Why is it so hard to see why this line of thinking is utterly absurd?

What you're arguing is that to protect some theoretical right to "fight oppression" with some semi-automatic AK-47 replicas, every grade-school teacher should be armed. What about waiters? How about the nice lady at the Macy's cosmetics counter? What about movie-theater ushers?

And even if you could convince a sane person that this was somehow a good idea in principle, you'd still have to explain how that would have changed anything in this case. This guy walked into a grade-school classroom where his own mother was the teacher and started shooting without warning. He killed her and then within seconds turned on the kids in the class. For your reasoning to make any practical sense at all, she would have had to not only be armed, but actually be carrying the weapon while teaching the class then pull it and fire with gunslinger-like speed and accuracy. (Or maybe you think the kids should have been armed as well).

Just because you live in a fantasy land where Obama is a communist who wants to take your dirt-farm doesn't mean you'll ever actually get a chance to pull a gun on a mugger (at which point you are statistically almost certain to die by your own weapon anyway).

No one wants to stop you from killing rats with antlers, they just want to make the world a little safer.

It depends on how you define "productive". If you mean churning out line after line of procedural algorithms, you are unlikely to accomplish much while under the influence. But if you're talking about creative problem solving that involves "thinking outside the box", there's a lot to be said for "altered states".

More often than not, breakthroughs in understanding tend to come from a reevaluating of previous assumptions. So for example, if you've been banging away at a problem for a week and cant seem to see a way out, cannabis can provide a bit of "distance" from the problem while not completely removing you from that space.

That said, I would never recommend - and in fact would strongly discourage - people from using during the bulk of their work. It is far too disruptive to normal cognitive function to allow for proper concentration and it is especially bad for learning. You just dont retain anything properly. It's a tool in the toolbox like any other.

The difference is in the history and direction of the subsidies you include in your equation. Their current vectors.

I understand that because food and fuel are arguably in the same range in terms of necessity and there are giant corporations on both sides, it is easy to make them appear equivalent.

The banks are a special case here wherein they are accused of and in many cases proven to have shot themselves directly in the foot. And when they can't perform their function because their too busy bleeding to death. Therefore the lack of any alternative system of currency exchange - aside from pigs and bales of wheat - the feds had no choice but to stop the bleeding and buy them all Segways so they could go about their business.

They got away with murder and the motto has been "never again" ever since. I agree.

The oil companies are a different story. Because of a century of not only subsidies but the entire US military to back them up, they have established themselves as the most profitable firms on the planet. Bar none (except Apple, which is really astounding BTW).

On the other side of your equation you have farm subsidies and Hollywood. Now I'm not sure what you mean about Hollywood, but I'm fairly sure whatever it is its 0.01% of the bank bailout and aircraft carriers dont protect the honey-wagons on a location shoot.

I also agree that farm subsidies are out of control. But precisely because farming is big business, you can't suddenly choke off millions of dollars of what is effectively "income" and not expect them to slash costs. Which would inevitably reduce the quality and quantity of what they produce. You know, bread and stuff.

Now when someone in power has the cajones to go after these subsidies in a rational way, I will support them even if they are attacked relentlessly by Karl Rove's PAC. But until then we have bigger fish to fry.

Look, as a share of what we spend, there is no comparison. And as outrageous injustices go, hedging with swaps has already written its own chapter in the history books and oil itself may well be humanity's undoing.

Basically, I dont question the numerators in your equation. It's a basic 1-1. But the denominators that are waaaaay off.

First of all, you can replace two with six and my statement still stands. I don't think anyone believes the people to which you refer are "flawless".

My point was simply that for a candidate to reasonably claim the support of a plurality of 300+ million people (something none of the other candidates can even come close to claiming - not necessarily for lack of merit), they must make compromises. The reasons for this are obvious:

• 1. Money
• 2. Electability (again nothing to do with merit, just the realities of how the general public chooses a leader - which is very different from choosing policy).

I agree we need a system that encourages more and better choices, but I stand by my statement. Which was, by the way, not central to the larger point about Obama's (possible) second term.

Does everyone really have that short a memory?

How about...

• When Obama and Congressional leaders (from both parties) sat around and discussed "alternatives" to the healthcare overhaul which had already passed with a normal majority but was being held up by filibuster in the senate?
• When the Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell saying that their top priority - in the face of crippling financial collapse caused in no small measure because of his own parties policies - was to "make him a one term president"? Which was then acted on...
• When the House held up passing a quite standard extension to the debt limit in the hope of making Obama look weak and in favor of "increasing the debt" in the name of - as Paul Krugman puts it - summoning the confidence fairy? Which of course resulted in the rest of actually starting to question the ability of the US political system to deal with the problem.
• When Tea Party affiliated candidates started turning the Republicans against themselves in the name of some idealized and quite fictional "good ol days" when the government didn't do anything more than ensure that the harbors were safe and contracts were enforced? The effect of which has been to scare all Republicans from being at all reasonable with regard to taxes?
• When every single Republican candidate said they would not accept even a 10-1 ratio of tax cuts to new revenue?

I can go on and on.

Yes, Obama and his team have not done a good enough job explaining these things, which is why Bill Clinton's otherwise obvious logic had such an impact at the Democratic convention.

Yes, there has been very little from Obama on what exactly he plans to do differently in the next four years - I think mainly because whomever wins will have to make difficult decisions and neither side is willing to "go first" and illustrate just how they would inflict the inevitable pain.

Yes, the core of both parties are hopelessly corrupted by the now billions of dollars spent on elections.

But just about every election is a choice between two flawed individuals. In this case I am going to choose the individual who seems most likely to do what he says and has some grounding the same kind of life I do. Obama has not lied per se. I believe he just greatly underestimated what he would face when he took office. In fact, NO ONE knew what he would face when he was nominated as the Democratic candidate, and very few really understood what he would face even as he was sworn in.

The first term is always the learning period. I believe Obama has learned his lesson (in no small part because he has stopped talking uniting and started talking about getting things done). I believe he will make better decisions in the next four years, and I simply do not trust Romney to do the same.

Yes, we should adopt Socialism because that's much better at adapting to a fast changing technology marketplace. Instead of small companies producing disruptive tech, you have giant institutional monopolies (see cable/phone/car companies, etc) doing whatever they must to maintain "stability" and such.

Much better.

What? How about this? I for one would like to avoid making foreign policy based on assumptions and hearsay. Or perhaps you're a Mittens man and would rather jump to wild conclusions before any real information is available?

And before you start wailing about how some of those early baseless assumptions turned out to be partly true, I would remind you that a broken clock is right twice a day...

Also, while the attack was clearly a blow to our local Libyan intelligence operation - in addition to the obvious human tragedy - the impact of the movie and its subsequent protests are more troubling because they demonstrate how there is a downside to greater freedom of expression in the region. There is clearly an attempt by extremists (religious and governmental) to hijack that freedom to let everyone know that they are still a potent force. The trick is to respect the protests while not allowing them to be completely one-sided. The counter-protests in Libya are a good example of this.

I wonder if people in the middle east realize how steadily their image as pre-enlightenment zealots with no interest in modernization is solidifying in the West. There was once a valid critique that said the West just didn't understand the Mid-East and that it was judging it in a relativistic way. But now that the West has been paying attention for a while, those early truisms seem downright sage-like.

"Experts" continue to offer somber explanations for such violent outbursts, saying that their youth is feeling a profound humiliation and that they are simply taking it out on the Western boogieman their parents and grandparents were taught to fear. This may be true on some level. But at what point do they take the responsibility for their own development. How long before they realize that whether or not you believe someone else is holding you back, you have to move forward on your own.

The "Arab Spring" seemed to offer a tantalizing bit of hope for a change from within, but if the religious right in the US is any indication, there is no reasoning with a zealot. And when the government of such a large and strategically important nation like Pakistan calls for worldwide censorship to avoid further offending an already humiliated culture, where is the path to change?

This is not news. This is Wikileaks publishing uncorroborated "evidence" that matches their expectations about "Big Brother".

Some things to remember:

• 1. The system is in no way secret and there are numerous publicly available sources of information about municipal uptake: public hearings, contracts, etc.
• 2. Most (if not all) of these emails were marketing materials or communiques regarding trial runs.
• 3. There is no evidence that TrapWire is currently in use as described in the Wikileaks release. See the NYTimes, Slate articles (among many others) that investigate the system's actual purpose and use.

Wikileaks has been more or less forgotten by the general public, so it's not surprising that they would take every opportunity to spout sensationalized conspiracy theories to regain the spotlight. After all, what would they be today without Mr. Manning's foolish self-sacrifice? A wanna be World News Daily.

Perhaps it is not feasible (or even desirable) for the /. editorial staff to vet everything that gets posted, but I for one am not interested in hearing every conspiracy theory floating on the web - regardless of the sympathy some may have for the source.

Not GM grass. Naturally bred hybrid. The headline is 100% wrong.

Perhaps you should read the actual article before posting. And, BTW, the first non-PDF result of your posted google search says specifically that it's a hybrid not a GM strain.

If you're actually "not a anti-GM nut" you should act like one.

wow. ok, have fun with that...

You really don't understand economics do you. Do you honestly think that someone handing out flyers on the street has other stuff lined up but just thought it would be nice to be out in the fresh air?

People don't do those jobs by choice, and one can most certainly make the case that they are effectively serfs. They take whatever they can get and live hand to mouth.

Perhaps you've never struggled to find a job to the point of desperation. Good for you, but please show a little compassion for those who must do whatever they can to survive. They may represent a wealthy company, but they are not shareholders.

Your cousin is a jackass. The people he is "protesting" to have nothing to do with the policies they are forced to implement. The TSA thing is different because it's a very public and extreme form of protest that will make the news 100%.

Crumpling some poor sap's flyers in front of him is just a dick move. What does he hope to accomplish? Further humiliating someone that is already forced to give away flyers on the street for pennies per hour? Wasting a telemarketer's time while he's trying to earn a living doing extremely unsatisfying work (believe me i know from experience)?

He's a prankster, not a protester.