Just some history of the 2 parties......Setting aside the fact the the KKK was formed by the all inclusive tent of the Democrats...to scare the southern brother who remained Republican up until the 60s.



The Democratic Party was formed in 1792, when supporters of Thomas Jefferson began using the name Republicans, or Jeffersonian Republicans, to emphasize its anti-aristocratic policies. It adopted its present name during the Presidency of Andrew Jackson in the 1830s. In the 1840s and '50s, the party was in conflict over extending slavery to the Western territories. Southern Democrats insisted on protecting slavery in all the territories while many Northern Democrats resisted. The party split over the slavery issue in 1860 at its Presidential convention in Charleston, South Carolina.

Northern Democrats nominated Stephen Douglas as their candidate, and Southern Democrats adopted a pro-slavery platform and nominated John C. Breckinridge in an election campaign that would be won by Abraham Lincoln and the newly formed Republican Party. After the Civil War, most white Southerners opposed Radical Reconstruction and the Republican Party's support of black civil and political rights.
The Democratic Party identified itself as the "white man's party" and demonized the Republican Party as being "Negro dominated," even though whites were in control. Determined to re-capture the South, Southern Democrats "redeemed" state after state -- sometimes peacefully, other times by fraud and violence. By 1877, when Reconstruction was officially over, the Democratic Party controlled every Southern state.

The South remained a one-party region until the Civil Rights movement began in the 1960s. Northern Democrats, most of whom had prejudicial attitudes towards blacks, offered no challenge to the discriminatory policies of the Southern Democrats.
One of the consequences of the Democratic victories in the South was that many Southern Congressmen and Senators were almost automatically re-elected every election. Due to the importance of seniority in the U.S. Congress, Southerners were able to control most of the committees in both houses of Congress and kill any civil rights legislation. Even though Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a Democrat, and a relatively liberal president during the 1930s and '40s, he rarely challenged the powerfully entrenched Southern bloc. When the House passed a federal anti-lynching bill several times in the 1930s, Southern senators filibustered it to death.

Link

>> ^VoodooV:

proof that conservatives will put aside their supposed morality at the drop of a hat just to oppose a black man



So who is opposing the Black Man? Which party enslaves the Black Man today? Democrats use the welfare system which keeps many enslaved into poverty. Republicans want to help those get out and become free men and women to make free choices for themselves.

If you give a man a fish you feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish you feed him for a lifetime. Democrats want to feed the poor fish-sticks. Republicans want to teach how to fish.

Maybe I can be more concise.

Temperature reconstructions of the years 0AD through 2000AD that show uncharacteristic warming since ~1850 are a smoking gun that we are influencing climate and in an unprecedented way. Correct?

Is the opposite then not true as well, if reconstructions from 0AD through 2000AD show that warming since ~1850 is not particularly unusual, then we are not facing unprecedented changes?

To me this seems to be the key, and the refinements to reconstructions are rapidly beginning to show that the last century is not particularly unusual.

@NetRunner,

From the author's own summary in the article you linked:

Improving observations of ocean temperature confirm that Earth is absorbing more energy from the sun than it is radiating to space as heat, even during the recent solar minimum.
In layman terms, ocean temp has increased over the last years were we have also been observing surface temp increases. If the heat content has gone up, it means more energy got in than went out.

This energy imbalance provides fundamental verification of the dominant role of the human-made greenhouse effect in driving global climate change.
If solar forcing decreased while the earth retained more energy, then it must have been other forcings driving the energy increase. This is verification of what we already know, that human GHG's are driving climate change. I'd argue that the 'dominant' part can only be justified in relation to solar forcing, would you say I'm overstepping with that?

I've read through the rest of the article as well. I don't see resounding evidence or confidence about CO2 dominating all other factors over the last 100 years. The most important section is on Fast-Feedback sensitivity. They have a method where they go against Paleo-climate data and conclude that Fast-Feedback sensitivity is much smaller than most previous studies. They even go to some length explaining the different results and admit that a major factor is what you count as a forcing vs. what you count as a feedback. More importantly to me, is that Paleo climate doesn't have the resolution to observe what we should expect from fast feedbacks within a century. Rank me a denier, but I count that as very significant. Mann et al's recent work seems to corroborate that over decadal timescales, climate can fluctuate a lot more than what shows up on long-term paleo reconstructions.

ChasoEngine said:those that have disagree with you. Appeal to authority? Yes, but I wouldn't ask a climate scientist to write software.

I'd ask you to be very specific about what I've said which relevant experts disagree with me on. Go back and look at the very first article I linked to. It is the relevant experts on statistics disagreeing with and correcting the climate scientists that went off and tried to work too far outside their area of expertise and wound making a mistake that seriously altered their results. The short version is the method they applied was well known to be biased for zero if the constraints were not met, which in the situation used was exactly the case. It is EXACTLY why Mann's original hockey stick graph showed very flat temperature anomalies in his reconstruction from 1000-1800AD. You can verify this by using google scholar to look at Mann's own new work following some of the advice of the article I linked and applying a more appropriate method. It's flagged as the EIV line on the graphs, and it shows several times in the last 1k years where the temperature anomaly from the reference date exceeds what we've experienced recently.

Chaos Engine said:Emphasis mine. Do you have a source for that figure? I don't know if you read the link I posted but it would seem to contradict that figure. Besides, even if CO2 is a small contribution, sometimes a small sway can dramatically affect a system.

I'm glad to hear that you believe in reducing our dependence on coal and oil. Frankly, I think it will run out before we stop using it (and it will run out in my lifetime).

I can't find the article I went off originally but here's a different one. It does vary from the range I gave a little but I think it still is consistent with the spirit of everything I've said. It pegs H2O at 71% and CO2 at 29%, the consistent thing I've seen in the multiple journal based estimates I've seen though is that H2O at a minimum carries double the influence of CO2.

We aren't going to run out of coal anytime soon. Even oil we won't run out of soon. What we may run out of soon is cheap oil, but once a certain price point is hit up here in Canada we've got more oil than Saudi Arabia stored up in the tar sands. It's messy, dirty, expensive and a much greater concern to the environment IMHO than CO2 emissions, but it's a big supply. I am hopeful though, as I said before, that in 20 years nobody is going to want gas powered cars anymore because electric will be cheaper, more reliable, more powerful and basically better in every meaningful way.

I believe he had major facial reconstructive surgery after the horrible accident mentioned above. >> ^sme4r:

Man hes had some work done. Facelift much?

>> ^poolcleaner:

>> ^SlipperyPete:
This is in Cu Chi, Vietnam. I visited this museum several years back... one thing this video doesn't show is the underground tunnels that you can crawl through. Viet Cong soldiers constructed encampments underground, capable of supporting 100's of soldiers for weeks at a time, linked together by shoulder-width tunnels.

And I reconstructed it in Minecraft!


Ssssssss...!

>> ^SlipperyPete:

This is in Cu Chi, Vietnam. I visited this museum several years back... one thing this video doesn't show is the underground tunnels that you can crawl through. Viet Cong soldiers constructed encampments underground, capable of supporting 100's of soldiers for weeks at a time, linked together by shoulder-width tunnels.


And I reconstructed it in Minecraft!

>> ^vairetube:
5/2009
really what we're talking about here is insanely increasing the resolution of the original photo to begin with, so the manipulation software isnt the issue... maybe you have video technology that takes multiple levels/layers/scenes and can on demand get that data... thats more of an issue with the recording technology then analyzing.


http://www.petapixel.com/2010/05/07/omni-focus-camera-boasts-infinite-depth-of-field/

5/2010
Researchers at the University of Toronto have come up with a new video camera that can achieve infinite depth of field even when objects are immediately in front of the camera. What they did was stuff an array of video cameras into a single camera, with each camera focused at a different distance.


2009:
http://cg.cs.tsinghua.edu.cn/montage/main.htm
System that composes a realistic picture from a simple freehand sketch annotated with text labels. The composed picture is generated by seamlessly stitching several photographs in agreement with the sketch and text labels

Present:
http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/09/23/1325247/brain-imaging-reveals-the-movies-in-our-mind

"Brain activity evoked by the second set of clips was used to test the movie reconstruction algorithm. This was done by feeding 18 million seconds of random YouTube videos into the computer program so that it could predict the brain activity that each film clip would most likely evoke in each subject. Finally, the 100 clips that the computer program decided were most similar to the clip that the subject had probably seen were merged to produce a blurry yet continuous reconstruction of the original movie"


----


So maybe you just need to find a witness then you can read their minds! Blows the incredulity over CSI out of water.

Congratulations! Your video, Scientists Scan Movie Clips From Your Brain, has reached the #1 spot in the current Top 15 New Videos listing. This is a very difficult thing to accomplish but you managed to pull it off. For your contribution you have been awarded 2 Power Points.

This achievement has earned you your "Golden One" Level 3 Badge!

What I do for a living and what I do in my bedroom are polar opposites...

>> ^AgentSmith:

>> ^MonkeySpank:
I don't understand how this works. I read the articles and I am a little skeptical. I've designed fMRI and DTI algorithms for years and I don't see why they keep talking about fMRI and brain waves. fMRI is an activity map that is related to the hot spots in the brain where the hydrogen protons aligned by the magnetic field resonate to the frequency of the emitter (TR/Echo Time) and only show consumption of glucose (hydrogen protons motility) during a designed paradigm, which in this case would be having the subject watch a video. Diffuse Tensor Imaging will help map the neurons going there in case a surgical procedure is necessary, and that's about it. Extrapolating fMRI (a very coarse k-space reconstruction) to brainwaves (an EEG signal) and images sounds very suspicious to me, and nothing published so far explains how this is technically done. I understand the excitement and it certainly would be possible in the future, but under the current state of the art, I don't see how this is possible, especially with fMRI or Fractional Anisotropy.

...says "MonkeySpank", lol! Really, thank you for the insight, but the association between your well informed comment and your avatar is what did it for me.
This is what led me to believe that E = MC² --LoudBelcher78

>> ^MonkeySpank:

I don't understand how this works. I read the articles and I am a little skeptical. I've designed fMRI and DTI algorithms for years and I don't see why they keep talking about fMRI and brain waves. fMRI is an activity map that is related to the hot spots in the brain where the hydrogen protons aligned by the magnetic field resonate to the frequency of the emitter (TR/Echo Time) and only show consumption of glucose (hydrogen protons motility) during a designed paradigm, which in this case would be having the subject watch a video. Diffuse Tensor Imaging will help map the neurons going there in case a surgical procedure is necessary, and that's about it. Extrapolating fMRI (a very coarse k-space reconstruction) to brainwaves (an EEG signal) and images sounds very suspicious to me, and nothing published so far explains how this is technically done. I understand the excitement and it certainly would be possible in the future, but under the current state of the art, I don't see how this is possible, especially with fMRI or Fractional Anisotropy.


...says "MonkeySpank", lol! Really, thank you for the insight, but the association between your well informed comment and your avatar is what did it for me.

This is what led me to believe that E = MC² --LoudBelcher78

Why do people always think libertarians are anarchists? Just because I don't belong into either of these bullshit parties doesn't make me not believe in government. I do, however, believe that government is a social contract between you and me, and everyone else, and that contract has to be balanced since we all don't have the same opinion. With that said, I do not believe anything a democrat says, and I sure as hell don't believe anything a republican says. The sad part about these parties is that the only time in the last decade where they actually agreed unanimously at the house was right after 9/11. As for the people (fans), only sheep will agree with their party all the time.

As for size and function of government, this is dependent on the state of the country and the scope of government's responsibility (Federal vs State). If you read Jean Jacques Rousseau's Social Contract (Du Contrat Social), you'd see that an exemplary government is one that focuses service, and not laws. If you have a serious drug problem, then you should get help, not get thrown in jail. Alas, we have an archaic emotional government. Republicans want to limit personal freedom, and democrats want to limit economic freedom. I see no point in either one of those as long as nobody is unfairly treated. That is THE bottom line.

Three things should be considered essential to our future economy:
1) Education
2) Healthcare
3) Science Projects / Environment

I'd vote for anyone who is willing to throw everything else under the bus for reconsideration - regardless of partisanship. The reason I brought the politician's case to pay their own healthcare and get a pay cut is not to save money - You can't consciously deny others free healthcare when you yourself have it. That's what's happening in congress today.

I like your statement about the legalizing and taxing Marijuana; however, Marijuana can't be taxed as most people would grow it at home - I say just legalize it and stop wasting DOJ resources. I don't mind taxing the shit out of oil, use of plastics, tobacco, and alcohol.

>> ^VoodooV:

>> ^MonkeySpank:
Your assumption is that the government will create jobs. I don't expect the government to create jobs - that's socialism. Just so you get this straight. I am not a democrat - I am a libertarian. I don't care about Obama; he is a failed president - just like Bush Jr., Carter, and Reagan. I'd rather have Ron Paul in the office, but you have to understand that we DO need a government. You have to understand that conservatives are not helping the situation either - two years in congress and nothing to show for. On top of all this, the hoards of Tea Party drama queens have been a horrible addition to our economic climate. They are not happy with anything, and are not offering any solutions. They give a bad name to the rest of the libertarians.
I don't like pensions, I don't like entitlements, and I don't like big government. However, everybody bitches about not having any money, yet nobody is willing to give up their benefits, pensions, and social security. Nobody is boycotting Chinese products at Wallmart/ToysRUs or outsourced manufactured goods. Nobody is willing to send their kids to private schools, yet they want to put a tourniquet on the education system. It's total hypocrisy. I hope the movement will die soon so we can go back to reconstruction.
The key word in this whole debate is "deficit." The money is already gone, and no amount of budget balancing alone will pay back the ridiculous amount the government already owes. I call on all these house representatives and government officials to take a 15% salary cut and pay for their own private health care. Let's see how patriotic they are. That'd be a good start; if that's not enough, then we can revisit the talks about taxing the rich.
As they say "Those who make the rules don't play the game."
>> ^quantumushroom:
His Earness has burned through 4 trillion dollars already. Why didn't he put any of it towards "paying off" the wars?
The logic here is astounding. When the wealthy keep more of what they earn, the left claims they don't use it to create jobs, but when the wealthy are taxed at a higher rate, the government (which creates nothing) can't use the "extra" revenue create jobs. Repeating: 4 trillions dollars already down the shitter, no jobs created.

>> ^MonkeySpank:
It's going to start paying back for the two useless wars that some idiot president started about 8 years ago. One thing is for sure though, not taxing them did not create jobs!
>> ^quantumushroom:
Federal government wastes half of every tax dollar.
So what's this magic millionaire money going to do that the spending addicts haven't done already?




You do know that cutting senator pay and benefits is a drop in the bucket. Overpaid as they are, they're still gov't employees and really don't make anything compared to their private sector counterparts.
No one is saying we shouldn't cut spending. It just can't be the only thing we do. There is nothing wrong with entitlements and pensions as long as they are paid for and efficient. Sure there is waste and corruption in government. The obvious answer is, eliminate the waste, root out the corruption. But that takes regulations and enforcement. Two things that Libertarians seem to oppose.
Freedom is really quite a myth. There are plenty of things people are not allowed to do because we as a society has deemed that they are harmful to others. We live in this country and thus, we have agreed to live by it's rules. If you don't like it, get the hell out.
I'm fine with making sacrifices, but dude, you need to remember what a luxury is and what a necessity. Pensions and entitlements for some people ARE necessities. It's not just some giveaway to people who don't need it. you want to cut entitlements? why do rich people even get medicare and social security and other entitlements...they don't need them obviously...they're rich..so they have the most, so they can shoulder more burden without being seriously affected.
It takes a scalpel, not a bludgeon. There is plenty of waste in social entitlements that even dems would be willing to cut. Get out of these wars we're in. No one is saying throw the military under the bus and leave our nation unprotected but we clearly don't need to spend as much on defense as we do. There are plenty of expensive pie in the sky defense projects out there that simply don't need to exist right now. get rid of them.
Dems have already agreed to plenty of cuts, Dems have compromised up the butt or have you forgotten Boehner bragging about he got 98 percent of what he wanted. Now it's time to bring some extra revenue to help pay those bills and invest in green tech that will improve our economy.
Pardon the pun but cutting alone just doesn't....cut it. Legalize and tax the fuck out of Marijuana. empty out the non-violent offenders in our prisons.
Gov't will shrink and grow as it needs to be. the size of gov't is unimportant, it just needs to be efficient. And small gov't is not necessarily efficient gov't.

>> ^MonkeySpank:

Your assumption is that the government will create jobs. I don't expect the government to create jobs - that's socialism. Just so you get this straight. I am not a democrat - I am a libertarian. I don't care about Obama; he is a failed president - just like Bush Jr., Carter, and Reagan. I'd rather have Ron Paul in the office, but you have to understand that we DO need a government. You have to understand that conservatives are not helping the situation either - two years in congress and nothing to show for. On top of all this, the hoards of Tea Party drama queens have been a horrible addition to our economic climate. They are not happy with anything, and are not offering any solutions. They give a bad name to the rest of the libertarians.
I don't like pensions, I don't like entitlements, and I don't like big government. However, everybody bitches about not having any money, yet nobody is willing to give up their benefits, pensions, and social security. Nobody is boycotting Chinese products at Wallmart/ToysRUs or outsourced manufactured goods. Nobody is willing to send their kids to private schools, yet they want to put a tourniquet on the education system. It's total hypocrisy. I hope the movement will die soon so we can go back to reconstruction.
The key word in this whole debate is "deficit." The money is already gone, and no amount of budget balancing alone will pay back the ridiculous amount the government already owes. I call on all these house representatives and government officials to take a 15% salary cut and pay for their own private health care. Let's see how patriotic they are. That'd be a good start; if that's not enough, then we can revisit the talks about taxing the rich.
As they say "Those who make the rules don't play the game."
>> ^quantumushroom:
His Earness has burned through 4 trillion dollars already. Why didn't he put any of it towards "paying off" the wars?
The logic here is astounding. When the wealthy keep more of what they earn, the left claims they don't use it to create jobs, but when the wealthy are taxed at a higher rate, the government (which creates nothing) can't use the "extra" revenue create jobs. Repeating: 4 trillions dollars already down the shitter, no jobs created.

>> ^MonkeySpank:
It's going to start paying back for the two useless wars that some idiot president started about 8 years ago. One thing is for sure though, not taxing them did not create jobs!
>> ^quantumushroom:
Federal government wastes half of every tax dollar.
So what's this magic millionaire money going to do that the spending addicts haven't done already?





You do know that cutting senator pay and benefits is a drop in the bucket. Overpaid as they are, they're still gov't employees and really don't make anything compared to their private sector counterparts.

No one is saying we shouldn't cut spending. It just can't be the only thing we do. There is nothing wrong with entitlements and pensions as long as they are paid for and efficient. Sure there is waste and corruption in government. The obvious answer is, eliminate the waste, root out the corruption. But that takes regulations and enforcement. Two things that Libertarians seem to oppose.

Freedom is really quite a myth. There are plenty of things people are not allowed to do because we as a society has deemed that they are harmful to others. We live in this country and thus, we have agreed to live by it's rules. If you don't like it, get the hell out.

I'm fine with making sacrifices, but dude, you need to remember what a luxury is and what a necessity. Pensions and entitlements for some people ARE necessities. It's not just some giveaway to people who don't need it. you want to cut entitlements? why do rich people even get medicare and social security and other entitlements...they don't need them obviously...they're rich..so they have the most, so they can shoulder more burden without being seriously affected.

It takes a scalpel, not a bludgeon. There is plenty of waste in social entitlements that even dems would be willing to cut. Get out of these wars we're in. No one is saying throw the military under the bus and leave our nation unprotected but we clearly don't need to spend as much on defense as we do. There are plenty of expensive pie in the sky defense projects out there that simply don't need to exist right now. get rid of them.

Dems have already agreed to plenty of cuts, Dems have compromised up the butt or have you forgotten Boehner bragging about he got 98 percent of what he wanted. Now it's time to bring some extra revenue to help pay those bills and invest in green tech that will improve our economy.

Pardon the pun but cutting alone just doesn't....cut it. Legalize and tax the fuck out of Marijuana. empty out the non-violent offenders in our prisons.

Gov't will shrink and grow as it needs to be. the size of gov't is unimportant, it just needs to be efficient. And small gov't is not necessarily efficient gov't.

Fuckin hook me UP! I wanna be plugged in, laying in a pool of my own excrement and drool in a fetal position for the remainder of my days.

In reply to this comment by gwiz665:
Next stop, virtual brains!

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