Its highly ironic that people think communism CAN make the planet heal when years of data shows that communist nations have the worst track record in history for environmental concern...and end up really just destroying the planet worse than "evil capitalistic countries." Obviously, anyone who believes blindly that communism can save the environment better than other forms of Government has not been paying attention to their basic history or even their basic current events like how nice the air in Beijing is currently...(hint, its not really nice)

Faith in the infallibility of the experts is no way to go through life. Experts are human just like you and me, and are just as likely to come to erroneous conclusions as you or me are...Let me give you an example:

Who should I believe on the existence of God? Should I trust my own beliefs and my own ability to reason and think, or should I allow others to think for me and allow them to tell me what I should believe....after all 99% of all experts on God tell me that God Exists, and so therefore if I shut my brain down and let the experts think for me I must logically believe that God Exists. Likewise, if I go to the experts on what I suspect is proof that God does not exist, those same experts dismiss my proof as wrong, and that God still exists.

This by no means settles the question on climate change, but it does give you a glimpse into the logical fallacy you employed here to explain to the world that experts should be trusted in groups when thousands of years of history shows us that the experts get it wrong all the time as a group....and so belief in the fallibility of experts in the end is nothing more than yet another excuse to shut your brain down, stop thinking and just assume that the world works like someone else tells you. Think for yourself! I don't frankly care if you believe in catastrophic climate change, normal climate change, natural climate change or no climate change. I just want you to believe in something based on your own thoughts instead of following what others say blindly. That route is not the route to science, but to dogma and darkness....

Did we not learn from the dark ages that blindly listening to the experts is no way to run science?

Yea, record HIGH ice extent is caused by extreme heat? This is why people are becoming skeptical because of arguments like that which make no sense. If Antarctica is indeed melting like you claim, why in the world would there be record levels of ice extent? Because ice does not form due to heat ya know, and common sense does dictate that you are lying or unaware of the true temperatures of the Southern Continent. The data itself proves you wrong.

This is like that bone-headed argument we heard 5 years ago about how "calving ice in Antarctica" is caused by extreme heat. That completely missed the boat that glaciers typically advance into the ocean when they are growing, and retreat when they are shrinking, and so people like me become skeptical because the arguments violate common sense, and when you actually look at the data like temperatures you find that antarctica is not heating up like claimed, but that the temperature is going downward or in some cases staying the same. Stop lying!!! That is step one in stopping skepticism...

We already have 57 states don't we? At least that is what our intelligent president believes, so it must be true since that man is an absolute genius.

Well said, absolution comes only from taking a stand, and if you keep silent and do not rock the boat you are not taking a stand but being complicit in the end even if you have no knowledge or any clearance for spying on grandmother. Its just like Germany all over again. The NAZI's took power, and all of those people who silently disapproved were just as guilty as those who approved openly because they never once questioned what was happening to THEIR country and to THEIR organizations. We all have a responsibility, and people like to make excuses like "I have to feed my family" or "but I don't do the bad stuff"....and my favorite: "guilt by assocation is wrong" Nonsense, you CHOOSE to associate yourself with a job, and that CHOICE is what you are being judged on. Don't like the NSA being asked painful questions? Quit. Want to do the right thing? Leak any and all information to the public domain, put as many others out to pasture for their wrong activities, and leave the country. Otherwise you are part of the problem and you deserve to be spit on, have rotten tomatoes thrown at you, and anything else we can think up as citizens who are being wronged by YOU and your buddies.

And this goes for other federal agencies as well like the IRS. After their debacle with targeting people based on political beliefs, anyone who is still part of this organization after no one went to jail for violating the constitutional rights of others is part of the problem and not only deserves to have rotten veggies thrown at them, they deserve to go to jail. It would be a different story if everyone who even touched this discrimination angle were tossed into the darkest deepest hole we could find and new procedures were written out to both make sure there was transperancy and consequences to those IRS employees who DID discriminate, but instead the result is as follows: No one got punished, no rules were changes, and its basically guaranteed that the IRS can not safely target people based on political belief and there is not one thing we can do about it. If you work for the IRS, you are just as guilty as the idiots at the Cleveland office, and I have absolutely no sympathy and I will be one of the ones throwing rotten veggies at you for not being a man or woman and owning up to the mistakes of your organization and associating with people who are known to target groups simply because of their political leanings. Just like with any NSA employee, you do not have the option of taking the fifth or pleading ignorance, because this is all out there in the public domain where you can not deny it. Until new rules and procedures are written up and everyone guilty of these crimes is serving time in a deep dark hole, you are a part of the problem for working there. And until you acknowledge your complicity and attempt to gain absolution like Snowden, you deserve every little bit of derision that you get for your decision to continue working for such monsters.

I doubt there will be another leak. In the meantime they do keyword checks on text messages and check for certain word combinations and if that is met, the calls are today filtered into "the listen to in totality" category. The truth is that Edward Snowden was the last chance we had for our society and politicians of both parties have blown the chance to change something for the better in the name of liberty. The next leaker will be killed before he actually leaks things and it will probably be made to look like an accident. Its a shame that this is all happening today during the presidency of a man who vowed to stop this nonsense and instead is spreading farther than the dimwitted George W. could have ever imagined.

As I get older, I believe more and more than the creators of BASIC knew what they were doing, and make something kids and beginners could understand quickly even if it wasn't perfect.

Well said, and I agree. The hint for me is in the name of the language. For children, you want something that gives near instant gratification and which they can understand as they go. Even the horrendous goto statements allow children to see clearly where things go...and so with children its probably is the best bet. You are not trying to train good programming quite yet at this level, you just want to interest children, so why not go with something that is not the buzz of the week?

You are assuming that republicans LIKE Romneycare or that they like Romney. You know what they say about assumptions...

Another guy who repeats the mantra that "other countries have better healthcare than the US". OK, do this....go study the issue. Look at survival rates for similar procedures. Than look at waiting times for "non life-threatening conditions". Than look at where medical doctors go to learn their trade. I will give you a hint, its not the UK or Canada, but in the US. Doctors come from all over the world to learn medicine here because our medical system is the best in the world.

And want to know a secret? We cover everyone as no one can be denied at our ER's. Nothing has changed there either from before or after the ACA, so in essence we still have the best medical care in the world and everyone gets it if they need it. That is no different than socialized medicine for care. Everyone who needs it gets it. And our waiting times are LESS than those other countries.

The only question is how does one pay for the bill. Prior to the ACA, people like me could go to the ER if we needed to without worry. Now, I will think long and hard about going there due to the cost because before I had a deductible of zero, but now I shell out the first 2000 bucks of anything that happens at the ER, and so in the end people like me who were responsible and had health insurance are going to be gimped even more. Now if we were to institute single payer, I would end up getting more coverage than everyone else anyway, because I would just join the long line of people from Canada and the UK who are buying medical insurance under socialized medicine. I want the best medical care I can get, and I will shell out the money and receive it.

So explain to me that one .... if medical care is so great with socialized medicine, why are people buying insurance in those countries? Why do people shell out extra money to get medical procedures done here in the US? Why are most medical advances pioneered in the US?

Wrong.

Those plans were what the people wanted to buy. The people did not buy these plans because they did not want this coverage. People did not want substance abuse coverage, or mental health coverage or the equally laughable "maternity care" for men or any number of extras that we are now covered for and that most of us do not need or want. I want my health insurance back from 2 years ago that had a deductible of zero and that cost half of what I am paying now. I am betting most Americans are saying the same thing....we are paying more for less coverage on what we actually want. You can dress the turd as much as you want about "the old plans were cheap plans that did not cover anything" but I used my health insurance, and I was happy with what I had. Is any amount of your talking about this going to change the fact that I now pay a deductible of 2000 bucks just to visit the ER every year? Are you going to reimburse me for when someone in my family does end up going to the ER and instead of a copay of 100 bucks, I end up shelling out just about the full price for my first ER visit? Who can really afford that anyway?

In any event, if its true that the older plans I am missing were really "substandard" or did not cover "what the people should have been receiving", than why in the world is our president exempting certain groups from being covered under the law? And if he is exempting the people who tend to be his political allies, is he actually subjecting his followers to sub-standard health insurance as a way to spite them?

It just does not make sense to state that old insurance is substandard while certain groups get exemption who are friendly with the president. And this is why politicians should not tell people what they can and can not buy. Because it always backfires as the people are forced to buy the candy and the extras that a small group of corporate bought shrills in congress decided they should. Perhaps the people who like the ACA just like to tell others what they must do? In that case, its just a case of children deciding that they know what is best for me, and I hate to tell them this, but they are wrong for me, and for all of those Americans who do have health insurance and who will end up paying full price for any ER visit they go to when in the past their insurance covered it with a zero deductible. So no, people are not paying for coverage that they should have previously been receiving...we are paying for coverage that the democratic party tells us we should have and you are just repeating that mantra.

"So what do you call people who start with a theory and twist and distort their explanations every time observations contradict their theory" Deniers.

1998 has the hottest ever record breaking year. Deniers: "This means nothing: it's a hot La Nina!". 2003 "Cooling since 1998!" 2007: By 2012 it will be back to within 0.1C of the 20C average! 2012: WE NEVER SAID THAT!!!

Seems like both sides do it. Its called an "argument" or disagreement. I realize you do not see the other position as tenable, but just because you can not see their point, does not mean the point does not exist. The largest problem with "believers" as I call them is that they are unable to differentiate what reality says. The hottest year ever does not tell you that the planet is warming up for one. Its nothing but a record that could have been set regardless of whether the planet is warming or cooling. (Hint: that 1998 statistic tells you nothing about the direction of the climate, just that you had the hottest year ever, and considering that its been 15 years since 1998 and we have not broken that old record yet kind of hints that perhaps the planet is not warming after all. But than again, most scientists use this complicated technique called linear regression to find out whether we are heating up or cooling, because a record does not tell you whether that is happening. To give you an illustration, every year of my last 15 years has been the tallest year of my life, but does this mean I am still growing? And there is your problem, your side engages in sophistry with arguments that have no bearing to what we are discussing. That entire 1998 argument is a bunch of BS that unthinking automatons sprout off and yes, they are like you claim "deniers" are: unable to think about what a fact actually means. So in other words, what is your point for saying 1998 was the hottest year ever? Yesterday Pittsburg set a record low, so does that mean anything? Probably not, some stupid worthless fact that tells you nothing of value. And so the primary function of even mentioning the year 1998 is typically to obfuscate the argument with irrelevant information that gives you no data and nothing to base facts upon. If you want to prove the the planet is warming up faster than ever before, there are scientific ways to do that such as linear regression. There are numerous data-sets including a few not run by NASA. And NASA provides code for some of the science and some of the data. In your logical universe, if NASA provides some of the data, this means that all of the data in the scientific world is open, and sorry, but that is another bad logical construct. I could go on for hours, because most of your arguments are using bad logic, sophistry, or even outright insults, and so in the end you come off as no better than a monkey who can repeat political sound bites that seem to apply to every argument, and those which he does not have a canned response for he just substitutes outright denial or insults. Yea, you are smart.

See how it works. Look at what really happens when you do this, because I am confident that this law will solve not a thing and will instead create a new atmosphere where the best companies will attract CEO's with other perks and other bonuses. A company car and driver? Check.... Its going to become all about the benefits, and while the CEO is going to be swimming in benefits (as companies want the best and will shell out for this) the lowly worker is going to get fewer and fewer benefits as his salary does increase slightly. Perhaps its just human nature, but people will align it so that the lower rungs of the company still have the worst jobs and the worst benefits. And things will not change even one iota as exec's end up cashing in on all sorts of benefits that in the end does keep their pay higher in proportion and the lowly worker is in the same boat as before. But sure, we can wait, but I am willing to bet those things happen, because the rich typically get rich by out-smarting the system in some way normally.

They didn't say "if you get a scrape you will die." They said "if you get a scrape you could potentially die," which is a factual statement if we have no effective antibiotics.

They also said it was catastrophic. (the scientists stated this outright) That is factually correct for the few people who will die in the future, but it really is bad usage of the language like your statement is as well. Yes, the statement might be factually correct, but its a catastrophic use of the English language in the end (funny enough huh?) Words have meanings you know, and just because you can show the statement is not complete horseshit is no reason to assume that its also NOT misleading and inherently a lie.

Let me explain further: there are lies and there are lies. This is not an outright lie by itself, but it is deceptive and really fear mongering in the end because the human race will not see catastrophe from "potential deaths." and if anything that could cause potential deaths is a catastrophe, why everything in our homes that could potentially kill us is also a catastrophe. I guess in some way that is true, but just because one person in 10 years might stick a pencil through their jugular is no reason to assume that pencils on the desk are catastrophic because they "will lead to potential deaths." Or how about those hidden dangers of straws and lids on cups? Those straws could be choked on, and those lids can likewise be choked on as can anything roughly that size can be. Yes, catastrophe awaits us at our desks, at our dinner table, and of course in our living room. Its all a catastrophe, and as you can see now, the word now has no meaning because its been butchered by you and other people into meaning something completely the opposite of what it was intended simply because you demand other people also accept other meanings for the word in the name of some "factual statement".

I personally do not see how you can excuse this usage of language when its deceptive, half-truthful and above all else fear mongering just to scare people into agreeing with them. There are tons of things that are potentially dangerous in this world, and the only things that should be catastrophic are those things which will actually be catastrophic and not just cause a few more deaths in isolated circumstances. Who is to say that the end of antibiotics won't be due to some medical advance before this issue even comes about? In that case, no catastrophe happens and so the end of antibiotics is actually possibly safer than that dangerous pencil on your desk.

Interesting that people who make more than 120k a year are the only ones who tend to benefit from solar and wind power. Does that mean anyone who encourages solar/wind development also hate poor people?

Are you kidding me? BP was into solar from the start of this fad in the 1970's. They only recently dropped their campaign: http://www.treehugger.com/green-investments/bp-drops-solar-division-so-much-beyond-petroleum.html And of course they are heavily involved in wind power to this day through their "beyond Petroleum campaign" So no, oil companies has nothing to do with it.