Vegan is an old Micmac word meaning, "Piss poor hunter." Anyhow, eating them exclusively will mean you want to take a vitamin supplement. We can't have you being malnourished.

I do follow that site. That is kind of my point. We can blame the voter for being naive and/or gullible but, when we really examine it, the fault of lying politicians is the politicians themselves. One key thing to remember is that a lot of them seem to think that they will be able to do many things as president but the job really does not have that much power in reality. Either way, the fault lies with the liar not the person lied to. Though they may share some culpability the blame still resides with the liar. Well, it does in my universe. My universe may not be exactly glued to reality. You're free to opine on such, of course.

I think my only point was that you said, "You don't." No, some of us do. See the EV craze for instance. That began with early adopters who did so not because it was cheaper but because they felt it was the responsible thing to do. I suspect the market could decide this, in time, but I do not think it will be allowed to decide it. I suppose the value of that is debatable but, yeah, there are a number of folks who will "do the right thing" simply because it is the right thing. There are others who will do it because it is trendy. Others will do it because they are contrary folks. Eventually enough will adopt it and the price will be more reasonable - maybe. I do it because I can and I try to minimize my impact so I can feel better about my abuses in other areas.

I love my Russian fireplace. It has vents to the whole house and the fans inside the vents are on thermostats. A Russian fireplace is awesome. I have plenty of acreage and will never run out of wood. I harvest it myself and have a wood splitter so there is not a whole bunch of labor that I do not like - I love felling trees (it is an art and a science) and I have a tractor with a heavy duty 10 ton winch so I can tote tree length to a yard and buck it up there and trailer it out for processing to 24" lengths. If I ever get lazy(er) I can have wood cut, split, and delivered. The only modification I made to the fireplace design is it has a custom forged door that allows me to cut off or control the air intake.

Many people are inclined to skip the idea of wood and see it as bad for the environment. Done properly it is the perfect renewable resource. Clear cutting is silly. Timber stand improvement is excellent and wonderful for the ecology - animals live around areas where the land changes from fields to trees or from trees to water or whatnot. (There's a name for those types of environments but I forgot the name.) Anyhow, animals live in areas near those breaks - not deep in the forest typically. It is great for them, great for us, and great for the environment in general. Err... So long as it is properly managed. There is that caveat.

I would choose to pay more for clean energy because it impacts the environment less. I already do pay more for electricity than I need to - I have solar and wind. I replaced the panels before they could pay themselves off because the newer panels are more efficient than the ones I had installed seven years ago.

I pay more in giving than I need to - I need to pay taxes. I also pay quite a bit in donations to charitable causes. Much more than I need to.

I pay more for consumables than I need to. I prefer the higher quality. I prefer food that tastes better. I prefer clothing that looks good and is comfortable to wear.

Just because you're cheap does not mean that the rest of us are. If this is something the market can fairly sort then, by all means, let it do it. But do not go assuming that people will be cheap just because you find shopping at Wal*Mart to be acceptable and because you do not value the local retailers, products, or produce.

I will, most likely, not be voting for Trump. I am not a fan. I worry that his success will make him unable to objectively view the needs of those who have not been successful. I suspect it will be Trump vs. Clinton. I am old, I have seen the pendulum swing in both directions and it is due to change again any time now. I suspect that this means that the Republicans will win this election and that it will mean Trump is in the Whitehouse. (Opera did not like the word Whitehouse. It suggested whorehouse instead. Very apt.)

I am a huge fan of donating. I donate a lot of money to varied causes because I think that is my end of the social bargain. So far as I know, Trump is not really a huge player there - though he does some donating. I would like to know which charities he has donated to in the past and what percentage of his income that was. Tax records are nice but not all donations go on tax records and there is no reason to list those that are not going to reduce your tax liability. You can only donate so much to reduce liabilities, after that you are donating without the tax benefit - which is well and good for me as I do not donate to get tax relief, I donate because I feel it is the honorable thing to do.

Back to Hillary... The populace has not seen much good come out of the current administration. This has, in my observations, historically been an indicator that the opposing party was due to win. Hillary is unlikely to win the presidential election - there is too much dirt to throw at her. This would not necessarily be a problem but her dirt is too widespread, meaning that there is something to dislike about her for everyone. We, the nerd vote, are annoyed with her private email server and the implications that has - as one example. The Middle East fiasco is a reason for the anti-violence folks to not like her (though I do not see many of them voting for Trump). And, obviously, there are more issues but they spread across a broad spectrum and anyone can find a reason to dislike her and this gives plenty of ammunition to her opponents.

At the other side, we have a bunch of Republicans nominally running. Trump is likely to get the GOP nomination in the primaries. He has lots of dirt but very little political dirt. He has no public vote history to track. He has no experience in the arena. While he might do things well it is a shot in the dark. An interesting thing to watch will be the mental gymnastics that people will do to vote for him after claiming they would not vote for Obama because he was not an experienced politician.

I, myself, will likely be doing as I always do which is throwing my vote away on a third party candidate. The Republicans that fail in the primaries may well do what they have often done and co-opt the Libertarian name (they are not, they have no concept of liberty) and run as such in hopes of remaining relevant. It should be interesting but I am not seeing a single candidate that I think is really qualified for the job and has a reasonable chance at success. I do kind of like Sanders but he is unlikely to get the primaries. I expect anyone who claims they will not vote for Hillary will be called a sexist (exactly like I, a partially black man, was a racist for not voting for Obama) and I expect that tactic to be successful.

Anyhow... I have enough popcorn for everybody. I planned ahead. It should be about as amusing as a three ring circus with Down's Syndrome afflicted persons as the center ring act. Which is to say, it should be pretty damned amusing but it is really inappropriate to laugh.

Thank you for reminding me. I am an idiot. I was really concerned with some of the moderation that I have seen over the past couple of months and this thread (I have mentioned it already in this thread) was one that caught my attention and not in a good way. I had forgotten that people tend to really be unable to be objective when the election cycle is in play. Yes, I had forgotten how bad it truly was. Yes, that makes me an idiot. It does not, however, excuse those moderators who are engaged in such acts.

I suppose that it is time to either just ignore moderations for a while or to actually use my mod points to counteract this as much as I can. I do not typically moderate, it is just not who I am. However, this may be a good time for me to do so. I understand that we humans are not very good about being objective but I do have high standards for this site and, usually, /. kind of sort of meets those standards (for varied degrees of meets). It is pretty clear what the moderations are for and pretty clear that it is not objective. So, again, thanks for reminding me why I have been seeing this trend for a couple of months and why this thread stands out in particular.

Did you miss the fact that they were clearly talking about Bill Clinton? I think you will find that *both* Clintons are now in play. We have a double-Clinton effect. ;) It is almost as bad as a Triple Bush.

As an aside, Bill Clinton is the only person that I have voted for that managed to win the presidential election. I am nearing 60. I consider my failure to vote for the winning candidate to be a good thing. I generally vote for third parties and always have. It is still holding my nose and voting but it is somewhat more comforting. Sort of like I imagine a rape victim might feel if the rapist left them a few thousand dollars as payment afterwards.

That is probably not my best analogy.

If a politician breaks their promises how can it be the fault of anyone but that politician? Just because one person voted for them does not mean that they are to blame for the politician breaking their promises. Do you blame the victim a lot? Was she dressed too much like a slut and deserved to be raped?

Heh... I ranted about this up-thread, with your post being the one that caught my eye. I decided I had too much emotionally invested and took a trip over to play with testing a new Linux distro and then I returned to keep reading this thread. What really pissed me off is your post was -1 and then the reply was +1. An off-topic post's reply is not any more on-topic. Then there were just a metric-shit-ton of crappy moderations after that.

I am disgusted, really. Usually the moderation is much better but it has taken a turn for the worse in the past month or two. (That is subjective.) This thread, and this particular sub-thread, really take the cake, however. If you can not moderate objectively, do not moderate. I, personally, do not moderate because who am I to judge what is seen and is not seen by default? Hopefully, some folks with sense and points can undo the damage. Sometimes that happens.

In my case, well, I am not sure if it is even realistically possible to make my karma go below the 'excellent' rating so I do not really care. I suspect that, even if it did matter, I'd still post stuff like this and just accept the karma hit. I have never been a fan of letting what people think control my speech. That has, of course, resulted in some confrontations in my life but, at least here, it can only really amount to pixels bombarding my eyeballs. In the worst case scenario, I get a chance to chuckle at the replies. I do mind, however, fundamental issues (such as moderation) being used for something other than objective critique.

Anyhow, I felt your post was on-topic and brought up a salient discussion. I felt you contributed and, if I actually moderated and had points, I would rate your comment higher than it currently is. An injustice has been done, my good sir, and hopefully folks are inclined to make reparations. Such has been known to happen, from time to time.

Which fucking retards are moderating this thread? Seriously, you dipshits. +1 Fits the Narrative -1 Uncomfortable thinking detected? How the fuck is a comment off-topic (GGP) and the reply a +1? A reply is not any more on-topic than the OP.

Fucking morons. Seriously, die in a fire.

Yes, I expect to be modded down. My karma will survive and it will not go any lower than the highest rating possible. Waste your damn childish points. I'll help you out, flame, troll, and off-topic are the most relevant. And I will still not give a shit and I will still post it as my own comment and not as some AC. Grow the fuck up and moderate objectively. Nothing, ever, on this site has ever been on-topic - including this.

Wait a minute...

Where I am, it is going to rain tonight... Hillary is to blame?

That is it. I am voting Republican.

You take that back! A foreign agent is holding a gun to my head, right this minute, and making me look at porn.

My council has stated that they will review the content of this group of messages, look into the area and land, and will let me know shortly how they think I should proceed or if I should proceed. I do not always listen.

They have also suggested that a public forum is not the appropriate place for this. Liability, interests, and other such gibberish that those folks tend to be on the alert for. So, especially with contact information, I would suggest further communication be via email.

Interesting read - thanks. I may be in violation actually. I am unlikely to change that, however. I am subject to being accountable, at any time and without notice, because I own a fully automatic weapon. (I own an AK-47. Yes, it is legal. I bring it to the "Machinegun Shoot" every year for the vets to fire. It is the only automatic weapon I own - it was expensive and put me into a strange regulatory condition. So, now I have a giant safe in my basement.

However, I have added scopes to a number of rifles that did not come with them. I wonder what the take is on add-on laser scopes? How about if you have rails and attach a scope? Is a pointing device a scope?

I have never had them come in and do a count, I have never had to report a break-in either, and I am not going to remove my scopes from the rifles that I have modified. I doubt they will do much as I attract little attention and am, mostly, an acceptable citizen by most rules. We shall see.