Why would I want to celebrate the exact same kind of idiocy that resulted in thousands of years of despots and monarchs ruling through martial prowess? The leaders of that era were by and large bad people, and so are the sports stars of today. A bunch of druggies and cheaters, in addition to the other more usual human vices.

The hero worship of demonstrably bad people because they could swing a sword better than others was stupid back then and it's stupid today, whether we talk of footballs of any variety or any other sport implement. Moreover, it is totally deserving of being called out, despite the fact that a lot of people who think they are intelligent are fully engrossed in it.

Well, yes, that is a possibility. Of course, various studies have shown that in trade between countries with highly restrictive import rules and high tariffs and countries with limited import rules and tariffs, it is the latter which fair better economically. Trade restrictions appear to have greater negative impact on the country imposing them than on the country they are applied to (exceptions being in those cases where the country imposing the restrictions has a much larger economy than the one they are being imposed on).

Of course he has no expectation that it will pass. In fact, he'd be horrified if it did! He absolutely does NOT want it to pass, because it's pure theater, designed to allow lefty politicians to say in advertisements that their opponents hate education spending, etc. It's 100% empty, completely disingenuous rhetoric, and should have the bright light of day on it from the beginning.

Maybe you should use a meme generator for that one?

Or, consider the reality of it. Cops who pull people over while driving unmarked cars are completely used to not being trusted - by anyone, of any color. I have a great relationship with the cops I know, and have never had a bad moment with any I don't. My wife and I are lily white, but I'd never encourage her to pull over for an unmarked car anywhere but in a very populated spot, and ideally in front of the local police station. I do not trust unmarked cars, and there's good reason for that. Great news bit just this morning, where a cop-impersonating douche in a white Crown Vic pulled over (wait for it!) an off duty cop. Good one. He got to flash his badge, and was packing (guy drove off, but was promptly caught and arrested). What do the rest of us get to do?

Meanwhile, back in your race-card-playing department: there's a reason that cops in rougher neighborhoods don't EVER do normal traffic stops in unmarked cars. Cops in marked cruisers get attacked, run over, shot at and otherwise put in peril all the time. And those are guys rolling in plainly marked cars, wearing uniforms. I'll have to look around to see if there are any stats on basic traffic stops in marked vs. unmarked cars in high crime areas. My sense, from talking to people in that line of work, is that it's very rare. Unmarked cars in those areas aren't about traffic citations - they're usually working warrants, drug mules, trafficking, that sort of thing.

In the mean time, if you get the lights on you from an unmarked car, and it doesn't matter what color you are, proceed at the speed limit to the nearest station, or look for a marked car and honk to get their attention (if the unmarked is real, the officer in the marked car will already know what's going on, and will usually join in the stop to help protect the unmarked guy and to make sure anyone seeing the scene understands it's legit).

Not rocked sciense, so don't know what a University offers.

Maybe they can find someone who can spell "rocket science"....

Does said US citizen get to hold his US passport?

Possibly.

Does he get to use US Embassies?

Ditto

BLOCKQUOTE>Will he be rescued by the US military if kidnapped in Iraq?

Extremely unlikely.

The loser here is Hillary Clinton. To win in the general election, she has to position herself as a moderate centrist, that can win in the Midwest, and maybe even pick off a Southern state. But by steering the Democratic party into hare-brained anti-business claptrap, Obama is diminishing her ability to do that.

I can see that as an intended consequence - Obama makes history as the first black President, then gets overshadowed by first woman President. Does it make sense for him to enhance his place in history by making sure the first woman doesn't come along for another dozen years or so?

Or am I just off my meds today, and seeing conspiracies everywhere? And what are you looking at me for?

When has a lack of legal basis stopped Obama from doing what he pleases in the past?

Then they will move some place else. Of course, you could always make it so that a company pays a tax in every country they do business in on all of the money they make any where in the world, with a tax credit for any tax paid in any other country (meaning that only the country with the highest tax rates actually gets any money). Of course the result of this will be for companies to separate into lots of smaller companies all owned by the same holding company. The holding company would be based in a low tax country and would charge each of the subsidiaries a fee for "managing" their relationships. That fee would be equal to, or exceed, whatever taxable income each subsidiary would otherwise earn.

Or to put it another way, yet more capital would be tied up in finding ways to avoid taxes rather than being spent on productivity.

....they never took Obama's budget proposals seriously. I'm not sure why the rest of us should even bother paying attention.

You know, and I know, exactly what sort of person decides to come to the GP's conclusion and make that sort of assertion.

Useful clue:

Calling someone an idiot for not knowing your buzzwords of choice does NOT persuade him to your side of an argument.

And if you actually want change in the world, persuading other people to your side of the argument is helpful to your side.

Of course, if all you want to do is bitch in your little echo chamber, carry on as you have been....

Just like there is simply no way that you actually post your comments in good faith, right? Because everything that everyone does is always bad, always, right?

You know the saying. When everyone around you is an asshole, you're the asshole.

Of course the cops aren't going to complain when someone so stupid as to walk into their lobby right next to a picture of them and the warrant that's out for their arrest that's posted on the wall makes it easy for them. But the idea here is to simply shut down some scam transactions before they even occur. They don't have to DO anything - just make it clear that people who are uncomfortable with a transaction with stranger are welcome to meet up in the safest place available. Just like they tell you that you any time you think you might be being pulled over by someone who's not a real cop (say, an unmarked car), you can drive to the parking lot of a police station before pulling over. That's been the policy everywhere I've lived for decades.

Your eagerness to make a safe transaction or the serendipitous arrest of a stupid known, predatory criminal a bad thing is truly bizarre. Which of those two things is not in support of "the citizenry?" Which backwards world view are you holding that makes either of those things something nefarious on the part of the local police station? Grow up.

This makes about as much sense as worrying about deorbiting Jupiter with all the gravitational slingshots we do around it. The amount of uranium we consume is extremely extremely tiny. For example, we could power 100% of the entire world's energy for 10,000 years using only the depleted uranium sitting around unused in barrels at enrichment plants. We might be making very inefficient use of it now, but there's nothing to stop us from eventually digging up spent fuel and reprocessing it, for instance.

Wrap the quarter liter of Uranium in a 20cm thick steel shell. That'll be about 400 kg of steel and uranium, and be pretty much immune to explosions that aren't directed energy booms (shaped charge would be bad, accidental boom, ignorable.).