More generally, I think it is the demented result of a sort of relativism. What you say can be backed by scientists, but I will claim those scientists are not all scientists or that they do not uniformly agree, therefore my opinion is just a relevant as yours. The sleight of hand is that all scientific opinion is now relative and can be cherry picked to support whatever I wish.

There is also the illogical step of arguing from the specific to the general in there. I have one counter-example so I can throw out the consensus. It is a wish for a black and white world: if you claim "most swans are white", then the black one I see is enough to claim "swans are white" is false. Technically, the statement is false, but the underlying belief is that I only need one counter-example to void your claim but subtly alter your statement to mean what I want it to mean.

It shouldn't take long for some of the inhabitants to consider this to be the tip of the Obama Administration spear to take over Texas so they can remove their guns, impose environmental regulations, force money to be spent on education. And this right after the Jade Helm 15 exercises. They are probably Islamic driverless cars.

Stalin was evil, Mao was evil, Lil'Kimmy Jong Un is evil. How many people has MS, Google, and Starbucks killed?

MS had their own HW/SW platform it did spectacularly miserably for them. Having that combination might be necessary, but it isn't sufficient. What Apple brought was a new way of looking at a mobile phone, then they executed on that view. And Google tried a HW/SW combo with Motorola and still came up snake eyes.

What I took away from these pathetic attempts is that when a company's brass thinks they can just throw together existing crap and somehow beat others, they wind up getting beaten themselves. What matters is redefining a market to play to your strengths, but you'd better be redefining it in a way people want even if they don't know what they want until you give it to them. The latter is the tricky bit, and MS never had that in their genes.

Devaluing their currency would help with exports, that's about it. Well, it will make their imports more expensive which might help their domestic industries. However, the world is already awash with Chinese goods, and the Chinese themselves know better than to rely on domestic suppliers given their "supply" problems, i.e., delivering a good that isn't some cheap knockoff or laced with chemicals you'd rather not come in contact with.

The government has spent the last several years consolidating power and claiming they know how to run a modern kleptocracy. This pokes a hole in their bureaucratic bravado. They have spent a modest amount attempting to prop up the stock market thinking its tanking reflects badly on them. What they fear most is that the Chinese proles might hold them responsible for all the responsibility they claimed while times were good.

If pushed hard enough, they'll create some foreign crisis to re-rally the people to cover the fact the government has no clothes. They'll have been taking notes from Putin's success in showing just how feckless is the West now that the West is all post-modern and above actually defending its principles.

Hmmm...you mean life isn't fair? Have you told anyone else about this?

A country is a big insurance policy...when it operates within its means. When it doesn't, then it is a large unhappy family because SOME family members were thinking only of themselves and not the rest.

Morals, or more accurately, ethics, are inescapably tied to economics. One has to accommodate and pay restitution for sins of the past. The sins of the future must be prevented by ethically thinking ahead for the future of the country. Greece wants to ignore the sins of the past and ask forgiveness without taking responsibility. They also want to sow the sins of the future by claiming the ethics necessary to avoid them are beyond anything they can do.

That said, the Euro politicians aided and abetted the behavior of Greece. And for that, the rest of Europe will pay one way or another. It matters who you elect to office. The U.S. has similar problems with politicians who refuse to pay for the past deficits in spending and won't acknowledge future debts, all on some misguided belief that that OTHER party is mainly at fault.

It worked for Kansas, the band. As related by the band, when they were starting out they were to open for Aerosmith once. Steven Tyler had gotten a reputation for pulling the power cables to the amps if the opening band was doing too well, it might make Aerosmith look bad when they came on afterward. Kansas' stage manager had been informed of Tyler's antics, so he rigged up the amps to take power from the other side of the stage using hidden cables and put in fake cables to where all could see.

So Kansas goes on and kills, Kansas was very hot, tight band. During the set, Tyler is pacing the sideline backstage getting more and more incensed. Kansas does one encore, Tyler is livid. They do a second encore and Tyler loses his brain cell and rips out the fake cables, which only pissed him off more since that didn't stop Kansas. After that song, Dave Hope, Kansas' bass player, threw down his bass and went to over to explain to Tyler using very colorful language what he was doing wrong. Dave Hope was a big guy back then so it was very impressive. Afterwards, other members of Aerosmith apologized to Kansas for Tyler's behavior.

You left out Aliens. Cue the Greek guy with the Electric Hair.

Damn, you caught them. It's a government conspiracy to...to...what was that again your imagination thought up?

Functional democracy? If by that you mean a Theocracy run by a bunch of power mad mullahs, then yes. I wonder if they've sent back Hebollah's thugs they imported the last time a few years back their people were stupid enough to believe they had functional democracy.

That would be true if the third was not MS. MS always defined itself by how it could screw competition, not compete fairly with them. Skunks don't change their scent.

Yeah, that's it, NSA wanted Cisco to do something so stupid it would take the Chinese 2 minutes to figure out how holey their boxes are.

And in 2012, Scalia argued the opposite with regard to subsidies and Roberts used part of that argument against Scalia in the current case:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...

Yep, the internal inconsistencies in at least Scalia are appalling.

The government got into the act when they defined laws that treat married people differently. I don't recall those laws being in the constitution but there they are. As long as there are civil constructs like that defined by Congress, then the government is into the act with both feet.

For thousands of years and across cultures the sun has been going around the earth. That fact that a minority culture in the world has chosen to call a cat a dog doesn't make it a dog.