I'm right there with you on almost every point.
I can't blame Bob for being misled. All I can do it point out to him that he knows that partisan '24-7 news' organizations don't tell the truth, and he should not listen to them...any of them, but particularly Faux, (pronounced 'fox', but still meaning fake) which is by far the worst of them.
I do understand the reason they, and others, have been so successful. I think that's all the more reason to point out at any opportunity what they are (propaganda machines) and what they aren't (news) to remind anyone listening that if they MUST watch, remember it's only entertainment, not information.
It's a sad thing that one must do their own research on nearly any topic they wish to be informed on. Faux is not the only culprit by far, nor the only side that does it, but it is the face of the industry, so they get targeted the most (at least by me).
I will give the benefit of a doubt that that's why he's here, but it could just be because he enjoys 'debate' and knows he can always find someone to argue against his ideas here, not that that's a problem for me. It's a large part of why I enjoy the site (not the only reason by far), and why I certainly don't want those who I disagree with to leave. I have to hope they take my discussions in the spirit they are intended and not as personally insulting, which I understand is how they often could be interpreted.
Absolutely, people are different, and come to different conclusions and solutions to the same problems. If we can't discuss ALL these ideas (at least the reasonable ones based in reality) we don't evolve (or stunt ourselves) socially. I also agree the biggest issue is the actual facts and data being misrepresented by those with agendas, any agenda.
Yes, I do remember the birth of the teabaggers (indicated by the fact that I still call them teabaggers, their original 'clever' name until they learned what it means), but it was so quickly taken over by those with 'keep youre government hands off my medicare' and 'Obama is a Kenyan Nazi' signs and tri-cornered hats it's hard to recall that tiny time period I might have been with them.
I'm always saddened how easily groups of people end up being misled. The teabaggers had it right to start, even with their name. Their intent was to make the major parties 'suck our balls' and clean up, so.... ;-)
I also hope Bob will continue 'debating' with me. I was actually upset when Chingalera went off the rails. On those occasions when he was respectful we got along great and had an amazing amount in common (although rarely agreed, never on politics). Unfortunately he did not act respectfully often.

Damn it, now you got me lecturing right back! Lecture over.
Professor Newt will only be in his office from approximately 3:00-4:00 ;-)

Monica explained in one episode that they could only afford the apartment because it was rent controlled and was actually her grandmother's apartment.

The guys who made this video forfeited all credibility saying on the show they never go to the bathroom or clean up. The show definitely had people using the bathroom on several occasions and Monica was always cleaning up.

And they weren't from old money. Phoebe and Joey were poor.

This seems like it was written by someone who only ever watched a couple of episodes.

That's hilarious...invent? I guess they "invented" deep water and vertical currents too?

The climate models have not 'failed'. They are not designed to predict short term weather. They only predict long term global trends, and are pretty much right on by that measure (contrary to what Faux News seems to have told you). The models have always predicted colder winters and hotter summers, exactly what we're seeing.

You seem to think if the temperature goes down in winter, or one year is not hotter than the last, it's proof that 'global warming' is a myth/hoax. That's simply wrong. (I still have yet to hear a logical reasoning for anyone perpetrating such a 'hoax' though, scientists could clean up if any credentialed, peer reviewed climatologist could prove the hoax and sell that proof to industry, why has that not happened if it's about making money amorally?)

This 'invention'-deep water warming and IPO are not a new ideas, maybe it's just the first you've heard of them?

Awesome technological *quality !
I can imagine this replacing ALL outdoor lighting. How cool would it be for street lights and signal lights to no longer require large poles, but just be a light floating in mid air 10 ft above? It could clean up metropolitan areas immensely, and remove many obstructions to taller vehicles/loads.
They just need to power up, add color, and stop the blinking so they don't trigger epileptics.

EDIT: My wife just pointed out that it's highly likely that we're now going see 'wacky wavy digital arm flailing tube men' on every corner once they commercialize this. :-(

That is the upcrust homely bumbler who becomes strong through finding her calling in Call The Midwife, sitting in the middle there.

She cleans up quite nicely! Amazing what hair and makeup can do, in both directions.

Actually it was rhetorical, I knew where I was going to start, I was not asking you in a real way or expecting you to answer...that's what rhetorical means.
Because the video was limited to American schools and systems does not mean the comments will be, we have a diverse bunch of sifters from all over the globe that might want to comment, and might not stick to America as the only place that counts. It is logical to ASSUME you might have meant only American schools, but some of us don't assume we know another's meaning and just go with what you wrote. If you wanted to limit your comment to American schools, you could easily have written exactly that. There's not a character limit on posts!
Or, perhaps Bareboards2 knows some Americans that would be insulted by your painting them as lowest common denominators at their basest. I would be one. I admitted those you describe exist, and may even be a majority, but Americans are not homogenous by far, and there are many that do exactly what you claimed they don't.
It's not hard to CARE, it's hard to retain, it's hard to focus, it's hard to attend at times, it's hard to come up with supplies, it's not hard at all to CARE about education, and I've never met a person of lesser means that didn't wish they could get more education. Saying they don't care is insulting, saying they don't achieve (as well as rich counterparts) is fact, sad tragic fact.
Yes, I agree, we need to help the poor a LOT more, their plight is getting worse daily while those not in need are the only ones succeeding.
I'm right there with you on free higher education, for the betterment of the nation AND it's citizens. College grads are far less likely to commit violent crimes or otherwise be drains on society, so are a boon for all.
It sounds like you may be confusing a lack of time, money, ability, and energy with a lack of caring, or perhaps not. As I said, those you describe do exist, in large numbers, they are simply not the ONLY variety of American student.
What?!? If this woman is in class working and paying for a degree while trying to raise 3 kids, one disabled, it sure sounds to me like she CARES about education, and that she's not lacking in educational pursuance or lack of drive, she's possibly failing for lack of energy and time would be my guess, or maybe from lack of educational preparation, or innate ability. If she didn't care, she shouldn't be spending money and time being in class working for a degree that no longer guarantees more money, she should be in welding class, or making bank cleaning up the school. There's nothing wrong with that, I've done both. People who only want to get more money and don't care about knowledge should go that route, they'll have a much better chance of success and not be in crippling debt for a chance they'll use their diploma for financial gain.
WTF?!? When they stopped the abuse, did you care then? The poor have tribulations, but are not constantly working to the bone unable to even contemplate a better future because they're outrageously accosted by life every second of the day. Be real. When there's time to think, many people of all social strata think how they would like to lean something new. You obviously cared enough to be in classes now even with this abuse you speak of, just like I did when and after all those things happened to me (but with only one brother. For me it was actually incentive to learn more and be 'better' than my brother whenever possible, in order to have a better life, I know I'm a freak though ), so what's your point? The poor don't think about furthering their education 100% of the waking day because they're too busy being poor, so they don't care about it at all? That's just silly. I think many if not most don't think about it much because they've determined there's no reasonable opportunity for them to achieve it, so why dwell on what you can't have. It' s not an issue of not careing.
I think we should help them have the opportunity to gain higher education and ability to make use of that opportunity because we know most of them DO CARE about education, but could certainly use help to achieve it. Those that don't care (I again admit they exist, but not only among the poor) should be helped to care, because it's important for them and us to have everyone educated.
Jon Stewart was generalizing, not making a statement about each and every American. I only take issue with the broad brush strokes painting all Americans in the same ugly color, I think we're a quite varied and interesting group, and I don't resemble your generalization in the least...and I'm American. I did admit that I think many, if not most Americans do fit your description, but you seem to still take exception to that viewpoint.

I'm no monarchist. But you're tilting at windmills. The symbolism you speak of is dead, because everyone knows how ridiculous they are. The government treats them with disdain and are always cleaning up after one of them goes gobbing off. The constitutional veto that the Queen nominally has, for example, would be impossible for her to exercise.

The British tourism industry is based almost entirely on the history of the Royal family and the USP is that we still have one - they're not just figures from history, we have, as Mr Stanhope points out, the genuine article still in residence. It's a zoo.

This chatter misses the main point.

Civil rights. The right to go about your own /consensual/ business with any number of other /consenting/ persons.

Rights to live your own life in peace, without bothering anyone else, and without being bothered.

Owning a gun harms no one. It's a personal matter. It has zero affect on anyone else.

Suicide is personal and consensual. It's nobody else's domain to judge. It's a simple property issue, about the most personal property that exists. Other people don't own your body. The clean-up crew was already paid for by the dead person's taxes (they aren't paid to sit around). Your family/friends, if they respected your wishes, they wouldn't criticize. God does not own you, and you don't have to worry about what he thinks.

Shooting NON CONSENTING individuals is a trespass onto those people, and it is wrong. These people should be punished accordingly, individually, for /their/ individual trespasses.

People at large should not be punished or have their rights taken away because of what someone else did. It's not their business.
That goes for guns, drugs, whatever else is strictly personal/consensual.



On a more specific note :
Having a gun does not necessitate killing.
Killing does not necessitate having a gun.
There is not a deterministic connection between killing and having guns.
For every example where 'gun control' and 'lower gun deaths' statistically aligned, there is another to show them not statistically aligned - precisely because one does not necessitate the other - and correlation is not causation.

I'm all for extremely hard punishment for killers - if it can be proven undeniably that they did it (high rez video / multiple close witnesses personally familiar with the killer / the like).
But I'm not interested in punishing anyone else for what they did.
(Just like I don't want to send drug users to jail because /someone else/ had a drug problem)

As far as I'm concerned, we have far too many laws that do not require any harm to be done to get your into trouble.

~5000 federal laws, thousands more per state, hundreds per county, hundreds per city, many with implementation guidelines defined by bureaucrats that outline multiple ways to violate each one.

It's a minefield. Everyone commits on average (according to some lawyer that wrote a book about it) around 3 felonies a day - when you do a complete review of their activities.
With 1 in 18 men in jail/on parole/in the system - do you really think we need to be sending more people to jail for having something and doing no harm with it?

How about focusing on the people doing harm - punishing in proportion to the harm done - but ignorant of what they used to do the harm.
What matters most is the suffering of the victims, not society's grimaces/preferances.

-scheherazade

Well ant, I was steadily replacing them daily until some asshole/insects decided they were bored, mean, and supported by other insects and stripped me of my power to resurrect dead videos....I was resurrecting several a day and pretty-much single-handedly on a thank-less path to cleaning-up the dead-pool...

Aluminium is one of the easiest materials to recycle. Although I'd say molding most of the shape and "cleaning" up the piece would be less wasteful of cutting edges and power...

Please do give us a closer look at ISIS is doing. Massacres, torture, rape, collective punishment and on, correct? Maybe killing what, 100 people at a time in the worst instances? That doesn't distinguish them from Saddam. Within Saddam's rule those crimes are what guys like yourself colloquially referred to as Saddam's 'firm' hand. They are his, so to speak, lesser and more routine crimes. I'd left them beneath mention thus far.

If you must insist on parroting your ignorance of Saddams al-Anfal campaign I'll resort to posting excerpts as evidence that the gassing was but a small part of it.

4,500 Kurdish villages were destroyed by Saddam, that's entire villages turned to rubble.
182,000 dead civilians by counts gleaned from Saddam's own records of how many Kurds his forces had succeeded in eliminating.
The concentration camps Saddam ran were pretty clearly modeled after Hitler's:
With only minor variations ... the standard pattern for sorting new arrivals [at Topzawa was as follows]. Men and women were segregated on the spot as soon as the trucks had rolled to a halt in the base's large central courtyard or parade ground. The process was brutal ... A little later, the men were further divided by age, small children were kept with their mothers, and the elderly and infirm were shunted off to separate quarters. Men and teenage boys considered to be of an age to use a weapon were herded together.

The conditions within the camp were terrible and torture, abuse and beatings were routine. The men of fighting age though were sorted for the express purpose to later drive them out into the desert by bus or truck for mass execution. This is how Saddam carried his genocide of the inhabitants of the 4,500 villages he'd destroyed.

Anyone interested in more or questioning the veracity of the above account can find more and endless references and evidence here:
http://www.hrw.org/reports/1993/iraqanfal/index.htm#TopOfPage

As for American policy, I don't quite see where I suddenly bear personal responsibility to clean up the world if I choose to form my opinions on world events independently of it's 'fit' to American policy.

I don't care much if it was Bush or Putin that took Saddam out of power aside from hedging on which would leave a better Iraq, either would be tough not to be an improvement from Saddam. Similarly for Sudan or the Congo, I'd be rather glad if world powers finally cared enough to try and spare the people there suffering under brutal military repression and endless war crimes. I'm not quite sure why you wouldn't share such a view?

OK, I see your points but....
1)with the plunger right there in it's holder, I never let it get close to spilling over, what a mess that would be (and there is a heat vent right there, UGH!)

2)I try to be careful plunging and not splash at all, but you do have a good point here, it would be cleaner, especially for those that get crazy plunging.

3)I leave the plunger in the toilet and flush again (at least once), to rinse it off some before removing it at all, then place it in it's holder. Granted, that's a bit nasty, but it never smells, and I give it a spray of bleach too. Every so often, while it's dry, I take it outside and wash it in the yard where the sun will sterilize everything.

The plastic seems to require you to clean before AND after, by hand at first BEFORE you can plunge (edit: with your face right next to the clog!)...and that's impossible if it's overflowing! Then what?!? A plunger can be cleaned up after at your leisure (better be before the wife needs the toilet though) and with scrubbing bubbles and/or bleach if that's your preference.

It may be strong enough to survive 'plunging' with your hands, but I certainly don't want to be the one to test that, or to find out it wasn't! It looks like if you don't get a perfect seal (so a perfect dry and clean rim first) it could easily detach. UGH!

Disposing the plastic requires you to take it to the garbage bag (or the bag to it) and then to take out that bag, which may or may not mean dripping it through your home, depending on your bathroom garbage. (mine has no bag)

All that said it's an interesting idea, but I think I prefer the plastic plunger. To each his own though.

Yes, it is way better.
1). First, that toilet isn't going to spill over. Ever had that happen? And with a heat register near by? Disgusting.
2). Two, do you realize how much Feces is splashed around the bathroom when you plunge? Not just on your floor, but walls, and on you, your clothes and possibly your face. It's not just the big drops, but the little ones, the ones that practically become airborne.
3). Three, Clean up afterwards, once you're done with a plunger, you need to clean it off, and if there is stuff sticking to it, as you can guess, that's not fun either. Not to mention, where are you going to clean it? in the bathtub? After you sanitize the plunger, now you have to sanitize the tub, or sink, or what ever as well.

-You're going to need to wipe down that toilet whether you plunge or use this sheet.
-This plastic sheet, looks strong enough that it's not going to break.
-And disposing it. Well, lifting it into a garbage bag, that just seems way easier.

They let their rabbit run around on the tile. Probably lucky they clean up the turds.

Oh, then you do believe in AGW? If not, what's the straw man?
If global warming were the reason I do the things I do, you would be correct, going vegetarian would be a reasonable next step. The thing is I've done all I have done for personal, self centered reasons that benefit me personally, it just so happens that they mostly also benefit the planet. Because I intentionally didn't have children and don't believe in reincarnation, I have little incentive to attempt to save the planet beyond my lifespan. That said, I eat little beef, which is the worst meat to eat, and mostly chicken, the best meat for ecology (except for Iguana tail, a truly sustainable meat product).
CO2 staying at current levels dooms the planet fairly quickly. Raising those levels dooms if faster and more completely. I see little chance that we might actually decrease CO2 production levels, much less turn it to a negative number, which needs to happen if there's any chance in hell of stopping the run-away greenhouse effect. I see it as an issue that's far too late to stop, and can only be minimized at best, and will likely be maximized instead.
It's more like 4 billion that need to reduce their 'footprint', and another 3-4 billion that need to not expand theirs. More to the point, it's about 5 billion that need to not reproduce, while the other 3 billion only have 2 children at most. Not a likely outcome, but what is needed to solve the most pressing issues of the day.
Government is required to incentivize industry to follow suit and reduce their emissions. Without coersion, they'll do what's cheaper every time, and not cleaning up your own mess is always cheaper.
The only 'climate scientists' that are skeptical are the deniers, all others have examined the data and come to the same conclusion, just differing in the levels of change they expect. From what I see, they all underestimate the changes to come and ignore compounding features of the systems.
I'm not sure why you don't see this as a serious conversation, but that's on you.
I have given a scientific commentary. you ignored it and asked the same questions again, claiming they had been ignored. I'll try again....

CO2 saturation and temperature are linked, and have been proven to be so. Human production of CO2 is larger and faster than any natural CO2 rise in known climate history, well over 200000 years and up to hundreds of millions of years depending on what data you consider reasonable and reliable, and it's not only the amount but the rate of change that is greater than any natural climate change ever seen in the data. It's that faster rate of change that's the most dangerous, but the amount that determines the change to come. The system is slow to react, and is only now reacting to last centuries atmospheric changes. That means that even if we stopped CO2 production completely today, the effects will still be felt for centuries to come, and we aren't even slowing the rate at which we raise the amount of CO2 we produce, it's going up faster by the day thanks to those that either deny the problem or ignore it in favor of profit or simplicity. That's why estimates of the future are all lacking in my eyes, they all assume either static or reduced CO2 production, which is not reality.
We're hosed. The only option I see is to become self sufficient and die before the planet does. One more reason to not have children and instead be self sufficient as much as possible and enjoy what's left while you can.