It's not limited to one side; it's not just liberals. It is one basic tactic of politics, right up there with sponsoring bills to get referred to committee you know will never get passed, or telling different stories to your domestic population than you do at the negotiating table with a foreign nation, and crafting your agreements explicitly to let each of you pretend to your people that you agreed to different things.

Yes. Every person who flies on an airplane in America pays for it, as well as every kid who is easier to recruit as a terrorist because we bombed countries rather than building schools in them.

Um... no, not really. If you go off concocting wild theories on the loose conjunction of facts not inconsistent with those theories, which is what most people who get labelled as conspiracy theorists do, sure. But plenty of people can bring up one inconsistency and ask why did X happen. If it's a question rather than a part of a grand theory involving a conspiracy of secret actors, it will be listened to by most intelligent people.

So people who say "jet fuel doesn't ordinarily burn hot enough to ignite structural steel, so that's odd..." or "isn't it convenient so many people hadn't gotten to work yet" are generally not painted as crazy conspiracy theory nuts. But if you turn that into "GWB and all those Arabs caused 9/11" then you'll be called a conspiracy theorist.

I mean, at the point where Noam Chompsky says it wasn't a conspiracy and you say it was, you're further away from the norm than Noam Chompsky, which means that statistically, you've got a 50/50 chance whether you're insane or just so far outside society that you barely have a common frame of reference.

Not just news and sports, but they are targeting a different market segment, and are already being forced to be competitive. Much pricier, but you can select from a MUCH more impressive video library if you have cable than you can through Netflix or Amazon Prime.

Good God. What Universe are you living in? The power balance has NEVER favored content creators in almost any medium, and has always favored producers and aggregators. The exceptions are hugely successful artists probably three or more standard deviations above the mean in terms of demand for their work.

Sort of.

He probably can't do something that makes it seem like he has the endorsement of the campaign, but he can still do a LOT because the first Amendment is strongest when it comes to political speech. There's a reason you can buy Donald Trump toilet paper.

No, I know this because I have friends who have visited North Korea, had "minders" with them whenever they went anywhere, and know you can't go outside of certain tourist areas.

Your "friend" visited the heavily scripted tourist areas of North Korea. It's not an accurate comparison.

Actually a somewhat thoughtful opinion, despite the fact that religion is absurd as a concept.

https://arstechnica.com/wp-con...

Clinton is opportunistic and talks like a snake oil salesman, but is unlikely to do any lasting damage. Trump is opportunistic and insane.

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

Wow, it's like our national security apparatus is doing its job. Almost as if the whole "spying on your own population" and "remote-control war by drone" and "harassing everyone who gets on a plane" and "entrapping as many people as possible" parts of their jobs were all really just silly and stupid wastes of taxpayer money to make us less safe.

A lot of good guys in intelligence. Almost as if they started down a road paved with good intentions...

Um. No. The end of a two-term presidency is when a president is free to actually try to do useful things.

It's a health care bubble, actually. There's over-investment in the health care sector right now, at least in startup costs.

Of course, there are also massive startup hurdles there for regulatory and bill-payment reasons

It's not just stupid people. It's also people who don't understand the issues because they have never studied encryption or computer security. Smart people and policy-makers.

FIOS around NYC provided one of the most reliable residential internet services I ever used, and I've only seen them send good technicians and linemen. I've seen cable service that just kicks out randomly for half an hour like crappy DSL, but the FIOS worked when semis knocked it down and ran over it.