So, again, point to a person who stole $15 million. Specifically. Or $5 million - whatever you like. Referring to a "thing" that happened, without actually pointing out which person broke an actual law but was not prosecuted - that's deliberately vague on your part. You seem to have something specific in mind, legally, so why not mention it?

What I said isn't wrong just because your tone happens to align with the commonly held positions of a particular group. You just sounded like one of that group. That doesn't make it any less specious when you use the word "racial" incorrectly, or assign that mis-use to other people. I don't know anyone, despite your assertion, that thinks Japan has a lower rate of gun violence because of the race of most of the people who live in that culture. No more than I think their visual characteristics are responsible for that country's unusually high suicide rate, tendency to see a lot of stabbings, or especially peculiar pop-culture strangeness. Those are cultural, not racial differences. Whether you're someone who makes that mistake/misrepresentation all the time, or just occasionally, doesn't change how and why it's nonsense.

Like most liberals, you can't seem to understand that race (physical differences which manifest themselves in fairly obvious, visible ways, and which are handed down through reproduction) and culture are two different things. What's up with that, anyway? Why is that so hard for people to understand?

The culture in gangland Chicago is violent and murderous. But people who share racial characteristics with those most commonly found in that criminal culture live elsewhere, within different cultures in other places around the country, and don't have the same problem.

But that gets the PC and Moral Relativism crowds all upset, because that implies that personal decisions about behavior actually make a difference. And that's no fun for the craven people who would rather blame inanimate objects for what people choose to do (thus letting themselves off the hook of making a moral pronouncement about somebody's personal or cultural behavior).

Of course that's not at all true. Every state in the country makes provisions for keeping crazy and criminal people from buying guns. It doesn't help when one of their family members decides to commit the criminal act of facilitating their acquisition of one anyway. Several states are actively knocking on doors and taking guns away from people who have been convicted of certain crimes, or who have fallen under a protective order or deemed not sane enough to own weapons. You're just (knowingly, I'm sure) wrong on the facts.

You mean, like we already have? Sure, why not. People who don't realize that just need to check their state laws so they can see that's already the case.

You're deliberately misrepresenting the second amendment. Even if you can't parse the actual words right in front of you, you can go off and ready countless documents by the people who wrote and ratified that amendment, showing that you've got it exactly, precisely backwards. The founders, having spent years living under the militaristic thumb of the British government in the colonies, were very apprehensive about the continued existence of a standing army (especially a federal one). Still, they knew that there had to be an organized military capacity at one or more organizational levels (at least state, county, etc). Their wording in the second amendment, if you were to use slightly more modern, casual parlance, would go like this: "Because we know there will always have to be a permanent military structure in place to defend the country, we don't want that military to have a monopoly on the ownership of arms, as we experienced under British rule. This amendment officially prohibits the government from preventing the people from keeping and bearing their own arms."

The second amendment was written specifically to preserve your personal right, should you choose to exercise it, to keep and bear arms exactly because there was inevitably going to be a well organized militia operating nearby, and the founders - having seen what they'd seen - considered it absolutely vital that the organized military didn't become the only entity in the country that was armed.

Your fantasy, in which it's exactly the opposite, flies in the face of everything the founders had to say on the subject, and is completely contrary to the debate, writings, and ratification votes that surrounded the amendment's place in the constitution. It's just like the first amendment in that capacity. The first amendment doesn't spell out who's allowed to speak, or indicate that you have to be qualified to own a printing press. It's there to prevent government over-reach, just like the second amendment. And the fourth, etc.

No, he was not law abiding. He's not allowed to take possession of a firearm with his previous and pending felony legal issues. He was already breaking the law before he even walked into the place, just as he'd broken the law earlier while carrying controlled drugs. Very likely at least one of his family members also broke the law in facilitating his ownership of a firearm while aware of his legal situation. So come up with a better example. Like, say, the law abiding guy in Norway who killed an island full of students.

Not all of them were wealthy or successful, but wanted to get the colonial monkey off their backs so that, among other things, they could pursue exactly that goal. Regardless, even the already wealthy people who were involved in the forming of the country and its charter came right out and explained it to you, if you're paying attention. Which you're not, obviously.

He didn't say any such thing. Criminals, by their actions, waive their claims on the same liberties that are enjoyed by the rest of us. You seem deliberately unclear on the concept.

If the threat of violence is credible, most laws treat it essentially just like an assault that actually employs the violence. Threatening to hurt somebody until they give you their property is a violent crime - because it's predicated on your willingness and threat to do violence in order to steal something. With or without a weapon has nothing to do with it.

And can you point to an example of someone who's actually robbed $15 million and not faced criminal prosecution? Or are you confusing robbery with legal activity that you wish were not legal? There are people in the world who think you make obscenely too much money, and they're convinced that the only reason they're not personally better off is because other people are better off than they are, which makes you one of the people who is robbing them of their prosperity. Should you go to jail? That person's irrational complaint is just as good as your deliberately vague one, right?

So can seeing a cow by the side of the road. So what? Let me guess: you demand that every business you visit put up a series of Trigger Warnings outside their door, just in case anyone coming in might be offended by the sight of a lobster, or a large steak knife, or an overweight person wearing horizontal stripes (the horror!). What the hell is it with people cultivating this new flavor of paralyzing, exquisitely sensitive fear of everything? Colleges are so in the thrall of this PC nonsense that they're throwing potential guest speakers off campus in order to make sure that not even one special snowflake in the student body might be made uncomfortable by hearing the expression of an idea that's contrary to their delicate world view. This has to stop while there are still at least some vertebrates left on the planet.

Because medallions create an artificial scarcity of taxis. And in any market, artificial scarcity creates cartels, which reduce competition and benefit no one but a tiny, well-connected minority of owners (and their paid-off politicians) at the expense of pretty much everyone else, including the consumers as well as the labor.

Medallions done properly create a scarcity of taxis in proportion to the scarcity of roads. There is insufficient roadage to support everyone who could potentially want to drive a taxi to make a little extra money on the side. You end up with gridlock, which counteracts any productivity gains that might be generated by having more taxis. So yes the scarcity is artificial, but it's done because it's the lesser of two evils. The other problems that arise out of the medallions, you try to address via other means.

Individuals are effectively taxed on profit via deductions and graduated income tax. A certain amount of income is assumed to be dedicated to necessary expenses like food, shelter, and clothing (at least in some states). Since the requirements for each person to live are pretty much the same, the same standard deduction works for every person. Further reductions in income taxes are made based on how many dependents (children) you're supporting.

The same method doesn't work for businesses because they vary so much in expenses they incur to operate. But why should you even tax a business? Businesses don't consume or produce anything - the people working at them do. A business is just a paper shell representing a group of people. If you tax the business, the money just comes from the employees (lower wages) and customers (higher prices).

Taxing businesses creates a contradiction if you believe in "no taxation without representation." Either you can tax businesses and therefore businesses deserve representation in government. Or you recognize that a business is just a group of people working together, and those people are already taxed and can vote, so it doesn't make sense to tax them more just because they've decided to work together, and therefore a businesses does not deserve representation in government.

(Some business taxes make sense. But these are generally taxes to recoup regulatory costs like excise taxes on vehicles, or to encourage/discourage certain behaviors like pollution taxes.)

Because it used to be Google didn't have a Korean keyboard for Android, and rather than direct customers in their home country to download a 3rd party one from the Play store, they decided to make one themselves that they trusted. That was one of the early advantages of Android over iOS - you could replace the keyboard if you didn't like the default one. Eventually they began adding extra features and keys to support features that were only in their phones.

That's how innovation happens. It's not exclusive to the lab of a single company whose only claim to fame is that they own the OS. Everyone in the world comes up with different ideas, and the better ones get borrowed/stolen by everyone else including the company who owns the OS. Most manufacturers and carriers licensed or came up with their own version of Swype long before Google added it to Android.

You have no idea what you're talking about.

A bomber pilot may let loose with similar guided weapons from miles away, or from 30,000 feet. He may never fly over that spot again, and may have no need to hang around doing bomb damage assessment. The drone operator may spend a month flying over the same area, gathering intelligence on individual people, vehicles, buildings ... many of them know the ground in some insurgent-run village in Iraq better than you know the ground a few blocks from where you live. And it's the drone operators and satellite imaging people who usually do the remote BDA, not traditional pilots. Traditional pilots don't "feel the impact" more, but it does cost a great deal more, and introduce a lot mroe risk, to operate an aircraft with them on board. You seem to prefer that, for some reason. Strange.

It's not. it's what, 55% fructose, 45% sucrose -- whereas table sugar is a 50/50 split?

Where did you get the idea that you can take a food, completely ignore the body's metabolism, list its component molecules, and declare parity? It's a complete stretch, and so it's completely wrong. This is 1982-era reasoning.

The ratio of fructose and glucose in HFCS is similar to a lot of fruits. Grapes are probably the closest, at 54% fructose, 46% glucose; and honey at 56% fructose, 44% glucose. So if HFCS is bad for you, then so are grapes and honey. And if you're trying to paint fructose as the bad guy, then you should be horrified to know that apples, pears, and watermelon have an even higher fraction of fructose.

The problem isn't HFCS per se. It's that we eat too much damn sugar (in all forms).

Are you sure its radiation hasn't killed anyone? I've seen several "news" articles that claim a death toll of over 10,000 spread across the pacific, including thousands in California.

Part of the problem is that a large segment of the public thinks we live in a radiation-free environment and so incorrectly attribute all new cancers to nuclear accidents. The reality is that outside of about a hundred km of Fukushima, the vast majority of your radiation dose is from natural sources. In fact the people who fled Japan because they feared radiation from Fukushima in most cases subjected themselves to an even greater radiation dose during their airline flight.