Point was that cheap (enough) ones absolutely have the ability to maintain position (including altitude) via GPS. When you want to start hanging a decent camera, video TX, the downlink receiver/display, and the beefier batteries/props that become part of hoisting the extras in the air and keeping them up there for over 10 minutes, you're getting closer to a $1000 machine. A lot of it depends on how willing you are to source individually cheaper components and do the build yourself, vs buying something (like a DJI products) that just works out of the box, but at more of a premium. Hang out at a forum like RCGroups.com, and you'll see lots of helpful people who cover that whole spectrum every day.

You need to keep up. Unless for you, "really expensive" is $350.

It won't matter. MythBusters will dry up and go away without boobs.

So ... don't phrase it that way? What the hell is wrong with "one ten-thousandth as strong," anyway?

I didn't say payroll tax, I said income tax. Payroll taxes don't have any bearing on discretionary spending, paying interest on the debt racked up by things like the ACA's new deficit spending, on a single road, school, Coast Guard ship, solar energy plant crony subsidy, or anything at all along those lines. Payroll taxes are transfer taxes taken from one person, and given to another that same year. Lower income people's payroll tax contributions are a pale shadow of the entitlements they receive in transfers from other people. So net net in their lives, no, they don't pay.

Strange that you would call basic numbers and simple facts about the differences between discretionary and mandatory entitlement spending a "lie," but if you think that's scoring rhetorical points with somebody, I guess that suits you.

More discretionary spending, which would come from the minority of the citizens who pay income taxes. What's your idea (other than not liking the First Amendment, obviously) ... that somebody who hates successful people who start businesses should be able to reach into that person's pocket in order to fund a political campaign during which they vilify the very person who's buying them their political ads? Nice. Compulsory funding forcing one person to pay for another person's political ambitions, even as you want to shut down the First Amendment in the very area where it's most important. You're saying that if a politician starts campaigning in my town, promising that he'll call for extra high new taxes on the type of business I run, that I can't - in defense of that business - buy an ad in the local newspaper to educate voters about the wrong-headedness of that politician's goals? Because that's just a little too Freedom Of Speech for your taste? And better yet, you'd like me to spend a little of each day working so that a government middleman can take some of my day's earnings and give it to the guy in question to help fund his attack on me?

Because Medicare is a disaster already, and sweeping a seventh of the entire US economy right into its gaping maw of abuse, corruption, inefficiency and low pay for medical professionals and the facilities they run would be a complete train wreck. They didn't attempt that because they new it would guarantee no buy-in from any thinking people. Just yesterday, we all got treated to a video recording of one of the architects of ObamaCare explaining how the only way it got passed by the one-party vote that put it in place was to avoid transparency and to be deceptive about the nature of the law. The law got lied into place by Pelosi, Reid, and Obama.

Except handing out subsidies has been the very hallmark of the lefty "war on poverty" for many decades, and it has resulted in exactly that. Multiple generations of families that are culturally, within their dependent families and social circles, utterly unfamiliar with being anything other than the recipients of other people's money. They feel entitled to it because people who choose to make being the government middleman for such schemes their profession TELL them that they are entitled to it. Half the people in the country pay no income taxes. Half. But they still get to vote and shape the very policies that spare them from having to do so, while putting the cost-paying part of the society's social contract onto other people. The entitlement-minded types love that scheme, and it's no surprise that there are political divisions along those lines.

That is a completely absurd non sequitor.

Better to say that giving someone something every day - something worked, bought, and paid for by other people who are under threat of imprisonment if they don't work part of each of their day to foot that bill - keeps the regular recipients of those things from ever feeling the need to provide for themselves. No need, no motivation. No motivation, and very few people do it. And the rare bright kid who escapes from that cultural pit is reviled by his friends and family for shunning that miserable trap of a way of life. Abuse of the system? Isn't having a gun pointed at you and being told to work from 9:00AM to noon each day in order to hand the fruits of that part of your labor to someone else abuse? Every day, for the rest of your life (or for as long as you can hang onto that productive and creative spark even when you're being told you must work for other people, and that by the way, you're the bad guy for living at all well despite having to do so), as a permanent feature of "the system?" Yeah, that's abuse. Systematic abuse.

The new health care law is just another example of ever more of that daily productivity/income transfer under threat of federal penalty and confiscation by way of the IRS.

Yes! And people who enter the health care field (like neurosurgeons, or emergency medicine specialists) should NOT be allowed to make any more money than absolutely necessary to live in a specific, government-approved lifestyle. Every geographic area of the country has different costs of living, so we'll need an elaborate new government bureaucracy to decide, week-to-week, what is the exact amount that an anesthesiologist should earn in order to exactly pay for rent on his one bedroom apartment and modest level of grocery buying. Just to be sure, we should probably also regulate the exact dollar amount of that rent, too, because many landlords have tenants who are nurses or otherwise employed in health care, and they also should not be allowed to profit, even indirectly, from the fact that someone who couldn't be bothered to trim his toenails ended up getting an infection. Only government control of that entire economic food chain can assure us of fairness and efficiency!

It's true. There are thousands of doctors, sitting around in their practices with their staff and equipment and highly regulated record-keeping systems that are just waiting for something to do. If everyone could just walk into any doctor's office any time they wanted without a care in the world because some minority of their fellow citizens can be counted on to pay the bill, that would absolutely have no impact on how many doctors and services there are available. Why, it would be even more attractive to get into healthcare, right? Oh, wait, but you're going to make sure that no doctor can profit from the long years of hard work and the ongoing expense required to start and run a medical practice, so that might actually make some of them reconsider participating in your utopia. Or, they'll all just get that same carefully decided-on-by-government income every year, but move to where the cost of living is lower. But that's not fair! We'll have to regulate the cost of living, too, to make sure it's all socially equal. So even if it does cost more to get food and electricity and supplies to Hawaii, we'll have to force everyone in that supply chain to lose money providing it, just to be fair to people who live in Wisconsin or New Jersey.

Of course they have only criticism. The law is terrible. Millions of people lost their coverage, with the only option to be the new purchase of much more expensive plans or penalties by the IRS. In January, that same thing is going to happen to ten times as many people when the employer mandate (which Obama illegally delayed for political reasons to get it in past this recent election - a lot of good it did him!) kicks in. Typical costs for people who aren't on the subsidy/dole will go up, along with huge new deductibles, just as has already happened to millions of self employed people already. This was predicted, and has happened. That's exactly the sort of criticism the Republicans had, and they were shouted down as being racists or the usual crap, because the left didn't want to face the music.

The ACA doesn't "solve the health care crisis" in any way. It just raises prices for health insurance on one group, and uses some of that money (the part that doesn't get burned in a bonfire of government bureaucracy) is handed to other people. It's a wealth transfer tax that does nothing to actually change what it costs an OB/GYN to get malpractice insurance, or how much a radiologist has to pay for a mortgage, or what it costs to run all of the unnecessary tests that are run to fend off capricious law suits. The health care crisis exists because what we now think of as health care includes hugely costly equipment, chemicals, and legal defense insurance, along with people getting hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical services during the two weeks that they're about to die, because otherwise some John Edwards-style lawyer will be suing a hospital for millions, in pursuit of his 30% cut of the action.

The GOP has been calling for cross-border competition, tort reform, and the reduction in scam-infested government involvement in medical billing for many years. You're just not paying attention because it takes the fun out of your narrative.

He doesn't have to be eager, but he should do his job. The point is that he doesn't go to congress at all, and has been using Harry Reid's control over the Senate's legislative agenda to shut down hundreds of bills that come from the congress (headed towards the president to sign, if Reid would allow something like a simple vote, which he doesn't). What you don't hear, at all, is Obama telling Reid to allow anything like the normal bicameral functionality of the legislative branch. That is Obama's strategy, and Pelosi (before she blew it with voters) and Reid (before he just did, too) were his eager (to use your word) helpers on that front. The voters got sick of it. Now the president will have to actually sign or veto things, rather than staying out of the process and making Harry do all the work of shutting down the opposition.

You're describing the Democrats, right? Because, in cases like immigration or the completely partisan ObamaCare ramming-through episode, it was 100% the Democrats who said "No!" to any participation by the other party, or consideration of any of the measures they put forward. You're pretending they're ready and willing to compromise their own positions, but they've said over and over again that they're not. Obama just spent over an hour in a press conference, right after his party took a major smack-down, telling reporters that he "heard the voices of the two-thirds of the population that didn't vote" as being obvious supporters of his policies, and so he's feeling no need to compromise on anything.

Yes, it did. But Harry Reid has made absolutely sure that no bill offered up by the congress even goes into conference in the interests of a vote in the Senate. He won't talk, ever, because he doesn't want to expose Obama to having to actually sign anything that involves compromise, or veto something that makes sense but wasn't a 100% from-the-Democrats fantasy (like the ACA).

Pure BS. You obviously didn't bother to even pay attention to the campaigns and candidates that just beat back the Democrats in congressional, senate, and gubernatorial races across the country. There are Republicans from across the conservative/moderate spectrum. Your "purity" meme is just as false as the Obama-wants-to-compromise meme.

Again, either willful ignorance of years of examples, or deliberate attempt to deceive. The Republicans (who weren't allowed by Pelosi and Reid to even participate in the writing of the ACA) shouted to the rooftops about how the lack of cross-state insurance shopping, the Dem's fear-of-the-trial-lawyer-constituency unwillingness to include tort reform, the insanity of putting the federal government in the middle of even more health care transactions, the brand new wave of taxes and deficit spending tied up in the law, and the guaranteed spike in personal monthly rates and huge deductibles would make the law a train wreck. They pointed out specific details and proposed changes. None were considered by Pelosi or tolerated by Reid, and as Nancy said, they just had to pass the law so everyone who wasn't directly involved in writing its thousands of pages could see what was in it.

No, they're trying to listen to and act on behalf of the more than half of the country that hates the new law. Just wait until January when the delayed (illegally, unilaterally by Obama, in direct contradiction with his own pet law's crystal clear language) employer benefit mandate kicks in. Just as happened to millions of self employed people, policies are going to be cancelled by the millions, and rates for new policies that meet the ACA's crazy new standards will go through the roof, along with sky-high new deductibles. Those "previously couldn't afford it" folks are about to be joined by millions more who will NEWLY no longer be able to afford it, but this time they get to be fined and pursued by the enforcement division of the IRS to have their wages garnished if they don't buy the expensive new policies, whether they want them or not.

No, if you don't realize that when you preach government hand outs and control of the food market you're exactly looking to keep people poor and dependent, then you really need to re-examine what you think you understand about cause and effect.

So your main objective is to make absolutely certain that poor people stay poor and that other people, under penalty of going to jail, spend part of every day caring for them like pets. Nice.

People driving around in cars is only a tiny part of it. You could stop everyone from driving a petroleum fueled car right now, and it would make little or no difference. Heavy industry, HVAC in homes and businesses - that's what does it. The solution is nukes or one form or another. Solar and wind can't put a dent in it, and China's not going to stop putting a new coal-fired power plant online EVERY WEEK any time soon. Cars have got almost nothing to do with it.

Nope. I only use the word when people with an obvious agenda throw around pure fiction hoping nobody will notice.

My judgement that the distortion was deliberate was based on the ready availability of the truth, and agenda-laden, cop-bashing tone of the falsity.

Sure you did. You deliberately asserted that what you had to say was more accurate than the information presented, and proceeded to do a classic slashdot bashing of the officer that busted the operators of the fishing boat for breaking the law, saying the cop made it up.