I mean, who the hell would want a normal $30 one

I own both a Springfield Arms 1911 and a Romanian AK (it's a 74, not a 47, meaning it takes 5.45x39 ammo instead of 7.62x39 like the 47 does). I paid $900 for my 1911 (brand new in the box) and I saw them at the last gun show I attended for up to $1500. I paid $1000 for the AK, 5 magazines and 1000 rounds of ammo. It is set up just like it would be in theater, and has hardly been used (muzzle wear and throat erosion are very low). The AK's I saw at the last gun show ranged from $650 up to $2000. Where are you getting them for $30?

lack of term limits

You don't need term limits when you can vote for the challenger.

However, this takes an educated electorate, so good luck with that I guess.

Taxes should be fair. If I buy something, the tax on it shouldn't depend on who I bought it from, or where they are located.

How do you define "fair?" Is it fair, for example, that I can drive across my state line and buy groceries and clothes and pay no sales tax? Shouldn't my state be allowed to compete by lowering or eliminating their own sales taxes?

Gasoline tax is also lower in my neighboring state, and I buy gas there whenever I can. Most of my driving is in my own state, causing wear-and-tear on the roads that's not being paid for by my gas tax. Is that unfair?

Avoiding taxes is one factor companies consider when deciding to locate somewhere. It's also a tool states can use when competing with each other to lure businesses to locate there. That seems pretty fair to me.

If a charge is determined to be fraudulent the retailer is out the money plus a chargeback fee

Plus almost certainly the inventory sold...

'hauled away'... somewhere... somewhere else... someone else's problem...

Around here, it's hauled to a treatment facility or to a location where it's deep-well injected. It's not like they haul it away to someplace else where they then dump it on the ground.

Explain that one to me again?

Because shit happens. I've worked at several big chemical plants and all of them have had spills. (To me, this sounds like a "spill" and not "dumping waste.") It's just the nature of the beast, nothing works perfectly all the time. At one plant in particular, vandals/kids/idiots with too much time on their hands got onto the property (not hard to do when the facility covers thousands of acres) and removed a cover off a pipe, causing thousands of gallons of water with a ph of about 1 to flow into a nearby stream, which eventually made its way into the bay and caused a large fish kill. Yes, the company was fined. Yes, corrective action was taken to avoid it from happening again.

From what I read, Exxon cleaned up the contaminated area as best they could. I seriously doubt the spill was done on purpose. I live in the middle of frack-land and these oil companies are spending millions buying/leasing mineral rights, hauling equipment in and out, drilling, fracking, trucking out wastewater and hauling equipment away. Millions of dollars are spent at each drill site. They're not going to risk "dumping" wastewater to save a few bucks on having it hauled away.

What should people like me do to show people like you that we're just as fed up as you are, if not more?

Vote. Talk to your neighbors. Get involved. Volunteer. Organize. Protest at your local county courthouse.

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson

either way he's not getting anything

Which is probably why he was addicted in the 1st place.

Similarly, it is a good idea to wall off some parts of a city that is infested with bubonic plague.

How can pirated software kill you?

You are neither

This. Face it, you're a jock.

I first used VMS in Computing 122, programming in Fortran 77, at uni in 1984

I was thinking the same thing as you. College programming classes in the 80's (at UMBC) consisted of taking your assignment and writing out your logic by hand, signing up for terminal time, then coding it in Fortran.

He sees a day when every kitchen has a 3-D printer, and the earth's 12 billion people feed themselves customized, nutritionally-appropriate meals synthesized one layer at a time, from cartridges of powder and oils they buy at the corner grocery store

No flipping way. You'll have to pry my garden from my cold dead hands before I'm eating that shit.

plain, simple, normal SOAP

How simple are you talking about?

chemical (water processing etc) engineers are interested in one of the country's largest man made chemical(water) processing structure.

I'm a chemical engineer, and I too visited several water and wastewater treatment facilities while in college. The whole class went at the same time on these "field trips." But, from TFA:

Shortly after midnight Tuesday, seven people were caught trespassing at the Quabbin Reservoir.

All of the "field trips" we took were during the day, and never "shortly after midnight." And, the trips were made while we were still in school, not after we graduated. The actions of these people seem very suspicious to me.

Money is not speech

Perhaps, but my freedom to spend my money as i see fit, on the candidate or candidates of my choosing, is protected under the 1st Amendment.

corporations are not people

True, but when the government decides to regulate corporations, they have a right to speak, like the individual person does.