The medical community that was telling us it wasn't an issue for human-to-human transfers? That same medical community that said it's not a problem, go ahead and keep traveling and socializing? That same medical community that said not to wear masks, they'll make it worse? It's almost like they PURPOSEFULLY got it wrong at every step of the way...

What country do you live in where any of that is even slightly true? I live in the U.S. and the medical community here never did or said any of those things.

Quote from the article you linked:

"Revenues would be much higher without the Trump tax plan"

Not sure what you're missing, but the quote says pretty directly that if taxes were not changed revenues would be higher than they are with the Trump tax plan. Therefore, the Trump tax plan cost the U.S. revenue and raised the deficit (est. 1.1 Trillion in 2020). Completely irresponsible in my book.

We don't need to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. We just need to stop putting CO2 into the atmosphere.

The full effect of the excess CO2 already in the atmosphere won't be felt for at least 40 years.

And that's the "good" news - from the article:

It's possible that even as emissions decrease, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will continue to increase. The warmer the planet gets, the less carbon dioxide the ocean can absorb. Rising temperatures in the polar regions make it more likely that carbon dioxide and methane, another greenhouse gas that warms the planet, will be released from storage in the frozen land and ocean reservoirs, adding to the problem.

Russia is a capitalist state for the past 25 years.

You misspelled "kleptocracy".

He's not a US citizen, he owes no fucking allegiance to the US. He has no duty to protect US secrets or to the US government.

52 U.S. Code  30121 is a Federal law that makes it a felony for any foreign national to attempt to influence a U.S. election, and a felony for any U.S. citizen to help them do it.

The DOJ appears to be trying to get Assange for conspiracy with Russians or Americans to influence the 2016 U.S. election. There is public information that Roger Stone, a long-time Trump associate, was in contact with Assange during the campaign, discussing how to handle the stolen DNC emails. Maybe that plays out, maybe it doesn't. In any case we'll know more when Mueller wraps things up.

The Trump tax cuts seem to have spurred growth well above the sub-3% ...

Here is something that everyone who runs a household or a business knows: Borrowed Money Is NOT Income.

A corollary of this is that Increased Deficit Spending is NOT Growth.

The 2018 Republican tax cuts lowered taxes on corporations and the rich. Since congress didn't lower spending, the government is essentially borrowing an extra $150 billion a year and handing it over to corporations and the rich. They now have $150 billion more to spend this year, and it counts as GDP, but it's borrowed money. $150 billion is about 0.75% of the economy. Fake growth. Also very temporary, unless Congress does the same thing again next year.

The other fake growth is the Trump Trade War. Businesses everywhere have been stocking up on supplies ahead of new tariffs. I can't find the link now, but I read recently that economists are saying this temporary effect is worth more than 1.5% of growth. When all tariffs take effect, the opposite will occur: businesses will lower their spending by an equivalent amount because they've stockpiled so much ahead of time.

So, the actual strength of the economy in 2018Q2 was 4.2% - 0.75% - 1.5% = 1.95%. About where we've been for the last decade.

A lot of economists insist that WW2 ended the great depression or rather the American victory in WW2 did.

Not many economists believe that due to this growth data:

U.S. Economic Growth 1925-1950
Year %Growth
1925 2.3
1926 6.5
1927 1.0
1928 1.1
1929 6.1
1930 -8.5
1931 -6.4
1932 -12.9
1933 -1.3
1934 10.8
1935 8.9
1936 12.9
1937 5.1
1938 -3.3
1939 8.0
1940 8.8
1941 17.7
1942 18.9
1943 17.0
1944 8.0
1945 -1.0
1946 -11.6
1947 -1.1
1948 4.2
1949 -0.5
1950 8.7

As you can see, the recovery from the Great Depression began with a period of strong growth beginning in 1934. Years 1934-1941 (bolded) averaged 8.6% growth. These were the years of the New Deal, all before WW2 began on December 7, 1941. This doesn't mean the New Deal caused the recovery, but it sure didn't hurt, and it helped a lot of folks get back on their feet.

As far as FDT New Deal ending the depression, it actually made it worse...

See above.

America has said that about every president in living memory.

Famous last words. "All the SRBs showed damage in cold weather and we've never had a problem."

The folks who said that were pretty damn smart. Can't say that about this president.

On my Centos (Red Hat) system:

$ uname
Linux

So we know what Red Hat thinks.

The only way I can see to prevent this is a specially made, double conversion UPS or similar storage-backed power supply that is carefully designed and sized to keep the power consumed from the wall completely independent of the power consumed by the device by averaging that power over the span of hours or maybe even days.

Another way is to run boinc distributed tasks that load the CPUs 24/7 at 100%. No variation in CPU demand, ever. That's what I do (for other reasons) and my CPUs have been pegged at 100% for more than 2 months. So I figure I'm well-protected against this kind of attack.

If that's too much, it shouldn't be too hard to come up with a script that randomly loads the CPU in the same way, and randomly run a bunch of instances of it. Make the haystack too big and they'll never find the needle.

Knowingly giving material false testimony to congress is a felony whether under oath or not. Being under oath mostly gives congress the right to hold you in contempt of congress and put you in jail if you refuse to answer questions.

We should know more about who we're talking to and what sort of reputation they have. I call it EPR (for Earned Public Reputation) and it's basically just sharing back with us some of the information that we're currently giving one-way to Facebook. Your EPR should basically be a reflection of public reactions to your public actions, but it needs to be fully symmetric.

So Facebook should incorporate the Slashdot moderation system?

I think that's a great idea. I'll mention it to Mark next time we meet. I'm sure he'll get right on it.

Many accidents involve the driver doing just that. Don't know what the stats are but a number of people I know personally were involved in accidents caused by the driver falling asleep.

Relativity pretty much guarantees that if you assume intelligent life exists outside of our solar system, they'd not know we are here, yet.

The James Webb space telescope we humans are about to launch is designed to, among other things, image exo-planets and detect the composition of their atmospheres. If we discover a planet with a strong Oxygen component in the atmosphere, only Life could cause that, and in the short term that planet would go to the top of the list for more intense scrutiny. In the long term, when we begin exploring beyond our solar system that planet will be at the top of our list of destinations.

The Earth has been sending a strong Oxygen signal to the cosmos for 2 Billion Years. If intelligent life exists outside our solar system, as soon as they have technology where humans are now they will know the Earth has life and Earth would go to the top of the list of places to visit.

If extraterrestrial intelligent life exists, there is no doubt in my mind they know we are here. Pretty soon, we will know if they are there.

Go on how this is a GOP shutdown.

Once upon a time in 2017 the GOP wanted to pack the Supreme Court with their extremist anti-abortion candidate, and made it happen by cancelling the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees. If the GOP really wanted to avoid a shutdown they had the votes to cancel the filibuster and pass whatever spending bill they wanted and there would be nothing the Democrats could do about it.

Besides, the GOP wanted this shutdown as much as the Democrats did. Each party believes beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Other party will take the blame, and that's really the point. It's all about talking points and attack ads for upcoming elections.