In no particular order:

* The person who is fit/healthy is less likely to end up unable to wipe his own ass in a retirement home.
* Fit and healthy people get more attention from the opposite sex.
* Exercise is a natural anti-depressant.
* Exercise boosts libido.
* You'll sleep better.
* You can eat more.

Of course there are no promises. You could be in the best shape of your life and get hit by a bus tomorrow. Such is life.

Yes, they do. But not all of them and certainly not in the manner that the GP presented. One needs to actually understand how the system works before one condemns it and/or proposes fixes for it. Incidentally, most of the people in politics hate the system as much as you do. You think they enjoy spending so much of their day begging people for money so they can fund their campaigns? The real world isn't House of Cards, most people actually enter public service for noble reasons, ranging from the mundane fixing of potholes to the desire to advance a social cause. The problem is two fold:

1) Campaign finance reform is inherently suspect because it's passed by people who have an incentive to make it harder for incumbents to lose elections. There's a reason why opponents frequently referred to McCain-Feingold as the "Incumbent Protection Act"

2) Meaningful campaign finance reform would require a Constitutional Amendment; the idea I most liked was the notion of precluding private donations but giving every American citizen X dollars to allocate as they see fit. It's an awesome idea but one that's utterly unconstitutional. Perhaps you should start building a network for this concept rather than spouting talking points about money going into Senators pockets?

Having everybody live off a high protein diet is unsustainable. There are whole segments of American society that couldn't afford it, never mind the third world, and even if money was no object it would be completely unsustainable from an environmental standpoint.

It's cute though that you took what I was saying and morphed it into "cutting sugar is unsustainable"; all I did was condemn your silly paleo diet, not the notion of cutting sugar or making other healthy lifestyle choices. One can cut out soda (or even enjoy it in moderation) without adopting a made up diet that claims to be what our ancestors ate.

Of course, physical activity is even better. I eat whatever the hell I want. You can do that when you're averaging 30 miles a week of running. Pass the cheesecake, mmm'kay?

You know that talking point is total bullshit, right? What you describe would be a felony offense in the United States. Nor can corporations give money directly to campaigns. They can donate to PACs, which are a special animal in the American political system, but they can't donate directly to campaigns or candidates. When people tell you that "Big oil/telecom/Hollywood/whatever gave X dollars to Y candidate" they really mean that the employees of those industries gave X dollars to Y candidate. Work at a gas station and donate $20 to your State Assemblywoman? That's added to the total donation from "big oil" when her opponent needs a talking point.

I realize such intricacies don't make for good talking points but it would be extremely helpful if people would at least learn how the system works rather than spreading FUD that only serves to undermine the tenuous amount of faith we have left in our system.

Try doing any cardio of moderate to heavy intensity (which you really ought to be doing, if you want to live a long life) without carbs. Your diet is a fad and an utterly unsustainable one (from an environmental standpoint) at that. If you really want to live like our ancestors did start having sex at 10 and forgo modern medicine. You'll be dead in your 20s and the carbon impact of your selfish lifestyle will cancel itself out.

What's wrong with coffee?

Except she won't be. And that's the problem. If they take their blood pressure and cholesterol meds they fucking live forever and just keep on eating. Meanwhile the rest of us get to subsidize their lifestyle choices because our healthcare system doesn't allow insurance underwriters to take lifestyle choices into account. The 40 year old sedentary fat ass pays the same as the 40 year old marathon runner.

Try running a marathon while being anti-carb and let me know how it works out for you.

You also might consider the sustainability of your little protein fetish.

Fat metabolism doesn't work that way; your body can metabolize a finite amount of fat in a given time and when the muscles call upon more energy (as they invariably will if you're sprinting) the difference is going to come from glycogen. It does take a few minutes for the fat metabolism to get going -- this is one of the reasons why distance runners warm up and/or start slow in long runs -- though there are interesting studies that suggest caffeine can accelerate the process.

The human body isn't "designed" for anything but it is remarkably adapted to endurance events. You almost can count on one hand the number of animals that can keep up with a human through a moderate endurance race (5k or 10k) never mind a marathon. Horses, dogs, the ostrich, and a few others. It's no mistake that we domesticated the first two in that list. Humans have even been known to beat the horse at a marathon on particularly hot days.

Point being, I'd question your claim that the human body is "designed" (adapted is really a better word, FYI) for long periods of rest w/short bursts of activity. What you've described there are the big cats and other ambush predators.

That may be true but at the end of the day it's still going to come down to self control. We're one of the few (the only?) animals blessed with the ability to override our base instincts. I guess some people are too powerless to do that.

Run 20 to 40 miles a week and you will sneeze at a 1.5 mile "jog" :)

(Those numbers would be totals, not net, obviously. My net intake averages around 2,500, which is about right for a high metabolism male....)

What's the obesity rate in those populations vis-a-vis the Western World?

Anecdote time: My family has a history of heart disease and diabetes, largely self-inflicted via eating ourselves to death. My blood markers (fasting glucose and cholesterol) follow my weight, up and down. Weight loss brought them into the normal range; dietary changes made no discernible impact whatsoever. I eat all the things that are supposedly bad for you, refined carbs, alcohol, greasy foods, and so on. The difference between me and the rest of the family is I exercise self-control and keep my net calories to a reasonable level. Reasonable ranges from 2,000 on days of doing nothing to >5,000 on days with mega hikes or long runs.

People need to stop buying into fad diets and nonsense theories. Barring allergies, most humans are fully capable of assimilating anything they throw at their GI system. Exercise some bloody portion control and get off the couch once in awhile. The rest will take care of itself.

Which Government on this planet is willing to negotiate with accused criminals in order to bring them to trial? It doesn't happen, not in Democracies or Dictatorships. The most you might get is "I'll surrender at the station tomorrow morning so you don't have to haul me out of my house in handcuffs." but even that isn't a sure thing.

Debatable, the takeaway I had from the show was that the Psi-Corps was largely responsible for it.

I'm going to ignore the hyperbolic statement about 9/11 (really dude?) and just point out the fact that the Shadows never really seemed to give two shits about the domestic politics of any of their puppet races, least of all humanity. And in such a situation as the B5 universe, humanity would have to be incredibly stupid not to take advantage of any scraps of technology the Shadows were willing to dole out, particularly given the aforementioned issues on Minbar and the fact that the survival of the human race depends on being able to effectively defend it against aliens with many times our technology.

Except it wasn't credible. That entire storyline was stupid and it was resolved by a deus ex machina ending. There wasn't even anything to get invested in as a viewer of the show. The Shadows are fucking with some minor races that we rarely see and don't care about as viewers. Yawn. The only time I genuinely cared about that entire story was when the Vorlons were about to waste Centauri Prime, otherwise it was all off screen minor races that nobody gave two shits about.