And its NOT a mixed message when liberals compare things they don't like (guns, voting rights in the ballot box, Non-universal healthcare etc) to slavery or racism? Hate to break it to you, but most heroes on the left are just as bad (trayvon Martin) because reasonable people don't live exciting lives like those so-called heroes...and so we only hear about the biggest freaks who are held up on a pedestal as being a victim of the other political party.

Shrug, its all the way the political parties keep us peons in line and voting either R and D in the end, because they have their glorious leaders and their big scare tactics to keep us scared into voting for them. And when political parties are in control of the levers of power, they typically only look after elites and the super rich who can donate the big bucks to run political campaigns. Corporations are people, don't you know?

That is an intellectually dishonest statement, because in the end if the simple goal of spewing as little pollution as possible REGARDLESS of potential issues means that we should kill all humans as Bender likes to say, because if we don't care about issues, well the extermination of the human race IS the ultimate solution. Of course, you don't mean that, but your statement leaves it open-ended when you do not stipulate "we should prevent as much pollution within REASONABLE limits." Just something to think about or chew on.

This is what happens when you trust the Government to solve a problem. They make the problem worse, waste money, and to make matters even WORSE, they tell you to vote for them in the next election to fix the problems they caused in the first place. But sure, Government is the solution to all of our crisis in the future, and we should turn to our over-lords to solve that which ails us, because after all they are soooo darn good at it huh?

How do I know that you are not a climate change shrill paid to post nonsense about some Koch Brother conspiracy just to poison those conversations? You see, dis-information goes both ways, and since Government seems to BENEFIT from belief in climate change, i would tend to reason that the NSA is on the opposite side of the spectrum and probably goes in that direction more often than the other. Of course, there are all sorts of paid shrills on the internet today I am sure, and the obligation from us is to use reason and logic to dissect poor arguments. Try that, and there will never be poison because people will laugh those idiots off the stage and leave the conversation to the non-trolls.

The thing that always gets me:

Above is like quite a few Americans who trumpets about the evils of the Koch brothers and yet say not a word about how Soros himself spends just as much money on the other side of the argument. The EPA today in fact publishes and uses data retrieved from non-peer reviewed resources and directly from SOROS funded charities all the time. But that is no problem because people like Above agree with what Soros says and only looks to the other side. This is a two directional thing where huge rich people are yanking us the population from one side to the other. Instead of promoting one over the other, why don't we slap both the Koch's AND Soros down and stop with the politicization of science.

We can start by making sure that every citizen can analyze all the data to their heart's content. Make it readable, reproducible, and above all else easy to see the truth of what the data shows us. Why in the world is the EPA allowed in the first place to not document everything and anything? If we have any faith in our leaders, we should hope that they can sift through bad studies like the rest of us and come to the correct conclusions...because otherwise you are simply approving or disapproving of something based on your political beliefs, and that is no way to go through life my friend.

"I highly suspect that this bill is NOTHING but industry trying to get the EPA off their backs so that they can go back to polluting like it was 1899 again." Quite an imagination from start to finish there. Science is supposed to be open, transparent, and reproducible. This bill simply makes science what it is supposed to be. Sure, if you twist things around enough any evidence will show anything, but that is no excuse for not presenting all of the information for everyone. Otherwise, you are trusting a group of people to tell you the truth and to be honest. Do you trust your fellow humans enough to ever do that? You don't seem to trust creationists, so my word of advice : assume that the people in charge of the EPA are in fact people like Ham, and act accordingly. Would you rather have all the evidence, or only that evidence which Ham wants to show you?

Its highly ironic that people think communism CAN make the planet heal when years of data shows that communist nations have the worst track record in history for environmental concern...and end up really just destroying the planet worse than "evil capitalistic countries." Obviously, anyone who believes blindly that communism can save the environment better than other forms of Government has not been paying attention to their basic history or even their basic current events like how nice the air in Beijing is currently...(hint, its not really nice)

Faith in the infallibility of the experts is no way to go through life. Experts are human just like you and me, and are just as likely to come to erroneous conclusions as you or me are...Let me give you an example:

Who should I believe on the existence of God? Should I trust my own beliefs and my own ability to reason and think, or should I allow others to think for me and allow them to tell me what I should believe....after all 99% of all experts on God tell me that God Exists, and so therefore if I shut my brain down and let the experts think for me I must logically believe that God Exists. Likewise, if I go to the experts on what I suspect is proof that God does not exist, those same experts dismiss my proof as wrong, and that God still exists.

This by no means settles the question on climate change, but it does give you a glimpse into the logical fallacy you employed here to explain to the world that experts should be trusted in groups when thousands of years of history shows us that the experts get it wrong all the time as a group....and so belief in the fallibility of experts in the end is nothing more than yet another excuse to shut your brain down, stop thinking and just assume that the world works like someone else tells you. Think for yourself! I don't frankly care if you believe in catastrophic climate change, normal climate change, natural climate change or no climate change. I just want you to believe in something based on your own thoughts instead of following what others say blindly. That route is not the route to science, but to dogma and darkness....

Did we not learn from the dark ages that blindly listening to the experts is no way to run science?

Yea, record HIGH ice extent is caused by extreme heat? This is why people are becoming skeptical because of arguments like that which make no sense. If Antarctica is indeed melting like you claim, why in the world would there be record levels of ice extent? Because ice does not form due to heat ya know, and common sense does dictate that you are lying or unaware of the true temperatures of the Southern Continent. The data itself proves you wrong.

This is like that bone-headed argument we heard 5 years ago about how "calving ice in Antarctica" is caused by extreme heat. That completely missed the boat that glaciers typically advance into the ocean when they are growing, and retreat when they are shrinking, and so people like me become skeptical because the arguments violate common sense, and when you actually look at the data like temperatures you find that antarctica is not heating up like claimed, but that the temperature is going downward or in some cases staying the same. Stop lying!!! That is step one in stopping skepticism...

We already have 57 states don't we? At least that is what our intelligent president believes, so it must be true since that man is an absolute genius.

Well said, absolution comes only from taking a stand, and if you keep silent and do not rock the boat you are not taking a stand but being complicit in the end even if you have no knowledge or any clearance for spying on grandmother. Its just like Germany all over again. The NAZI's took power, and all of those people who silently disapproved were just as guilty as those who approved openly because they never once questioned what was happening to THEIR country and to THEIR organizations. We all have a responsibility, and people like to make excuses like "I have to feed my family" or "but I don't do the bad stuff"....and my favorite: "guilt by assocation is wrong" Nonsense, you CHOOSE to associate yourself with a job, and that CHOICE is what you are being judged on. Don't like the NSA being asked painful questions? Quit. Want to do the right thing? Leak any and all information to the public domain, put as many others out to pasture for their wrong activities, and leave the country. Otherwise you are part of the problem and you deserve to be spit on, have rotten tomatoes thrown at you, and anything else we can think up as citizens who are being wronged by YOU and your buddies.

And this goes for other federal agencies as well like the IRS. After their debacle with targeting people based on political beliefs, anyone who is still part of this organization after no one went to jail for violating the constitutional rights of others is part of the problem and not only deserves to have rotten veggies thrown at them, they deserve to go to jail. It would be a different story if everyone who even touched this discrimination angle were tossed into the darkest deepest hole we could find and new procedures were written out to both make sure there was transperancy and consequences to those IRS employees who DID discriminate, but instead the result is as follows: No one got punished, no rules were changes, and its basically guaranteed that the IRS can not safely target people based on political belief and there is not one thing we can do about it. If you work for the IRS, you are just as guilty as the idiots at the Cleveland office, and I have absolutely no sympathy and I will be one of the ones throwing rotten veggies at you for not being a man or woman and owning up to the mistakes of your organization and associating with people who are known to target groups simply because of their political leanings. Just like with any NSA employee, you do not have the option of taking the fifth or pleading ignorance, because this is all out there in the public domain where you can not deny it. Until new rules and procedures are written up and everyone guilty of these crimes is serving time in a deep dark hole, you are a part of the problem for working there. And until you acknowledge your complicity and attempt to gain absolution like Snowden, you deserve every little bit of derision that you get for your decision to continue working for such monsters.

I doubt there will be another leak. In the meantime they do keyword checks on text messages and check for certain word combinations and if that is met, the calls are today filtered into "the listen to in totality" category. The truth is that Edward Snowden was the last chance we had for our society and politicians of both parties have blown the chance to change something for the better in the name of liberty. The next leaker will be killed before he actually leaks things and it will probably be made to look like an accident. Its a shame that this is all happening today during the presidency of a man who vowed to stop this nonsense and instead is spreading farther than the dimwitted George W. could have ever imagined.

As I get older, I believe more and more than the creators of BASIC knew what they were doing, and make something kids and beginners could understand quickly even if it wasn't perfect.

Well said, and I agree. The hint for me is in the name of the language. For children, you want something that gives near instant gratification and which they can understand as they go. Even the horrendous goto statements allow children to see clearly where things go...and so with children its probably is the best bet. You are not trying to train good programming quite yet at this level, you just want to interest children, so why not go with something that is not the buzz of the week?

You are assuming that republicans LIKE Romneycare or that they like Romney. You know what they say about assumptions...

Another guy who repeats the mantra that "other countries have better healthcare than the US". OK, do this....go study the issue. Look at survival rates for similar procedures. Than look at waiting times for "non life-threatening conditions". Than look at where medical doctors go to learn their trade. I will give you a hint, its not the UK or Canada, but in the US. Doctors come from all over the world to learn medicine here because our medical system is the best in the world.

And want to know a secret? We cover everyone as no one can be denied at our ER's. Nothing has changed there either from before or after the ACA, so in essence we still have the best medical care in the world and everyone gets it if they need it. That is no different than socialized medicine for care. Everyone who needs it gets it. And our waiting times are LESS than those other countries.

The only question is how does one pay for the bill. Prior to the ACA, people like me could go to the ER if we needed to without worry. Now, I will think long and hard about going there due to the cost because before I had a deductible of zero, but now I shell out the first 2000 bucks of anything that happens at the ER, and so in the end people like me who were responsible and had health insurance are going to be gimped even more. Now if we were to institute single payer, I would end up getting more coverage than everyone else anyway, because I would just join the long line of people from Canada and the UK who are buying medical insurance under socialized medicine. I want the best medical care I can get, and I will shell out the money and receive it.

So explain to me that one .... if medical care is so great with socialized medicine, why are people buying insurance in those countries? Why do people shell out extra money to get medical procedures done here in the US? Why are most medical advances pioneered in the US?