The Internet has already descended into Anarchy.

That's why we like it. The rules are made by the people who own/run/create/manage it, by mutual agreement, not enforced from the top down. If people don't agree, they go their separate ways, because you can't be forced to allow someone on your network if they violate your network's rules.

The Internet is fine. We like it how it is. No need for more government regulation to ruin it on behalf of those with influence with government officials/politicians/bureaucrats.

a real mess that he inherited from the Bush administration

And someday (perhaps after he's out of office?), Obama will start being held responsible for his own actions by those who supported him. It's what, only been almost 6 years now? That's longer than many presidents serve in office. Obama's off to a really fast start, isn't he?

Did Obama end us being at war in Iraq? Apparently not...

Giving up and removing U.S. forces isn't the same thing as ending a war. The other guys were still in the neighborhood waiting for our announced removal.

Who looks really stupid now? The Iraqis who trusted the U.S. after we took down Saddam's government. They have a pretty good gripe about our government making promises to them and then not supporting them.

We ended the war against Germany and Japan in such a way that it didn't start back up again a few years later. That took time and leaving troops behind to maintain security and help rebuild the countries in a self-sustainable way so they're good friends of ours now and positive influences on the rest of the world.

Iraq? Not so much...

Are you talking about the War in Iraq, which Obama boasted continuously about ending, despite loud criticism at the time that he was creating the conditions for what's going on right now with ISIS?

I wouldn't be boasting about that anymore, his related words are now one of those things his opponents publish on Twitter so as to illustrate how incompetent he is.

"His [Schulte's] prior experience as Chief-of-Staff at Priorities USA, the Super PAC supporting President Obama's re-election," assured Zuckerberg in a letter to FWD.us contributors, "will ensure FWD.us continues its momentum for reform."

But, how is this possible? I thought Obama banned his team from becoming lobbyists after they left him???

I guess that rule doesn't apply to everyone. Good thing we have the most transparent administration ever and these lobbying efforts won't influence anyone...

What's the difference between Bush's illegal wars and Obama's illegal wars?

In terms of the economy, Obama has done at least as much damage over time, based on his own administration's charts, even. Remember all those rosy predictions?

This voluntary online survey of academic fieldwork environments primarily shows two things:

1. These people aren't very good at science (See "voluntary online survey" again).
2. What science they've done which someone may consider valid serves only to demonstrate that one of the most left-leading, "liberal", feminist groups in the nation (academics, for whom government bureaucrats and main stream media would be their only real competition for the title) is apparently unable to successfully implement "solutions" to sexual harassment they'd confidently proscribe for everyone else to follow.

A reasonable alternate interpretation to #2, reversing causation, would be that academics are the ones who complain much more about feminist mythology-type topics and propose dramatic solutions because they happen to be the group with the biggest problem in that area, which causes them to be more concerned about it than most folks do.

Of course, they might also just be caught up in the pettiness which comes from arguing about less and less important things over time, but no one would suggest that...

Buying a new fleet of more expensive city buses primarily benefits the politicians who get to decide which of their friends will get to sell the city the buses.

Any arguments around the desirability or suitability of the new buses are just a bonus for their election year propaganda aimed at credulous residents.

So don't worry, they'll come back around to trollies, railways, etc... they just need to allow enough time to pass for voters to forget their last expensive "great" idea.

Yeah, I have to resist telling my kids about the natural gas balloons we made for the 4th while unsupervised. As a parent, they're too dangerous.

Fill up a white kitchen trash bag from the stove, tie the end with kite string, unreel the string until the balloon is at least 30-40 feet in the air, then light the end of the string.

Big whump and fireball in the air later, fun was had by all.

Who'd want 3 different water/sewer systems connected to their house?

Ummm... me?

I'm currently forced to buy water from only the local government-granted monopoly water provider, who has decided not to provide one type of water I want to purchase (greywater) to residential customers. They sell it to commercial customers at1/10th the cost of their potable water lines, but despite the fact that the pipes and infrastructure supporting it are literally 2 feet from my property, I'm classified as residential, so no using greywater for landscaping for me.

There's another potential water provider less than a mile away in a different political jurisdiction who I could purchase from... if it was legally allowed for them to compete here, which it isn't.

The truth is that taking a government-created monopoly and saying that's proof that a market wouldn't support a non-monopoly setup is really saying that the legal framework creating the monopoly in the first place isn't really needed. So let's get rid of the government enforcing monopolies and see what's really a persistent natural monopoly vs what's actually a favor for buddies of the local politicians instead?

This argument doesn't make any sense, and certainly wouldn't to a strict-constructionist.

Either the Constitution was intended to cover any type of travel when originally written, or it wasn't.

If it was, then any type of travel is protected, because nothing in the Constitution authorizes the government to restrict travel.

If (as you argue) it wasn't intended to cover, say, flying, because it didn't exist at that time yet (silly, no one really argues that but let's go with it...), then still, nothing in the Constitution authorizes the government to restrict travel via flying.

The fallacy you seem to be falling into is thinking that the Constitution needs to explicitly permit or protect a particular freedom (like travel) or else the government can do what they want in regards to it. The Constitution doesn't grant people rights and doesn't protect only enumerated freedoms. It enumerates specific powers for the government and reserves everything not specifically granted to the States and the people.So if the Constitution doesn't apply to something, then the Federal government doesn't have any authority whatsoever in regards to that something.

In actual fact, the courts have ruled that any limitation on the fundamental right to travel must pass strict scrutiny. See a few hundred thousand links from Google.

There are maybe 4 authors that are obviously right wing and published by the big 6 in fiction.

And none of them got started in the last 15 years or so, they're all established names who sell too many books to justify dumping. You know TOR's editors hate that Card is their biggest selling author, but they can't come up with an excuse to drop him as long as he still sells well.

Anyone newer than that will be with Baen, or one of the smaller or indie imprints.

Quick, name one publicly right-wing midlist fiction writer currently published by one of the big 6.

Take all the time you want to think about it.

Non-fiction and (especially) celebrity/best-sellers who can write their own contract are treated differently.

As an author, I can tell you that Amazon and their eBook pricing means more money (overall) for Authors. Maybe not for the "best seller"s who don't actually sell many books, but their publishing house prints lots of them and sends them out to stores, so while they end up on the bargain rack or destroyed, they still make the NY Times list based on the lay-down. Yeah, the authors people don't actually want to read will ultimately make less money, but the real authors that people like and want to buy from will make a lot more.

There is currently a battle going on in the industry between the special favorites of the big 6 publishing houses and the midlisters and independents. There are very few authors who can get a reasonable deal out of one of the publishing houses. Everyone else is getting contracts which require them to sign away their works forever, sign away any future works in the same genre, sign away all electronic rights, etc... for a $5K advance on a one or two book contract.

The midlisters and indies are running to ebooks and small publishing houses as fast as they can. It's not a mystery why. Amazon will pay 70% on an ebook. A publisher will typically pay maybe 15% (on poorly documented bookscan sales numbers, even on eBooks, which should be exact!) Where they used to purcahse only limited publication rights, which expired after they took the book out of print, now they want contracts where the author will never get their book back, even if the publishing house isn't actually doing anything with it.

If you are a well-known celebrity, or you sell millions of copies, then a big 6 publisher may work with you on somewhat fair terms. Otherwise, they won't edit you (it's gotten much worse over the last few years), they won't market you and they'll barely make sure your latest book stays on store shelves for a month.

The big 6 publishers are not only an issue in terms of IP rights and author payments, but they are also a very bad gatekeeper. Ever wonder why so many old SF authors stopped publishing and much of what is out there now is crap? It's because they're being picked by a publishing house with a NY "editor" who probably doesn't even like SF. They literally drove popular authors (who wrote what people actually wanted to read) out of the business. If an author sold too much (i.e. more than the editor projected), did they reprint and push the book? No, they'd keep the same print run and just stop publishing it when it hit the number projected as the max, usually tiny. Baen was the only real exception of any size in the industry. Jim Baen also did eBooks right from the start (gave old ones away in order to promote newer books in the same series/by the same author). That's all just starting to turn around because of Amazon, on-demand publishing and eBooks. Old famous authors are even starting to put out the books their publishing house stopped selling, or that they couldn't get published in the first place because it wasn't the editor's latest fad.

Also, the big 6 publishing houses have a massively left-leaning bias. They've spent decades now killing the sales numbers of entire genres because the authors were required to toe the line of the latest politically correct movement. You can date books in some genres by the issues and characters the editors required. Many books that adults like have been pushed into YA categories, just because if it it's not "edgy" enough, the NY editors don't want to buy it. Forget about what will sell, they buy what they'll want to tell their NY publishing friends about at the next cocktail party.

Scalzi is the poster-child cheerleader for the big 6 publishing houses. He's on the "inside" of the publishing establishment and does everything he can to defend them. He could care less about SF authors, just about his publishing buddies.

You want the real scoop on Amazon and Authors? Go look at Mad Genius Club, or According to Hoyt.