well of course, but that was beyond the scope of the piece.

(why share? because biscuits are a delicious and simple recipe everyone should know, even if you're just feeding yourself)

Especially if the food is delicious....

pastrami on rye with sauerkraut, mustard, and swiss.....mmmm
fettuccini alfredo...
fresh peaches...

or my favorite: homemade biscuits
-Oven at 425
-2 cups flour
-1/2 cup butter (stick, chilled/frozen, and cut into small pieces; I actually a cheese grater on the frozen stick, and then re-chill it a few minutes after grating it)
-1/2 cup Crisco (I use both fats to get the best of both worlds)
-1 cup milk
-1 tablespoon sugar
-1 tablespoon baking powder
-1 teaspoon salt
-Mix the dry ingredients (flour, salt, powder, and sugar) together. Add the remaining ingredients (Crisco butter and milk), but mix gently and not too much (work it too hard or long and the butter melts during mixing instead of during baking; you want it to melt during baking as it gives off steam and helps make the biscuits more flaky/airy).
-Put in oven until tops start browning (the traditional toothpick test works too), which is about 15 minutes in my oven.
-Higher yields are gotten from straight linear increase of all materials.

Personally I prefer them in muffin tin format (as opposed to Drop (drop globs of dough on coking tin), or Cut (the traditional round cylinder made by rolling and cutting dough)), and so use a greased muffin tin (brushed Crisco instead of cooking spray), and I gently smoosh dough into each cup almost to the top. Makes 7-8 biscuits this way. I also get a little extra texture/flavor from keeping my fingers covered in flour as I do the smooshing, so the tops get a little extra flakiness from the flour on my fingers.

Gonna have to make more tonight.

Well they couldn't use Comcast, because for Comcast to say that the rules are onerous would be clearly laughable as Comcast is hugely profitable even under net neutrality aka the status quo f the current internet. the argument Comcast would essentially be making is that they are less profitable than they -could be- if they were allowed to screw consumers, but that's a difficult case to make in court.

but a small company like Alamo is more able to make the claim that the rule are onerous and impairs their ability to be profitable.

you're right, it is absolutely a premade engineered case.

it is not an unconstitutional power grab.
and it is NOT unnecessary.

there's no problem right now because the internet already functions by and large under the concept of net neutrality.
they aren't fixing a problem, they are setting the current status quo in stone.

it's pre-emptive rule making done precisely because Comcast and its ilk want to violate net neutrality, and have tried to do it in the past.

you are a complete moron.

please learn how marginal tax rates work.

say there's 3 brackets:
0 to 10k is 1%
10k+ to 20k is 2%
20k+ is 3%

Now say you earn 50k dollars a year.
That doesn't mean you pay 3% on the entire 50k.
It means you pay 1% on the first 10k, 2% on the next 10k (20k-10k=10k), and 3% on the remaining 30k (50k-20k=30k).
So you pay in taxes: $100+$200+$900 = $1200 total.
$1200 in taxes on a $50k income is a total effective tax rate of 2.4%.

The more you earn in the top bracket, the closer your effective rate will get to that top rate, but it will never quite equal it.
And it will never go over it. California's top rate is 13.3. The US top rate is 39.6. Added up, that's 52.9%.
But the top rates are different brackets as well.
In California its on any earning over 1 million dollars.
But the federal top rate is on earnings over $406,750.

A person earning 950k a year has an effective rate of 45.97%.
A person earning 1million a year has an effective rate of 46.26%.
A person earning 1.05 million a year has an effective rate of 46.58%

You don't pay an effective rate of 50% until you earn 2.3 million a year.

I just find it funny how they claim it is "onerous" to maintain the status quo.

Well first off, they aren't fixing it.
They are simply preserving the status quo as a bit of a pre-emptive strike before companies like Comcast can break it.

The car couldn't operate without the wheel that came before it.
So yes, the wheel absolutely gets some credit.
No, he doesn't get all of it.

But he does get credit for creating the foundation that enabled further development and invention. That's all the President's statement meant, though folks try to take it out of context, oversimplify it, and ignore the rather obvious meaning behind it.

It's quite simple: no one exists in a vacuum. Everyone in our society has had help from the rest of society, and we shouldn't ignore that interdependence.

the same way it mucked up:

-railroads linking the country

-the interstate that provided the backbone for industry, so that suppliers no longer had to be next door to factories (which creates a dynamic where every town is its own industrial enclave), but could supply the entire nation

-the telephone network allowing instantaneous real time voice communication across the country, where before moving from coast to coast typically meant leaving all your family and friends behind essentially forever, other than a couple letters a year

-creating a currency that fuels and backs our economy

-creating the rules and regulations that permit businesses to operate in a predictable and profitable manner, along with legal protections for everyone and everything involved (company, employer, employee, consumer, copyright, trademarks, business practices)

-safe food that doesn't require finding out a supplier is bad by having people die first

-safe cars that don't require finding out a supplier is bad by having people die first

-safe homes and buildings (the building code) that doesn't require finding out a construction company is bad by having people die first

-safe (lots of things) that don't require having people die first

-a military that ensures the nation is secure from outside threats, rather than having every city state or town see to its own defense, or worse have it provided by rival companies ala The Syndicate (also acts as a unifying force, otherwise cities/states essentially act as their own nation states)

-public health, particularly including vaccinations

The list goes on.

But the point is this: to say government always mucks it up is ignorant. No, government isn't perfect. But in our nation, and other free nations like us, if its not perfect we are able to fix it, and more importantly, fix it without resorting to violence and revolution, which is good for stability and long term growth as a society. And it's because we follow the political theory of a government "by the People, for the People, and of the People". Our government is US, we are the government, represented in the abstract by the representatives we send to D.C. And because of that, our government is more successful than not, and more adequately addresses problems that we as society see than other governmental systems that have come before. Our government is not some abstract Other, separate from us, and unaccountable to us, regardless of the hyperbole you may be told by people and groups who WANT YOU to think that you are powerless. They want you to think that government is a failure, that it is out of control....so that they can control it more than you.

Ask yourself, why do people fight so hard to get into office in an entity that they not only claim is not only a failure, but also evil, and the source of all problems?
And further, why do they try so hard to MAKE it fail, to make their claims come true?
The answer is because it's a sham. They want you to think those things, so that you stop caring, or stop trying, and cede control to them.
--

If you ever spend time in the military, you find lots of seemingly braindead warnings and procedures. Things like "caution jet blast", caution tape around bulkheads, particulary the top and bottom, signs near ladders saying "watch step", or "hold handrails". You may think these things are dumb, but going through training you will learn, each of these warning exist because someone, somewhere didn't pay attention, got hurt, screwed up, or hurt others. Someone fell down that ladderwell; someone got sucked into a jet engine; someone cracked his head open going through a hatch, someone knocked someone overboard.

Government action is very similar: Government and a lot of the functions it has taken on, or regulations it has made, like say in areas of food and car safety, or manufacturing pollution, exist specifically because someone, somewhere, took advantage of society before those rules exist. Companies know how much a life is worth, and compare it to how much it costs to make a better/safer product, and without regulations to force their hand they can, will, and HAVE in the past made decisions that directly result in death or injury. They know how much they can get away with before it hurts profits more than providing a better/safer product, or better/safer workplace.

There is a very educational website which provides a good refresher course on basic civics and the role of government, and basic US history as to why we got to where we are today in society and governments place in that society. This is important knowledge, but knowledge that is seldom taught anymore in schools. And this ignoring is directly feeding some current political movements.

Two good articles to start with that are related to your specific claim ("they always screw up") are Why Government Becomes the Scapegoat and The Forgotten Achievements of Government.

why is it so hard to accept or comprehend that things build on each other?

the full statement should be "you didn't build that all by yourself, you had help", and it's absolutely true in modern society.
all of our various constructs help and reinforce other constructs.

Gizmo Wonderbrain creates the practical flying car.
-Gizmos car factory is dependent on shipments from suppliers around the country.
--those shipments can be shipped quickly and easily because we have a national highway system
---that highway system is safe and reliable because we have rules and safety requirements
-gizmos factory is also dependent on skilled workers
--workers who are attracted to his company by good wages
---wages paid in currency usable around the world because it's backed by the full faith and credit of the government, rather than just in Gizmos Company Town
-Gizmo himself is a genius
--a genius whose intellect was brought out by his teachers in his schools as he grew up, reinforcing and challenging him
---teachers who taught in public schools because as a society we value education for the benefits it provides society
--a genius who went to college to learn engineering
---with the help of Pell Grants and a GI Bill
----paid for by a portion of everyone's taxes

Really we can go on and on. But the point is this: No one is born without help, raised without help, educated without help, creates a company without help, and all the surrounding and enabling infrastructure. Everything is dependent on everything else. Everything is built on a foundation that consists of everything that came before it. From the computer at your desk, to the clothes on your back, from the education you receives, to the gum in your pocket.

Look around you: the reason we don't exist in a Dickens novel where basic existence is an uncertainty, life is short and miserable for the overwhelming majority, is because we as a society pulled together and have created a slew of enabling infrastructure. The mechanisms vary, some are through government, others through private enterprise, but all in all, the end result is the same: No, you bloody well did NOT build "that" all by yourself and without any help from the surrounding society.

John C Calhoun is and was MOST DEIFNITELY a member of the political right, even in his own day. you try to say he isn't because he was a democrat, but again: party affiliation is NOT what determines placement on the spectrum. he is the one who gets the credit for redefining republicanism to allow for slavery. he supported increased state's rights, only he called it "minority rights", the minority he was referring to being the Southern states. and most importantly he is the one who pointed the way towards secession of the Southern States.

the constant abuse of party labels, and the conflation of such with political spectrum gets very tiresome. today it largely correlates, but today the parties are monolithic. but 60 years ago the parties weren't so monolithic, and 160 years ago even more so. the "Radical Republicans" were radical BECAUSE they were so different from the rest of their party: more progressive, less conservative, especially about slavery (which leads to another datum: it wasn't -all- of the republican party that opposed slavery).

the divide on civil rights did not come down to party lines until after the various civil rights acts, the 1960s, and most importantly Nixon's Southern Strategy. the key unifying factor over civil rights WAS NOT PARTY AFFILIATION, BUT GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION. The congress critters who opposed the civil rights act of 1964 were nearly all southerners, particularly white southerners elected by systems that repeatedly disenfranchised black voters giving them no representation in the Congress. nearly every southerner in Congress voted against it, regardless of party. The inverse is seen among those who voted for it.

Again: the breakdown isn't by party, but by geography.
80% of Republicans voted for the CRA of 1964, 20% against.
~65% of Democrats voted for the CRA of 1965, ~35% against.

But 99% of southern congressmen voted against it, and 95% of northern congressmen voted for it.
Even a complete statistical noobie can see that that is a much tighter correlation than party affiliation.

the parties had wings that they no longer have. they are now monolithic structures.
the liberal leaning republicans have all fled by now and become democrats.
as have all the conservative leaning democrats, largely southerners, who opposed civil rights are now republicans.

the willful glossing over of this fact, of this ongoing homogenization of the parties from 1865 continuing to the present day (reaching it's peak with Richard Nixon) in order to disingenuously claim "democrats are the real racists" is pure BS.

Sure....it was the past 40 years of "leftist" government that created the current economic scarcity, the stagnant wages, the rise in inequality... ...and the left, with it's constant claims that "the richest nation on earth can afford to spread that wealth around a bit better" is all about creating scarcity...

Do you go to school stupid, or just come out that way?