziness. While apparently not having any suggestions as to how to do so themselves.

Virtually the entire internet is nothing -but- experiments in alternative means of monetization. The fact is that there really aren't many options. You can sell access directly (via subscriptions, micro-transactions or some such), or you can sell advertising. Neither of which appear to be sustainable strategies; as soon as the content is made available to a few (or before), it'll be stolen and distributed for free, and advertising has been getting less and less profitable for a decade (since about the time the market got saturated, and there were no newbies left to click on the ads).

You really can't sell "support" contracts to content. I suppose you could sell crappy merchandise, like action figures and plushies, but that's wanting content creators to do something other than creating content to be able to pay the bills. Not a good trade-off, IMO.

Note, I don't have any answer either, but I'm not about to lay "a large part of the problem" on the content creators.They have -every- incentive to solve the problem...unlike the consumers, who have plenty of incentives to -be- the problem.

Human governments can learn a lot from nature, including the natural Emergent orders of ant colonies. These are anarchic systems which adapt into collective (i.e., socialist or communist) or transactional (i.e., capitalist) forms of functionality in the absence of central control.