You're confusing "totalitarian" with "authoritarian". Authoritarianism is the lack of limits on state power. Totalitarianism is when the state actually uses that lack of limits to institute a pervasive, total control of the populace in all aspects of their lives. Remember that the word was actually used in its proper meaning in a positive sense by the very people that we recognize as the first conscious totalitarians today: Italian fascists. Mussolini defined it as "everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state".

Once they have located an attacker, having privately owned armed drones would be very handy. if the attacker is a nation state, even more aggressive measures could be used.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership gives them the right to use "even more aggressive measures". It's called "corporate sovereignty" and it will be our undoing. Basically, it says that a corporation can sue governments for damages for any law that might conceivably cost them money.

We already have a mercenary military. Imagine the armies the Fortune 500 will put into the field, and the mischief they could create.

No, and I would greatly prefer if people the Clintons and Obama didn't hand these people trillions of tax payer dollars.

You mean Obama's the one paying all those Wall Street bonuses?

Damn, no wonder we got us a deficit, amirite?

If that were true, why haven't Chromebooks taken over?

The power of marketing.

There are a few people who believe that we don't need a government; that the free market can solve all problems up to and including national defense.

And all of those people are running for the GOP presidential nomination.

Maybe now, we can build some more dams

California? Dams?

I thought hydroelectric dams need water to operate.

Clinton also announced a new initiative to replace the warplanes of the American air force with modern and environmentally sound flying pigs.

We already have the F-35.

I wish I could vote for the real Al Gore.

It wouldn't matter unless you could get the Supreme Court to vote for him too.

About half of my power bill is the cost of generation, the other half is transmission...

He didn't say "price", he said "cost". Because "transmission costs" are how power companies raise rates. The transmission costs have not gone up, but they've raised to transmission price as an end-around local consumer groups that have gotten laws passed to limit energy cost increases.

Transmission "costs" are actually a profit center for companies that really should be regulated utilities instead of one-way piggy banks for billionaires.

Let me know when they make a Soylent that tastes like Harold's Fried Chicken (One Bite and We Got'Cha).

https://farm6.staticflickr.com...

Seriously, let me know.

[By the way, if you're ever in Chicago and looking for some terrific, delicious chicken or cat fish - and I mean really really good - try Harold's. Stuff is amazing. But be careful the really hot sauce is really hot. There are a bunch of Harold's around town for your late-night post Hawks/White Sox/Bulls game enjoyment.]

I did: The claim is bullshit because it computes meaningless numbers ["hourly wage"] for a meaningless group of people ["all workers"].

The NELP paper is misusing that number in its own analysis, by multiplying by the nominal number of work hours to arrive at an annual full time income and then reasoning about that.

Furthermore, if the number meant what the NELP paper implies it means, it completely contradicts their argument for raising the minimum wage to $15/h: if in some sense "40% of workers" already make that much money, then $15/h is a solid, middle-class income, not a sign of poverty.

If you think the number has meaning, why don't you clearly state what that meaning is.

No matter how you slice it, rationalize it and just straight-up bullshit about it, more than 40% of the people who are working are working for less than $15/hr.

then $15/h is a solid, middle-class income, not a sign of poverty.

What part of "40% of the workers make less than $15/hr" do you not get? The "less than" part is kind of important.

The current minimum wage is less than half of your "solid, middle-class income" of $15/hr. And if you add up the incomes of everyone making minimum wage in America it comes to a little more than half as much as the bonuses that get paid out to Wall Street bankers in one year. And we're talking about full-time minimum wage workers ($7.25/hr). And by "Wall Street", they don't include investment bankers in Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas, etc etc. We're only talking about the swells that do their business on a few square blocks on Manhattan island. And we're not talking about their entire incomes, but just the bonuses. So they find more money in their Christmas fucking stockings than all the full-time minimum wage workers in the United States put together. And don't forget, Wall Street bankers don't produce a goddamned thing.

http://www.businessinsider.com...

And we need to keep in mind that the fundamental characteristics of these countries is not that they happen to have socialist policies, but rather that they have capitalism, rule of law, and democracy. The combination of those three pretty much guarantees that they'll have comfortable and to some degree, affordable socialist policies.

Did I just get khallow to endorse some level of socialism? Please wait a second while I skypoint for a bit...

Unfortunately for those European Socialist countries since the EU was formed, the new late-stage capitalism financial aristocracy is using disaster capitalism to create all sorts of havoc. I don't know if they're taking after us, or we're taking after them.

You still have not provided a single bit of evidence that the statement "Over 40% of US workers make less than $15/hr". This was a statement you said was so ridiculous as to be laughable, so put up or shut up.

Any competent Corporate IT already scrubs URL's from all email, it get's quarentined and a tech has to look at the email before the user can get it.

Comcast was doing that back in the early 2005's

Unless it's active low, then tie it to V+ rail.