That's true and not... unfortunately there are segments that alienate one group or another, and they are all republicans so it looks like all republicans feel that way. There's a huge generally libertarian sect of the republican party that doesn't care what color you are or who you're sleeping with... but they are a vocal minority and try to ignore the idiocy and vote for republicans on policy... but then get associated with the idiots.
The democrats have segments, too, but have marketed themselves as the party of inclusion (unless you're a wealthy white person, despite the fact that the majority of democratic politicians are wealthy white people). It's just marketing though. I think if you really dig deeper, you find there are just as many racists (especially via the "soft bigotry of low expectations") in the democratic party.
Ultimately both parties have too many douchebags to want to associate with either.
A modern JFK would be labeled pro-war; the party would complain about wasteful spending trying to outdo Russians; JFK was more conservative than most conservatives are today - and yet not ultra religious, racist, and bigoted the way most republicans come off (whether they are or not). JFK was for a stronger economy and realized that you needed successful businesses to do it.
Excuses excuses. Population density doesn't explain why places like Seattle have such shit Internet - or many other urban areas with similarly shit access, for that matter.
It doesn't have to in order for it to be true elsewhere.
Existing middle-mile routes have plenty of capacity (dark fiber, spare wavelengths or even simply unused megabits, depending on who is selling) available on them, and it's not terribly expensive in the grand scheme of things.
"Terribly expensive" is a relative term - if you're the cable company and could spend the money that would bring faster speeds to 1000 people, or even faster speeds to a million living in a highly populated area, you make the best choice for your company, because as of yet, the infrastructure is NOT a public utility.
The public isn't necessarily asking the telcos to run last-mile fiber to Joe Ruralman's ranch from the nearest town which could easily be 50+ miles away - Joe Ruralman probably has satellite or something - 99% of the public is merely asking for decent access in their town, and if it's a town with more than some arbitrary number - say 1,000 households - there aren't that many excuses that can accurately justify why those households don't have better access.
Of course there are when there's hundreds of cities across the U.S. that have populations of hundreds of thousands or millions, unlike your little "northern European" nation that's as big as Rhode Island. BTW, I didn't say the total population density, I'm saying the U.S. is so large compared to Europe that you must break it down into highly populated (which accounts for 95% of the people) and lowly populated areas. If the companies haven't gotten to that last 5% yet, too bad - it's one of the prices you pay for living in the countryside. The 95% that live in highly populated areas, with few exceptions, has decent internet access.
The death penalty is not an effective deterrent against murder.
You're mostly right, except of course it removes those who would commit the same crime again.
That's how I feel about it - some people simply do not deserve to live with the rest of humanity. There should never, ever be a chance that some people should ever have the possibility of afflicting more atrocities on society. I can can understand arguments about when it's perhaps not clear the perpetrator was guilty (and, of course, it sadly has happened before)... but of course, that didn't happen in this case.
People think it's all about punishment, but it's also about keeping those who'd violate your rights away from you.
Gmail is awesome - tons of free space, ability to combine and access all your other old email addresses you didn't want to give up (like AOL? Not me, but why not?), great filtering options, access from anywhere on just about any device...
No, what we have here is a clear case (like the music industry) of a bunch of hipsters who think that anything really popular must suck for no other reason than that it's popular.
Two million on dial-up? One tenth of that would've still made me surprised. USA truly is a third world shit-hole in many ways.
Because some people choose to live in the countryside instead of the city? Or that dial-up might be cheaper and a lot of people don't use bandwidth the way you do? I think you have weird priorities.
He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion