when a corporation or cartel controls access to something you need then they don't need their own men with guns, they can use the governments mwg for free while they wring you dry.

There is no american value cabal secretly controlling media. Most media is advertising supported, the ads they contain influence both the viewer and the content they are carried in. There are specifically and openly designed to influence behavior directly. They also openly pay the people who decide what news stories get more or less attention and how those stories are spun. There is no need for conspiracy, american values primarily relate to consumerism in their influence world wide. The primary purpose of advertising supported media is to influence people to consume. this isn't the stone cutters

the most creative people in Hollywood are the accountants and the opportunities to hide money within private subcontractors all over the world in movie making seem endless.

I could see this being useful but many items in a grocery store lack the fungible nature of factory goods. I want to see how the produce looks before I even decide fully on what produce I want, for most types of fresh fruit, fish,meat, vegetables etc

if the issue is electric vehicles not paying for road wear and tear just raise the gasoline tax and eliminate the hybrid/electric subsidies on vehicle purchase

everyone pays a little more to support the roads, an incentive for switching away from fossil fuels is maintained and it requires no complex/expensive/intrusive new systems to administer

That's a very kind thing to say but the post isn't clever enough to be a quote.

I don't understand how people can not love Venture Brothers - it's like they somehow have different tastes than I do!

which is the same as being wrong

I remember back in the day, as a young man full of optimism and energy, eagerly anticipating the second half of this marvelous novel.

Now at last I might take it in my wrinkled, trembling hands and gaze in wonder through rheumy eyes, ever so slightly before the reaper takes my withered husk from this world!

He never lost hope that he could get both Ginger and Mary Ann if the competition was old, fat and retarded.
At night he would go out and do what he could to obscure any traces of occupancy that might be visible from an airplane.
A devious and obsessed man.

sneaking across the great wall of china at whatever point in that 4000 mile stretch is the least defended would be easy, blending in as successfully as a mexican in california can would be less so.
getting a job that pays far more than a similar one in you home country and doesn't have chinese nationals lining up for it would be another real challenge.

An inaccurate comparison as closing a door is easy and hermetically sealing thousand of miles of border is impossible.

Look at the problems the Israelis have securing their Gaza border against tunneling.
Consider that they are a highly motivated and technically sophisticated people with a much,much shorter border to guard.

Border sealing is distraction and noise, either fines and enforcement make employing illegals an economically bad decision or the status quo continues no matter how much money is wasted at the border or how many hispanics are harassed in the streets.

What does this give us except perhaps security in a less is more sense? Moving processing/storage etc to the cloud and eliminating the microsoft tax might allow cut rate hardware though.

Stereoscopy without actual focal depth requires me to consciously think about how I'm focusing my eyes or I get eyestrain and headaches.
For me this makes it an interesting novelty but not something I actually want to put up with on a regular basis.

As an aside, despite having only two eyes I find it annoying that stereoscopy (2 * D * D) is described as 3D (D * D * D).

I always thought Spocks ridiculous precision with fuzzy math was really "don't question me you pathetic dummies" because, I mean, for f*cks sake, Really?, that many decimal places of accuracy? ;)

I don't think so, if anything MSNBC is part of the huge chunk of american media that is controlled by a small group of international corporations and promotes the interests of their advertisers and ownership.

The extremism and hysteria that fox broadcasts its audience may make it seem like the rest of the corporate media is somehow "left wing" but he who plays the piper calls the tune and that's the ownership and the advertisers regardless of which channel you watch.

Thus you see endless examples of viagra commercials wrapped around things like "death panel" debates on every channel but no serious discussions about things like the huge premium americans pay for drugs compared to other wealthy western countries. Controlling and limiting debate doesn't require a big conspiracy, it merely requires that those with editorial control have a shared set of true interests.

follow the money, ignore the noise.