It is long past the time when any religion should expect the government to take any notice of its beliefs in a secular society. A secular society should ignore religion because if you don't, how do you draw the line? Should I be allowed to stone my neighbor to death if he doesn't observe the Sabbath? Allow my child to die from an easily cured malady because I believe in faith healing?

Religion has no place in making the laws of a secular nation.

As a Canadian, it seems that the only policy the Republicans have is "vote no to anything Obama or any Democrat proposes". We don't care that Obama won the presidential election, we will thwart the will of the people for our rich masters. We will do our best to raise taxes on the poor and middle class while giving the rich tax breaks. We will reduce food stamps to the poor. We will do our best to ensure the middle class have the worst access to health care of any western nation. We will continue to show we say we are Christians while doing exactly the opposite of what Jesus preached.

That last bit of hypocrisy is particularly galling.

This is another very good example why a single payer system is better. Is it any of your employers business if you are using contraceptives? I would say no - even if you are a nun. With a single payer system only you and your doctor know what medical treatments you are using.

Wage disparity, a lack of social mobility, low wages, greedy CEO's with obscene salaries are all real problems, but these protesters are clueless.

Busing is not driving up rent, being a good place to live is driving up rent. Someone busing isn't "rich".

Want to do some good? Vote to get a higher minimum wage. Vote to strengthening union laws and get rid of union busting laws. Improve the social safety net. Improve labour laws, especially being able to be fired without cause.

We don't have a big problem with illegal immigration in Canada because we fine the shit out the COMPANIES that hire illegals. We don't fine the illegals, we just deport them. If there are no jobs for illegals you don't get many illegals. Lots of entry level jobs for locals.

It would take a LOT of buses to affect the price of housing in SF - it isn't a little town.

The busing is NOT driving up prices. Being a desirable place to live, and attracting a lot of people is driving up prices.

I live in one of the world's most expensive cities when it comes to rent and real estate: Vancouver BC. For same $1.25 million that will buy you nice mansion in the Hollywood Hills you can get a nice crack house in Vancouver.. It is a real problem, but we don't have idiots breaking bus windows. We have the government stepping in and providing what we call social housing. You only pay 1/3 of your income and get a nice apartment. That is right, in Vancouver spending 1/3 of your gross income on rent is considered a GOOD deal. Good government can do good. I don't know why so many Americans think government can do no good when it is the fact you had good government for many generations to thank for your general wealth and civil society.

What else do we do? Virtually every home has an illegal suite in the basement being rented out. It helps pay the mortgage, and helps with housing. It got to the point where most municipalities threw in the towel and made the suites legal. Many people give up, and move farther, and farther from downtown Vancouver, but even in socialist Canada we don't get mobs attacking honest hard working people taking the environmental friendly bus instead of an SUV.

Sure, there have been protests against gentrification. People walking on sidewalks with signs, yelling at passerby's in the downtown east side. One restaurant that opened in a very poor part of town had protesters out front for months because they thought it was wrong to open a restaurant they considered up scale. They ignored the fact the building had been vacant for 6 months, and the business hired locals in the kitchen. The protests seem to have increased business. I went to support them.

These bus window breaking protesters are just vandals. Housing Markets can be weird, you just have to deal with it. Sometime that means moving. I had to move when I bought my place.

Socially progressive policies can help, but vandalism doesn't help any ones cause.

There are much better ways to heat your home than incandescent light bulbs. You'll have a warmer home and save money if you use efficient lighting and efficient heating.

From my point of view outside of the USA the problem is two fold in the USA:

One, the USA is awash in guns, anyone can get one. This is a minor issue.

Two: the culture in the USA says it is okay to solve problems with firearms. The culture in the USA says it is normal to live in fear from violent crime, and a good way to stay safe is to have a firearm handy. This leads to disgruntled people shooting other people. This leads to what might be a fist fight in most of the western world turning into a shoot out in the USA. You have to pretty scared to shoot a random person knocking on your door (who was looking for directions). You have to be pretty scared to think it is a good idea to have a loaded weapon in your home.

No one I know who owns firearms owns them to defend their home or their person. Guns are for hunting and target practice. Only drug dealers routinely carry firearms for self defence, but they mainly shoot each other, and having a gun has been proved to be singularly ineffective as self protection. As drug dealers are a very small sub-culture, there are very few gun deaths.

Can someone explain why so many people in the USA think human rights should only be respected by the government and not private individuals or corporations?

Up here in Canada the government has more leeway to infringe your rights than corporations or other citizens. For example the police can detain you, but private citizens cannot. The government can force you to pay taxes, but corporations cannot. The government can force a website to remove "hate speech", but a private citizen cannot. Yes, as a private citizen who owns or rents property, I have many rights over my private property including excluding those I do not like. But if I'm running a business catering to the public I do NOT get to discriminate against people based on their beliefs, creed, race, etc... Human Rights apply to all areas of the public - government and corporate.

If it seems like an honest mistake, I send it back. I've been sent the wrong order by amazon twice, and I contact them, arrange to get paid for shipping and send it back. My personal honesty and integrity are more important than a few dollars.

If I'm sent something out of the blue I did not order with an invoice I will keep it and ignore the invoice as this is a scam.

I was shocked that people would post in public that they are dishonest - and brag about it.

Cultivate virtue for a better life, and a better world.

There are not "dumping" the chemicals. They want to build a secure, floating, facility for destroying the chemicals. Building this facility in an environmentally sensitive area doesn't seem that bright. I would have expected it to be better to build it somewhere dry, like an isolated desert.

This creator must be some sort of evil, violent,psychopath to design: cancer, hiv, fig wasps, malaria, a universe where pretty much all of it will kill his favorite creation, parasitical wasp Dinocampus coccinellae, old age, lupus, etc...

Or, maybe there is no sign of a creator and it all just evolved.

Science is not at all like religion. As you say yourself: "The difference is we test all that stuff in science and try to break it; whereas in religion we try to protect our views". Science takes nothing on faith, it is all tested multiple times. Science is not a a belief, it is a method of determining what the real world is actually like.

Science does not automatically reject the benefits of meditation, or any other hypotheses. Some people might, but science does not, and it it is science, not Buddhist philosophy that has determined that meditation has a real affect of the state of your brain.

Science - it just works. No faith required.