That's not true: the President is perfectly free to veto all spending until Congress is willing to give him a sane budget (or 2/3 of it is insane enough to override him).

The city fucking deserves what it got!

If Baltimore's police wasn't made up of murderous, jackbooted thugs, then there wouldn't be any riots in the first place.

Compare and contrast Baltimore or Ferguson to Charleston and how the latter city handled the Walter Scott murder. Whereas the governments of Ferguson and Baltimore (until recently) dug in their heels against their own citizens in defense of their corrupt police, Charleston's leadership had the basic decency to prosecute a blatantly obvious crime without trying to spin or weasel their way out of it. As a direct consequence, there have been no riots in Charleston.

The lesson for government here is simple: if you don't want riots, then respect the citizens' rights!

No, I mean like how the old, old AT&T (before the monopoly was broken up) used to only allow "approved devices" on its landline network, gave you exactly one choice of phone (the Model 500), and had to send a technician out to hard-wire it, using screw terminals, to the phone network (i.e., this was before RJ-11).

My bank can and do notify me when there is 'odd spending' happening on my credit card.

The key phrase there is "credit card." Your bank does that precisely because it is the one liable for fraudulent charges. If you were the one liable -- is is the case with debit cards, or phone bills (as per this article) -- then they wouldn't give a shit.

That sort of thing happens with old people. When my grandmother died (in the '90s), we found out that she had still been renting her phone!

My Comcast bill is autopaid... using my bank's system, where the payment is "pushed" (not "pulled") only if it conforms to the rules that I set (namely, that it is not more expensive than usual). In fact, I got an email a few days ago saying that my most recent payment was not sent because Comcast tried to increase the rate by almost double. It's time to negotiate again... Google Fiber can't come soon enough!

Hey, it could be possible on planes flying the Tripoli - Mogadishu - Kabul route!

The words "engineer," "architect," and "developer" have been rendered meaningless by all title inflation (especially bullshit like "sales engineers").

Here's a newsflash for HR and others who hire workers:

IF THE JOB DOES NOT CONSIST MOSTLY OF DOING MATH AND REQUIRE THE WORKER TO BE LICENSED BY THE STATE, IT IS WRONG TO TITLE IT "ENGINEER!"

I'd love to have 30 job OFFERS a day. These are not offers.

Maybe they should've claimed they were just tunes-sharing. Like Uber.

You missed the GP's point: the problem is not that true negatives were found; the problem is that they were not published. Because they were not published, future researchers might waste more effort re-discovering them.

Of course. But if I'm going to use an antenna, then what the fuck would I be paying the cable company for?!

More to the point, I think the situation violates at least the spirit (if not the letter) of the FCC's must-carry rules.

The answer to both of those issues ("green" fuels for aviation and trucking) is biofuel or synthetic (hydrocarbon) fuel. (FYI, we had an article here about the latter just a few days ago.)

Nobody said we need to be "carbon-less;" it's sufficient to be "carbon-neutral."

Excuse me; let me clarify: I'm talking about laws restricting people's ability to get on the ballot as a candidate (especially when said candidate lacks affiliation with the Democrat or Republican Party).

Having laws restricting who can vote is a different issue.

Pick almost ANY topic and the parties are going to take polar opposite views of it.

Only the ones that don't matter, but make for good sound bites. On the actual important topics, both halves of our oligarchic regime enthusiastically agree:

1. Both parties love the PATRIOT Act, warrantless wiretapping and Gitmo.
2. Both parties think corporate "rights" -- particularly "imaginary property" -- are more important than the real property rights of actual people.
3. Both parties love pork and wealth redistribution (albeit not necessarily to the same groups).
4. Both parties love Federal control, and hate Federalism (i.e., separation of powers between the Federal government and the States).
5. Both parties abuse the Commerce Clause and the Elastic Clause.
6. Both parties feel free to ignore various parts of the Bill of Rights.
7. Both parties are big fans of restrictive ballot access laws, gerrymandering and first-past-the-post voting systems (to hamstring third parties).

And that's just off the top of my head, not anywhere close to a complete list.