Given that the price of gas keeps going up, isn't every year a record year for gas prices?

Dear America . . . Stop it. . . . There is no sympathy from the rest of the world. Here in Canada . . . in Europe its way worse . . . Pick some other non-issue to cry about

How much does it cost to blow up innocent people (women and children included though I value them neither more nor less than males) by drone just about every day of the year.

I really don't know where my priorities are at -- what the fuck is wrong with me for valuing interesting scientific data over blowing up random people and making enemies of the survivors.

. . . it can;t come from the Senate, it can't come from the President . . .So can we please drop this bullshit about how it's Harry Reid's fault for not coming up with a budget. The blame falls clearly on the House and thus on Boehner's lap

Once the president lays out his proposal, the House and Senate budget committees can begin writing their budget resolutions. The budget resolution sets targets for spending and tax revenue and identifies any policies that will need to move through reconciliation. The resolutions are sent to the floor for a vote, and differences are resolved in conference.

President Obama proposed a FY2012 budget last year, and the Senate voted it down 97–0. (And that budget was no prize—according to the Congressional Budget Office, that proposal never had an annual deficit of less than $748 billion, would double the national debt in 10 years and would see annual interest payments approach $1 trillion per year.)
-- 1,000 Days Without a Budget: Facts on the Senate’s Failure

Congress has spent $11.2 trillion since passing its last budget on April 29, 2009, according to the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee. The new debt since that date is $4.8 trillion.

"Since the last budget resolution was passed 1,200 days ago, the government has borrowed 42 cents of every dollar spent," the chart notes. The chart is based on Treasury Department figures.

It's occasionally helpful to pop a wiki page before ranting mindlessly

Most scholars, Jewish as well as non-Jewish, are of the opinion that Judaism was strongly influenced by Zoroastrianism in views relating to angelology and demonology, and probably also in the doctrine of the resurrection, as well as in eschatological ideas in general, and also that the monotheistic conception of Yhwh may have been quickened and strengthened by being opposed to the dualism or quasi-monotheism of the Persians. But, on the other hand, the late James Darmesteter advocated exactly the opposite view, maintaining that early Persian thought was strongly influenced by Jewish ideas. He insisted that the Avesta, as we have it, is of late origin and is much tinctured by foreign elements, especially those derived from Judaism, and also those taken from Neoplatonism through the writings of Philo Judæus.

While we don't need religion to tell us that murder is wrong,

Mod parent up. If these fragments were truly the word of god, then surely they would contain useful information that would increase our knowledge of the world/universe and would remain true even today. Instead, we get re-worked fables plagiarized from other sources, tribal customs codified into law, doomsday prophecies, and rants against various enemies (all of which the old testament is full of).

They also adopted Zoroastrian monotheism. . . . . The term is henotheism.

Jewish scriptures changed tremendously during the Babylonian captivity, which indeed occurred around 600BC (it basically blended in ideas from Zoroastrianism, chiefly the ideas of angels, demons, hell, and basically morality and good vs evil; and its final written form got written around then), but the general ideas of judaism had been around for far older than the end of the mideast bronze age.

. . . as Eichrodt insists, "the idea that the eschatological resurrection hope, in the form attested in the Old Testament, was influenced by Persian conceptions, can be shown by any reasonably detailed comparison to be inadmissable."

To this point, I have spoken of Persian or Zoroastrian matters as if they themselves were composed during and reflective of the Persian era of contact with the exiled Judahites (fifth-fourth centuries BCE). But they were not. In fact, the severe deficiencies in the written sources of Zoroastrianism make accurate analysis virtually impossible. No modern scholar dates Zoroaster earlier than ca. 1400 BCE, and while both Arabic and Avestan29 traditions date Zoroaster to the sixth-fifth centuries BCE, most scholars are more comfortable with a date between the two extremes; the date 1000 BCE is most widely presumed. But scholars of written literature are faced with a problem that has yet to be solved. No written materials are linked to the era of Zoroaster regardless of when he lived, and even scholars who argue that early Iranian texts are linked to ca. 1000 BCE, admit that these Gathas ["hymns" (of Zoroaster)] are so difficult that their meaning can be grasped, "only with the help of the later Zoroastrian scriptures."30

Iranian priests of the early first millennium actually rejected the use of writing for their holy beliefs, and the fact is that these beliefs existed only in oral form until the sixth century CE! And yet these written texts are the ones which Persian scholars are required to use in interpreting the teachings of Zoroaster, who lived between 1000 and 2000 years earlier. Shaul Shaked has framed the matter accurately and concisely:

In short, the texts being examined in comparison to the Bible were written more than 1000 years later than the Persia with which Judahites came into contact.

Still, the larger problem with the written sources of Zoroastrianism is not their late date of composition, but rather the fact that even these late written sources present very few close parallels to biblical ideas.

In light of this chronological difficulty, it would seem to make more sense to compare Zoroastrian religious texts with talmudic literature. And even here, Neusner, the scholar with the greatest knowledge of Babylonia during the era of Sassanid rule, has concluded that what the rabbis of the Talmud knew of Zoroastrianism amounted to virtually nothing at all.

. . . Yet, it seems obvious that the claims for Zoroastrian influence on biblical doctrines have been vastly overstated. . . . it should follow that the use of late, very late, written sources of Persian theological tenets must be ruled out as evidence of any significance whatsoever regarding biblical texts. 33

Seriously kid, stop watching fox, your bain is rotting away. Australia and Europe both got lower crime rates.

The figures were sourced from Eurostat, the European Commission's database of statistics. They are gathered using official sources in the countries concerned such as the national statistics office, the national prison administration, ministries of the interior or justice, and police.

A breakdown of the statistics, which were compiled into league tables by the Conservatives, revealed that violent crime in the UK had increased from 652,974 offences in 1998 to more than 1.15 million crimes in 2007.

It means there are over 2,000 crimes recorded per 100,000 population in the UK, making it the most violent place in Europe.

Austria is second, with a rate of 1,677 per 100,000 people, followed by Sweden, Belgium, Finland and Holland.

By comparison, America has an estimated rate of 466 violent crimes per 100,000 population.

France recorded 324,765 violent crimes in 2007 – a 67 per cent increase in the past decade – at a rate of 504 per 100,000 population.

The Home Office says there has been a downtrend in overall violence for the past decade.

But last October it emerged that levels of violent crime in England and Wales had been underestimated for more than a decade because of a blunder in recording methods.

Recorded assault increased again in 2007, to 840 per 100,000, compared with 623 per 100,000 in 1996. The 2007 rate was the highest recorded since 1996.

THE controversial ban on the ownership of handguns which was introduced after the Dunblane massacre has failed to halt an increasing number of crimes involving firearms.

An independent report, Illegal Firearms in the UK, to be published by the Centre for Defence Studies at King's College in London tomorrow, says that handguns were used in 3,685 offences last year compared with 2,648 in 1997, an increase of 40 per cent.

Okay, how about this. When out hunting you don't need hundreds of rounds, and even if for some reason you do you don't need high capacity magazines.

You could even buy your own and keep it at the range, or even keep it in your house but keep the cartridges at the range.

Much like the "pertectin' mah fambly" gun nuts who build up arsenals against the mythical home invasion,...

*An estimated 3.7 million burglaries occurred each year on average from 2003 to 2007.

*A household member was present in roughly 1 million burglaries and became victims of violent crimes in 266,560 burglaries.

*Simple assault (15%) was the most common form of violence when a resident was home and violence occurred. Robbery (7%) and
rape (3%) were less likely to occur when a household member was present and violence occurred.

*Offenders were known to their victims in 65% of violent burglaries; offenders were strangers in 28%.

*Overall, 61% of offenders were unarmed when violence occurred during a burglary while a resident was present. About 12% of
all households violently burglarized while someone was home faced an offender armed with a firearm.

*Households residing in single family units and higher density structures of 10 or more units were least likely to be burglarized (8 per 1,000 households) while a household member was present.

*Serious injury accounted for 9% and minor injury accounted for 36% of injuries sustained by household members who were home
and experienced violence during a completed burglary.