The notion that shills are poisoning the discourse itself poisons the discourse. Shouldn't we then treat whoever brings forward this notion as a troll?

It's not just the NSA. It's evident in forums across the web that there is quick, coordinated trolling of any discussion of climate change or health insurance - the main targets of the Koch Bros' web of disinformation front groups.

What remains to be seen is whether the Koch Bros' fronts and the NSA are allies in these efforts to poison the watering holes, sharing techniques and perhaps even operatives. There's clear evidence the NSA has spied for American industrial interests, for instance against Petrobas in Brazil, which competes against some of the Koch Bros' firms.

Petition at Whitehouse.gov

Look, Hitler was a fucking hero, to the Germans. There's no ultimate, single, universal scale of heroism. This isn't all being judged in God's eyes, and He isn't telling us who the heros are. Caesar was a hero, to the Romans, but not to the followers of Christ. That said, we owe more of the modern world to Caesar than we do to Christ. So we should render unto Caesar some credit for that.

There are some clear cowards in this story. It's cowards who spy and lie. God has personally identified these cowards to me. But heroism, by contrast, is always relative to point of view. Charles Manson was a hero. Justin Bieber is a hero. The congressman threatening to throw the reporter off the balcony was a hero. And everyone who is a terrorist to us is a hero to other people. Similarly, our heroic troups are terrorists when they enter civilian homes at night and kill the people there.

This doesn't mean there aren't "real" heros and terrorists. Just that the reality of both depends on who you are, and where you're looking at them from.

The Time op-ed mentions the children of Chinatown wait staff excelling in NYC highschools. Those aren't educated families

What's being described is an Adlerian superiority-inferiority complex. Get to know some who expresses strong feelings of either superiority or inferiority, and you'll most likely find they also have the other paired with it. It's a well-mapped variety of neurosis.

As for the emphasis on delayed gratification, the authors claim that this is incompatible with an emphasis on the now. But they have no data to prove that conscious focus on the longer term is incompatible with conscious focus on the present moment. Most of us have experienced how focus on the present moment can fold out into awareness of and resolutions regarding the longer term. The authors would have us embrace neurosis that ignores the present, as if we can't be richly in the present, and have rich futures, both. In this, they unwittingly illuminate how our ruling class is leading us to doom.

We look forward to your publication of the flaws you have discovered in Dr. Mann's math. Ah, but you can't publish them, because you're just making this stuff up. Or is it because every single reviewer for every scientific journal is a member of a deep conspiracy to undermine the fossil fuel industry because ... well if you have to ask you don't understand how these dark conspiracies work!

Here's Mann's new book on The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars.

Because it's an official meme of the Heartland Institute that scientific concern about radical climate change constitutes a "religion."

The hockey stick has stood the test of time. The facts hold. The data continue to support it. Here's Mann recently, and discussion.

Here are myths about the hockey stick debunked.

I was talked into running a FIRST-based Jr. First Lego League Robotics club at my 3rd-grader's school. The materials provided were awful. For instance, the instructions suggested handing each kid a few Legos to put together, then having them talk about what feelings they had when gazing at them. Considering the high skills serious 3rd-grade Lego users have, they were immediately bored by the program materials and beginners-level kits provided. We ordered more advanced materials mid-stream, but it took them weeks to even ship them out right. They lost the order, then sent something else instead the second time around. FIRST puts on great airs, but they don't deliver much. There's no evidence they've put any serious thought or effort into it at all. It's just a vanity thing for Kamen. A disgrace, really.

you should work on changing your nations behaviour to reduce the incentive for such raids

That's the most bogus suggestion imaginable. There is no end to the number of "behavior changes" that I would require, as a leader of a group capable of such raids, once I knew that you were likely to make those changes to remove my "incentive for such raids." The very willingness to change a nation's behavior to avoid them is an infinite incentive to conduct and threaten to conduct them.

My group is perfectly willing to cease threatening your power grid just as soon as you provide us with "justice" in the form of nuclear parity. You have nuclear bombs. We don't. Give us some of your bombs, and we'll have no incentive to continue threatening your power grid. We'll threaten your capital then instead. Far more satisfying to us.

If that's the case, that it's an extra chip in some of the scanners, how many other retailers use scanners from the same factory? Will it be Walmart's CC scans that get dumped on the market next time around?

Then why to the rich from various countries with socialized medicine come to the US for treatment again?

The rich from various countries go to various countries, including the US. There are thousands of different medical conditions. The best specialist for any particular condition can be anywhere in the world. Nobody's saying none of the doctors in America are first-rate.

But life-expectancy in the US is lower than in our Western European peers with universal health care. So is the question, "What is the best system of medicine in terms of medical outcomes for billionaires?" Or "What is the best medical system in terms of medical outcomes for average citizens?"

If you're a billionaire, the first question is entirely to the point. Because billionaires determine the agenda of the Republican Party, FOX News, and the Wall Street Journal, we're having this debate still. Our European peers, whatever their political and economic shortcomings, server average people better. As for billionaires, there's no question but that we've got more of them, that they're happy here, and that they mold our system to server them well.

Young people are the poorest age group. Middle aged and older people are the wealthiest age groups. Why should relatively poor young folks continue to pay more and more and more to subsidize their relatively rich elders?

Young people with the lowest income get insurance under Medicare for free under the ACA (unless you're in a state where the population was stupid enough to elect a governor who has blocked that out of meanness and spite). Those with slightly higher income get it with high subsidies, so it doesn't cost much. The only young people who pay full fare are those with high incomes. If you're a young person with high income, you're in the only segment for whom insurance payments are possibly going up under the ACA, aside from those who are older and had junk insurance that basically didn't cover anything before. You're also, if a young person with high income, paying more for recreational drugs, fine dining and clubbing than your new insurance rates will come in at. If you give up one of your nights on the town each month to afford health insurance ... yeah, I feel your pain.

I use TaxAct too. Not the online version, but the standalone. However the first year I used it I filed online through them after preparing it locally. The following year I went to file online again and found someone else had beaten me to it. Someone who had information that could only have been obtained from access to my prior year's return. Took me most of a year and help from a senator's office to straighten it out.

Now, where did the perp get access? The laptop that I only boot into Windows once a year to do taxes, and then only on a well-firewalled home network (I'm a network engineer, I have confidence in my work here)? From the IRS itself (which, if it were that vulnerable, should lead to far more identity theft even than what we see now)? Or from 2nd Story Software? Odds are it's 2nd Story Software which was compromised somehow. Since then I still use their product, but only file on paper. So this isn't a caution about just preparing returns online. Filing online is similarly dangerous.

Coincidentally, that same year I found a place where they misinterpreted state tax code. Confirmed that with my state's tax office. Contacted 2nd Story about it. Their response was, "We have expert advisors in every state. We trust them over your state's tax office." Fortunately returns are coded by which tax software is used, and the state office assured me they could spot and correct the mistake for all those using TaxAct, now that they knew to look for it.

Why would the U.S. want to finance potential competitors?

Because they're also potential customers - for electrical and generating equipment to start with (most of these loans are for equipment they buy from us), and for all sorts of other goods once their wealth increases.