What I want to know is how come there isn't any discussion of shutting down the NSA et.al. itself (if we can agree that it is acting beyond the scope of its purview) before giving the Feds the power to kill free expression in the name of preventing terrorism or spying or whatever.

Personally, I'm far less afraid of some other nation's government "spying" on me than I am of my own government deciding that the First Amendment is no longer applicable due to said spying. We'd all be undoubtedly safer in prison cells too, but I think most would agree that we don't want to give the government the power to arbitrarily lock us up for our own "protection". I realize that's a bit hyperbolic, but then again, in today's world, being cut off from the internet would bring an awful lot of hardship.

And how exactly does one critically examine facts and/or lies when the access to that information (the internet) has been cut off?

So says the person who pulled the words "malicious misinformation" straight out of his ass.

Define "malicious misinformation" and perhaps I can. You appear to have used some kind of circular logic to prove a point which you failed to make in the first place.

Think hard indeed.

Emergency for Putin or Russian citizens? I can't think of any possible scenario which can be called an emergency where I personally would benefit from having _less_ information.

I'm disgusted that people like Putin are actually of the same species as myself.

Indeed. It's striking when Americans care more about Ray Rice than we do about methods of tyranny that would make the Stasi cream themselves.

Bread and circuses, and so forth.

McDonald's is happy to introduce the all-white-meat chicken McNugget!

Wait ... what the fuck was in it before?

Never.

The rich have robust retirement savings accounts AND pull social security once they've turned 65.

It most definitely is worth something to them, otherwise the cap would not exist.

It's fine for the rich to "be rich". They can sit on their cash all they want. It's when they want to do something with that cash like buying/selling stocks, moving their operations overseas, or passing their fortunes on to their children, it needs to be taxed. The taxes then go into social welfare programs (which include roads, schools, police) for the betterment of the society which they've used to become rich in the first place.

If they want to take their ball and go home crying, then so be it. Thanks to social safety nets, there will be a robust middle class eager to fill the void. The rich aren't the only ones capable of producing markets!

But poor and middle class people don't pay less, they pay more.

Ever hear of the Social Security tax cap?

The rich who make more than $117,000 annually do not have to pay Social Security taxes on anything earned above that amount despite the fact that every US citizen is expected to draw from the pool. As the rich inevitably get richer, the taxable dollars become fewer.

Please do the logic in your head and tell us how you think that is "the best way to distribute limited resources".

Oh yea - keep on blaming the poor for being poor! Have you ever lived paycheck-to-paycheck? If not then count your lucky-ducky stars because you are in the minority of Americans (assuming that you live in the US).

You're thinking about this in the wrong way. Social safety nets are not about altruism, or even making it easy for the poor to get subsidies (it's not). When poor people lose their jobs, they lose their homes and end up on the streets. When large swaths of the population are homeless, you end up with filthy slums where basic necessities are rare and diseases flourish. Walls, police and even social ostracism may be able to keep undesirable people out of your pristine life, but they won't prevent diseases from spreading from poor communities to the rich who've managed to deny them even a damn toilet to shit in.

Keeping the poor from becoming that poor is a necessity for any civilization. Subsidies for the poor do far more for the common good than tax breaks for the rich.

It was a bad joke. I was agreeing with the OP that an opinionated comparison between two unrelated concepts is not really news for anybody, much less nerds.

Unfortunately I suck a e-jokes :)

What's better: municipal parks or the NFL?