I don't know what really matters behind the scenes. But whilst they are standing and speaking, then this about resonating with people's values can matter. I am still wondering to this day what was the real reason for the Iraq invasion. I mean the really real reason.

Regards China, can I ask, there were some documentaries that China of late is becoming more passionate about nationalism, is that true?

There is a theory, used in South Africa to help ease the transition away from Apartheid, called Spiral Dynamics. It models human development as going through about 6 worldwiews, each with their own sense of morality/justice/values. It spans history, so the first worldview is of a hunter gatherer. The most recent worldview is of an educated Western post-modern cultural relative intellectual interested in minority rights and the environment. Anyway, between those two worldviews you have the view of warlords, then the view of religious-empire-order, and then the view of individualistic achievement/playing to win in a competitive world individualism. That last one by the way was the start of modernity and freedom in the French revolution sense of the word, it recognises that EVERY human is equal and has their won brain and is an equal player and should not be oppressed by religious-empire-orders (Communism is similar in that it is also a single empire order which oppresses individual freedom and ingenuity).

OK so, this relates to politics because the politicians do, as you say, simply have to FRAME a proposal in language which RESONATES with the worldview of the people being targeted. The point is that when you are born, you are basically at the hunter-gatherer level. Culturally and intellectually and morally you then grow up and somewhere along the way, tend to stop or focus on one of the worldview levels. If you are currently living in a Nigerian bad land, you're probably hovering around warlordism. That's fine, that's just the most appropriate adaption to your environment. A pomo sensitive type will merely become a target in that environment. So whatever level people are at, that's just the best they can manage. Anyway, Spiral Dynamics might not be 100% true, but it is a useful distilling of some of the major differences.

So yes, the tradition-valuing, we are one nation, one flag, NCIS TV show committed marine of honour and purpose, holy order type worldview is about half of America, I forget the exact percentage they estimate, and so anything that speaks about being a responsible individual who self-sacrifices their own selfish needs for the sake of serving the lager community, any issue framed in that way, will gain a lot of voter approval. People like W. Bush, Al Gore, and Hilary Clinton know all about Spiral Dynamics and such theories (various institutes and advisors etc.) and it is anybody's guess how much they are using them.

You're working under the assumption that consumers will demand them...I'm kind of thinking that's a negative. I think most of them are probably more interested in having a tablet or smartphone instead. When it comes to me getting cars, I don't really give a shit about infotainment systems as I've always found my smartphone to be much more flexible. Music? Pandora. GPS? Google Maps. How would CarPlay improve anything? Maybe, *maybe* for a self-driving car, but beyond what I mentioned, I don't really mess with any controls while I'm driving.

Nothing is ever free when it comes from the government. It all costs money and it all gets paid for by the citizens of that country; whether your realize it or not.

Well YES! That's the Democrat (the politicians, not the voters) Party for you. Rules for them, and rules for everyone else. They actually believe in a caste based system. The idea being that if you accept your position in life, you'd be less inclined to fight for a higher standard of living. It makes management of a serfdom much easier along with the ease of accumulation of power.

1. - Create Condition - convoluted tax code
2. - Fix condition you created with Government money- Federal paid assistance to file taxes
3. - Claim you're helping the little guy
4. - Profit!

Here is another example - Food Stamps (aka SNAP) and Agriculture policy. You might think food stamps exist to help the poor, but you'd be wrong. Food stamps are part of the AGRICULTURE spending bill, not the health and human services bill. The idea is to stimulate buying of "surplus" agricultural produce by subsidizing poor people who can't aford to buy it. But the dirty secret is that the agrculture policy of price supports both stimulates over-production for some crops and under-production for others while keeping prices high and making food LESS affordable for the poor. With food stamps the agribusinness interests can now sell the 'surplus' created by the price supports (government money) at artificially high prices to the poor (with government money), all the while with the political overhead cover of helping "family-farmers" and the "hungry children".

1. - Create Condition - Pay yourself Government money to artifically inflate prices (agricultural subsidy)
2. - Fix condition you created with Government money - Funnel yourself even more Government money by subsidizing purchase of your artificially high priced goods (food stamps)
3. - Claim you're helping the little guy
4. - Profit!

It is "just playing the game." The question is, whose side are you on? Google in many cases has to lobby just to be allowed to do anything at all. Intuit in this case is lobbying to keep the tax system unintuitive.

Ok, (1) what web portal? (2) when your email client is giving you a generic "something broke" message, how do you know to validate the password?

Occam's razor. It should be applied when troubleshooting.

E-mail passwords often expire on custom hosted servers. E-mail passwords for accounts hosted by your ISP, Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook.com..etc, don't. Company hosted mail, yes, quite common for that to happen. Especially true of your using a company Exchange server as the credentials are tied back to Active Directory.

The only time I've ever broke down a TCP/IP dump file was when troubleshooting PPTP VPN connectivity over a Verizon air card seven years ago (SSL VPN; use it yeah yeah, I know..) The problem was that some segments of their network were configured differently depending on what cell tower you were communicating against. For whatever reason, Verizon had a problem in that it was breaking the GRE protocol. Eventually, we isolated which which of the three cell towers were causing the problem out in the field (refinery complex for safety crewmen needing to log with a remote laptop).

H&R Block maybe more convenient, but YOU are still on the hook if they screw up somewhere. That's the law. With Turbo Tax and apps like it, you are still on the hook, but at least you have chance to go over it with a fine toothed comb before hitting the submit button. And BTW, Turbo Tax will catch any mistakes or discrepancies for you and alert you to the fact. It won't however catch any extra source of income or life changing events that you haven't already entered in.

TurboTax. You get to keep a history and I've had to call their line for consultation once. I was pleased with how it all went. Their online FAQ forum was pretty useful in fact.

To each his own, but if your tax situation is really complicated, perhaps you're living a life beyond your pay grade? Or perhaps we should go with a fair tax system. It's way too bloated and complex as it is. If I was forced to do this on my own with nothing but paper and instructions from provided PDFs via IRS website, no doubt it would have been an epic failure for me.

Wouldn't you have validated their password from the web portal side of things in the first place. That's sort of like trying to figure out how a lock works when you should have just turned the knob in the first place.

Some of you guys way over analyze shit by making mountains out of mole hills. 9 times out of 10, it's fucking user error!!!

You mean the same IRS that would automatically audit tea party groups even if they weren't suspected of doing anything wrong?

Carpenter Who Cut Off His Fingers Makes "Robohand" With 3-D Printer, Cuts Off Other Fingers With 3-D Printer

Ugh...I don't think I'm getting my point across correctly. This is pretty much the opposite of a "why, no true scottsman would..." argument. You're just picking things you want to identify as right wing, and if that person meets any of those you just dismiss them entirely.

Why not just look at each individual viewpoint based on its own merits/demerits?

I'm pro second amendment, free market capitalist, and anti affirmative action. Does that make me right wing?

I'm for the legalization of drugs, gambling, prostitution, and I'm atheist. Does that make me left wing?

Here's a better idea: Let's talk about these issues individually rather than say left or right.

No, I'm justifying lobbying based on a lot of things. People react so stupidly to perceived problems that they theorize will happen, and it often costs money (not bribe money, but lobbying takes time, and you know how time relates to money.)

It isn't just politicians; it's voters as well. For example, I'm pro immigration, but against illegal immigration. I suggested ending birthright citizenship in an old slashdot post. Somebody replies to me saying "oh but that would cause second class citizens and it would be so awful." Really? Well, in numerous countries in Europe they don't have birthright citizenship, yet they don't have those perceived problems. I make similar arguments in favor of gambling, drugs, prostitution, and others, where other countries have legalized them to REDUCE violent crime, (German red light districts and the autobahn aren't causing social problems there) yet politicians and indeed many voters have this fear about them anyways (and no, it's not just the religious ones, the secular ones fear it as well, but for different reasons.)

Liz Figueroa was overreacting to Google's advertising model. This reaction came mainly out of misunderstanding what google is doing (they actually had people making claims in the popular media about things they were doing that they weren't actually doing) in addition to having her own vision about how the world "ought to be" and wanting to force it on everybody else. Also you seem to have a misunderstanding of your own - companies like them have ALWAYS had the ability to look over your emails if they wanted to - there never has been anything stopping them from doing so. Microsoft demonstrated that recently. Google just has a machine look for words and show ads -- your emails are safe from Mrs. Kravits.