Terrorist attacks are really rare too. The US government seems happy to 'turn the country inside out' to be seen to be catching and preventing them.

You need to draw a line somewhere. Humans, from the very beginning of humanity, always tried to get wasted, so you won't be able to pull of another prohibition era. On the other side you can legalise everything and decriminalise everybody (I see no reason why a methcook shouldn't go to jail, fuck Heisenberg). However, the US government is extremely shitty at drawing lines as they give the chalk away to lobbyists and other people whose job depends on prohibition and criminalisation. Maybe we should let actual drug and addiction experts in on this.

Yup; that and everything else.
- Guantanamo
- /banks
- /insurance companies
- /silicon valley bullshit
- /NSA
- hating the republicans while taking the exact same viewpoint on 75% of the issues
- all in on supply side economy
and last but not least,
- drones, drones, drones

I keep waking up and hoping this whole administration was a bad dream. It's "almost" like money is controlling the entire Federal US government regardless of party.

You do realise that socialised healthcare works pretty well in the rest of the developed world, right?
It's not perfect, but it's significantly better than the disaster that is the US health system.

Or is it just that you feel the US government are uniquely incompetent?

Your video, Congressman Mistakes US Government Officials for Foreigners, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Wired piece on Snowden, page 5:

By the time he went to work for Booz Allen in the spring of 2013, Snowden was thoroughly disillusioned, yet he had not lost his capacity for shock. One day an intelligence officer told him that TAO—a division of NSA hackers—had attempted in 2012 to remotely install an exploit in one of the core routers at a major Internet service provider in Syria, which was in the midst of a prolonged civil war. This would have given the NSA access to email and other Internet traffic from much of the country. But something went wrong, and the router was bricked instead—rendered totally inoperable. The failure of this router caused Syria to suddenly lose all connection to the Internet—although the public didn't know that the US government was responsible.

Meanwhile the US politicians agreeing to send the weapons to these other rogue states are getting paid by the companies producing the weapons, and/or accepting positions with them after government.

The US government is rotten to the core and many countries, my own included, are trying their best to get in on the corrupt, rotten action.

In your opinion, what is "the right thing"?

This isn't a flame, just an attempt to understand your perspective.

My reason, and perspective, is because for many years I've seen what actions that Israel has taken, even through the American rose-colored-lens of media, as oppression-bordering-on-genocide. I also sincerely doubt that the Palestinian media has such a subversive hold on American media that it could launch as much propaganda as what I've seen over the last couple decades.

The US appears to have an unspoken mandate to support everything that Israel does. Even when I research US and world history, I don't fully understand why the US has taken this stance.

Regardless, terribly, ironically, the US seems to be supporting an organized regime of the like since we have not seen since the early 19th century. I try to listen to all channels of media because I feel it's healthy to be exposed to contradicting viewpoints, but I've never heard a single positive action that Israel has done in the name of its geographical area, history, or government, that wasn't entirely selfish in the name of biblical righteousness.

Anyway, I originally viewed this post because I was actually surprised that the US would condemn an action of Israels because I'm so used to the US government loading up the state of Israel with arms and supporting their militant actions. I've no idea what "WochIT" media is, but it would be a nice turning point for the US if their channel portrays a legitimate perspective.

In the meantime I won't hold my breath.

Corporations and the US Government has tested many things on the American public and when people protest the answer is "Prove it hurts you." I'm sorry but that's not how it works, you have to prove that it doesn't hurt us, they onus is not on the people to bring evidence of it creating harm, the onus is on you.

So yeah because it's done in a lab by a corporation who is complicit in war crimes. Because it's done in a Lab by a government that is known for testing medicines on people without telling them. Because of these facts the onus is on you. PROVE that it is not harmful, create meaningful and effective regulation of GMOs and then THEN we might embrace all of it whole heartedly.

Until that time, these questions are valid despite what you think. It's the people in the black neighborhoods who hate cops, because the way the cops treat them. It's not an insane standpoint.

*controversy

Related:

- http://videosift.com/video/The-REAL-Reason-Youre-Circumcised
- http://videosift.com/video/US-Government-Promotes-Circumcision-to-Prevent-AIDS
- http://videosift.com/video/Have-It-Chopped-Off-Or-Wash-It-Tough-Choice
- http://videosift.com/video/Penn-and-Teller-Bullshit-Circumcision

Yes this doesn't look good for NPC. Pulling a veteran reporter because he tweeted something critical of the US government speaks to how the entire corporate media industry is, as Yogi stated, subservient to power. Keep kissing the asses of powerful politicians NBC, it helps to show just how fucked our 'free media' is here in the US.

Free market doesn't come into it. The internet itself is not a free market invention. It is essentially a public service that we allow contractors (the ISPs) to maintain in the same way that building companies maintain roads.

The internet itself (i.e. the physical network and the IP layer) grew out of DARPANet; a US government-funded defence initiative and the world wide web (the HTTP layer, HTML, etc) came from CERN; an EU multi-state research project.

The point is that the infrastructure itself was not created by the cable companies, they merely built on it. And they have no more right to decide to charge for different data than a road maintenance company does to charge different freight companies different rates.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

No matter how the US government tries to portray him, this guy is wicked smart and a patriot.

On the other hand, apparently the US Government lost $11.2 billion on bailing out GM. They *spent* 50 billion bailing them out, the 11.2 billion is just how much dried up and blew away entirely.

Maybe if we'd have just let some of those corporate juggernauts fail, as should happen in a REAL free market, we'd actually have seen more progress. I'm thinking of, say, Tesla -- that got a $465 million loan from the gov. and paid it off in full 9 years early.

Not so long ago -- within my lifespan -- the government actually *broke up* giant corporate monopolies like Bell telecom. Now we can't throw money at them fast enough. I guess lobbying "works".

Here's some easy math.

A great deal of money is involved + The rules are made in, by, or for Americans = The game is rigged so only the wealthiest truly prosper

Doesn't matter whether it's bidding for government contracts, stock market, banks, big manufacturers, or even retail. Does anyone think the US government spends 75 billion a year on the NSA, CIA etc. just to keep people safe? No. They found a way to siphon a great deal of that money off to private industries. Most of that money goes to absolutely useless projects that will never have any impact on the safety of Americans or their allies.

Now that the rules restricting donations to politicians have been thrown away you can all expect things to get a lot worse.