You're delusional (tainted by confirmation bias, no doubt) if you don't think democrats pull the same crap. I remember when voting for Bush would bring us back to the days of back-alley abortions. They both pick inconsequential things to motivate their bases - sometimes it works, sometimes not. Anyone that votes on a single issue should stay the %$R#@ at home.

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.

I can't mod you up, so I just wanted to say those are good points.... except they weren't really all that civil (but they were more so than today, perhaps).

Yes - the problem with ubiquitous media and the ability for parties and pundits to use social networking is that they concentrate on dividing us when, in fact, the parties are more alike than not. They pick their single issues they can use to "motivate their bases," things that really have had no consequence in the last forty years (like the abortion "debate").

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.

Someone posted this interesting link above.... clearly the iPhone borrowed heavily from what Samsung had already released.

Agreed... I was born and raised republican, but left the party a long time ago. I'd have become a democrat if the democratic party were anything like it was during the JFK years. Glad there's more choices, and no, I don't feel like I'm throwing my vote away.

It doesn't have to in order for it to be true elsewhere.

"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.

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 backwards system of it being cheaper to incarcerate someone for 50+ years than to quickly execute them is asinine. In some countries they would have a second jury or committee of judges watching a death penalty trial, the instant appeal would be dealt with immediately. This process of incarceration for 20 years through numerous appeals is ridiculous. So I will say this - I agree that we just do life without parole in order to save money, but my preference would be instant appeals and immediate execution, especially in cases where the perpetrator admits guilt and actually asked for the death penalty instead of solitary confinement for the rest of his life, because that's where he's going... locked in a cell for 23 hours, then an hour alone in a little exercise room. And that's it.

The simple answer is, who cares? Why should we be trusting science to a bunch of arrogant people that cost too much, live to short, and have such an inefficient method of programming anyway? Science itself is something that should be automated, to create a world where everyone gets to know exactly how to do whatever they want to do, without all the whiny political bs about it? Wah, women can whine about being unemployed just as much as automated men increasingly are.

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.

I have my own domain, but I still access via gmail because I get so much free storage. What does that say about me? In fact, I have a bunch of addresses on my domain, and access them all through gmail and filter them into their own labels to keep it all nice and neat.

Population density in most of the U.S. is far lower than Western Europe, with much wider spans between cities. You're nuts if you think you can compare. And if people already have a phone line and don't use it much, it's really not fair to include it as part of the price - you just don't get that people have different priorities than you.

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.