*sniff* Oh how I miss being able to get Papa Murphy's...

Sexual orientation != gender != physical sex (and certainly != some fetish).

And frankly, it's isn't about you. Or me. Or anyone else but the person trying to deal with their own identity. I'm lucky to be part of the majority, but I've known people who didn't fit into the simple M/F boxes, and if it helps them find a place, then I'm all for it.

No, that's definitely not their sin of omission. Marx's "The Communist Manifesto" is almost entirely about this issue and proposes instituting checks and balances on this, like progressive income taxes, the abolition of land ownership, a 100% inheritance tax, a minimum wage, free education, no more child labor, and the centralization of several utilities and services considered essential or potentially exploitative in the hands of private citizens.

The failure to recognize the abuse of power as an abuse is more capitalism's failing. Socialism's failing is Marx's denial that people will attempt to get the most reward for the least effort. He glosses over the issue by pointing out that most of the rich still work (but ignoring that most of them do so in the attempt to acquire more than what they need).

Deep Space Nine is the show for you then. It's certainly the show which is least idealistic about the Federation. (And really, in any Star Trek, it seems that to rise to Admiral rank, you have to be corrupt, a zealot, or outright evil in some other way.)

Literally what it says at face value.

It means a mixed-model economy in which the government steps in when essential services would be poorly served by a profit motive, and the free market is allowed to handle issues where a profit motive would drive improvements. Typically, it also includes strong worker protections, socialized medicine, and mostly public utilities and transit.

On the more free-market end, you'll have countries like Germany and the UK. On the more socialist end, you'll have counties like France and the Scandinavian countries.

The only think I'd add is to this part:

Ever since the housing bubble collapsed, many employers are taking this one step further by demanding continuous availability. That means that your schedule must be open at all times, and if you have conflicts with another job, then you'd better pick which one is more important.

I know a few friends who can't even get a second job because of this "dance for it, monkey!" attitude.

The problem is not really that the number of people is increasing in "the civilized world." The problem is that the rest of the world is getting "civilized," and China and India are at the forefront of multiplying the resources consumed per capita while also growing their populations. If everyone in the world lived at a US standard of living, we absolutely could not feed and provide energy for the populace. Especially without transitioning away from carbon-heavy energy.

We're caught between a rock and a hard place. You don't want to kill off people or impose harsh fertility limits, because, you know, ethics and human decency, but you can't feed everyone steak in air conditioned restaurants either, and it's extremely hard to say, "No you can't have that," while having it yourself or convincing the people who already have it to give it up.

No it wasn't. The electoral college was not designed with a two-party system in mind (the greatest evidence of this is the elections of 1796 and 1800). No, it was designed with Congress as a backup in case no one won a majority, because they expected that to happen quite often once Washington was no longer in the picture. In fact, the framers were more worried about a couple of large states ganging up than what we would now think of as issue-driven parties. (This is the main reason for the large state/small state compromise showing up against in assigning electors by Congressional + Senate seats). They expected most elections to have to be decided between more than five candidates since electors from multiple states would have difficulty colluding before sending their votes in.

So dramatic, magnified consensus was not one of the design goals for it. In pretty much every way, it was designed without the opinions of the public much in mind. It turns out that you don't actually have any Constitutional right to elect the President. States can choose to pick the electors without you. (In fact, South Carolina did that all the way up until it seceded from the Union.)

You can read more of the history of the debate in the Constitutional Convention here. Also some really great history of the foundation of the first political parties in the years leading up to and after the ratification of the Constitution.

George W Bush lost the popular vote in 2000, and many of the people on your list bear almost NO resemblance to a modern Republican in terms of political views (e.g. Roosevelt, Eisenhower).

Still, the GP's argument is almost as bad for much the same reason, because if the current Republicans kept getting drubbed in the polls, they'd very quickly become a different party. The parties change their mix of positions about once every 2-3 generations or so -- sometimes much faster. Heck, just look at how different Republicans were today and in the 1990s, the 1970s, the 1950s, and the 1930s.

A bully is someone who picks on someone because they know that they can't/won't fight back. If your problem is the latter, then it's simple to do as you say. If you simply *can't* fight back, because the other party will destroy you if you try, then that's a different story. What you advocate is simply self-destructive stupidity in the name of pride.

Fighting back in court isn't free, and King's victims simply can't afford justice.

That's your problem right there. It wasn't "a dusting of snow." It was wintry mix, complete with 1/4 thick sheets of solid ice on all the roads that formed as people were trying to get home.

Plus, honestly, if 80% of the people in Atlanta had panicked and jumped on the roads in the same half hour in good driving conditions, you'd have had hours long snarls anyway. The ice that trapped us in transit made it much, much worse, but it would have been bad without it. Probably not, "abandon your car and walk home because it's low on gas, and the gas station 1 mile away is about 2 hours away in this traffic" bad, but still bad.

People in the South are spoiled by air conditioning. I know, because I lived in Oregon for a few years and didn't understand what it was like to live in a house without AC in that weather until it happened.

Here's one. What's the long-term effect of using TCMS during development? Strengthening of the affected areas or weakening thereof / dependency on the stimulation?

Yes, and if you make your living as a window-maker, anti-vandalism laws might seem to be a bad idea too. The car dealer is a holdover from the days in which haggling was a common practice. The average consumer today would far rather get the best deal by comparing fixed numbers rather than their ability to beat a negotiator who practices every day at screwing people of as much extra money as possible.

Don't buy the talking points of the parties. Each party has a number of conflicting interest groups within them, and which group is on top varies from region to region. Some conservatives believe in the free market almost religiously, while many others believe in the free market is only a great idea to apply *outside* of their industry. Furthermore, the lower you go down from the national level, the more an individual politician's interests will be tied into which big fish is willing to dribble money into their campaign, and that will more often than not be tied to the local rich guy.

Car dealerships are local businesses that pull in a lot of money and which have long had a history of being big donors to local politics. There are a number of ideological reasons that Republicans would support protection of a local elite at the expense of what the public wants, but let's face it, a Democrat would probably support the same bill if his town had a politically active car dealership in it and just use different rhetoric for it.

The "free market" is a principle, and principles frequently go AWOL when reelection funding is on the line. Or if you want to be even more cynical, you can consider it just the Republican's "branding" rather than beliefs. Something to keep the common voters rooting for the team, while the business of politics continues to be business.

Which no one ever checks, much less automatically, because signatures vary wildly even in the best writing conditions. A signature is a placebo, not an actual verification method.