Saying that the Democrats are to the left of the Republicans doesn't make the Democrats "left", it only makes them "less right". There are some politicians who actually are left-wing (Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are two that have been in the news lately; Kucinich was the only one in the 2008 Democratic primaries), but most of the leadership of the Democratic party are not.

No, the Democratic party isn't a left-wing party because overall they aren't really socialist at all, despite what Fox News repeats ad nauseum. Most Democratic politicians like to claim that they are so that they can get some votes, but their actions rarely match their words.

Keep in mind that authoritarianism is an orthogonal concept; you can have right-wing authoritarians (e.g. most current Republican politicians), and you can have left-wing authoritarians (usually what most people think Communism is, such as the USSR). As always, I point people to Political Compass.

Uh, no, "the correct amount of regulation and no more" is what everyone wants, there's just disagreement about how much is "correct". I've never met anyone that wants to create new regulations just for funsies.

I dunno, I hear Somalia is a Libertarian paradise these days.

That's pretty much it. The United States has two major political parties: a right-wing party, and a far right-wing party.

Yup, but it's almost impossible to find outside of New England, and fairly difficult to find outside of Maine.

Purely for the sake of argument, let's say you can get one person per minute to give you one dollar, and you're at an intersection for two hours during the morning commute and two hours during the evening commute. That's $240 per day, $1200 per week, and $60k per year, without paying any income taxes. Certainly not rich, but doing pretty well.

I don't know if "gamut" is the word you were looking for. Both of those things are pretty crappy ways to fire someone.

In other words, they aren't SUVs, they're station wagons, but "SUV" doesn't damage the owner's fragile ego the way that "station wagon" does.

Full disclosure: my first two cars were station wagons. They were great in high school and college for carrying a group of 8 people somewhere.

You're right, you shouldn't mention any of that unless you can back it up with something from reality.

And that's why we need to allow the merger of Time Warner Cable and Comcast.

Er, wait...

Intent is a huge part of the legal system. It's the difference between murder and manslaughter.

Petitions to the government aren't supposed to be written on $100 bills.

That's because the leagues themselves are not-for-profit organizations. All of the profit in professional sports goes to the individual teams, who do (or at least should) pay taxes on those profits. Whether or not all of the "business expenses" of the leagues are appropriate is, as with any corporation, of course debatable.

Similarly, most religious organizations do not have any owners or shareholders that get dividend checks at the end of every year. I've witnessed first-hand how difficult it can be just to balance the budget; it's always a struggle between higher membership dues, cutting programs, or trying to organize a major fundraising campaign.

Death by snoo-snoo?