Your alarmist progression is worthy of a Fox News headline; it's so full of holes and logical fallacies that it's difficult to know where to start, but how about your crazy, uninformed jump from #2 to #3?

There's about 4 million Muslims in Thailand, out of a population of around 70 million. If you're trying to refer to the current insurgency in southern Thailand, the evidence suggest that's more rooted in ethnic (Malay vs. Thai) differences than it is in Islam vs. Buddhism, though of course that plays a part - problem is, that particular conflict has been present for hundreds of years. And before you point your finger and say "Aha! that proves my point, Muslims have always been trying to conquer!" take a look at what "Christian" nations were doing hundreds of years ago and were continuing to do until right after World War II. Some would say we're still trying to do it now, what with invading Iraq and all.

To suggest that this one religion is somehow worse than all the others when it comes to breeding maniacs that want to impose their will on others is ridiculous.

A critical difference is that the geek doesn't (usually) attempt to make other people live their lives according to the same sacred texts.

If you've applied this brand of logic to all the decisions in your life, I'm not surprised that you're a bitter person.

I belong to a union. I'm a full-time freelancer, in a technical field (not IT), but I belong to a union that I pay union dues to.

From your comments, it sounds to me like you either don't work for a union, or at one time you worked for an extremely shitty corrupt one. I assure you that while I pay union dues, I also make a lot more money on union jobs than on non-union ones (which I am far less likely to take on, because of the pay difference). I also now get my health care through a union plan, which is far cheaper than getting it on my own was.

My union dues pay for themselves each year within the first 4 days of work I do, in form of increased day rates that I get paid - and those rates are higher entirely due to my fellow techs and I organizing in 2008. Literally overnight, I suddenly had an about-30% increase in pay, and all I had to do was sign a card saying I wanted to be represented by the union, and I agreed to pay 2% of each check to the union. Pretty good deal by any measure.

Please don't paint all unions with your "commie unions and corrupt union bosses!!!" brush. It doesn't work that way in the majority of unions. But conservatives have done a great job convincing many Americans that that's actually the case. Which is unfortunate, as wealth continues to get more concentrated at the top. The thing is, my clients pay the higher union rates because they're still making money on each job. They just don't make as much of it, but that doesn't mean they just threw up their hands and said "oh well, we're only making 16 cents on the dollar now instead of 18, time to shut the whole thing down!" They have the money. They just want to keep more and more of it, no matter how much they make. Unions serve as a valuable counterweight to that greed.

It's interesting to me that to come up with people that move around large amounts of cash, your one example is organized crime, and that's supposed to make me against a cashless society.

You missed my point entirely. I was responding to your argument that "if you find yourself on the wrong side of the powers that be for some reason they can simply deny you access to your wealth at their whim. " No one holds millions of dollars in 10's and 20's. Any significant movement of wealth is already electronically tracked; in fact, any significant movement of cash, usually over $10000, is tracked as well if you use a bank. Have you been completing a lot of transactions with $9,999 worth of cash? I haven't.

How is this different from now? How many people have great amounts of wealth stored entirely in cash? The situation you describe where "the powers that be (can) deny you access to your wealth at their whim" already exists, and we seem to be okay with it.

I'm not saying you should be entirely okay with it, or that it's the best possible system, just pointing out that going cashless isn't going to change the status of what you regard as freedom to do as you please with large amounts of wealth.

Yeah, that particular article doesn't mention the Maldives. Dozens of others do identify the Maldives as the site of the arrest, most of them quoting the Russian government calling his arrest in the Maldives a kidnapping.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/us-ac...

What's happened to the price of houses since 2008?

yeah, really, when an oil company sees people making ridiculous blanket statements, for free, about how gas will ALWAYS be the main fuel for vehicles, why would they want to hire him?

Judging by his comments on inflation above, I'd say that's a remote possibility.

Since 2008, inflation has been 3.0% or lower every single year. I'm not sure what point you were trying to make, but if it was "inflation is out of control!!" then you're obviously not reading about the history of inflation over the last 50 years.

Well, someone selling a red T-shirt with the word REDSKINS on it in yellow, without the team logo, for $15 in a store in the DC suburbs, for example. It's not Redskins fans that would find the word offensive. They just want to support the team. If the NFL doesn't get a cut of that T-shirt sale, they're going to legally go after the person selling it. Without the registered trademark, it becomes more difficult to make their case that the seller is infringing on their trademark.

You could come up with example after example that's similar to that. And in the end, that's why the NFL will ultimately force the change - once the bottom line is affected enough, and they see they're going to lose more money by the Redskins keeping the name than by dropping it, the pressure will mount.

I have a feeling this one is a self-fulfilling prophecy for a guy like you.

Not completely meaningless. While the registration of the trademark being gone doesn't strip the trademark, it does make it more difficult for the Redskins go after people in court for infringement.

I googled right after I typed that last part, because the whole thing gets complicated, but here's the key sentence - "cancellation makes it more difficult to enforce exclusivity under federal law since the Redskins lose legal presumptions, customs and counterfeiting remedies."

from this link - http://sportsillustrated.cnn.c...