Judging from their recent track record, looks like we'll get to look forward to even bigger explosions in the future.

>Nonsense. What do you imagine will happen automation arrives at farms? The supply of food will increase, and the price will decrease. Same thing for trucking and the volume of goods carried down the world's roadways. The volume of cargo will go up, and the cost to move it will drop. Thats more economic productivity, which means more for all. Simply awesome.

Short sighted and fails to see many pitfalls.

First off, automation will only be available to those who can afford it. IE multinational corporations. Whether that's good or bad is your perspective, but it will spell the end of many small businesses. Many will sell, some will take on bank debt to try to compete under the new "rules" of labor being a one-time fixed cost that you amortize over an amount of years, rather than being able to pay as they go. That, or they'll cut wages even lower than they already are. And that work force was a million people in 2012.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/topic...

Second, independantly of that, transportation is another industry that's being threatened with being automated away. That's 6.8 million people (3 million truck drivers, people loading, unloading, etc). Not counting independent contractors, owner/operators, which are very prevalent.

http://www.trucking.org/News_a...

So, food is now cheaper, but you've taken away the means for millions and millions of people to actually purchase food.

And you last supposition, the volume of cargo will go up and the price to move it will drop. That's not correct - the cost to ship things doesn't drop as more stuff needs to get shipped, it rises as producers with more and more product to ship bid against one another in an effort to secure access to a limited resource. Gasoline prices stay constant, tire costs are constant, and the trucks themselves are fixed costs - you don't achieve new economies of scale by shipping more and more, you're locked in battle fighting over the same resources as not only your competition in that industry, but with every industry that has goods they want to ship to market. In the short term, that's higher profit margins for transportation companies, but in the longer term, that means they'll need to expand their fleets to capture more of that lost revenue - whose cost will be passed on to us as well.

So. We produce more food. We have far fewer people able to afford it. You lose tons of small/family farms in order to redistribute that income to Wall Street. And shipping prices most certainly rise, not just for foodstuffs, but for anything else that could be shipped on those same trucks as well.

We were attacked by a group of stateless outlaws on 9/11.

We retaliated against them shortly after, and opted to go after the state that had provided them sanctuary, and overthrew Taliban.

And then the Bush Administration provided fake evidence to the world about WMD's and terror connections in Iraq. When someone that knew better said something, they outed the fact that his wife was a CIA agent, putting her and her contacts at severe risk.

And then they invaded Iraq, overthrew Saddam, created a HUGE power vacuum, and the entire Baath party out on the street, military included. So you gave them zero reason to do anything but fight against the invaders. And provided a training ground for the worlds insurgents to come and practice their urban warfare skills, and spread out from there.

So yes. The middle east was already an unstable place, but Bush/Cheney Wars were entirely unnecessary, avoidable, and had horrendous side effects for us, the Iraqi's and the entire region.

Ford might have pardoned Nixon, but it was hardly uncontroversial:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

It's a late 2013 model, Retina display, upgraded SSD.

As has been discussed to death already, Apples refresh gave me zero reason to want to upgrade. No performance benefits anywhere to be found.

And now, with this revelation, should my computer shit the bed, I'd probably go looking for a similar model on the used market than go with a new one.

Hopefully Apples next update in 2018 (given its current product life cycle) remedies that - give us a upgrade path to greater performance, the ability to upgrade and service some of the components ourselves. Oh, and bring back the Magsafe power adapter. I know my computer survived two near death incidents at coffee shops thanks to Magsafe, I can't image why in the world they'ed take that away. Oh, so we can have 4 matching ports, rather the 3 USB-C's and one power connector.

I'm getting to the point where I think 80% of what I do could be done with Linux with the same exact programs, 90-95% if i wanted to learn new things like GIMP, but I just prefer Mac OS X's look and feel. But the trajectory at Apple since Steve's death has me starting to think that I'm not a wanted customer anymore. I'd say that maybe mac's are just becoming expensive accessories to iPhones and iPods, but that can't be - you can't even plug the latest iPhone into the latest MacBook, after all!.

The Tax Foundation only had 2005 numbers available when I bookmarked the page a month or two ago. And i know things have changed since then, but none of your links provide the full picture, so I"m going to post this one for some historical data:

http://taxfoundation.org/artic...

As of 2005, the States that paid more to the Federal Government than the spending they received in return were:

New Jersey
Nevada
Connecticut
New Hampshire
Minnesota
Illinois
Delaware
California
New York
Colorado
Massachusetts
Wisconsin
Washington
Michigan
Oregon
Texas
and Florida

Rhode Island was break even.

The rest of the states, at that point, were the recipients of that taxation.

You realize that you make a ton of money selling food to other states? Can you imagine what would happen to incomes in Nebraska if they only produced enough food for themselves?

Except OP is speaking factually, and you're just making stuff up based on what you want to believe, which is 100% wrong. A little research might help you not be an idiot, not that it matters since you're just an anonymous coward...

California sends far more money back up to the Federal Government than it gets back. It's the red states that are typically the subsidized ones, receiving back from the Federal Government far more than they pay into it.

Damn pesky facts...

Unfortunately, Canada is a bit too gold for many of us. But who knows, with a coal industry about to get revitalized, maybe Canada will take on more tropical temperatures in the coming years...

What so many fail to realize is that the Blue states are net exporters of Federal Tax dollars. We pay far more than $1 for every $1 of federal spending that comes back to our states. The Red states, on the other hand, suck off the teats of the blue states. You'll see no improvement, only even fewer tax dollars to support you than you already get.

It no more cheating than the gerrymandering the GOP has done (and now, will continue to do), redrawing districts to lump as many voters from the opposing party in the fewest number of districts as possible.

South Florida has long seemed like a separate state than the rest of Florida, too... But, the Constitution says that states can't be divided up after they've been established.

If California did such a move, it would essentially guarantee Red leadership for the rest of the country. Or more likely, would cause other Blue states to follow suit.

Part of me thinks that wouldn't be so bad, but on the other, if we're believing that the election was affected by other countries interfering with our politics in order to produce an outcome that was more desirable, it would probably be a gift beyond their wildest dreams to see the US splinter into two or three different countries.

Logistically, there's also the problem of Federal debt (among so many other things) - who assumes it?

Far from it. The Alt-Right is their own beast, not to be confused with the regular Republicans that embraced them and welcomed them into their party in order to give them a chance at... I don't even know, the GOP doesn't much like attempting to govern anymore.

Let me inherit a few hundred million dollar real estate empire, and I'll show you some grand accomplishments, too.

Seriously. What has he done? Blow up casinos? Run a fake university? He made an image of rich and gets to sell his name. That's all.

The stupid thing is that the thing that got him famous in his supporters eyes is saying "you're fired", NOT hiring people or creating jobs. That's who they think will spur the economy, a guy that fires people. But none of them claim to the the brightest bulbs, now do they?