Why is it set up this way? If we start the Slashdot Party and it gets really really popular, will we displace one of the two? Are the Dems and Reps actually enshrined by name in legislation?

The USA is the only place I am aware of where the "public" has any say in how a political party decides who will run under their banner. In most places I am familiar with, only the card-carrying members of "Party X" get to decide who will be running. Since I am not a member of Party X, I don't pay membership dues or attend conventions, why should I have any say in what Party X does in terms of putting people on the ballot?

Similarly, why is "the state" running (and paying for running) these primary elections? Shouldn't that be something that the political parties run and fund themselves? Do only the Dems and the Reps get this treatment, or does the US Libertarian Party, and the US Communist Party also get their candidate selection process funded by the public?

I was very disappointed that the Democrats did try to compromise on health care reform back when they had the votes to push through whatever they wanted. The removal of the public payer option (ie let people pay into the medicare system if they wanted) was an error. Instead they compromised and passed a marginal reform that still has "the other side" out of their minds with woe. If the other side is going to piss and moan about socialized medicine no matter what, why didn't they actually pass a socialized medicine bill?

Anyhow, from my viewpoint, the Dems have done a lot of compromising, to little effect. Probably however, I am viewing the world through a biased filter. I do feel that pretty much everyone is being pretty ineffective in actually working towards reasonable solutions to problems rather than spending all their efforts demonizing the "other side".

How about 4 hours per day? 1? What if I do it once? What if I pick up a hich-hiker and he offers me some cash? To pay for gas? A doughnut? Where-ever you draw the line, the position is arbitrary as all of this exists on a continuum.

"Uber is reporting an 850% increase in app downloads today"

Oops. I thought that might happen.

In a competitive market, the differences in price between "personal" and "commercial" insurance prices would depend primarily on the statistics - I would not be surprised to find that for a taxi-like business there are more insurance claims per policy per year than for personal insurance claims, if only due to the greater number of miles driven.

I'm a huge James Bond fan. Usually the movies are released in the UK a week or two before North America. Still doesn't mean I'd watch a version filmed off the projection screen with a hand (or face) -held camera. Life's too short to watch crap like that.

Who in the smeg watches these 'handy-cammed' movies? The quality must be crap. If you have the time to watch this stuff, go get a Golden Retriever and spend the time walking him / her instead. The Golden'll be up for the walk, I guarantee it.

Hear, hear! (or is that "Here, here!", or maybe "Hear, here!". Certainly not "Here, hear!", yes?)

That does look like a great text. 2nd edition in 1914!

Worldwide? I would guess that most criminals are Asian in "ethnicity".

You decided to start WW I and WW II

How did some white kid working in a coal mine in Wales 'decide' to start WW 2?

"Unnecessary?"

Based on what science, exactly?

I'm 47. When I was a kid there was no pox vaccine - When my brother caught it he had the pox everywhere - Inside his mouth, on his tongue, genitals. He lay in a dark room crying for a week in pain, with terrible headaches, with my parents up at night with nothing they could do. Why on EARTH would you subject a kid to that, when with one jab you're protected?

That's child abuse.

Even with milder cases I have friends today who are still scarred from scratching from the terrible itching when they were kids.

The reasons are similar. It's based on fear and misinformation

No, it's based on facts. It's the anti-vaxxers who operate based on misinformation.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

A Vancouver father is calling on parents to vaccinate their children for chickenpox after his son nearly died from the disease while his immune system was compromised during chemotherapy.

Jason Lawson's 10-year-old son Beckett has been in and out of hospital for most of his life for cancer treatment, but Lawson says one of the scariest moments came when the boy caught chickenpox from a classmate at school.

I think part of the animosity comes out of frustration. As the article states, having kids generates emotional and biochemical reactions in parents - You wind up deeply loving these fun crazy little maniacs. Loving what they do and what they say. Loving watching them grow and develop personalities and understand the world.

People with kids want to convey those feelings to the childless, but it's impossible - There's no means to convey those emotions, no language to explain it, there's no means for the childless to 'get it..'

Concrete example in my case: I loved my nieces and nephew, but didn't have this emotional response until I had my own kids.

So trying to explain what it's like is like trying to describe "blue" to a blind man - So it leads to frustration that manifests as animosity.

I certainly don't express it to my childless friends, but I'm sure others do...