They should not, under any circumstance, reduce cash reserves at this point. Re-establishing a dividend might make sense, but not an excessive one, and not as a means of managing capital.

Do you know why it took a year for competitors to bring out a real iPad competitor? It wasn't because Apple had much better tech, or because the others didn't have the prototypes - it was because no one could order parts. Before Apple launched the iPad, they bought up so much of the manufacturing capacity for key components - screens, especially - there was no way that Samsung could contract enough suppliers to bring a competitor to market.

Doing this takes a lot of capital. If they're talking about reducing operating capital, that tells me they don't have a "Next Big Thing" that they're planning on launching like they did the iPhone and iPad. That means drastically lower long-term growth.

As an analyst for a trucking company, I can tell you that's just not true. We're sending an increasing percentage of our trailers over the rail. They're loaded via crane onto flatcars, and taken off the same way on the other end. I don't know that I'm at liberty to say exactly what percentage of our traffic goes rail, but suffice it to say that if we have the choice between sending a trailer over the interstate highways, or sending it over rail - we choose rail, every time.

Driving Ms. Daisy (Cutter)?

I work for one of the largest less-than-truckload carriers in the country, and we also have a division that deals with stuff like this. While I've not been privy to exactly what some of our trucks carry, I do know that we haul an awful lot between government facilities, and that our security guys are almost all ex-military and have their CDLs.

To be perfectly honest, I am far more interested in who's poking their hands into the shrink-wrapped pallets of iPad2s than I am about government stuff. They provide their own security for the important stuff :)

Biomass, which we can use to produce energy and build more robots.

Duh.

Wrong.

The Republicans that go after pork as a primary means of staying in office get up and yell about their pork. That's the space program, farm subsidies, and defense mostly.

The Republicans that want smaller government stand up and yell about additional entitlement programs.

Note that the first group stays sitting quietly while second group yells, and vice versa. There is no lack of consistency, you're simply lumping in multiple groups' pet interests and saying that is representative of half of America.

I'm a geek - I love space, and technology. I almost always vote Republican. I am also an Anarcho-Capitalist, though, and I am therefore intellectually honest enough to see that government funding the space program is immoral. I still find it hard to be as upset about money going to NASA as I do about money going to supply free cellular phones to people without jobs.

Left wing is not anti-authoritarian any more than right wing is authoritarian.

Counter-points: Barack Obama & the nationalization of the automotive industry; Ron Paul as an anti-authoritarian on the far right.

I always liked AA, except for the fact that you couldn't play Opfor :( I ended up spending half the game trying to get an AK-74su every time.

You seem to have a slightly warped view of the power of the Presidency.

He would have to use his veto power to kill the budget in order to kill the TSA. The War of Drugs is a legislative issue, so all he could do there is refuse to enforce those laws while in office. It would also be within his power to pardon all non-violent drug offenders in federal prison (but not state prisons). He couldn't disband the TSA, but he could require them to weave baskets or something all day instead of enforcing the law.

Paul has been a constitutionalist first and a libertarian second. I don't believe he would break treaty obligations, although I'm sure he would work to lessen them while in office. He would certainly pull all of our troops home (except if bound by treaty, see above). He certainly wouldn't start a war of aggression, although I believe he would decisively defeat any state enemy that attacked us during his term.

There are a LOT of things a "rogue President" could do. I'm a gun nut, so the first thing that springs to mind is the FOPA '86, which banned new-manufactured machineguns, and the GOA '68, which allows the Attorney General to authorize an Amnesty, which could allow individuals to manufacture and register machineguns, suppressors, short-barrelled rifles and shotguns, etc. There's not reason that Amnesty couldn't last all 4 years.

Finally, let's not forget that for the past 40 or so years, the federal government has primarily exercised control via regulation, not law. Think of all of the controversial rulings that you've lived through, whether they be from the EPA, BATFE, FTC, etc. All of that could be repealed in a heartbeat, as ultimately, the President acts over those agencies in the same way a CEO acts over a corporation.

You may not agree with him, but he has answered that repeatedly: he personally experienced attempting to save a premature baby, while at the same hospital another doctor was performing abortions on babies older that the one he was doing everything in his power to keep alive.

Are you sure about that?

I'm a fan of Paul's, but I don't know his position on Citizens United. I suspect that he would be opposed to any restrictions on speech...

To understand Paul, you really have to see where he's coming from.

Take drug legalization, for instance. Paul supports an end to the federal War on Drugs - but he also believes that the federal government does have to authority to force the states to do the same. That is not saying that he believes states should ban drugs, but merely that he believes states have the enumerated power to do so under the federal constitution.

I share his approach. I'm an anarcho-capitalist, I want to eventually see the state dissolve. In order to do that, there are two things that have to happen: The state must be forced to abide by its own charter, and the charter must be amended over time to reduce its power, eventually culminating in the state being replaced entirely by private interests. Reining in the federal government does no good if it is authorized by the constitution to do all sorts of horrible things. Likewise, amending the Constitution does no good if the state does not stay within it.

Just for clarification, there are a set number of Bitcoins being mined over time, regardless of computational efficiency. The only "breakthrough" issue would be breaking the hash algorithm - which would mean huge problems for the traditional financial industry as well.

Bitcoin Spinner for Android has come a long way to close that gap.

The assault rifles are also quite handy when self-righteous fascists attempt to enforce their will on you at the point of a gun.