Frankly, it was insane to go down that road in the first place, but Americans have had it drilled into their heads millions of times that the free market is always more efficient than government.

That statement is 100% true, while being completely misleading.

Incandescent light bulbs are extremely efficient... at producing heat instead of light.

Private enterprise is very efficient at creating short-term profits for their shareholders.

Yet Americans seem to think it'll somehow save tons of money so they don't have to pay their precious taxes and everyone can go out and individually buy services for 10x the price they'd pay through the government.

Classic example is GM buying up public transit in the 30s-50s and bulldozing the facilities so everyone has to buy a car. Great for GM, terrible for everyone and everything else (including, ironically, GM in the long run).

Absolutely...the important question is "how fast is he going down?"

Especially when the EIA candidate decides to climb above someone who is taking reasonable care. Should he fall, there's a pretty good chance he's going to injure or take someone else with him now. He's entitled to risk his own life (although I'd not be happy about paying for his hospital bills). But he needs to take his own path, rather than put others at risk.

Since you going down memory lane... Just Saying

Nice tribute, well played.

I heard a story from a Swedish friend about 3-4 years ago, where they released a stamp with him on it, but it didn't go down all that well. No one over the age of 35 had heard of Avicii, and no one under 35 knew what a stamp was.

You could not be more wrong ..
There was the bias in the memo? What fact was a false? Did you even read it?


If there was nothing to the memo why did ALL try to stop it?
Its a bombshell and just the tip of things to come.


Hillary/ Obama and many, many, and many others are going down..



http://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/373379-federal-abuses-a-growing-blight-on-obamas-legacy

Following your same arguments:
Religions are NOTHING like race.

Actually, pretty much all the bad things you said about cops are exactly what the nazi's said about Jew's and it wasn't racist because jews aren't a race, and it was as true because they could point at the zionists....

You need to acknowledge your going down a stupidly dark road here man.

Bob, I must congratulate you. Your caricature of gullible republicans is spot on.

I guess Obama is going down for being an illegal immigrant from Kenya, right? Hillary for Benghazi, and all federal law enforcement for......having some agents who don't like or respect orange Kanye, just like every Republican senator and representative just months earlier. I guess you're just lucky that wasn't Obama's move, or they would have released all their damming info about Trump and not implicated Clinton last minute, but somehow now that they're investigating Trump they're all deep state democrats (that threw an election to elect Trump).
You cannot be that dumb, the fact you remember to breathe is proof you have too much intelligence to believe such flipflopping theories that require amnesia of yesterday to believe today's new utter bullshit story.

It's hilariously transparent that, according to Trump, the FBI, CIA, and NSA are suddenly republican enemies (so much for being the law and order party, huh?) and Putin is your friend. Reagan would be so proud.

Not me.
I have a much broader scope than immigrants.

Obama, Hillary, and top FBI, CIA all going down.

Muller got nothing,

Trump holding all the cards.

While I agree that tricking someone into parenthood is an awful thing to do, I feel like your solution might be worse than the crime.

What happens to the child? What happens to the other parent?

Obviously, if it's a man tricking a woman, she can terminate the pregnancy, but I'm pretty sure we don't want to go down the path of forcing a woman to have an abortion, even in this circumstance.

At which point, the woman is in jail and the father, even if he didn't want a kid, might feel he has to raise the child himself.

But yeah, it's an utterly reprehensible thing to do.

A Mitt Romney fan, eh? You should probably read this article, which absolutely guts the myth that only half of income earners pay taxes.

As far as the top 1% paying 40% of the taxes, I agree that is atrocious--they are supposed to be paying almost ALL of it! See, when the income tax was introduced with the 16th Amendment, it was primarily meant to be a tax on the rich. The federal tax rate for middle-class people was meant to be around 1-2% whereas the tax rate on the rich was around 7%. You can see the original 1913 tax form here.

Of course, since literally the income tax's inception, the federal government has continuously been shafting the middle classes while reducing the tax burden of the wealthy. It's about as American as apple pie by this point!

The big problem is that the government relies more and more on income tax to fund federal projects. Take a look at the graph in the article I linked to at the start of this comment and note how corporate taxes keep going down while income and payroll taxes keep going up.

It doesn't help at all that most of America's biggest businesses have offshore tax havens where they can avoid paying taxes (think Ireland for Apple, Inc., though that hasn't worked out so well for them thanks to the EU being less corporate cock-sucking than the U.S. government).

So, to solve America's tax deficit problem, the solution is pretty clear--tax rich people more (as was intended), tax corporations more and cut off their tax havens, and maybe give a tax break to the people who actually need and deserve it--the middle and lower classes.

But of course all of that sounds suspiciously like socialism, which as we all know is the devil incarnate and about as un-American as naming your kid Stalin.

Come on... when's the last time you were in a brawl? Have seen lots of guys go down with less than that, caused a few of 'em too. A guy back home (Mike Lubbock) was about 6' 1" tall, big broad shoulders and barrel chest, would sooner fight than eat and used to win most of the time. Unless you caught him just below the right cheek bone, and he'd drop like a soft rag. Usually woke up after a minute or two. The Metheral brothers were about the same, and so was Keith Verstagen. Doesn't take a serious medical condition, just one of those things.

What I was thinking...
But then maybe the grid isn't there to filter small debris but to stop big things from going down there like branches and small children ....

This is the slinky i had. Getting it to go down the staircase was all we did with it.

To be honest, I did not expect them to be as open a platform as they were for as long as they were.

Once the platform had enough content that was interesting to enough people out there to make it a noticeable alternative to "old media", it was clear that it's only a matter of time until the corporations buying the ads had to choose between TV and YT, since TV "news" was going down. So they did. Bam, no more business model for news and political/religious commentary on YT. Good luck getting commentary on war crimes in Jemen or apartheid in Israel monetized.

And now that so many content creators get their income through Patreon, it'll be interesting to see how long Patreon remains neutral.

"if someone had been able to take Hitler aside BEFORE all the horrors of WW2 and been able to convince him to lay off the genocide"

This is the pacifists dilemma though. There were numerous attempts to sway hitler from his course. Neville Chamberlain famously celebrating the Munich Agreement. At the end of the day, you can't peacefully stop someone if they are intent on causing violence.

I don't think you can really go down this road, either. It's a fun thought experiment, but it requires knowledge you only have once it's too late. You can't talk to the one kid who will grow up to be adolf hitler. There's very likely one out there now that we can't stop because we don't know them.

"At that point, violence is your only recourse to stop the atrocities."

The pacifist's dilemma and this combined, to me, put this in a morally ambiguous place. If you accept that you can't stop someone bent on violence, and nazis arrive announcing that they are, then is it better for a little violence, visited upon those who pursue violent ends? Or is it better that we wait and see the violence occur before we react to it?

On further introspection, i think both of our positions exist in a similar ambiguity - you need to know who to speak to before you know who to speak to, and i need to know who to correctively punch before i know who to correctively punch. Yours might be better for short term, worse for long term. Mine might be worse for short term, better for long term.

In truth, i probably lean more towards agreeing with you, but i'm trying to point out that even though we think "be civil" is the best option, it doesn't have any divine right to be the best option. The best option (we would probably agree) is the one that causes the least overall harm, and we don't *know* what that is, and never can. I think it's important we reconsider accepted wisdom like that. (which is really why i decided to argue it..in honesty, i probably feel the same as you; disapprove but not loudly. My main problem with the position i'm taking is - how do you *stop* the nazi punchers once the nazis are suitably punched? And when do i become the nazi?)

@transmorpher
"leaving yourself and your loved ones open to the same treatment next time someone disagrees with one of your views."

I made it very clear in earlier comments that i'm only ok with someone being punched if they are openly calling for genocide and death to people. I'm ok with you ripping that argument apart (because i think it can be.. i'm leaving myself open on purpose), but that isn't what you've done. I don't accept there's an equivalence between my harmless beliefs and a genocidal maniac's.